In the three editions of his De rerum natura (1565; 1570; 1586), Bernardino Telesio (1509-1588) provided a complex and nuanced account of nature understood as a vital self. I argue that his distinction between a «nature that remains» (quae remanet natura) and a «nature that comes and goes» (accedens recedensque natura), discussed in particular in the 1570 edition, helped qualify the conceptual tension between matter and force that underlies Telesio’s metaphysics. Nature can therefore be seen as a kind of self grafted on to a unique variety of monism, in which the eternity and immutability of matter is reconciled with the impermanent character of life.
