Physis as Heimarmene: On some fundamental principles of the Neoplatonic philosophy of nature

The paper focusses on the relation between Nature and Fate in Proclus’ philosophy, drawing mainly on texts from De Providentia, but with excursions into the Platonic Theology and the Timaeus Commentary. The enquiry leads to three main conclusions: 1) In De Providentia, Fate means much the same as natural necessity; elsewhere, it emerges as Nature qualified by the divine; 2) Neoplatonic ‘natural’ order is not an independent order, separate from transcendent divine causes; rather, bodies and their qualities must be regarded as the corporeal appearance of divine causes. Accordingly, Proclus posits not two or more distinct orders, but only one order, capable of assuming different shapes, according to different ontic levels. In such a respect, Proclus’ De Providentia is deeply influenced by Peripatetic concepts, here made to fit a different philosophical framework; 3) The value of Neoplatonic physics should not be measured from its attempts to develop a coherent conception of reality—in this respect the Neoplatonists were successful—but rather from its capacity to provide rational explanations of natural phenomena in all their complexity and multiple aspects