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Single Idea 14029

[filed under theme 7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 1. Nature of Existence ]

Full Idea

If that which disappears were destroyed into what is not, all things would have been destroyed, since that into which they were dissolved does not exist.

Gist of Idea

If disappearing things went to nothingness, nothing could return, and it would all be gone by now

Source

Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 39)

Book Ref

Epicurus: 'The Epicurus Reader', ed/tr. Inwood,B. /Gerson,L. [Hackett 1994], p.6

A Reaction

This follows on from Idea 14028. Theologians will immediately spot that this is the underlying principle cited by Aquinas in his Third Way for proving God's existence (Idea 1431).

Related Ideas

Idea 14028 Nothing comes to be from what doesn't exist [Epicurus]

Idea 16595 If each thing can cease to be, why hasn't absolutely everything ceased to be long ago? [Aristotle]

The 21 ideas with the same theme [what it means for things to exist]:

14874 Anaximander saw the contradiction in the world - that its own qualities destroy it [Anaximander, by Nietzsche]
481 Nothing is created or destroyed; there is only mixing and separation [Anaxagoras]
14028 Nothing comes to be from what doesn't exist [Epicurus]
14029 If disappearing things went to nothingness, nothing could return, and it would all be gone by now [Epicurus]
23634 Accepting the existence of anything presupposes the notion of existence [Reid]
4475 Saying a thing 'is' adds nothing to it - otherwise if my concept exists, it isn't the same as my concept [Kant]
11008 Existence is not a first-order property, but the instantiation of a property [Frege, by Read]
8643 Affirmation of existence is just denial of zero [Frege]
14463 Existence can only be asserted of something described, not of something named [Russell]
13133 The world is facts, not things. Facts determine the world, and the world divides into facts [Wittgenstein]
16434 Some say what exists must do so, and nothing else could possible exist [Stalnaker]
16439 A nominalist view says existence is having spatio-temporal location [Stalnaker]
15532 'Allists' embrace the existence of all controversial entities; 'noneists' reject all but the obvious ones [Lewis]
6070 Existence is a primary quality, non-existence a secondary quality [McGinn]
12214 'Exists' is a predicate, not a quantifier; 'electrons exist' is like 'electrons spin' [Fine,K]
10279 Can we discover whether a deck is fifty-two cards, or a person is time-slices or molecules? [Shapiro]
8321 All possible worlds contain abstracta (e.g. numbers), which means they contain concrete objects [Lowe]
9427 For Humeans the world is a world primarily of events [Mumford]
19659 The absolute is the impossibility of there being a necessary existent [Meillassoux]
18740 If 'exist' doesn't express a property, we can hardly ask for its essence [Horsten/Pettigrew]
19034 The world is either a whole made of its parts, or a container which contains its parts [Vetter]