Within each of these negational ranges two general facets of negation may be distinguished for analysis. I shall call them "free" and "bound." Negation, however, is never completely free nor completely bound, so "free" and "bound" shall refer to negation in a relative sense.

The Greeks could never have asked, "Why is there something; why not nothing?" Parmenides and Plato both held Absolute Non-Being to be inconceivable, and Aristotle's emphasis on the priority of the actual also excluded this question. The ex nihilo nihil fit of classical metaphysics may be taken as an implicit rejection of the why of Being. To say that nothing can come from nothing is to deny any priority for, or any ontological status to, Nothing.