gr. physis = natureza. Quando utiliza o termo physis, Platão   retoma por sua conta as conclusões das investigações de seus predecessores mas inserindo-as na estrutura de uma ontologia nova, onde intervêm notadamente as noções de forma inteligível e de alma (do mundo e do homem). Para Heidegger   o significado da physis é triplo: surgir, desabrochar e abrir. Em Plotino  , forma produtora imanente à alma.

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gr. physikós: estudante da physis, filósofo natural

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The Neoplatonists, as Genequand has brought out, did not want to give nature too much independence, for fear of jeopardising the unifying power of higher intelligible realms. Aristotle   and the Aristotelians did not feel the same concern. Alexander holds that nature acts without the need for Platonic Ideas as a model and without rational reflection or choice but by a sequence of automatic changes, ap. Simplicium in Phys. 310,25-311,21, like those of marionettes. Nonetheless, the natural sequences have a purpose, and in natural reproduction the parent’s enmattered form serves as a model. Alexander’s mechanistic (though teleological) account of nature contrasted with that of his rival Galen  , and was opposed by the Neoplatonists, starting with Plotinus. [SorabjiPC2  :33]

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Φύσις is not to be taken in the modern sense of “nature” as opposed to “culture,” whereupon one then polemicizes against Aristotle. That is a superficial way of viewing it. Φύσει ὄν is a being that is what it is from out of itself, on the basis of its genuine possibilities. [Heidegger, GA18:45]

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LÉXICO: PHYSIS