One of philosophy's most contested words — from Laozi's way and Aristotle's physis to Bacon's mastery, Spinoza's God, Darwin's selection and deep ecology.
Is nature a norm to follow, a machine to master, a self-organising whole, or a value in its own right?
'Nature' may be the most equivocal word in philosophy: it names the essence of a thing, the sum of all that exists, the wilderness untouched by humans, and a standard by which conduct is judged. The ancients read it as an ordered whole with its own ends, a physis one could live 'according to'; early modern science reconceived it as matter in motion, a machine to be measured and mastered for human benefit. The Romantics recoiled, restoring nature as a living, spiritual power and a refuge from a mechanised society, while Darwin dissolved the boundary between the human and the natural altogether. In our own age the question has turned practical and moral: does nature have a value and a claim independent of its usefulness to us? The disputes below track that long swing between nature as norm, as resource, and as end in itself.
Daoism
Nature is the spontaneous, self-so course of the Dao, which acts without striving (wu wei) and yet leaves nothing undone. The sage does not impose order but yields and follows the grain of things, for forcing against nature brings ruin. To be natural (ziran) is to return to simplicity, softness and the uncarved block, letting things unfold of themselves.
Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching).
Ancient Greek (Peripatetic)
Nature (physis) is an inner principle of motion and rest belonging to a thing in itself, as opposed to what is made by art. Natural things have ends toward which they develop, and 'nature does nothing in vain'; to understand a thing is to grasp its formal and final causes, not just its matter. The natural is what happens always or for the most part, providing a norm of function and flourishing.
Physics, Book II; Parts of Animals.
Roman Epicureanism
Nature is nothing but atoms and void moving eternally, without gods intervening or designing. All things arise from the chance collisions and 'swerve' of atoms, follow the laws of their own compounds, and dissolve back into their elements; nothing comes from nothing and nothing returns to nothing. Understanding this frees us from the fear of the gods and of death, which are the roots of human misery.
On the Nature of Things (De rerum natura).
Early modern empiricism
Nature is to be studied not for contemplation but for use: knowledge is power, and 'nature is only to be commanded by obeying her'. Through a new inductive method that puts nature to the test of experiment, humanity can recover its lost dominion and relieve its estate. Bacon reframes nature as an object to be interrogated, dissected and harnessed for the benefit of human life.
Novum Organum (1620); The New Atlantis.
Rationalism / mechanism
Nature is extended matter in motion, wholly explicable by mechanical laws without appeal to ends or souls; even animals are complex automata. The world is a vast machine whose workings can be captured in mathematics, and knowing these causes lets us make ourselves 'masters and possessors of nature'. Only the human mind, res cogitans, stands outside this mechanism.
Discourse on the Method (1637); Principles of Philosophy.
Rationalism / pantheism
There is only one infinite substance, 'God or Nature' (Deus sive Natura), of which everything is a mode. Nature is not created by a transcendent God nor made for human ends; it acts from the sheer necessity of its own nature, and to grasp this is the highest knowledge. Spinoza distinguishes 'naturing nature' (the productive power) from 'natured nature' (the produced modes), collapsing the gap between God and world.
Ethics (1677).
Enlightenment / Romantic precursor
'Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.' Nature is the original condition of innocence, health and self-sufficiency from which society and its artificial needs have corrupted us. The remedy is not a return to the forest but an education and a politics that follow nature rather than distort it, recovering the natural goodness beneath civilised vice.
Discourse on Inequality (1755); Emile (1762).
German idealism / critical philosophy
Nature is the totality of appearances insofar as they are governed by universal laws that the understanding itself prescribes; causality and lawfulness are conditions we bring to experience. In studying organisms we cannot help but judge them as if designed toward ends, yet this teleology is a regulative principle of our judgment, not knowledge of nature's own purposes. Nature as phenomenon is law-bound, leaving room outside it for freedom.
Critique of Pure Reason (1781); Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790).
German idealism / Naturphilosophie
Nature is not dead mechanism but 'visible spirit' — a living, dynamic productivity striving toward consciousness, just as spirit is 'invisible nature'. It develops through a hierarchy of powers and polar forces, an unconscious creativity that culminates in the mind that comes to know it. Schelling's Naturphilosophie thus reunites the natural and the ideal that Cartesian dualism had split apart.
Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (1797); On the World-Soul (1798).
Natural science / evolutionary biology
The apparent design of the living world is produced without a designer, by natural selection acting on heritable variation over immense stretches of time. There is no fixed ladder of being and no separate creation of humanity; all species, ourselves included, descend with modification from common ancestors. Nature is a branching, contingent history rather than a fulfilment of pre-given ends.
On the Origin of Species (1859); The Descent of Man (1871).
American Transcendentalism
By living deliberately at Walden Pond, Thoreau sought to front the essential facts of life and learn what nature has to teach. Nature is a source of moral and spiritual renewal, a wildness in which 'the preservation of the world' is found and against which a commercial civilisation measures its poverty. To immerse oneself in it is to recover simplicity, attention and a right relation to time.
Walden (1854); 'Walking' (1862).
Liberal utilitarianism
Mill dismantles the idea that 'nature' can be a guide to conduct. Either it means everything that happens, in which case following it is meaningless since we can do nothing else, or it means the course of things apart from human action, in which case imitating it is often wicked, for nature kills and tortures indiscriminately. Human progress consists precisely in amending and controlling nature, not obeying it.
'Nature', in Three Essays on Religion (1874).
Environmental ethics
Leopold's 'land ethic' extends moral consideration from human beings to the whole biotic community of soils, waters, plants and animals. Its guiding rule: 'a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community; it is wrong when it tends otherwise.' We must stop seeing land as mere property and learn to think like a mountain, valuing the health of the whole ecosystem.
A Sand County Almanac (1949).
Deep ecology
Naess distinguishes 'shallow' ecology, which fights pollution for human benefit, from 'deep' ecology, which affirms the intrinsic value of all living things regardless of their usefulness to us. Human flourishing requires identifying with a wider 'ecological Self' that embraces the whole biosphere, and human population and interference in nature should decrease. The goal is not exploitation but a life 'rich in ends and simple in means'.
'The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement' (1973); Ecology, Community and Lifestyle.