The Seba library treats Phusis in 8 passages, across 5 authors (including Hadot, Pierre, Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Brad Inwood).
le mot phusis que nous traduisons par « Nature » signifie aussi, quand on l’emploie sans qualificatif, la force de croissance propre de l’organisme.
Hadot demonstrates that phusis, used without qualification in the Stoic-Marcusian framework, denotes not universal Nature but the specific vegetative growth-force immanent in the individual organism, constituting a determinate level in a hierarchy of natural powers within the human being.
, What Is Ancient Philosophy?, 1995thesis
le mot phusis que nous traduisons par « Nature » signifie aussi, quand on l’emploie sans qualificatif, la force de croissance propre de l’organisme.
Identical thesis to the 1995 edition: phusis names the organism’s intrinsic growth-force, a specific internal level distinct from sensation and reason, each level carrying its own ethical obligations in the Stoic discipline of desire.
, What Is Ancient Philosophy?, 2002thesis
the becoming of nature (phusis) was no more intelligible than the genesis of myth… Among the Ionians, the new demand for positivity was from the start aimed at the absolute in the concept of phusis.
Vernant argues that phusis served as the Ionians’ candidate for the absolute ground of intelligibility, yet its character as becoming rendered it philosophically unstable and ultimately forced the opposition between rational logos and natural process that defines Western metaphysics.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983thesis
second are those objects moved by the phusis or the soul within them, which are also said to move ‘from themselves’… it will be similar either to a plant moved only by phusis or a stone being carried along by an external agent.
Inwood reconstructs the Stoic hierarchy of motion in which phusis represents an intermediate self-moving principle — superior to hexis but inferior to the animal’s self-directed impulse — whose removal reduces any being to mechanically governed matter.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985thesis
our hair and nails are compared to plants governed by phusis, because of their obvious ability to grow.
Inwood documents Philo’s illustration of how lower principles — including phusis as vegetative growth — are included within higher levels of the Stoic psychophysical hierarchy, while cautioning that this specific image may owe more to Philo than to orthodox Stoic sources.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985supporting
the contrast between actions which are aischra nomêi, shameful by convention, and those which are aischra phusei, shameful by nature, is the contrast between the new ‘quiet moral’ aischra and the traditional aischra of failure.
Adkins shows that phusis entered the ethical lexicon of the Sophistic period as the criterion of genuine shame against which conventional (nomos-based) moral categories were measured and frequently dismissed as derivative or secondary.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
in accordance with nature / AN = kata phusin: 58
The Long-Sedley glossary locates kata phusin as a technical Stoic ethical formula, confirming that phusis functions normatively — as the standard by which impulse, desire, and action are evaluated — across the Hellenistic ethical corpus.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
Eusebiuserrs in saying that sticks, stones, etc. are moved by hexis. Rather they are unified by hexis and moved by external force. No reliable Stoic source attributes the power of motion to natural place to the lowest entities on the scale.
Inwood’s textual correction clarifies the Stoic hierarchy from which phusis is distinguished: hexis unifies inert matter but does not move it, whereas phusis is the first principle capable of self-initiated growth-motion, making the terminological boundaries of the hierarchy precise.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985aside