Ex nihilo nihil fit — nothing comes from nothing (Parmenides, Lucretius). Lear warns that “nothing will come of nothing.” Martin Heidegger finds the nothing revealed in anxiety; Jean-Paul Sartre makes nothingness the very structure of consciousness. Nāgārjuna‘s emptiness (śūnyatā) is not nothing but the absence of independent existence.
Thinkers & Authors
9
Laozi
The legendary “Old Master” credited with the Tao Te Ching — the short, paradoxical classic of the Way that cannot be named, of yielding water and effortless action.
Parmenides
The stern pre-Socratic of Elea who argued that only what-is can be thought, that nothing comes from nothing, and that change and plurality are illusions.
Lucretius
Roman poet whose single masterpiece, On the Nature of Things, set Epicurean atomism to hexameter verse — and, rediscovered in 1417, helped kindle modernity.
Nāgārjuna
Founder of the Madhyamaka (“Middle Way”) school of Buddhism, who argued that all things are empty (śūnya) of independent existence — including emptiness itself.
Gauḍapāda
The earliest systematic teacher of Advaita Vedānta, whose verses on the Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad taught that nothing has ever really been born — the waking world is like a dream, and the one consciousness only seems to become many.
William Shakespeare
The playwright and poet of Stratford whose 37-odd plays and 154 sonnets gave English its richest store of quotation and gave philosophy Hamlet, Lear and Macbeth.
Martin Heidegger
The philosopher of Being, who argued that the West had forgotten the question of what it means to be, and analysed human existence (Dasein) as thrown, anxious, being-toward-death.
Jean-Paul Sartre
The face of French existentialism — existence precedes essence, we are condemned to be free, and hell is other people.
Samuel Beckett
Irish playwright, novelist and poet who wrote in English and French, the master of minimalism and the absurd — Waiting for Godot made a play in which “nothing happens, twice” into the defining drama of the twentieth century.
Works
5The Ṛg Veda
The oldest text of India and one of the oldest in any Indo-European language — 1,028 hymns to the gods of fire, storm, sky and order, composed c. 1500–1000 BCE and preserved orally, syllable for syllable, for over three thousand years. Its final book already asks how the universe began, and whether even its creator knows.
Tao Te Ching
The 81 short chapters of the “Classic of the Way and its Power” — the foundational text of Daoism and one of the most translated books ever written.
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
Nāgārjuna’s 450 verses in 27 chapters — the founding text of Madhyamaka, which examines causation, motion, the self, time and nirvāṇa, and shows that nothing has intrinsic existence; everything is empty because everything is dependent.
The Heart Sūtra
The shortest and most famous Mahāyāna scripture — a single page in which the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara declares that “form is emptiness, emptiness is form”, negates every Buddhist category, and ends with a mantra: “gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond — awakening, hail!”
King Lear
An old king divides his kingdom between the daughters who flatter him and banishes the one who loves him — and is stripped of everything on a heath in a storm.
Ideas
4Nothing from Nothing
The ancient principle that nothing comes from nothing — the foundation of Greek physics and the target of the Christian doctrine of creation from nothing.
Nirvāṇa
The Buddhist goal — the “blowing out” of the fires of greed, hatred and delusion, the end of suffering and of rebirth. The Buddha described it as unborn and unconditioned, and refused to say whether the awakened exist after death.
Śūnyatā (Emptiness)
Emptiness — the Mahāyāna teaching that all things lack intrinsic, independent existence (svabhāva), because they arise in dependence on causes, parts and concepts. Not nothingness, but the openness that makes change and freedom possible.
Anxiety
Not fear of something, but dread before freedom and nothingness — for Kierkegaard “the dizziness of freedom”, for Heidegger the mood that reveals the nothing.
Schools & Movements
1Characters
2King Lear
The proud old king who divides his kingdom by a love test, banishes the daughter who loves him, and is stripped of everything until he learns, too late, what love and suffering are.
