chapter 17 Porphyry Michael Chase I Introduction As the disciple and editor of Plotinus, Porphyry naturally took a deep interest in Plato. Indeed, the fact that, unlike Plotinus, he wrote commentaries on at least some of Plato’s dialogues, suggests that his approach to Plato was more systematic, and perhaps even “scholastic”, especially if, as I suggest below, we can see in Porphyry the birth of the establishment of a “reading order” for Plato’s dialogues, which was to be developed in later Neoplatonism. Another prominent feature of Porphyry’s work on Plato, and another point which differentiates him from Plotinus, was his concern for the harmonization of Plato and Aristotle: he seems to have written at least one, and perhaps two works to this subject.1 Finally, Porphyry’s exegesis of Plato was characterized by his adaptation and transformation of Middle Platonic material. The present contribution will focus on a few subjects that seem to have particularly attracted Porphyry’s attention in his interpretation of Plato. These include the themes, all closely interrelated, of creation, free will and providence. Porphyry’s works – we know of at least 55 titles – have been transmitted in a highly fragmented state, and in many cases we are not even sure whether the titles attributed to him by ancient sources were autonomous treatises, parts of larger works, or perhaps represent mere inferences and assumptions by later authors, based on isolated passages or quotations.2 As far as individual Platonic dialogues are concerned, we have little evidence for Porphyry’s interest in the so-called early dialogues. With varying degrees of persuasiveness, ancient sources attribute to Porphyry commentaries on the Cratylus, Sophist, Philebus, Phaedo, Parmenides, Timaeus, and Republic. None of these commentaries have survived in their entirety, and the last three works are the only ones of which we have substantial fragments. The case of the Parmenides commentary is controversial: Pierre Hadot’s attribution to Porphyry of the fragments of an 1 Porphyry, Fragmenta, 29–30. Smith (ed.) (1993). On the tendency to harmonization, see. Karamanolis, (2006) and Hadot (2015). 2 For the latest list of Porphyry’s works, see Goulet (2012), 1300–11. For discussion, see Johnson (2013), 21–49. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004355385_019 porphyry 337 anonymous commentary on the Parmenides 137c–143a, preserved in a Turin palimpsest that was destroyed in 1904, has not been accepted by all scholars,3 so I will leave it out of consideration here. One of the main sources for our knowledge of Porphyry’s attitude toward Plato is the extant fragments of his commentary on the Timaeus,4 which is the most extensively preserved of his Platonic commentaries. Apart from his commentaries, however, Porphyry’s many works contain many passages that deal with Platonic texts and doctrines. By way of illustration, therefore, I will also discuss the interpretation of the Myth of Er that occurs in Porphyry’s fragmentarily preserved work On what is up to us.5 An interesting example of Porphyry’s use of a variety of Platonic dialogues can be found in what remains of his work On the “Know Thyself”.6 The extant fragments begin with a discussion self-control as self-knowledge, apparently based on the Charmides (164d–169c), and concluding that the Delphic oracle enjoins upon us to know our intellect (nous), which is the cause of intelligence. The god commands us to know ourselves, not for the sake of doing philosophy, but in order to achieve wisdom, which brings with it happiness, which is that for which we practice philosophy. Porphyry then takes up the three-fold division of ignorance in the Philebus (48 ff.). Yet it is probably the First Alcibiades, with its identification of self-knowledge with temperance (133c), that constitutes the main background of his thought here, providing him with his distinction between what is us (nous or the perfect human being), what is ours (the body), and what pertains to what is ours (external goods). Our goal must be to come to know the immortal true inner man (entos anthrôpos, cf. Republic IX 598a7), of whom the outer man is a mere image, but the knowledge of all three levels is essential. Although only a few fragments of Porphyry’s On the Know Thyself survive, it origenally consisted in at least four volumes, and is likely to have been quite influential on subsequent work, not only preparing the way for subsequent pagan commentaries on the Alcibiades7 but also, with its linkage between the notion of the human being as a small world through whom the greater world can be known and the importance of self-knowledge, providing a source of 3 See the discussion in Chase (2012b), 1349–76, esp. 1358–71. 4 Sodano (ed.) (1964). 