Brief History about Aristotle
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher. He was a student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great. Aristotle wrote a lot covering subjects which include physics, metaphysics, theater, poetry, music, linguistics, rhetoric, logic, politics, ethics and biology. His writings were among the first to be considered a comprehensive system of Western philosophy encompassing logic, morality, politics and metaphysics. Along with Socrates and Plato, Aristotle is one of the most important founding individuals in Western philosophy.
Aristotle’s father was in the medical profession. This perhaps made an impact on Aristotle as his philosophy laid its principal stress on biology unlike Plato whose emphasis is on mathematics.
“Aristotle regarded the world as made up of individuals (substances) occurring in fixed natural kind (species). Each individual has its built-in specific pattern of development and grows toward proper self-realization as a specimen of its type.
Growth, purpose, and direction are thus built into nature. Although science studies general kinds, according to Aristotle, these kinds find their existence in particular individuals. Science and philosophy must therefore balance, not simply choose between, the claims of empiricism (observation and sense experience) and formalism (rational deduction). One of the most distinctive of Aristotle's philosophic contributions was a new notion of causality.
Self-Realization Explained
Merriam Webster's dictionary defines self-realization as “the fulfillment by oneself of the possibilities of one's character or personality.”
The theory of self-realization is that a life of excellence is based on the actualization of human potentialities. In psychology, this is called "self-development.” Oftentimes, we interchangeably use the following:
self-realization = self-development = self-actualization
The basic premise of