Lear's Fool
The king’s jester, who tells Lear the truth in riddles, songs and jokes — and vanishes from the play after the storm.
Great Scenes
2The Storm on the Heath
Shut out by his daughters, Lear rages at the storm, prays for the poor, and meets “unaccommodated man” in the naked Poor Tom.
Alas, Poor Yorick
In the graveyard, Hamlet is handed the skull of the jester who carried him on his back as a child — and sees where all flesh, wit and glory end.
Lines to Remember
5 quotationsNothing can ever be created by divine power out of nothing.
nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus umquam
Context & when to use it
For naturalism and conservation laws; the root of “ex nihilo nihil fit”.
Whatever is dependently arisen, that is explained to be emptiness. That, being a dependent designation, is itself the middle way.
Context & when to use it
For emptiness as relationality, not nothingness.
The rest is silence.
Context & when to use it
Hamlet’s last words.
For endings, death, and what cannot be said (compare Wittgenstein — “whereof one cannot speak”).
Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.
Context & when to use it
Cordelia refuses to flatter, saying “Nothing, my lord.” Lear warns her that she will inherit nothing.
Ex nihilo nihil fit, in Shakespeare’s mouth. For causation, for silence, for refusing flattery.
We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
Context & when to use it
Prospero ends the masque — the “cloud-capp’d towers” and “the great globe itself” shall dissolve.
For māyā, the dreamlike unreality of the world, and the brevity of life. Perfect beside Śaṅkara or Zhuangzi’s butterfly.
⚠ “Made on”, not “made of”.
Sententiae
phrases in the originalEx nihilo nihil fit
Origin. The principle goes back to Parmenides (c. 500 BCE), who argued that what-is cannot come from what-is-not. Lucretius put it in Latin verse — “nil posse creari de nilo”, nothing can be created out of nothing (De Rerum Natura I.155–156). The compact form “ex nihilo nihil fit” is a later scholastic formula. — Parmenides
⚠ Christian theology answered with “creatio ex nihilo” — God creates out of nothing, precisely because God is not bound by the rule. Shakespeare’s Lear throws the maxim at Cordelia — “Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.”
Against any argument that pulls something from nowhere — a free lunch, a cause without a cause, a conclusion without premises.
Angst
Origin. Kierkegaard’s Danish “Angest” (The Concept of Anxiety, 1844), then Heidegger’s Angst in Being and Time. — Martin Heidegger
For existential dread.
Das Nichts selbst nichtet
Origin. Heidegger, “What Is Metaphysics?” (1929) — mocked by Rudolf Carnap as the model of a meaningless pseudo-sentence. — Martin Heidegger
⚠ The Carnap–Heidegger clash became a symbol of the split between analytic and continental philosophy.
For nothingness — or for jokes about philosophical jargon.
Explore Next
related by shared connectionsExistence Precedes Essence
Sartre’s formula — humans have no pre-given nature; we exist first and make ourselves through our choices.
Heraclitus
The obscure philosopher of Ephesus for whom everything flows, strife is the father of all things, and a hidden logos governs the endless change.
How Should We Face Death?
Naciketas at Death’s door, Socrates’ hemlock, Epicurus’s argument, the Stoics’ rehearsal, Hamlet’s skull, Ivan Ilyich’s scream, Heidegger’s being-toward-death.
What Is Time?
Flux and permanence, the moving image of eternity, Augustine’s puzzle, Kant’s form of intuition, eternal recurrence, Heidegger’s temporality.
Śāntideva
The 8th-century Nālandā monk whose Bodhicaryāvatāra (“The Way of the Bodhisattva”) is the most beloved poem of Mahāyāna Buddhism — a guide to compassion, patience and wisdom that the Dalai Lama calls his greatest inspiration.
Phenomenology
Husserl’s method of describing experience exactly as it appears — “to the things themselves!” — which Heidegger and Sartre turned toward existence.