Naturing Nature and Natured Nature

Abstract

In chapter 10, Neyrat returns to a summary of two manners of defining nature that date back hundreds of years: natura naturans (nature as a process, a becoming, and a permanent genesis of things) and natura naturata (nature as finite, created objects that are the result of this process). Neyrat returns to this summary in order to show how these two ways of defining nature were, eventually, over-interpreted in a religious sense. Neyrat shows an exemplary example of how these concepts of nature became religiously over-interpreted through interpretations of Spinoza’s concept of Nature as God —Deus sive natura. He cites how in the work of Spinoza, the creative capacity of the natura naturans becomes substituted or replaced by the creative capacity of God and what is created by god, natura naturata.