Porphyry of Tyre

This was an interesting work to some degree. It does contain the usual obsolete biological knowledge (I don't detract from ancient works for that), but it also has some ideas that are still relevant for philosophical discussion.

It isn't absolutely certain that this work is Porphyry's. There is little in terms of manuscript support (it only existing complete in one manuscript). There is an accumulation of evidence that makes the Porphyrean attribution highly favorable, but all that can be said for certain is that it was written by a Neo-Platonist with strong Porphyrean tendencies. For the sake of the review, I will accept the work as Porphyry's. As it stands, if the text really was composed by Porphyry, it's the closest thing we have to a complete treatise on the soul by him. Sadly, Theophrastus' and Iamblichus' treatises are rather fragmentary on this subject.

The thing that caught my attention the most was the discussion of the role of phantasia and prothumia/epithumia. The Greek term "phantasia" I usually read as "imagination", although the translator doesn't render it that way here. Epithumia is often translated in English as lust or desire. The latter term can either be used in positive or negative senses in philosophy. Porphyry uses the terms prothumia and epithumia in relation to what is given and what is possessed by the embryo. What I thought was interesting is that Porphyry sees prothumia as being transferred through seed and is important for the development of the embryo. He also accords a pretty significant role to phantasia in the process of embryonic development. The embryo receives desire for life and consciousness from the dual roles of father and mother (the mother adding something to the paternal prothumia) and to some extent from outside influences like the realm of phantasia. When the embryo is in the womb and removed from the realm of sense, the realm of phantasia is particularly strong and exerts a strong influence. I thought this part of the work ironic because I have been involved in a discussion on the bottom of my last review regarding the notion of archetypes and the collective unconscious. It often happens that I will pick up a book that will relate to something I've been thinking about or to a book I just read. This is rarely intentional, so I find it ironic (if not downright synchronous). Maybe when dealing with Jungian topics one shouldn't be surprised when they accumulate spontaneously. Anyway, one can discern here that, whatever the empirical merits of archetypes and the collective unconscious are in terms of Psychiatry, the idea itself has it's roots in Greek idealist philosophy. It isn't hard to make the connection between Jungian archetypes and Porphyry's realm of images (phantasmata).

There is a critical edition of this work that includes "On What Is In Our Power" and also includes further textual support from Psellus. The critical edition is entitled "Porphyry: To Gaurus on How Embryos are Ensouled and On What Is In Our Power." I'm not so taken with Porphyry that I was willing to dish out 40$ for the critical edition. I bought this copy used at a far better price. From what I can tell, the translator did a good job rendering the text. One doesn't have access to the Greek here, but she does leave key Greek terms untranslated and provides a glossary in footnotes and as an appendix. I have no complaints about the readability of the rendering. The translator uses the word "breathe" a handful of times when she apparently meant "breath." None of that really affects the overall merits of the book and doesn't detract from the translator's competence in rendering a rather obscure text.

The only text of Porphyry's I still have yet to read and that I plan to eventually is his Life of Plotinus. There is a fragmentary text available online called "On The Faculties of the Soul" that is relevant to this work and should be consulted if one wants an even more substantive look at Porphyry's views related to the topic of the Soul. That text is from Stobaeus and was translated by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie. It discusses the difference between "sensation" and "intelligence" and the difference between faculties and partition.

As I said, I'm not that into Porphyry, but if one wants to be well-versed in Neo-Platonism, this work is probably worth reading. If one wants just a basic rundown of Porphyry's Neo-Platonism, one can just read the "Auxiliaries to the Perception of Intelligible Natures" (aka "the Sentences/Sententiae).… (plus d'informations)