Ex nihilo nihil fit

2004 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 350-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphael J. DeHoratius
Keyword(s):  
Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mordecai Lee

The American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) was founded in December 1939. This did not occur ex nihilo. Rather, it was the desired end-result of an elaborate and detailed collusion by some early public administration professionals including Louis Brownlow, Luther Gulick, and William Mosher. With patience and careful planning beginning in 1937, they designed a scenario that would, as the events they were catalyzing unfolded, undermine the Governmental Research Association (GRA) and provide justification for the new organization. This pre-birth campaign is often skipped over lightly in histories of ASPA. In particular, their collusion caused some serious collateral damage, destroying the academic career of University of Chicago doctoral candidate Norman Gill. This revisionist history explores the detailed maneuverings of the leaders of the nascent ASPA against GRA and how they, seemingly obliviously, wrecked the intended professional path of an innocent researcher who worked for them.


Author(s):  
Ryan Wasserman

Chapter 5 surveys the various causal paradoxes of time travel. Section 1 introduces the concept of a causal loop and reviews some of the standard arguments against backward causation. Sections 2 focuses on the bootstrapping paradox, and the question of whether or not time travel allows for self-caused events. Section 3 addresses the ex nihilo paradox, and the question of whether or not time travel allows for uncaused events. Section 4 looks at the restoration paradox, and the question of how to understand the life cycle of an object in a causal loop. Section 5 considers D. H. Mellor’s frequency-based argument against causal loops. Section 6 discusses Michael Tooley’s counterfactual-based argument against backward causation.


Author(s):  
Stewart J. Thomas ◽  
Brian P. Degnan ◽  
Cristel Callupe Chavez ◽  
Billy Culver
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Michaela Belejkaničová

AbstractIn his Heretical Essays, Jan Patočka introduces the concept of the solidarity of the shaken. He argues that it emerges in the conditions of political violence—the frontline experience (Fronterlebnis). Moreover, Patočka brings into discussion the puzzling concepts of day, night, metanoia and sacrifice, which only further problematise the idea. Researching how other thinkers have examined the phenomenon of the frontline experience, it becomes obvious that Patočka did not invent the obscure vocabulary ex nihilo. Concepts such as frontline experience, sacrifice and the metaphors of the day and night were commonly used by thinkers in the inter-war and post-war eras in their examination of community (Gemeinschaft). This study aims to reconstruct the idea of the solidarity of the shaken as contextualized within a broader scholarly debate on the concept of community (Gemeinschaft). Through the critical dialogue between Patočka’s works and the works of Ernst Jünger and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, this study will portray how Patočka, in his discourse on the frontline experience, follows the usual pattern of overcoming one’s individuality, transcending and opening up to the constitution of solidarity. This paper will argue that Patočka defined the solidarity of the shaken in an attempt to revive the positive aspects of a community and break with the regressive (if not sinister) uses to which it was put in the twentieth century.


Lumen et Vita ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Linthicum

The two dominant concepts Catherine Keller examines in her study of creatio ex profundis, creation out of chaos, are the feminine tehomic language and refutation of divine omnipotence. She studies both these concepts through a feminist lens as well as with an overarching question as to why creatio ex nihilo, creation from nothing, has commandeered the thought behind Genesis exegesis and creation theology. Using various literary styles, both religious and secular, Keller attempts to deconstruct creation out of nothing and argue how a theology of becoming is more appropriate given the language of Genesis and creation as a whole. Rather than merely substitute the present masculine understandings of God and creation with the feminine, she persuades for a return to the foundation of tehomic language in an effort to reconstruct the negative feminine connotations of chaos and support a theology of becoming without a “divine dominology.” The purpose of this paper is to offer an examination of Keller’s text and counterarguments to her understanding of creatio ex nihilo and ex profundis. There are various examples of male dominant thought in theology throughout history; however, divine omnipotence, both in general and as associated with creation theology, is not an affront to the feminine and creatio ex profundis. Keller’s fault does not lie in the notion of creatio ex profundis and its validity; rather, her argument concerning the domineering power of divine omnipotence and its association with creatio ex nihilo remains insufficient.


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