## 1. Life



Porphyry was born in Tyre in Phoenicia (now in Lebanon), probably in
234 C.E. His name was 'Malcus', 'king' in his
native tongue, hence he became 'Basileus'
('king') in Greek. He, however, calls himself Porphyry,
which supposedly was a common name in Tyre, the city of purple, and is
generally known under that name. Little is known with certainty about
his life, except what can be gleaned from his own account of
Plotinus' life, *The Life of Plotinus*. There is an
account of his life in Eunapius' *Lives of Philosophers and
Sophists* but this account clearly depends on the *The Life of
Plotinus* and has little reliable to add. Before he came to study
with Plotinus in Rome in 263 C.E. he studied with the Middle Platonist
Longinus in Athens. In Rome he stayed for some five years and
converted to Plotinus' version of Platonism. On Plotinus'
advice he left Rome for Sicily in order to recover from a bout of
depression in 268 C.E. He must have stayed there for some time, even
beyond Plotinus' death in 270 C.E. There are some untrustworthy
reports about a school of Porphyry in Rome after Plotinus'
death. In reality we do not know anything with certainty about where
he lived in the latter half of his life. He may have been
Iamblichus' teacher. The evidence for this, however, is not
beyond dispute. It is clear, though, that Iamblichus was strongly
influenced by Porphyry, even if he turned vehemently against him.
Towards the end of his life (301 C.E.), Porphyry edited
Plotinus' writings, the *Enneads*, dividing them into six
books of nine treatises each, which he prefaced with his *Life of
Plotinus*. The latter is the most reliable and the most
informative source about his life and attitudes. He married fairly
late an older wife, for whom one of his extant writings, the
*Letter to Marcella*, is written.


## 2. Works and Profile



Porphyry was a prolific author who wrote about a whole range of
topics. There are some sixty works attributed to him, but most of them
are now lost or survive in mere fragments. Extant (though not all
complete) are: *Life of Plotinus*, *Life of Pythagoras*,
*Letter to Marcella*, *On Abstinence from Eating Food from
Animals*, *Starting-points Leading to the Intelligibles*
(usually called the *Sententiae*; in Latin the work is called
*Sententiae ad intelligibilia ducentes*), the *Isagoge*
(*Introduction*), *On the cave of the Nymphs*,
*Introduction to Ptolemy's opus quadripartitum* (see
Bezza 2012) and there are commentaries on Ptolemy's
*Harmonics* and Aristotle's *Categories*. An
extant work attributed to Galen, *To Gaurus*, is almost
certainly by him. There are fragments of a history of philosophy and
fragments of a number of works on psychology. One such work, the
*Symmikta zetemata*, has been partly reconstructed by Heinrich
Dorrie (1959). It has been argued by Pierre Hadot (1968 and
several articles) that Porphyry is the author of anonymous fragments
of a commentary on Plato's *Parmenides*. This attribution
has been widely accepted but also forcefully challenged (see below).
He also wrote commentaries on Plato's *Timaeus* and
several works by Aristotle. The fragments of these are given in Smith
1993, which contains the extant fragments and testimonia of Porphyry.
In addition we know that Porphyry wrote on such diverse subjects as
grammar, philology, rhetoric, and geometry. *Against the
Christians* is perhaps Porphyry's best known title. Of this
large work only some fragments have survived.



In his monumental study, *La vie de Porphyre* (1913), Bidez
portrayed the young Porphyry as someone prone to religion and
superstition. He was supposed to have become a more rational thinker
during his sojourn with Plotinus, though later to have relapsed to
some extent into his previous mode. Later research has found that
there is no clear support for such a view of Porphyry's
development. He may throughout his life have used different styles,
perhaps aiming at different readerships, while maintaining somehow
both his proneness for religion and superstition and his rational
tendencies.



