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did, it would arise from nothing 3⁄4 a logical impossibility 3⁄4 for nothing can come into existence from what is not: ουδαμα αν γενοιτο ουδεν εκ μηδενóς.35 For Aristotle, too, nothing can come out of “what is not,” as long as “what is not” is understood as μη ον, simpliciter; however, things can come to be, coincidentally, from the privation of something.36 To posit otherwise, adds Lucretius, is to destroy the notion of causation, and to admit the randomness that out of anything, anything can come to be.37
Hellenism’s tendency to represent efficient causes as imitative or final causes sparked the idea of creation as emanation. From Aristotle to Plotinus, it was conceived, to avoid infinite regression of causes, that creation of reality no longer began from a self-moved Platonic Demiurge, but from a First principle, an “Unmoved First Mover” or “the One:” an ideological shift that demanded changes to the notion of substance. Overall, metaphysical creation challenged Grecian thinkers, for they were never able to posit rationally, the bewildering creatio ex nihilo
35 Waterfield, Robin. The First Philosophers. The Pre-Socratics and the Sophists. USA: Oxford University Press, 2009. Melissus of Samos. Diels-Kranz, 30B1. 84. This fragment is seen by many as a paraphrasis.
36 Aristotle. Phys. I, 8, 191b4; 191b15. For Aristotle, the problem with Parmenides’ argument is treating not being and being as simples, rather than compounds. For example, an entity might be a non-musical man, who is a being (in a way) and not a being (in another way). That is, the man is something that ‘is’ (in one way), and something that ‘is not’: non-musical (in another way). That is, the musician does not come to be out of sheer nothingness, but from what is simply a non-being. The musician, thus, comes to be from the compound “unmusical man,” that is, the musician comes to be from a privation: the unmusical. To Aristotle, Parmenides offers an either/or dilemma, instead of a both/and one.
37 Lucrecius. De Rerum Natura, I, 150-210.
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