TEOFRASTO. — Peripatetic philosopher and scientist, b. at Eresus in Lesbos between 372 and 368 B.C., d.
between 288 and 285. He succeeded Aristotle in the scholarchate in 323–322 and promoted the development of the school (for which he secured the possession of a plot of land).
He wrote numerous works on various subjects, of which there remain two volumes on botany, namely the Περὶ φυτῶν ἱστορίας in 9 books (which describe and classify plants) and the Περὶ φυτῶν αἰτῶν (plant biology), a treatise Περὶ αἰσθήσεως καὶ αἰσθητῶν (a remnant of the Φυσικῶν δόξαι), a few other brief scientific writings, a small collection of metaphysical problems (Θεοφράστου τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά), the celebrated Ἠθικοὶ χαρακτῆρες (lively descriptions of thirty human types), and otherwise only fragments. Among the lost works, mention should be made of the aforementioned Opinions of the Physicists (with which T. founded the history of philosophy and provided material for all subsequent doxography), the Φυσικά, the Περὶ ζώων, the Περὶ φιλίας, the Περὶ εὐσεβείας, the Περὶ λέξεως, the Περὶ νόμων, etc.
T. was more important as a scientist (he deserves the title of father of botany) than as a philosopher in the strict sense. On the whole, he accepted Aristotle’s metaphysics, cosmology, anthropology, ethics (v.), while nevertheless displaying in his speculation a certain personal naturalistic tendency. He seems, however, unlike his fellow disciples the materialists Dicaearchus and Aristoxenus, to have admitted the autonomy, and consequently the immortality, of the human intellect. (Themistius, De an., 91; Simplicius Phys., 225 a; cf. O. Regenbogen, s. V. in Pauly-Wissowa, Suppl., VII, col. 1548). Noteworthy is his thesis that the νός does indeed enter man from outside, but already at the moment of birth (Themistius, De an., 107). In ethics he exalted the contemplative life as the supreme ideal (whereas Dicaearchus placed the πρακτικός βίος first (cf. Cicero, Ad Att., II, 76)) and, on the other hand, attributed moral value to the possession of external goods (id., Tusc., V, 9; Acad. post., I, 9). As a transmitter of Aristotelian thought, T. exercised great influence. The Characters, which inspired La Bruyère, were also highly esteemed in the modern age.