It is clear that Porphyry was a very learned man. He is sometimes
claimed as a highly important promulgator of the late ancient branch
of Platonism (usually called 'Neoplatonism') rather than
as an original philosopher. The former claim is certainly true: he
applied Neoplatonic doctrines to traditional pagan religion and myths
and was in many respects a more extrovert thinker interested in
applying Platonic philosophy to various spheres than his master,
Plotinus. The judgment that he was unoriginal may, however, be
overhasty, since the sample of his writings we are left with is very
small and among these his more theoretical works are clearly
underrepresented. What we have and know to be his, however, does not
indicate drastic theoretical innovations, except in the sphere of the
philosophy of logic and language. To judge from the evidence of
subsequent ancient Platonists, Porphyry was an independent philosopher
whose views were taken very seriously indeed. Late ancient Platonists,
however, often mention him in the pair "Plotinus and
Porphyry". So, as should be clear from what already has been
said, Porphyrian scholarship, when soberly done, is filled with
caveats: we rarely know when he wrote what, and we do not know for
sure what his philosophical doctrines were. What is extant suggests a
close doctrinal affinity with Plotinus, except for the fragment of the
*Parmenides* commentary for which the authorship and
relationship to Porphyry is disputed. To this we can add
Porphyry's take on Aristotle's *Categories* with
consequences for his view on the structure of the sensible realm.
Thus, we are faced with a figure whom we know to have been respected
in late antiquity, who was influential long beyond then, but we do not
know with any certainty what he stood for philosophically or what was
original with him in the central areas of philosophy.


## 3. Philosophical Views



It seems safe to assume that before his encounter with Plotinus,
Porphyry's philosophical views were shaped by Longinus, Numenius
and other Middle Platonists, in addition to Plato, Aristotle and other
classics of Greek philosophy. After meeting with him he turned into a
follower of Plotinus, even if some of his Middle Platonist background
shows through also in his post-Plotinian phase. This picture is
strongly suggested both by his *Life of Plotinus* and the
*Sententiae*, the only extant work in which he lays out his
basic philosophical views that is with certainty attributable to
him.



For Plotinus and Porphyry, there is a categorical gap between two
realms, the sensible and the intelligible. The latter realm contains
three "hypostases" (three different ontological levels),
the One, Intellect and Soul. Of these, the One is the first cause of
everything else; it is characterized by sheer unity which renders it
beyond thought and beyond description in language. Intellect is the
sphere of real being, identified with the Platonic Forms, which are
the thoughts of a universal intellect. Soul, the lowest of the
intelligible hypostases, is the intelligible item directly responsible
for the sensible realm. The sensible realm, which is an imperfect
image of the intelligible, also consists of levels: There are
organisms, of which the sensible cosmos is one, comprising the other,
lesser organisms. Organisms are ensouled beings and thus include an
intelligible component. Below them on the scale are forms in matter,
bodies, and matter itself. These too are results of Soul's
creative activity but are not intelligible entities.



The relationship between these levels is in general described in terms
of a doctrine of double activity: each higher level has its
characteristic internal activity which is accompanied by an external
power or activity which constitutes the level below. This talk of
internal and external activities (powers) is equivalent to what is
known as the relationship between paradigms and imitations in
traditional Platonism.



Human beings have, so to speak, one leg in each realm: Through the
body and its non-rational soul (the seat of appetitive and spirited
desires and sense-perception) they belong to the sensible realm,
through their higher soul (intellect) to the intelligible. Actually,
the true human being is to be identified with the intellect and the
intelligible Man. It follows from this that the task set for human
beings is to free themselves from the sensible and live by the
intelligible, which after all is their true or real nature.



This is Plotinus' philosophy, which Porphyry shares, in broad
outline (see entry on
 Plotinus).
 There are, however, some differences in terminology, which show
Porphyry to have a certain scholarly bent that Plotinus avoids, and
Porphyry is in general more interested in reconciling Aristotle with
Platonism than Plotinus was. This is seen, for example, in
Porphyry's more positive attitude towards the doctrine of
Aristotele's *Categories*. In what follows, we focus on
some points where Porphyry diverges from Plotinus or has been taken to
diverge from him, or may seem to develop his thought.


### 3.1 Religion



In the Platonic tradition before Porphyry, Plutarch and Plotinus
already interpreted classical Greek mythology as philosophical
allegories (the Stoics were first to establish this practice).
Porphyry, however, takes this much further than his Platonic
predecessors and does it more systematically. This is revealed, e.g.,
in his attitude towards Homer, whose texts he takes to have a hidden,
philosophical meaning behind the literal one (see *The Cave of the
Nymphs*). He wrote a work entitled *Philosophy from
Oracles*, which survives only in a few fragments (F343-F350
[Smith 1993]). We have only a vague idea about its contents but
presumably it presented some kind of synthesis of pagan oracles and
cults with Platonic philosophy. It is a characteristic of
post-Iamblichean Neoplatonism (330 AD onwards) that religion,
religious rites and even magic (theurgy) were taken to be an
alternative way to the soul's salvation, beside philosophy.
Porphyry did not share this view and was scolded for his skeptical
attitude towards theurgy by Iamblichus, his presumably former student,
in the latter's *Reply to Porphyry*. Iamblichus'
censure was actually not limited to Porphyry's attitude towards
theurgy, it concerned fundamental ontological issues as well (see
article on
 Iamblichus
 5.3.). Porphyry did not reject magic outright, however, but he seems
to have restricted its efficacy to the sphere of nature and not to
have regarded it as a means to establish contact with the intelligible
realm as philosophy could do (see Smith 2011b). His interpretation and
concerns with religious matters, however, opened for the developments
undertaken by Iamblichus and the subsequent tradition of pagan
Neoplatonism. Somewhat disappointingly, perhaps, the fragments from
*Against the Christians* do not exhibit deep metaphysical
disagreements; they are mostly concerned with particular,
non-philosophical claims made in the Bible and by Christians that
Porphyry finds incredible and objectionable.


