Porphyry

3rd-century Greek Neoplatonist philosopher

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Lived 233–301, aged 68

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Era
233–301
Aged 68

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

He salvaged his teacher's metaphysics for posterity, then spent the rest of his career writing everything from vegetarian treatises to attacks on Christianity sharp enough that an emperor ordered them burned.

Biography

About

Born around 234 in Tyre during Roman Phoenicia, Porphyry studied under Plotinus and became the sole editor of the Enneads — without him, Neoplatonism's founding texts would have been lost. He then ranged across disciplines in Greek, producing works on music theory, Homer, and vegetarianism, but his Isagoge became his most enduring legacy: for a thousand years it was the standard logic textbook across Latin and Arabic traditions. His anti-Christian polemics, especially Philosophy from Oracles and Against the Christians, made him a lightning rod — Constantine the Great eventually banned the latt…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Porphyry

Porphyry

saidundated

Every body is in place; but nothing essentially incorporeal, or any thing of this kind, has any locality.

— Auxiliaries to the Perception of Intelligible Natures, in Select Works of Porphyry (1823) as translated by Thomas Taylor

Porphyry

saidundated

Things essentially incorporeal, because they are more excellent than all body and place, are every where, not with interval, but impartibly.

— 2 - 4

Porphyry

saidundated

Soul, indeed, is a certain medium between an impartible essence, and an essence which is divisible about bodies. But intellect is an impartible essence alone.

— 5 - 6

Porphyry

saidundated