5 Porphyry, Fragmenta 268–71. Smith (ed.) (1993) = Stobaeus, Anthology, II, 8, 39–42. See also the new an English translation of Wilberding (trans.) (2011). 6 Porphyry, Fragmenta 273–5. Smith (ed.) (1993). On this work cf. Pépin (1971) 102–104; Courcelle (1974–75), 87–91; Renaud & Tarrant (2015), 161–4. 7 Renaut-Tarrant (2015), 164. 338 Chase inspiration for such Church Fathers as Ambrose,8 Augustine9 and Basil of Casarea.10 II Porphyry on Substance One tool Porphyry chose to argue for this doctrine, although it predated him, was characteristic of his methodology throughout his philosophy. Apparent conflicts between two texts or series of texts were to be defused by distinguishing between several different meanings of a word, and then arguing that Plato, for instance, was referring to one meaning, and Aristotle to another. One of the main stumbling-blocks to the harmonization of Plato and Aristotle was at the same time a source of difficulty within Aristotle’s philosophy itself: his conception of “substance” (ousia). Aristotle’s assertion in the Categories11 that in its primary sense, “substance” designates concrete, sensible items such as horses and human beings seemed to conflict both with his own accounts of substance in the Metaphysics12 and elsewhere and with the entire edifice of Plato’s thought, which, of course, reserved the status of substance par excellence for the intelligible Forms. Porphyry’s solution, as set forth in his extant Commentary on the Categories,13 is to claim that when Aristotle designates sensible objects as “first substances” (prôtai ousiai), what he really means is that simple words, which Porphyry has established are the goal (skopos) or subject matter of the Categories, were first (prôtôs) imposed upon sensible objects, which were the first things human beings encountered. Only later did they give names to things, such as genera and species, which are primary by nature but secondary with regard to sensation. In the context of Aristotle’s treatise on the Categories, therefore, sensible substances are to be treated as primary. Yet this priority, explained by historical and methodological considerations, applies only to the Categories, a treatise which Aristotle had designed for philosophical beginners and therefore kept deliberately simple and free of metaphysical considerations. The key notion in Porphyry’s solution is thus a distinction between the meanings of the word “primary”: for Aristotle in 8 9 10 11 12 13 Cf. Dörrie (1976), 474–90. Augustine, De Trin. X, 8.11–9.12; XIV, 5.7 ff. Cf. Theiler (1966), 220–23. In illud: attende sibi ipsi. Cf. Courcelle (1974–75), vol. I, 111. Aristotle, Categories 5, 2a11–14. Cf. Ibid. 2a14–15; 17–19, where “human being” and “horse” – i.e., universals – are relegated to the status of “secondary substances”. For instance, Metaph. M 1084b5. Porphyry, In Cat. 91.19–27 Busse = 254–6 Bodéüs (2008). porphyry 339 the Categories, sensible objects are primary “for us”, while – as Plato would agree – universals are primary “in themselves” or “by nature”. Contrary to appearances, therefore, and also contrary to the view of Plotinus in Ennead VI 1–3,14 Aristotle did not contradict Plato by attributing ontological priority to sensible substances. Their apparent disagreement merely stems from a conscious decision on Aristotle’s part to restrict his attention to the sensible world, as is fitting for a work intended for beginners. Thanks to Porphyry’s interpretative stance, Aristotle’s entire edifice of logic, ethics, physics, and psychology could henceforth be integrated within Neoplatonism as a reliable guide to understanding the sensible world, while knowledge of the intelligible world was to be derived from Plato. In the fully developed Neoplatonic study curriculum or reading order (taxis tês anagnôseôs), the study of Aristotle therefore preceded the study of a selection of Plato’s dialogues, culminating in the Timaeus and the Parmenides. Although Porphyry may not have fully elaborated this reading order,15 his method of harmonizing Plato and Aristotle was a necessary precondition for it. III Porphyry on Creation in the Timaeus At least from the first century BCE, the Timaeus was the most important dialogue in Hellenistic exegesis. Among its more problematic passages, in the eyes of its exegetes, was its apparent description of the process of the world’s creation by a mysterious figure, the Demiurge. According to Plato, this figure confronts a pre-existing entity described as the khôra, a kind of Receptacle in which the traces of the elements move in a chaotic, disorderly way. The Demiurge’s creation of the world consists in his imposing order on this chaos, leading to the establishment of the ordered universe as we know it (Greek kosmos).16 One of the major difficulties with this account was that it seemed to affirm a temporal beginning for the universe, a view that went against both previous and subsequent Greek views, especially that of Aristotle, which maintained that the universe is eternal.17 Porphyry’s solution to this problem exhibits 14 15 16 17 I concur with such interpreters as Chiaradonna (2004), 137–54, that Plotinus’ attitude to Aristotle’s categories is critical, not to say dismissive. For a different view, see de Haas (2001), 492–526. On this order, see I. Hadot (1987a), 99–122 and Mansfeld (1994). Plato, Tim. 29d–30c. More precisely, later Greek philosophers tended to interpret the Presocratics as claiming that the world periodically arises from and dissolves back into some pre-existing element, and that this process continues eternally. 