### 3.2 Psychology and Ethics



As regards his views on the soul, Porphyry seems in all essentials to
follow Plotinus. In addition to the *Sententiae*, *On
Abstinence* and *To Gaurus*, there are quite a few
fragments of other works bearing on his psychological views, preserved
especially in Nemesius, Stobaeus, and St. Augustine.



The soul is an intelligible entity but, as noted above, it is the
intelligible entity that is directly engaged with the sensible realm.
Intelligible entities are incorporeal and without extension and not
present in bodies as in place. Following Plotinus, Porphyry
distinguishes between the soul in itself, which seems to be identical
the rational soul, and a second power of the rational, the lower soul,
which is the soul in relation to the body and is alone directly
engaged with it (*Sent.* 4). The lower soul is responsible for
soul-functions that directly involve the body, such as
sense-perception, desires, emotions and purely biological functions
such as growth. In the tradition before Porphyry, this distinction
sometimes became so sharp that it was supposed that each person has
two distinct souls. Porphyry, by contrast, insists on the unity of the
human soul: the lower functions are powers that depend on the rational
soul (see Deuse 1983: 169-217). The distinction between the soul
itself and its powers (the lower soul) is an instance of the
distinction between internal and external acts, mentioned above. Thus,
the soul itself has an intellectual activity that has the second
powers or lower soul as its external act.



Certain problems arise in accounting for how something which in itself
is incorporeal can be present in an extended body, as the soul
apparently is. Porphyry resolves this by saying that the soul is not
locally present in the body but is present to it by a certain
disposition or inclination towards the body (*Sent.*3; 4). In a
passage preserved in Nemesius, *On the Nature of Man*, he says
that when something intelligible enters into a relation to some place
or to a thing in a place, it is by a misuse of language that we say
that it is there. Because its activity is there, we speak of the place
when we should speak of the relation to it and the activity. When one
should say "it acts there" we misleadingly say "it
is there" (Nem. 3, 112-114; cf. *Sent.* 28). From
Porphyry's "inquiry" (*zetema*) about
the relation preserved by Nemesius we further learn that the embodied
soul's relation to the body is a case of "unfused
union" (*asynchytos henosis*), (3, 1-185;
Dorrie 1959: cap. 2). This implies a relationship that amounts to
a fusion in which the two ingredients, however, retain their identity
and can in principle be separated. Here, perhaps typically, Porphyry
makes use of Stoic theories about mixtures but comes up with an
account that does not essentially depart from Plotinus (see Emilsson
1994: 5357ff.). In *Against Boethus* (a Peripatetic philosopher
of the 1st century B.C.), fragments of which are preserved by
Eusebius, Porphyry argues that a distinction must be made between the
soul as the form of the body, what makes the body alive, and the soul
as an intellective, transcendent entity, which is its essential
nature. This latter soul is immortal and Boethus makes the mistake of
confusing the two (see Karamanolis 2006: 91-98 and Trabattoni
2020).



For Porphyry, as for Plotinus, what matters most in life is to free
one's soul from the calamities of the body and the sensible
world in general so that it may become purely what it originally and
essentially is, viz., a part of the intelligible world. Thus, reason
should endeavor to elevate itself to the level of the Intellect, which
is distinguished by a much higher degree of unity than the mere
ordinary use of reason is capable of. It may even be possible to rise
above this to the level of the One itself. There seems to be a certain
difference in Porphyry's and Plotinus' emphasis here,
however. Whereas Plotinus stresses episodic escapes in this life by
means of philosophy, Porphyry, while admitting this possibility, seems
to suppose that the soul may, after successive reincarnations, free
itself from the sensible realm for good. At least according to some of
the evidence, he, however, rejects the incarnation of human souls into
animal bodies and interprets Platonic passages suggesting this as not
literally intended (see Smith 1984 and Deuse 1983: 129-159).



