LES CARACTÈRES DE THÉOPHRASTE ENTRE PHILOSOPHIE, POÉTIQUE ET MORALE
THE THEOPHRASTUS’ CHARACTERS BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY, POETRY AND MORAL

Summary/Abstract: The problem of the purpose of Theophrastus' Characters was one of the most intricated in the study of the work. Critics have suggested that the work has links with ethics, rhetoric: some of them saw a comedy of character, while the others were trying to show a poetic purpose or pure entertainment, a narrative, a work of fiction or a philosophycal work. Being so many contradictory views, we show that Theophrastus' Characters is a work that continues the moralist tradition who practiced a kind of representative discourse, both mimetic and moral, the éthopée - a genre between literature and knowledge, and that it can be practiced by all the "moral sciences" history, anthropology, psychology, etc. - referring to the human reality by indirect mean of phenomenological representation of the ethos. Having a decisive influence on the birth of the modern novel and the humanities, the Characters are a field shared by several experts, a "middle ground" where philosophers, poets and historians gather to study moral behavior.

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