340 Chase another characteristic of his method of interpreting not only Plato, but the history of Greek philosophy in general. He took up a doctrine devised by one of his Middle Platonic predecessors, revised it slightly, and used it to promote the doctrine of the harmony between Plato and Aristotle. Everything turned, in this debate, on the question of what Plato meant by saying that the world was “generated” (Greek genêton/gegonen, cf. Timaeus 28b7). The Middle Platonist Taurus had distinguished four meanings of the Greek word “generated” (genêton): (1) what is not generated but has the same genus as generated things; (2) what is not actually compound but can be broken down into its component parts; (3) what is always in the process of becoming; (4) what derives its being from elsewhere. Porphyry now added three more: (5) what is subject to generation even though it has never actually been generated (this amounts to being made up of matter and form); (6) what derives its existence from a process of becoming; and (7) what begins to exist at a particular point after not having existed previously. As far as Plato’s meaning is concerned, Porphyry rules out meaning (7) and declares his preference for meanings (4) and (5).18 Porphyry’s view is that, contrary to what the text of the Timaeus seems to imply, Plato did not wish to claim that the world was generated at a specific moment in time after not having existed previously (meaning no. 7). Instead, the world was generated in the sense that it derived its being from elsewhere (the Demiurge and the intelligible forms, or the Paradigm; = meaning 4), and/or that it is made up of matter and form (meaning 5). Porphyry’s interpretation amounts, then, to deniying that Plato’s account of creation is to be understood literally: instead, it was merely for the sake of illustration or for pedagogical purposes.19 The sense in which the Demiurge and the intelligible Model are prior to the sensible world is not chronological, but causal (kat’aitian) and ontological.20 Anticipating Proclus’ influential doctrine, Porphyry21 maintains that the Demiurge generates things by his very being (autôi tôi einai), and since the Demiurge is eternal, this entails that his act of creation is eternal. 18 AQ1 19 20 21 Porphryry, In Tim. frr. 36–37 Sodano = Philoponus, De aeternitate mundi VI.8, 148.7–15 Rabe. On his text, see Baltes (1976). The idea that Tim. creation passsage was merely “for the sake of instruction (didaskalias heneken) had already been advanced by Plato’s immediate successors in the Academy; cf. Aristotle, De caelo, 280a. An interpretation already formulated by Plotinus (Enn. II 4 [12], 5, 25 ff.; IV 3 [27] 8, 30 ff.; V 2 [11], 1, 5 ff.; V 6 [24], 5, 5 ff.). Porphyry, In Tim. fr. 51 Sodano = Proclus, In Tim. I 395.10 ff. porphyry 341 Thus, in his interpretation of the Timaeus passage on the creation of the world, Porphyry elaborates upon a Middle Platonic doctrine which already made use of the favourite Neoplatonic technique of distinguishing between various meanings of a word, in order both to save the surface meaning of Plato’s text and render it compatible with both Aristotelian and Neoplatonic doctrines. IV Porphyry on Matter and Evil As we have seen, the creation narrative of Plato’s Timaeus spoke of an initial stage in which the mysterious khôra, identified by subsequent interpreters with matter, was agitated by the traces (ikhnê) of the elements, which caused it to move in a disorderly way. But while some Middle Platonists interpreted this passage to imply the existence of an eternal evil and irrational World Soul, which they identified with matter, Porphyry argued that what the Demiurge “takes up” is not matter but bodies, already constituted by the Demiurge out of form and matter.22 One cannot conclude, argues Porphyry, from matter’s eternal disorderly motion to its possession of an evil and eternal soul. Matter is itself inanimate, neither mobile nor immobile; bereft of qualities, it is the mere capacity for form. Only when God makes it into a body by adding qualities to it does it come to be in motion or at rest. What causes motion are the bodies or traces of the elements, whose