Scholars now universally agree that the work, *To Gaurus on How
Embryos are Ensouled* attributed to Galen in the manuscripts, is
not by him but by Porphyry. There is now a fine edition, translations
and commentaries of this work (Wilberding 2011; Brisson et al. 2012).
Though arguably an elaboration of Plotinus' views, in *To
Gaurus* Porphyry gives the details of a very interesting account
of the development of the embryo and its relations to the parents (see
in particular Wilberding 2008). Among other things Porphyry gives an
explanation of how and why children resemble both their parents: the
embryo develops from the seed of the father but it does not have a
soul of its own. It is ruled by the vegetative soul of the mother who
puts a permanent stamp on the embryo through a process of blending in
which the nature of the embryo retains its individuality. The account
given diverges significantly from those of previous thinkers, allowing
for much greater influence of the mother.



Porphyry is on record for his defense of vegetarianism in his *On
Abstinence*. This work is addressed to a friend (an associate of
Plotinus' circle in Rome) and former vegetarian who has resumed
the consumption of meat. On the one hand, Porphyry's abstinence
from eating animals is motivated by the goal, mentioned above, of
freeing oneself from the body and the sensible realm as much as
possible. The exhortation is addressed to those who have set
themselves such a goal. There are, however, ethical concerns as well.
Porphyry accords certain rationality to the animals and in general
emphasizes what they have in common with us humans. He claims that it
is plainly unjust to harm those who intend no harm against us, and
this applies to the animals. So his vegetarianism is also a matter of
justice (Tuominen 2015). The evidence suggests, however, that he did
not hold this view consistently: in his *Philosophy from the
Oracles* (see Smith 1993) he accepts animal sacrifices and does
not object to them on principle in his *Letter to Anebo*.



In *Sententiae* 32 Porphyry presents his views on the virtues,
which, though a development of Plotinus' account in
*Ennead* I. 2, are interesting in their own right. He
distinguishes between four kinds of virtue: civic, purgative,
contemplative and paradigmatic. The four kinds of virtue are
hierarchically ordered so that paradigmatic virtue comprises in some
way all the rest (paradigmatic virtues are the Platonic Forms, or
paradigms, of the different virtues). On the other hand, even if,
e.g., civic virtue naturally leads to purgative virtue, a person may
be virtuous at the civic level without possessing the higher forms. On
all four levels Porphyry posits the four cardinal virtues of
Plato's *Republic* (wisdom, courage, temperance and
justice). The civic virtues are concerned with the virtuous actions of
ordinary life--wise, temperate, just and courageous. These
cardinal virtues are differently, albeit analogously, defined in the
case of each level. Thus, e.g., wisdom as a purgative virtue is
defined as the soul's "not forming opinions in accordance
with the body, but acting on its own", whereas wisdom as a
contemplative virtue consists in the contemplation of the essences
inherent in Intellect. Thus, the virtues form a hierarchy where the
inferior may be seen as a weaker manifestation of the superior. This
theory of virtue is a clever attempt at reconciling the
*Republic*, the *Phaedo* and the *Theaetetus* and
fitting their teaching about virtue into a coherent Platonic
metaphysics. This kind of account of the virtues was accepted and
expanded on by later Neoplatonists.



Interesting differences between Porphyry and Plotinus can be detected
in their respective views on the emotions and on happiness. While
Plotinus holds that the emotions should be eradicated and that
happiness consists in the life of Intellect alone, the perfect life
(*Ennead* I.4.3), Porphyry recommends *metriopatheia*,
"moderate emotions", and allows for degrees of happiness.
Not only the intellectually virtuous person is happy, the civically
virtuous person is happy too, even if this is a lower form of
happiness (see Karamanolis 2006: 303-308). These differences
reflect Porphyry's endeavor to bring Plato and Aristotle into
harmony.


### 3.3 The Metaphysics of the Higher Realms



The hierarchy of hypostases the One, Intellect and Soul has already
been sketched. Given the available texts with certainty attributable
to Porphyry, in particular the *Sententiae*, there would be no
strong reason for supposing Porphyry's metaphysics to differ
significantly from that of Plotinus, though he does not always follow
his vocabulary. Furthermore, Porphyry has a different and more
Aristotelian conception of the branches of philosophy than Plotinus,
who claims dialectic as the supreme philosophical method (Hadot 1966;
Strange 2007; cf. Plotinus, *Ennead* I. 3). This different
conception is shown, for instance, in his arrangement of
Plotinus' treatises which follows a pattern of ethics, physics,
psychology, and ontology.



