Zeroth Nature.
"The purport of the discovery of nature cannot be grasped if one understands by nature 'the totality of phenomena'. For the discovery of nature consists precisely in the splitting-up of that totality into phenomena which are natural and phenomena which are not natural: 'nature' is a term of distinction. [...] 'Custom' or 'way' is the prephilosophic equivalent of 'nature'." (Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History , pp. 82-83.) In order not to disappear in the totality of phenomena, we require customs/ways ( nomoi , ethoi , dikai —"laws", "morals", "rights"). "Over against the ruinous permissiveness of anarchism Nietzsche asserts that precisely long lasting obedience to unnatural and unreasonable nomoi is 'the moral imperative of nature'. Physis ["nature"] calls for nomoi while preserving the distinction, nay, opposition of physis and nomos ." (Strauss, Studies in Platonic Pol