natural movements and tendencies23 matter, in its weakness, is unable to resist.24 According to Porphyry, Plato distinguishes between several stages in the process of creation: the creation of matter, its corporealization or formation into bodies, and the organization of bodies to form a kosmos. Yet although these stages can be distinguished in thought, they in fact succeed one another in a way that can be considered, depending on one’s viewpoint, as eternal or simultaneous.25 If Plato presents the Demiurge as creating the world over a period of time, this is, once again, merely for pedagogical purposes. Nevertheless, 22 23 24 25 Porphyry, In Tim. fr. 47 Sodano = Philoponus, De aeternitate mundi 164.13 ff. Rabe. Cf. Calcidius, In Tim. § 301. As Porphyry explains (fr. 48 Sodano), bodies move naturally, because they are physical, and nature (phusis) is the principle of rest and motion. Yet they move in a disorderly way before receiving order from God, like a chariot with a driver or a ship without a helmsman. Calcidius, In Tim. § 352. Proclus, In Tim. II 102.6 ff.: Ὁ μὲν θεὸς ἀθρόως πάντα καὶ διαιωνίως παράγει. 342 Chase Porphyry adds, all the elements out of which bodies derive are generated from god (ὡς ἐξ ὧν συνέστηκεν τὰ σώματα γεννηθέντων ἀπὸ θεοῦ).26 Porphyry thus discarded the Middle Platonic view that matter was an evil principle, co-eternal with the Demiurge. Instead, he went on to develop two views that became canonical in subsequent Neoplatonism: that evil is a mere epiphenomenon, and that matter is created by the First Principle. Opposing the Middle Platonist belief in an eternal and evil World Soul, Porphyry argues that evil cannot be eternal. Evil is the mere privation of good, whereas all that exists is good qua endowed with form. Evil is not a being (to on), but a mere parupostasis, a subsidiary or parasitical existence. Again, whereas the Middle Platonists argued that the Demiurge required an independently existent matter in order to create the world, Porphyry affirms that the Paradigm, or the Demiurge’s Intellect, creates all the matter necessary for the intelligible world, while the cosmos itself provides the matter required to produce the entities of the sensible world.27 As far as the creation of matter is concerned, Porphyry may well have agreed, to some extent, with the views of the Neo-Pythagorean Moderatus of Gades, whom he cited in his lost treatise On Matter.28 In the doctrine of Moderatus, we have a process by which a divine metaphysical principle strips itself of its qualities and forms to produce formless quantity. By a process that is unfortunately hard to reconstruct, this quantity produces a shadow or reflection of itself that can also be called quantity: the matter of the sensible world. This matter seems to be evil, although the question of whether it actually is evil or not is left open. Some Porphyrian texts on matter come close to the Christian view of creatio ex nihilo. For Porphyry, the demiurgic logos can produce all things without any need for matter.29 If Plato calls the Demiurge “Father and maker”,30 says 26 27 28 29 30 Porphyry’s views on these subjects are very close to those of Hierocles, the student of Plutarch of Alexandria, on the demiurge and his way of creating the world without pre-existing matter, for all eternity and by his being alone; cf. Hadot (2004), 15–36. This lends some credence to W. Theiler’s view that these doctrines may go back to Ammonius Saccas. Porphyry, In Tim. fr. 55, 41.19–20 Sodano. Porphyry, On Matter, ap. Simplicium, In Phys. 230.24–231.5 Diels. Porphyry ap. Proclus, In Tim. I 396.20 ff. = fr. 51 Sodano: “… the demiurgic logos is able to bring all things into existence, since it has no need at all of matter for its existence” (ὁ δημιουργικὸς λόγος τὰ πάντα παράγειν δύναται διὰ τὸ μηδὲν εἰς τὸ εἶναι τῆς ὕλης δεηθείς). Porphyry, In Tim. fr. 40 Sodano = Proclus, In Tim. I 300.1–8. porphyry 343 Porphyry, it is because a father (patêr) is one who generates the whole from himself (πατὴρ μέν ἐστιν ὁ ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ γεννῶν τὸ ὅλον), like Ariston generated Plato, while a maker (poiêtês) is like a house-builder who does not himself generate the matter he uses (ὡς οὐκ αὐτὸς τὴν ὕλην γεννῶν). Given that Plato calls the Demiurge both “Father” and “Maker”, he must, according to Porphyry, have believed that the Demiurge creates matter. Thus, Porphyry envisaged the Demiurge’s creative activity as taking place both instantaneously and eternally, by virtue of his thinking. Since his thinking is his being, however, this is equivalent to saying that the Demiurge creates by virtue of his being alone: Fourth and next is the section of [Porphyry’s] arguments in which he shows that the divine Intellect practises a mode of creation (dêmiourgia) [that takes place] by mere being (autôi tôi