NOMOS AND PHUSIS IN DEMOCRITUS AND PLATO

By C. C. W. Taylor

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In the fifth and fourth centuries b.c., one of the questions central to Greek thought was that of the relation between how things are in reality, independent of human thought, and how they are represented by human thoughts and practices. That is the most general characterization of a contrast which took different forms in different areas of thought.1 One of the most fundamental applications of the contrast was the question of whether our ordinary beliefs represent things as they really are. Thus, the fifth-century philosopher-poet Empedocles says (DK31B9) that when we describe a plant or animal as being generated or as perishing, what is really happening is not that anything is actually coming to be or ceasing to be, but simply that portions of the eternal changeless elements, earth, air, fire, and water, are being mixed together and then separated again; he comments: “they [i.e., people in general] do not call it what they ought, but I too comply with their usage.” “Usage” renders nomos, from the verb nomizein, to have a usage or custom. Nomos is ho nomizetai, what is customary or enshrined in usage. The term is standardly contrasted with phusis, literally “nature,” which in this general contrast is simply the abstract noun for how things are independent of human thought or belief.
A related sense of nomos is “norm,” or more specifically “law,” derived from the basic sense via the normativity of custom and usage. In that sense of nomos, the question of the relation of nomos to phusis is a question of the status of moral and other norms (including legal norms). Are they in some sense part of or grounded in the real nature of things, or are they mere products of human customs, conventions, or beliefs? In this essay, I shall explore the treatment of some of these issues by Democritus and by Plato in the Protagoras, the Gorgias, and the Republic. I shall argue that while in his physical theory Democritus draws a sharp contrast between
the real nature of things and how they are represented by human conventions…
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