Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The definition of 'entelechy'

Entelechy (Gk. 'entelechia'): the self-realisation of the essence in the phenomena, Aristotle calls entelechy. Windelband 1891 p. 140. Windelband further expresses the meaning of 'entelechy' thusly: "[the essence]...exists only in the succession of its phenomenal manifestations, by means of which it realises its own possibility. The universal is real or actual only in the particular; the particular is only because in it the universal realises itself (p.140)."
'Everything working together': to think the totality of living and non-living systems together as a working whole, this is more than Gaia, it is the totality of all being and all what is not 'being' if such things exist. The sense of all things working together is known as 'entelechia' in Aristotle's writings.