Zhonghua Zheng

The Peripatetic school of philosophy, which succeeded Aristotle, has traditionally been regarded as a period of decline, marked by an overemphasis on empirical and historical material, combined with an obsession with biography and anecdote. This tendency seems to have appeared early in the ethical works of Theophrastus, which are filled with character sketches and anecdotes and seem more concerned with popularity than with depth of theory. Theophrastus’ account of Parrhasius, the famous Ephesian painter of the classical period, is a classic example preserved by two prominent authors of the imperial period, Aelian and Athenaeus. Their accounts reveal Theophrastus’ keen interest in Parrhasius, as he vividly sketched the painter’s life and career with humor and wit in a lost work known as On Happiness. What is questionable, however, is whether these stories have a serious philosophical purpose and how they attribute to a discussion of happiness. By re-examining these questions, this paper argues that Theophrastus’ attention to Parrhasius should be viewed through the lens of Aristotelian ethics, with these anecdotes as carefully selected cases, enriching and complementing Aristotle’s reflections on pleasure and happiness, thereby contributing to the inter- and intra-school debates about the ideal lifestyle in the post-classical era.