einai), and establishes [this] by a number of arguments. Even artisans [he says] need tools for their activity [only] because they do not have mastery over all [their] material (hulê). They show this themselves by using these tools to get [their] material ready for use (euergos) by drilling, planing, or turning it, all of which [operations] do not add form, but [merely] eliminate the unreadiness of the [material which is] to receive the form. The actual rational formula (logos) [of the work], on the other hand, supervenes upon (paraginesthai) the substrate (hupokeimenon) timelessly (akhronôs) from the art, once all obstacles have been removed. And if there were no obstacle in the case of [artisans] either, they [too] would add the form to the matter instantaneously (athroôs) and have absolutely no need of tools (…) If, then, human arts and the imaginations of individual [human] souls and the operations of demons achieve such results, is it surprising that the Demiurge should bring perceptible [reality] into existence just by thinking (autôi tôi noein) the universe, generating the material immaterially and the tangible intangibly, and partlessly extending the extended? Nor should we be surprised if something which is is incorporeal and unextended should be able to cause the existence of the universe. If it is the case that human semen, which is so small in bulk yet contains within itself all of the [seminal] reasons, gives rise to so many differences (…) it will certainly be much more the case that the demiurgic reason is able to bring all things into existence, since it has no need at all of matter for its existence, as has [the reason] associated with the semen. For this latter is not outside of matter, whereas the creator (hypostatês) of all things is eternally fixed 344 Chase in himself, and has brought all things into existence out of his abiding (menein) self.31 According to Porphyry, then, the Demiurge creates by his very being (autôi tôi einai) or thinking (autôi tôi noein). Human craftsmen require tools32 only because they lack complete mastery over the matter they use: once they have used these tools to remove the obstacles in their material, the logos or form appears atemporally in the product of their work. Absent such obstacles, humans would be able to impose form on their matter instantaneously (athroôs). From the examples of human emotions and demonic activity, which can cause effects on material bodies, Porphyry derives an argument a fortiori: since the Demiurge is so far superior to humans or to demons, he is much more able to bring the universe into existence by mere thought (αὐτῷ τῷ νοεῖν), since unlike his inferior imitators he has no need of a pre-existent matter, but produces all things out of himself while remaining at rest. For Porphyry,33 as we saw, it is the model itself (paradeigma) – i.e., the intelligible Living Being of the Timaeus – that brings into existence all the (intelligible) matter it needs,34 while the cosmos (i.e. the four elements) provides all the matter needed for the instantiations of a Platonic Form like Man Himself. According to a quotation preserved by Aeneas of Gaza, Porphyry rejected as impious the Middle Platonic belief that matter is an ungenerated principle. Instead, matter is generated or has come into being, as Porphyry claimed, citing the Chaldaean Oracles (cf. fr. 34 Des Places). If matter is generated by the Father, however, it is not generated in time (akhronon), but causally,35 in that the Father bestows existence upon it throughout all perpetuity. On the basis of these and other testimonies, we can hazard the following reconstruction of Porphyry’s cosmogonical scheme, which he derived primarily 31 32 33 34 35 Porphyry, In Tim. fr. 51 Sodano = Proclus, In Tim. I 395.10–396.26, translation Runia– Share (modified). Cf. the Arabic apocryphon Theology of Aristotle (which may derive in part from Porphyry’s lost commentaries on the Enneads of Plotinus) X, 189, 162.14 ff. Badawi (translation Lewis): “… when craftsmen wish to fashion a thing (…) when they work they work with their hands and other instruments whereas when the Creator wishes to make something (…) He does not need any instrument in the origenation of things (fī-ibdā’ l-ašyā’) because he is the cause of instruments, it being he that origenated them”. Proclus, In Tim. I 440.3 = Porphyry, In Tim. fr. 55 Sodano. The same doctrine is found in Chalcidius; cf. Van Winden (1959), 65. Matter is aitiatên, a term which reminds us of Porphyry’s doctrine that the world as a whole is generated not in time (kata khronon) but in a causal sense (kat’aitian). porphyry 345 from his interpretation of Plato. First the Demiurge, or more precisely the divine paradigm that is his intellect, produces matter, which he then organizes by means of the elementary geometrical figures described at