ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Aristotle's so-called “naturalist” approach to agency and, more precisely, on the similarities and differences subsisting between nature and character. It describes the notions of nature (physis) and habit (hexis). Aristotle uses the word “nature” – and all the adjectives, adverbs and locutions related to it – in different argumentative contexts: in Aristotle's own terms, nature can be said in many ways. A natural process always tends to have the same outcome unless the irregularity is explained through a violent cause which prevents the natural course of the process. Natural processes are thus one-sided. An apple tree can only produce apples and not apples and/or pears; fire moves naturally upwards and not sometimes upwards and sometimes downwards, unless some violent cause interferes. Aristotle refers the expressions “nature” or “by nature” to attributes which belong to certain substances in virtue of what these substances are.
