Abstract
Abstract: This paper studies the interplay between the history of mankind, philosophical polemics and ethical debates about the best life in the fourth century BC through an inquiry into the positions of Dicaearchus of Messana, a pupil of Aristotle, and his disagreement about the best life with Theophrastus. Against recent interpretations, the paper establishes the various stages in Dicaearchus’ history of wisdom, its downward path and its criteria to define “philosophy”. This leads to a better understanding of Dicaearchus’ assessments of the Golden Age, the Seven Sages and Socrates and, above all, of his notion of the “practical life” as not restricted to politics and as opposed to contemporary scolastic conceptions of philosophy probably put forward by Plato and best exemplified by Theophrastus in Dicaearchus’ eyes.
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