As mentioned above, Hadot (1968) made a case for identifying Porphyry
as the author of the so-called Anonymous commentary on Plato's
*Parmenides*. The late ancient author of this commentary,
extant in mere fragments, takes the *Parmenides* to present
Plato's ontological view. The commentary employs a notion of the
One as an ineffable first principle that according to Hadot makes it
post-Plotinian. However, in the commentary the distinction between the
first and the second hypostasis is somewhat blurred: the ineffable One
is somehow also at the same time the first member
("Father") in a triad of being, life and intelligence and
in this context identical with being. Positing a first principle that
is a part of such a composite is surely un-Plotinian. If Hadot's
identification of the author with Porphyry is right, Porphyry indeed
held metaphysical views that differ significantly from those of
Plotinus. However, even if Hadot's hypothesis about Porphyry as
the author of the commentary quickly won wide acceptance, in later
years it has suffered several blows at the hands of scholars with the
result that it must be considered highly questionable (see, e.g.,
Edwards 1990, Bechtle 1999, Corrigan 2000, Rasimus 2011). The
discovery that most of the supposedly Porphyrian characteristics of
the *Parmenides* commentary are to be found in pre-Porphyrian
Gnostic texts (unavailable to Hadot in the 1960s) seems especially
troublesome for Hadot's thesis (see Rasimus 2011).
Porphyry's authorship has, however, been recently defended by
Chiaradonna (2014). Smith (1987, 2007), though unwilling to assert
Porphyry as the author, holds that it comes from his circle and,
hence, is definitely post-Plotinian.


### 3.4 Aristotle, Logic and Epistemology



Porphyry was the first Platonist to write proper commentaries on
Aristotle's logical works and indeed on Aristotle generally
(Karamanolis 2004) and from what can be gathered from what is extant
he does so without assuming a strong Platonist point of view. There is
an extant commentary of his on Aristotle's *Categories*
and another longer one in seven books, *Ad Gedalium*. This
latter work was for centuries known only in mere short fragments from
later commentators but a plausible case has been made that a recently
discovered palimpsest contains a substantial portion of it
(Chiaradonna et al. 2013). He also wrote commentaries on other parts
of Aristotle s *Organon*. He wrote the *Isagoge*,
which is an introduction to Aristotle's logical works in
general. Through these logical writings Porphyry established himself
as an important figure in the history of logic. He is the instigator
of the tradition followed by subsequent Neoplatonists of taking
Aristotle's *Categories* as a basic introductory text and
his *Isagoge* in particular served as a standard introductory
text in Byzantium, the Arabic world and in the Latin West through
Boethius' translations and commentary. These texts served as a
basic introductory texts in philosophy for at least 1000 years.




Platonists before Plotinus differed in their attitude towards
Aristotle (see Karamanolis 2006). Porphyry belongs to those who
believed that Plato and Aristotle can be harmonized and in this he is
followed by just about all subsequent ancient Platonists. A preserved
title of a lost works of his, *On the differences between Plato and
Aristotle*, may seem to give contrary indications (he is also
supposed to have written a work about the unity of their thought).
Admitting some differences is compatible with a fundamentally
reconciliatory attitude (cf. Karamanolis 2006: 243ff.). This positive
attitude towards Aristotle is particularly evident from his position
on Aristotle's *Categories*. The question arises how such
an attitude can be reconciled with those passages in Aristotle that
seem to disagree with Plato, sometimes expressly. We do not know how
Porphyry dealt with others of these, besides Aristotle's
*Categories*, which appears to modern readers in many respects
to be an anti-Platonic work. This is especially notable in its claim
that particular sensible substances are prior to the universal species
and genera. Porphyry solves this dilemma by insisting that the
so-called Aristotelian categories--substance, quality, quantity
etc., dealt with in the *Categories*--are
"significant expressions". That is to say, the
*Categories* is not a work in primary ontology but rather a
work about the expressions used to signify the sensible things around
us and that the sense in which these are first or primary is that they
are the first we meet with in our experience (58, 1ff.). The class of
beings signified by a universal term of this sort is indeed prior to
the universal term, e.g., the class of pale things to the universal
term 'pale'. As Strange (1987, 1992) notes, this, however,
does not affect the basic ontology. So interpreted the
*Categories* is innocuous from a Platonic point of view: the
realm of Platonic intelligible Forms, which are universals of a
different kind than the expressions involved in the
*Categories*, can be kept intact. The universals the
*Isagoge* and Porphyry's commentaries on the
*Categories* are concerned with are *post rem*
universals abstracted by the mind from external objects met with
through sense-perception.