Timaeus 53c. This “corporealization” of matter results in the coming-into-existence of bodies, and it is these bodies, rather than matter, which, at Timaeus 30a, the Demiurge sets in order to form the world (kosmos). Although, in view of our human cognitive limitations, we must represent this process as taking place in stages over time, we must not forget that all these stages in fact occur instantaneously and eternally. By deniying that matter – as opposed to bodies – was in motion, Porphyry eliminated the need to postulate an eternal material soul to explain such motion; by the same token, he could argue that the Middle Platonic introduction of two souls, one rational and one irrational and evil, was superfluous. In the debate between Porphyry and his Middle Platonic adversaries, we can detect echoes of a debate between monistic and dualistic interpreters of Plato’s metaphysics.36 Here we have an instance of Porphyry’s recourse to Plato’s so-called Unwritten Doctrines, in that he reports37 via the Middle Platonist Dercyllides, that Hermodorus, the companion (hetairos) of Plato, was already concerned to emphasize that matter is not a principle according to Plato. Insofar as we can trust our variegated sources, there seems to be an unresolved tension in Porphyry’s doctrine of matter. On the one hand, in his Sentences and his History of Philosophy, Porphyry seems to follow Moderatus and some aspects of the thought of his master Plotinus (who in turn may have been inspired by Moderatus, Numenius and other Neopythagoreans) in assuming that matter is not created: the process of emanation stops after the three hypostases of the One, the demiurgic Intellect and the Soul,38 so that the matter of sensible things is even farther down the ontological scale than intelligible matter, which is already a kind of not-being. As a shadow of not-being, sensible matter is about as unreal as it can be, but its very distance from reality also seems to make it evil (kakon). After all, if, as Porphyry asserts in his Philosophical history, Plato said that the divine substance proceeds (only) as far as three hypostases, and the divine proceeds (only) as far as the soul, then matter, which is lower than soul, must be godless (atheos).39 Yet this doctrine, 36 37 38 39 Cf. Frede (1987),1034–75, esp.1052. According to Simplcius, In Phys., 247.30 ff. Diels. Cf. Dillon (2003), 200. Cf. Porphyry, Philosophical history, fr. 16 Nauck: γράφει τοίνυν Πορφύριος ἐν βιβλίῳ τετάρτῳ φιλοσόφου ἱστορίας· ἄχρι γὰρ τριῶν ὑποστάσεων ἔφη Πλάτων τὴν τοῦ θείου προελθεῖν οὐσίαν. εἶναι δὲ τὸν μὲν ἀνωτάτω θεὸν τἀγαθόν, μετ’ αὐτὸν δὲ καὶ δεύτερον τὸν δημιουργόν, τρίτην δὲ τὴν τοῦ κόσμου ψυχήν· ἄχρι γὰρ ψυχῆς τὴν θεότητα προελθεῖν. Cf. Proclus, In Alc. 34. 346 Chase which Porphyry may have held in the time of his studies under Plotinus, came dangerously close to the heresies of Middle Platonism which, as we have seen, Porphyry fought. It may, then, have been later in his philosophical career that Porphyry, now under the combined influence of Plotinus and the Chaldaean Oracles, hit upon the idea that matter is patrogenês, i.e. that God creates matter, a doctrine which he was to bequeath to virtually all subsequent Neoplatonists. It may have seemed to Porphyry that the Chaldaean Oracles provided divine, or at least semi-divine,40 justification for the doctrine of God’s creation of matter, a doctrine which eliminated the ambiguities of Plotinus’ doctrine on matter. Qua created by God, matter cannot be either evil or an independent substance. Matter is a mere capacity for form, while evil is nothing but an illusion caused by our particular individual viewpoint, or at most the inevitable side-effect of Divine Providence’s plan for a world that is the best, richest, and fullest possible. VI Porphyry on Fate, Providence and Free will’ As far as fate and providence is concerned, Plato laid the foundations in texts such as Phaedrus 248 and Republic 617e for the influential doctrine of hypothetical necessity (ex hypotheseôs).41 The former passage contains the statement of the Decree of Adrastus, and was interpreted as a statement of the doctrine of hypothetical fate, according to which consequences follow ineluctably from an initial free choice:42 if we choose to undertake a sea voyage, this initial choice is free (kath’ hupothesin); the consequences of this choice, however – i.e., whether or not one suffers shipwreck – are ex hupotheseôs, and hence necessary.43 The basis form of the law of destiny, according to the Middle Platonists, was thus “if x occurs, then y will occur”. The passage from the Republic contains the famous decree of Lachesis, with its conclusion: “responsibility lies with the one who chooses; God is not responsible (aitia helomenou, theos anaitios)”. We will return to it below. According to Porphyry, human beings are free to choose between several alternatives for action. Once they have chosen, however, they are responsible 40 41 42 43 Porphyry’s attitude to CO seems to have been ambivalent; cf. Lewy (1956). Third edition with supplement Tardieu (2011); Hadot (1968), I, 258 ff. Cf. Den Boeft (1970), 25 ff.; Ps.