Onassis, Aristotle Socrates, 1906?-75, Greek shipowner and financier, b. Turkey. Leaving Turkey after the Turkish defeat of Greek forces at Smyrna (1922), he revived the family tobacco business in Argentina. In 1925 he received Argentinean and Greek citizenship. Onassis purchased his first ships in the early 1930s and later in the decade became the first Greek shipowner to enter the tanker business. In 1946 he married the daughter of the influential Greek shipowner Stavros Livanos, and he later became the brother-in-law of Stavros Niarchos, another Greek shipowner; together the three men formed the most powerful shipping clan in the world. Later, however, considerable rivalry developed among them. After divorcing (1961) his first wife, he gained special prominence in the United States through his marriage (1968) to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (see Onassis, Jacqueline Bouvier), widow of President John F. Kennedy. A controversial figure in world finance, Onassis was formerly the principal stockholder of the company that controlled the Monte Carlo casino. He was also the founder (1957) of Olympic Airways of Greece.

Aristotle, 384-322 B.C., Greek philosopher, b. Stagira. He is sometimes called the Stagirite.

Life

Aristotle's father, Nicomachus, was a noted physician. Aristotle studied (367-347 B.C.) under Plato at the Academy and there wrote many dialogues that were praised for their eloquence. Only fragments of these dialogues are extant. He tutored (342-c.339 B.C.) Alexander the Great at the Macedonian court, left to live in Stagira, and then returned to Athens. In 335 B.C. he opened a school in the Lyceum; some distinguished members of the Academy followed him. His practice of lecturing in the Lyceum's portico, or covered walking place (peripatos), gave his school the name Peripatetic. During the anti-Macedonian agitation after Alexander's death, Aristotle fled in 323 B.C. to Chalcis, where he died.

Works

Aristotle's extant writings consist largely of his written versions of his lectures; some passages appear to be interpolations of notes made by his students; the texts were edited and given their present form by Andronicus of Rhodes in the 1st cent. B.C. Chief among them are the Organum, consisting of six treatises on logic; Physics; Metaphysics; De Anima [on the soul]; Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics; De Poetica [poetics]; Rhetoric; and a series of works on biology and physics. In the late 19th cent. his Constitution of Athens, an account of Athenian government, was found.

Philosophy

Logic and Metaphysics

Aristotle placed great emphasis in his school on direct observation of nature, and in science he taught that theory must follow fact. He considered philosophy to be the discerning of the self-evident, changeless first principles that form the basis of all knowledge. Logic was for Aristotle the necessary tool of any inquiry, and the syllogism was the sequence that all logical thought follows. He introduced the notion of category into logic and taught that reality could be classified according to several categories—substance (the primary category), quality, quantity, relation, determination in time and space, action, passion or passivity, position, and condition.

Aristotle also taught that knowledge of a thing, beyond its classification and description, requires an explanation of causality, or why it is. He posited four causes or principles of explanation: the material cause (the substance of which the thing is made); the formal cause (its design); the efficient cause (its maker or builder); and the final cause (its purpose or function). In modern thought the efficient cause is generally considered the central explanation of a thing, but for Aristotle the final cause had primacy.

He used this account of causes to examine the relation of form to matter, and in his conclusions differed sharply from those of his teacher, Plato. Aristotle believed that a form, with the exception of the Prime Mover, or God, had no separate existence, but rather was immanent in matter. Thus, in the Aristotelian system, form and matter together constitute concrete individual realities; the Platonic system holds that a concrete reality partakes of a form (the ideal) but does not embody it. Aristotle believed that form caused matter to move and defined motion as the process by which the potentiality of matter (the thing itself) became the actuality of form (motion itself). He held that the Prime Mover alone was pure form and as the "unmoved mover" and final cause was the goal of all motion.

Ethics and Other Aspects

Aristotle's ethical theory reflects his metaphysics. Following Plato, he argued that the goodness or virtue of a thing lay in the realization of its specific nature. The highest good for humans is the complete and habitual exercise of the specifically human function—rationality. Rationality is exercised through the practice of two kinds of virtue, moral and intellectual. Aristotle emphasized the traditional Greek notion of moral virtue as the mean between extremes. Well-being (eudaemonia) is the pursuit not of pleasure (hedonism) but rather of the Good, a composite ideal, consisting of contemplation (the intellectual life) and, subordinate to that, engagement in politics (the moral life). In the Politics, Aristotle holds that, by nature, humans form political associations, and he explores the best forms these may take. For Aristotle's aesthetic views, which are set forth in the Poetics, see tragedy.

Aristotelianism

After the decline of Rome, Aristotle's work was lost in the West. However, in the 9th cent., Arab scholars introduced Aristotle to Islam, and Muslim theology, philosophy, and natural science all took on an Aristotelian cast. It was largely through Arab and Jewish scholars that Aristotelian thought was reintroduced in the West. His works became the basis of medieval scholasticism; much of Roman Catholic theology shows, through St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotelian influence. There has also been a revival of Aristotelian influence on philosophy in the 20th cent. His teleological approach has continued to be central to biology, but it was banished from physics by the scientific revolution of the 17th cent. His work in astronomy, later elaborated by Ptolemy, was controverted by the investigations of Copernicus and Galileo.

(born Jan. 20, 1906, Smyrna, Tur.—died March 15, 1975, Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris, France) Greek shipping magnate and international businessman. The son of a tobacco dealer, he started a tobacco-importing business in Buenos Aires, Arg. He was made consul general after negotiating a trade agreement for the Greek government. A millionaire by age 25, he bought his first freight ships in 1932. In the 1940s and '50s his fleet grew until it was larger than the navies of many countries. He acquired business interests in Monte Carlo, and from 1957 to 1974 he owned and operated Olympic Airways, the Greek national airline. He conducted a long affair with Maria Callas, and in 1968 married Jacqueline Kennedy (see Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis).

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(born Jan. 20, 1906, Smyrna, Tur.—died March 15, 1975, Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris, France) Greek shipping magnate and international businessman. The son of a tobacco dealer, he started a tobacco-importing business in Buenos Aires, Arg. He was made consul general after negotiating a trade agreement for the Greek government. A millionaire by age 25, he bought his first freight ships in 1932. In the 1940s and '50s his fleet grew until it was larger than the navies of many countries. He acquired business interests in Monte Carlo, and from 1957 to 1974 he owned and operated Olympic Airways, the Greek national airline. He conducted a long affair with Maria Callas, and in 1968 married Jacqueline Kennedy (see Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis).

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(born 384, Stagira—died 322 BC, Chalcis) Greek philosopher and scientist whose thought determined the course of Western intellectual history for two millenia. He was the son of the court physician to Amyntas III, grandfather of Alexander the Great. In 367 he became a student at the Academy of Plato in Athens; he remained there for 20 years. After Plato's death in 348/347, he returned to Macedonia, where he became tutor to the young Alexander. In 335 he founded his own school in Athens, the Lyceum. His intellectual range was vast, covering most of the sciences and many of the arts. He worked in physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, and botany; in psychology, political theory, and ethics; in logic and metaphysics; and in history, literary theory, and rhetoric. He invented the study of formal logic, devising for it a finished system, known as syllogistic, that was considered the sum of the discipline until the 19th century; his work in zoology, both observational and theoretical, also was not surpassed until the 19th century. His ethical and political theory, especially his conception of the ethical virtues and of human flourishing (“happiness”), continue to exert great influence in philosophical debate. He wrote prolifically; his major surviving works include the Organon, De Anima (“On the Soul”), Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, Magna Moralia, Politics, Rhetoric, and Poetics, as well as other works on natural history and science. Seealso teleology.

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