The physis concept in Plato: from the pluralists to Aristotle
Abstract
The concept of physis and its derivatives appear hundreds of times in Plato’s dialogues. Given the unsystematic method of the author and the many years he devoted to philosophical writing, the variety of meanings attached to this complex and polysemic word will not come as a surprise. Moreover, Plato recaps, synthetises and reworks some of the fundamental conceptions on nature, especially those from pluralist philosophers. He showed an interest in the constitutive elements of the physical world and took part in the discussion on mechanism and teleology. This paper analyses both the Platonic assimilation of pre-Socratic physics and the influence exerted on the Aristotelian approach, mainly regarding the final causality and the principle of motion.
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