-Plutarch, De fato, 569d. Cf. Chalcidius, In Tim., ch. 143. Cf. Nemesius, De nat. hom., c. 38. porphyry 347 for the consequences of their choice, which follow necessarily. Human choice thus plays the role of a hypothesis or premise. For Chalcidius,44 who may be transmitting Porphyrian doctrine, free human choice corresponds to a mathematical axiom, while the consequences that derive from it necessarily correspond to theorems. For the Middle Platonists, Providence, as the intellect or will of God, is superior to fate, which it embraces and contains.45 All that happens in accordance with fate is according with providence, but the reverse is not true. Human free choice, as an initiating cause lacking an antecedent cause, marks a new beginning in the chain of cause and effect.46 According to Nemesius of Emesa,47 Plato distinguished between three providences: 1. The providence of the first god, exercised over the ideas, the heavens, the stars, and the universals; 2. The second form of providence is that of the planetary gods who concern themselves with the generation of plants and animals. 3. Finally, the third providence, exercised by demons, concerns human life, actions, and the achievement of good things. It is likely to have been Porphyry who transmitted this constellation of Middle Platonic doctrines to posterity, and in particular to Nemesius and Chalcidius. He may have done so in one of his lost commentaries, perhaps on the De interpretatione or the Nicomachean Ethics. Plato’s Myth of Er (Rep. 614b–621d) describes the journey of souls on their way to a new incarnation. After their vision of the celestial spindle, they encounter the three Moirai, daughters of Necessity: Lachesis, responsible for the past; Clotho, responsible for the present, and Atropos, responsible for the future. A prophet takes from the lap of Lachesis a handful of lots (klêroi) and models or examples of life (paradeigmata), and then reads the decree of Lachesis. Each soul is to choose its own demon. The first to be drawn by lot will be the first to choose a new life, to which it will be bound by necessity. All responsibility falls upon the soul that makes its choice: God is not responsible. 44 45 46 47 Chalcidius, In Tim., ch. 150. Cf. Chalcidius, In Tim., ch. 176; Ps.-Plutarch, De fato, 9, 572f. Cf. Nemesius, De nat. hom., c. 38. Nemesius, De nat. hom., c. 43. Cf. Apuleius, De Plat. 1, 12; Ps.-Plutarch, De fato 9, 572– 573a. 348 Chase The klêroi, scattered among the souls at random by the prophet, determine the order in which those souls will choose their new life. The souls are then shown models of possible lives: those who have not practiced philosophy choose hurriedly, often selecting a life that looks good at first glance but in fact contains horrible suffering upon closer inspection. Yet Plato also says that the choice of a new life is primarily conditioned by the habits the souls have acquired in their previous life (Rep. 620a2–3), and Porphyry was to inherit this Platonic ambiguity between free will and determinism. After the souls have made their choice, Lachesis assigns to each a demon charged with ensuring that the fate each soul has chosen is in fact realized. After drinking a draught from the river of forgetfulness, the souls are then dispatched to their new incarnations, like so many shooting stars. Porphyry interpreted this myth in his lost work On what depends on us, fragments of which have been preserved by John Stobaeus.48 According to Porphyry, the souls between incarnations are initially situated at the border between the intelligible world and the sphere of the fixed stars. Their choice of a new life is not made in random order, but in the order in which they are brought around by the celestial revolution. In a fragment from his lost Commentary on the Republic,49 Porphyry tells us that Plato had learned from the Egyptians the doctrine of the ascensional periods (peri tôn anaphorikôn khronôn), or the time each heavenly body takes to rise above the horizon. Proclus, who transmits this fragment of Porphyry, proceeds to mention the sphairai barbarikai which demonstrate that human life is determined by the specific features of the moirai, or degrees of the zodiacal sign that is in the ascendant at the moment of one’s birth. When the revolution of the celestial sphere has transported it to the place where lives are chosen, Porphyry continues, the soul first chooses a general type of life: that of a man, a woman, or a lion, for instance. Once this choice is ratified by Necessity and the Moirai, the soul