Aristotle asked the vital question, “What is the essence of life?”
His answer was “To serve others and to do good.”
Your answer can differ from Aristotle. You are on this journey for yourself. You have to find your essence from your experiences.
The essence of life is your absolute truth. Once you embrace the essence, life becomes meaningful. In simplest terms it should give peace, make you feel alive and serve your purpose.
For some it can be to bring peace or to spread love. It can also be to aspire growth or to touch million lives. Your essence makes you more aware in harmony with other individuals existing around you.
In this article we will first trace the philosophical roots of Essence, then we will proceed to understanding why a life of service is considering more meaningful. Hope at the end of it, you come in touch of your true essence.
The Origin of Essence
It’s commonly agreed that the notion of essence began with Aristotle.
However, a philosophical prototype can also be found in Plato’s Euthyphro. In that book Plato argued that physical entities acquire their essential being when they instantiate what he called Forms. For Plato this meant that Forms are abstract universals which exist before any concrete particulars instantiate them. Plato therefore saw Forms as the paradigms of the particulars (i.e., things) which we experience in everyday life.
Aristotle himself departed from Plato in that he attempted to discover the non-capitalised form of an individual physical entity. Aristotle called such a thing ousia or substance. In other words, Aristotle believed that Forms (or universals) must be instantiated in order to have being.
The Muslim philosopher Avicenna (Ibn Sina) initiated an important distinction between being
and essence.
