Physis — the Greek term for nature, natural constitution, or the inherent principle of growth — occupies a critical and contested position across the depth-psychology corpus. Edinger situates it as a still-living etymological root underlying the modern lexicon of physical science, while simultaneously tracing its philosophical genealogy through Presocratic cosmology, Philo of Alexandria, and Stoic naturalism. For the Presocratics, as Vernant makes clear, physis was the totalising horizon of existence: nothing lay outside its compass, and the Ionian naturalists constructed their theoriae on precisely this monistic premise. In depth-psychological discourse, physis becomes a polarity: set against pneuma, psyche, nous, and logos, it marks the domain of material, instinctual, and bodily life. Hillman exploits this polarity most sharply, opposing an Aristotelian physis-oriented psychology — which takes nature as its norm — to a Platonic soul-psychology oriented toward depth and death. Giegerich, pressing the dialectic further, argues that alchemy as opus contra naturam had already superseded physis as its operative horizon, advancing to the plane of logical interiority. Jung, cited by Peterson, insists that religious statements concern the reality of psyche, not physis — a distinction foundational to analytical psychology's claim to irreducibility. The tension between physis as ground of unconscious process and physis as what depth psychology must transcend remains generative and unresolved.
There are modern words which have physis as a root: physics, physical, physician, physiology, physiognomy and so on. Physis is still a living entity in our evolving language.
Edinger establishes physis as an etymologically vital root persisting in modern scientific vocabulary, arguing for its living presence in the conceptual life of depth psychology.
, The Psyche in Antiquity, Book One: Early Greek Philosophy From Thales to Plotinus, 1999thesis
For the "natural philosophers" of lonia, a spirit of positivism pervaded the whole of existence from the outset. Nothing existed that was not nature, physis. The human, the divine, and the natural worlds mad
Vernant identifies physis as the totalising category of Ionian thought, collapsing the human, divine, and natural into a single ontological domain.
, The Origins of Greek Thought, 1982thesis
The quantitative approach represents the point of view of physis towards psyche, of matter toward soul, and therefore it enters psychology from the science of material nature.
Hillman defines physis as the perspective of matter upon soul, using it to demarcate a naturalistic, Aristotelian psychology from a Platonic, depth-oriented one.
, Mythic Figures, 2007thesis
Jung had learned from William James that psychological development is intrinsically spiritual, explaining that "religious statements without exception have to do with the reality of the psyche and not with the reality of physis."
Peterson cites Jung's foundational distinction between physis and psyche to ground the claim that religious and psychological development belong to an order irreducible to natural causation.
, The Shadow of a Figure of Light, 2024thesis
soul as logic contains both physis and pneuma as sublated moments within it.
Giegerich argues that soul, understood as logical life, dialectically supersedes the opposition of physis and pneuma by incorporating both as sublated moments within a higher logical structure.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020thesis
The point of alchemy is that, as 'opus contra naturam' (!), it had precisely overcome the dimension of the physis as its horizon (the physis that used to be the horizon of mythical existence).
Giegerich contends that alchemy's defining gesture was to transcend physis as the encompassing horizon of mythic consciousness, advancing to an abstract, logical plane.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020thesis
this has nothing to do with the Christian 'shadow' and Christianity's alleged neglect of the physis through an exclusive concentration on pneuma.
Giegerich distinguishes alchemy's concern with matter from a mere compensatory rehabilitation of physis against pneuma, insisting that alchemy's logic operates on a different plane entirely.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020supporting
the conscious mind, advancing into the unknown regions of the psyche, is overpowered by the archaic forces of the unconscious: a repetition of the cosmic embrace of Nous and Physis.
Jung invokes the mythological union of Nous and Physis as an archetype for the psychic danger of the conscious mind's descent into the unconscious during the analytic process.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting
ciples of nature physis was well aware that it is indispensable that in all existing things there must be an active cause and a passive subject
Through Philo's commentary on Moses, Edinger shows physis used in conjunction with nous as the passive, material substrate opposed to the active causal intellect of the universe.
, The Psyche in Antiquity, Book One: Early Greek Philosophy From Thales to Plotinus, 1999supporting
a world made wholly of a subtle 'matter' of light, intermediate between the world of the Cherubinic pure Lights and the world of physis, which includes corruptible sublunar matter as well as the astral matter of the incorruptible Heavens.
Corbin positions physis as the encompassing cosmic Occident in Iranian Sufi cosmology, comprising both corruptible and incorruptible matter, against which the Soul's intermediate world of light stands as Orient.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971supporting
Speech is truly conceived as natural reality, a part of physis. A man's logos may grow, just as it may shrink and shrivel away.
Detienne documents the archaic Greek conception of speech and logos as belonging to physis itself, subject to the same natural laws of growth and diminishment as organic life.
, The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece, 1996supporting
These unnamed persons are surely the Physis men, or the pupils of the Physis men, the 'realist' politicians whom we meet in Thucydides.
Dodds identifies the 'Physis men' as a politically consequential intellectual tendency in fifth-century Greece, connecting the naturalistic reduction of value to a broader cultural crisis addressed by Euripides.
, The Greeks and the Irrational, 1951supporting
Philo uses the terms physis and nous in another passage
Edinger notes Philo's paired deployment of physis and nous as complementary cosmological principles, marking the Hellenistic fusion of Greek natural philosophy and Jewish theology.
, The Psyche in Antiquity, Book One Early Greek Philosophy supporting
Physique also extends to plants, and in us there are things like plants - nails and hair. Physique is tenor in actual motion.
The Stoic Philo distinguishes physique (the dynamic expression of physis) as a graduated vital principle extending from stones through plants to rational souls, offering a hierarchical ontology of natural constitution.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987aside
Collins English Dictionary, s. v. "physis," April 12, 2023
A bibliographic footnote citing a standard dictionary definition of physis, establishing the term's contemporary lexical presence without substantive argument.
, The Shadow of a Figure of Light, 2024aside