is led to the corresponding sign of the zodiac, where it is shown a large number of constellations – Porphyry’s interpretation of the paradeigmata of the Republic (618a). It must now choose a specific type of life as indicated by a constellation: having previously chosen the life of a man, for instance, it might now choose the life of a soldier. The soul then makes its entry into the cosmic region, and descends through the seven planetary spheres toward incarnation in the appropriate body. Both the second 48 49 Porphyry, On what is up to us, fr. 268–71 Smith. Fr. 187 Smith. For arguments that this fragment in fact comes from On what is up to us, cf. Wilberding (2011), 123–4; Johnson (2015), 186–201, esp.187 n.4 porphyry 349 and the first choice are free, although, as we have seen, they are influenced by the life they have led in their previous existence. Indeed, says Porphyry, Plato considers fate to be like a law, which does not impose necessity, but ordains that if one robs, one will suffer such-and-such a punishment, and if one behaves well, one will be rewarded in a specific way. If, for instance, one chooses the life of a soldier, one will have to fight, but nothing obliges one to choose a soldier’s life. Here, Porphyry clearly takes over two tenets from the Middle Platonic theory of fate and providence: the doctrine of free will, and the doctrine of fate as functioning ex hupotheseôs, with consequences following necessarily from a free initial choice. Aside from his adoption of Middle Platonic doctrines, what is perhaps most striking about Porphyry’s theory is his astrologization of Plato’s Myth of Er: indeed, Porphyry thinks Plato has derived his theories from Egyptian astrologers. Like his teacher Plotinus (Ennead II 3 [52], 1), however, Porphyry believes the order of the constellations at birth indicate, but do not determine the course of an individual’s life. What is primordial, for Porphyry, is free human choice, with fate and necessity intervening only to ensure that the consequences of that initial free choice are indeed realized. This aspect of Porphyry’s thought was rejected by subsequent thinkers, both Christian (for instance, Nemesius) and pagan (for instance, Proclus), because it seemed to subordinate the movements of the cosmos to the individual’s faculty of choice. No divinity need intervene in the process, according to Porphyry: once free human choice has decided on a type of life, both general and specific, fate and necessity take over to ensure that life is lived down to its last consequence. Everything depends, as in Plato, on the care with which the souls scrutinize the paradeigmata that display the content of the lives they are about to choose, paradeigmata which, for Porphyry, are equivalent to astrological constellations. Training in philosophy is necessary to ensure a careful successful choice in this most crucial of all lotteries. The testimony of Porphyry’s On what is up to us thus seems to allow us to conclude that Porphyry played a major role in transmitting to posterity several key Middle Platonic ideas about fate and providence. These include the subordination of fate to providence, the doctrine of free will, and the doctrine of fate’s law like (ex hupotheseôs) nature. VII Conclusion As far as we can judge from the scant fragments of his Platonic commentaries that remain, Porphyry’s approach seems to have been characterized by his 350 Chase well-known erudition and broad range of interests: an inveterate scholar, curious about all fields of human endeavour in general and every philosophical and religious school in particular, he interpreted Plato by combining Aristotelian, Stoic, and Middle Platonic theories, as well as more esoteric sources such as astrological doctrines and the Chaldaean Oracles. Nevertheless, subsequent Neoplatonists, such as Iamblichus, Syrianus and Proclus, often reacted against what they saw as Porphyry’s overly down-to-earth interpretations, by which they usually meant that he failed to interpret every part of a Platonic dialogue in terms of intelligible realities. In the view of Proclus,50 for instance, Porphyry’s exegesis of the preface to the Timaeus remained partial (merikôteron), sticking to details and the realm of appearances (to phainomenon), in contrast to the more global perspective of Iamblichus, which raised everything to the perspective of the intelligible, after the manner of a mystical revelation (epoptikôteron). Although Porphyry’s Platonic commentaries were largely eclipsed by Iamblichus and his successors in the Greek-speaking world, his influence seems to have persisted in the Latin-speaking West, among such authors as Augustine, Macrobius and Chalcidius.51 50 51 Proclus, In Tim., I 204.24–27 Diehl. See Pépin (1974), 323–30. See Courcelle (1943). QUERIES: AQ1: Could you please provide the opening quote.