Metaphysics
Athens · -287
T
Theophrastus
Theophrastus
c. 371 BCE–c. 287 BCE · Athens
Theophrastus (c. 371 – c. 287 BCE) was a Greek philosopher and naturalist from Eresus on the island of Lesbos who succeeded Aristotle as head of the Peripatetic school (the Lyceum) in Athens, leading it for roughly thirty-five years. A student and close associate of Aristotle, he extended the Peripatetic program across logic, physics, metaphysics, ethics, and the natural sciences. He is best known for his botanical treatises, "Enquiry into Plants" and "On the Causes of Plants," which laid the foundations of systematic botany, and for his "Characters," a set of sketches of ethical types. His surviving shorter works include a "Metaphysics," which raises critical questions about Aristotle's account of first principles and teleology, and the physiological essay "On Fatigue" (De Lassitudine).
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AthensAttica (Greece)
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About Athens
Athens, the capital of Greece since 1834, was the leading intellectual centre of the classical Greek world. Socrates taught there, and four major philosophical schools took root in the city: Plato's Academy, founded around 387 BCE, Aristotle's Lyceum, the Stoa of Zeno, and Epicurus' Garden. Under Hellenistic and Roman rule Athens remained a place of study that drew students from across the empire; in the 4th century CE the Christian writers Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus studied there together, while Neoplatonist teachers kept lecturing. Emperor Justinian's ban on pagan teaching of philosophy in 529 is generally taken to mark the end of the city's ancient history.
In Athens at the same time
Democritus, Antisthenes, Isocrates, Alcidamas, Xenophon, Plato
Across the traditions, in Athens at the same time
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Theophrastus’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
Democritus, Antisthenes, Isocrates, Alcidamas, Xenophon, Plato, Isaeus, Diogenes of Sinope, Speusippus, Xenocrates of Chalcedon, Apollodorus son of Pasion, Heraclides Ponticus, Hyperides, Lycurgus, Hegesippus, Aeschines, Philip of Opus, Aristotle
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Theophrastus’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works(18)
De Lassitudine
Athens · -287
De Vertigine
Athens · -287
De odoribus
Athens · -287
De Signis Tempestatum
Athens · -287
De sensu et sensibilibus
Athens · -287
Enquiry into Plants
Athens · -300
De Sudore
Athens · -287
On Fire
Athens · -287
De Animi Defectione
Athens · -287
Fragmenta varia
Athens · -287
De Nervorum Resolutione
Athens · -315
De Odoribus
Athens · -287
On the Causes of Plants
Athens · -287
De signis tempestatum
Athens · -287
De Ventis
Athens · -287
De lapidibus
Athens · -287
Characters
Athens · -319