Nothing Precedes Emergence

There is no system in the history of Western philosophy that has truly conceived of origin as an event without precedence. Every emergence has been interpreted as a consequence, as a transition, or as a response. Even the most critical currents have preserved the structure of succession: something comes after something, something erupts because something broke, something begins because something was missing. The origin, in this regime, is never an inaugural gesture — it is always a retroactive effect, an inscription upon what is already given.

The problem is not just one of language — it is one of the structure of thought. Philosophy, in attempting to escape theological creation, fell back into a logical model that demands condition. If something emerges, there must be a principle that allows it; if something transforms, there must be a before that configures it. From the Greek *arché* to the Derridean trace, passing through the unmoved mover, sufficient reason, or dialectical negativity, what remains is the compulsion to think of the beginning as derivation. No one conceived of emergence as that which comes from nothing — but which also does not follow anything.

In classical philosophy, the origin is almost always substance or potency. In Anaximander, the *apeiron* — the unlimited — precedes everything as the matrix of generation and dissolution. In Heraclitus, conflict generates unity. In Plato, the sensible world derives from a pre-existing ideal world. And even when Aristotle tries to secularize the principle, he conceives of an unmoved mover, the cause of all movement, which is moved by nothing. In all these cases, the origin founds: it is anterior, necessary, and superior. Emergence is not conceived as an event, but as the ordered consequence of an already given principle.

Modernity, which seemed to promise a rupture, maintained the structure. Descartes seeks the absolute foundation of thought in the transparency of the subject. Leibniz formulates the principle of sufficient reason: nothing exists without there being a reason for it. Kant, even while rejecting the metaphysics of the absolute, anchors knowledge in *a priori* forms — categories anterior to experience that make it possible. The origin continues to be conceived as a condition: an anterior plane that organizes and permits. Emergence is not an ontological fact, but a result derived from laws, structures, and conditions.

Even Hegel, who breaks with the idea of initial stability, founds the thought of becoming in an originating negativity. The origin, here, is the conflict that is overcome, the cleavage that is resolved, the dialectical process that reconciles. But there continues to be a before: the thesis, the absence of form, the initial indetermination that demands overcoming. Emergence is the product of what is missing, never a gesture of affirmation without antecedent.

In the 20th century, attempts at displacement emerge — but none abandon the model of precedence. Freud sees trauma, loss, and repression as the engines of psychic formation. Heidegger inscribes being in the temporality of forgetting: what exists is always what has been lost. Derrida deconstructs presence, but founds all inscription in absence and *différance*. Nancy thinks of being as shared and always already dissipated meaning. Foucault analyzes events without a subject, but as effects of historical systems. Even when criticizing the origin, these currents maintain an economy of anteriority — now negative, displaced, dispersed, but still operative.

All these attempts fail in the essential: none conceive of emergence as that which does not come after anything. None accept that what begins does not follow — it merely erupts. Even radical critique remains imprisoned in the horizon of a lost origin, an anterior structure, a founding negative. Emergence continues to be a response, deviation, synthesis, failure, postponement, lack — but never an operative fold without cause.

Western philosophy has not known how to conceive of the event as origin. It built sublime architectures of totality, of becoming, of inscription and loss — but always starting from something. From a substance, a lack, a tension. Even attempts to escape chronology ended up reinscribing it in other forms: logical, symptomatic, narrative. Emergence without a before remains unconceived. Not because language is lacking — but because the very structure of thought remained captive to the demand for precedence.

It is not about refusing tradition here. It is about recognizing that none of its conceptual forms managed to break with the imagination of the beginning as succession or rupture. None conceived of what begins as that which does not follow. The origin was always justified, presupposed, symbolized as return or as cut. Never listened to as a gesture that does not repeat, that does not repair, that does not follow.

Therefore, thought has not yet begun to conceive of what emerges, and all philosophy of origin remains, to this day, captive to what precedes it.

"The origin does not follow, it erupts.
Emergence does not begin, it insists."

—— David Cota — Founder of the Ontology of Emergent Complexity ——