Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Characters
The flatterer, the boor, the cheapskate: Aristotelian virtue theory applied to the observation of everyday life
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Characters |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Finite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Space · Curvature | not engaged |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | N/A |
| Energy · Extent | not engaged |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | not engaged |
| Information · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Information · Granularity | not engaged |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Characters
The Characters assumes that character-types are stable across time — the Flatterer and the Boor exist in every generation. This reflects the Aristotelian view that human nature has a fixed structure. Time is the medium in which character reveals itself through habitual action.
Space
Characters
Space is the concrete Athenian social world: the agora, the baths, the dinner party. The Characters shows that Peripatetic ethics is grounded in particular places and social situations.
Matter
Characters
The Characters does not philosophise about matter directly, but its method — careful observation of material behaviour — presupposes the Aristotelian hylomorphic framework: the soul (form) is manifest in the body's actions (matter).
Observer
Characters
Theophrastus is the detached empirical observer, cataloguing human types with the same patient attention he brought to plants. The observer is embodied, active, and plural (the work assumes a shared social world). No metaphysical agency: the vices are natural human tendencies, not divinely caused.
Energy
Characters
Energy is not discussed. The Characters is an ethical, not a physical, work.
Information
Characters
The Characters is itself a technology of information conservation: it fixes ephemeral social observation in literary form. The moral types are universal (conserved across generations), but the individuals who instantiate them are not (personal information is not conserved).
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The Characters' main tension is between the universality it claims (these types exist always and everywhere) and the specificity of its evidence (these are Athenian behaviours in the late fourth century). A related tension: the sketches catalogue only vices, never virtues. Whether this is because vices are easier to observe, or because the corresponding "positive" half of the work is lost, or because Theophrastus intended the reader to infer the virtues by negation, remains debated.