Characters
Thirty sketches of moral types — a Peripatetic gallery of human vices
Tradition: Peripatetic ethics / literary character-writing
The flatterer, the boor, the cheapskate: Aristotelian virtue theory applied to the observation of everyday life
The Characters is a collection of thirty brief prose sketches, each defining a moral type — the Dissembler, the Flatterer, the Boor, the Arrogant Man, the Coward, the Oligarch, the Late Learner, the Cheapskate, and so on — by cataloguing its characteristic behaviours. Each sketch opens with a definition of the vice ("Flattery might be understood as a degraded form of sociability") and then lists concrete examples of how the type behaves in daily life. The work is unique in ancient literature: it applies Aristotelian virtue theory — with its attention to the mean, the role of habit, and the constitutive relation between character and action — to the observation of ordinary Athenian social life. Its literary influence is enormous: it established the genre of the "character" that runs through La Bruyere, Addison and Steele, Samuel Johnson, and ultimately into the realist novel. Its philosophical significance lies in its demonstration that Peripatetic ethics is not merely abstract but has a precise observational content.
Author
Editions cited
- Theophrastus, Characters, ed. and trans. James Diggle (Cambridge, 2004)
- Theophrastus, Characters, ed. R. G. Ussher (London, 1960)
- J. Rusten, ed. and trans., Theophrastus: Characters (Loeb Classical Library, 2002)
School Embodiments
The Characters applies Aristotelian virtue theory to concrete observation: each vice is a departure from the mean, defined by its habitual manifestations in action. It is Peripatetic ethics in miniature.
"Flattery might be understood as a degraded form of sociability, and the Flatterer may be defined as follows …" (Characters 2, opening)
The Characters presupposes the virtue-ethics framework: character (ethos) is constituted by habitual action, and vices are identifiable by their characteristic behavioural signatures.
"The Boor is the sort of person who … The Cheapskate is the sort of person who …" — each sketch assumes that character and behaviour are mutually constitutive.
The Characters is the most empirical work of ancient ethical literature: its data is observed behaviour, not deduced principle. It demonstrates that ethics can be a science of observation.
The concrete behavioural details — "he will buy rotten fish and then quarrel with the vendor about the price" (Characters 30, paraphrase) — are drawn from direct observation of Athenian life.
The Characters belongs to the late classical Athenian tradition and preserves invaluable evidence of daily social life in the late fourth century BCE.
The sketches mention specific Athenian institutions (the Pnyx, the baths, the market) and social customs, providing a window into the world of Menander and Demosthenes.
Internal Tensions
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.
I. Time
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.
Attributes
II. Space
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.
Attributes
III. Matter
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).
Attributes
IV. Observer
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.
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V. Energy
Energy is not discussed. The Characters is an ethical, not a physical, work.
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VI. Information
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).
Attributes
Personas that cite this work
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How Characters resolves each dilemma
49 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 4 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 8 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.
6 mainstream positions
Matter · 7 dilemmas, all mainstream
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 1 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.