The extant commentary on the *Categories* mentions only a dual
semantic relation, that between signifying expressions (words) and
things, whereas other sources attribute to Porphyry a triadic relation
between words, concepts and things. This is probably the doctrine of
the longer lost commentary. The reason for the difference may be that
in the short commentary he wanted to keep matters as simple as
possible or as Griffin (2012) has proposed that the two views build on
different traditions.



There are two intertwined issues debated by scholars relating to
Porphyry's philosophy of logic: One has to do with
Porphyry's understanding of the relationship between
Aristotelian categories as "signifying expressions" and
the things these expressions refer to, the ontology. His remarks in
the *Isagoge* indicating that he will eschew difficult
ontological issues (1, 9-16) as well as the absence of
distinctively Platonic views in the *Isagoge* and the extant
commentary on the *Categories* have lead scholars to suppose
that he regarded logic as an ontologically uncommitted discipline that
could be freely adopted by different schools of different persuasions
(Ebbesen 1990; Barnes 2003). There are strong reasons to believe,
however, that Porphyry the logician cannot so easily be separated from
Porphyry the philosopher. The *Isagoge* and the extant
commentary on the *Categories* are intended as elementary works
but not thereby philosophically neutral, unconnected with
Porphyry' substantial views on the nature of things. That
Porphyry's interpretation of the *Categories* brings with
it certain ontological commitments is evident from the fact that he
took the signifying expressions, the categories, to reflect the
structure of the sensible world (cf. *In Categorias.*, 58,
21-29; Chiaradonna 2008). This is by no means a trivial
assumption. The other issue has to do with Porphyry's stance
towards Plotinus' account of the Aristotelian categories in
*Ennead* VI.1 and 3. Plotinus understands the
*Categories* as a work in ontology rather than being about
expressions and he takes a critical view of it as such. What is
debated is to what extent this shows a deep disagreement between the
two thinkers not only about the interpretation of Aristotle's
*Categories* but about the structure of the sensible realm and
its relation to the intelligible causes. Chiaradonna (2002:
48-54) argues forcefully, and in this author's view
successfully, that there is a breach with Plotinus on the issue.
Porphyry accepted and adopted Aristotelian essentialism about sensible
objects along with Aristotle's categorization of them and sought
to harmonize this view with his Platonist position about the
intelligible causes of this realm. Plotinus did not share this view.
Porphyry's line won the day in late antiquity. The opposite
view, that there is a smooth continuation between Plotinus and
Porphyry on the Aristotelian categories, is argued by Frans de Haas
(2001).



In spite of the ontological assumptions behind the *Isagoge*
and the lesser, extant commentary on the *Categories*,
Porphyry's very disclaimers, his avoidance of the deep questions
about the ontological status of genera and species--whether they
exist or depend on thought; and if they exist, whether they are bodies
or incorporeal; and if the latter, whether they are sensible items or
exist separately from such--no doubt contributed to the ease with
which these works were taken into obligatory school readings for
centuries. Thus, his non-committal formulations of them helped make
these works the most lasting part of his legacy in West.



It has already been noted that Porphyry seems to be committed to a
version of abstractionism with regard to human beings'
acquisition of knowledge of sensibles. His *Commentary on
Ptolemy's Harmonics* contains a section about epistemology
(11, 5-22, 7), in which the overarching theme is the question of
the respective roles of sense-perception and reason (*logos*)
in the acquisition of knowledge. In the course of this discussion he
describes a process starting from sense-perception, through
apprehension (*antilepsis*) and supposition (*doxastike
hypolepsis*) to the reception of in the soul of a concept
(*epinoia*), which is identical with the form of the object;
hence come knowledge (*episteme*) and finally understanding
(*nous*). Much of what Porphyry says here is compatible with
Middle Platonist and Peripatetic doctrines and with Plotinus (who is
rather ambiguous about the details of this process) and indeed with
Aristotle. As regards the intellect, however, Porphyry's account
contains an unmistakable reference to Plato's Seventh letter,
which would count against his assent to a purely Aristotelian account
of the acquisition of knowledge about sensible objects (see Chase
2010). More research is needed on these aspects of Porphyry's
thought.