ARISTOTLE

Aristotle is considered as one of the greatest Greek philosophers. He began to study

at Plato’s academy at age of 17 and was the most illustrious students of Plato. Although, he
was a student of Plato, Aristotle’s ideas were very different from his teacher. If Plato is an
idealist, Aristotle is a realist.

He did not accept the idea that there is a separate world of ideas rather he believed
that the world that we see and experience is the real world. We gain ideas about the world
through experience or perception. He argued that not all of the ideas in the World of Forms
are perfect, and if the "Ideal Forms" are eternal and unchanging, then how do they link to the
Forms on Earth with all the physical imperfections? Aristotle's view of the Theory of Forms
was meld with his belief that we develop some scientific thinking of a primary substance
when we know what are he called its "causes". While Plato believed that what we see on
Earth are only artificial replicas of the real thing, Aristotle believed that our natural world
itself is real and physical. Aristotle also argued that we could identify all the natural Forms
on Earth with our senses. He found that there are holes in Plato’s concept of Forms. That it
doesn’t explain change. That the idea of perfection varies relatively from person to person,
culture to culture, and through time periods. For example, what is a perfect girl, if it’s perfect
it exists in the world of forms but through time the definition of a perfect girl changes. There
cannot be different perfect forms of a same thing, thus he concluded that there is no such
thing as a world of forms.

Aristotle principal work Metaphysics is about "being". It focuses of causation, form

and matter. It says that every matter that have name has a purpose, use and end. That the
actual and potential state of things can be interpreted in terms of the causes. The four causes
are Formal Cause or what is it, Material Cause or the elements out of which the object is
made, Efficient Cause or the means by which it is created, and the Final Cause or the end for
which it is. Aristotle says that what separates humans from things is our purpose. While
theirs are predetermined before their existence, we, humans, decide and find our own
purpose to fulfill in our lives.

The great philosopher, Aristotle, made us realize that change in one’s human life is
important. Existence of a human is really far from existence of any other thing. And
answering the question “to be what?” is a difficult one a human can encounter, because the
question reflects our self-actualization in life. Nobody knows what really our purpose in life
is. But through changing, we can somehow know and realize what really our life is for.
Changing will be the way to shape ourselves into our actuality.