You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
"The Introduction to philosophy, written by Porphyry at the end of the second century AD is the most successful work of its kind ever to have been published. Porphyry's aim was modest: he intended to explain the meaning of five terms, 'genus', 'species', 'difference', 'property', and 'accident' - terms that he took to be important to Aristotelian logic and metaphysics, and hence to philosophy in general. Thus in principle the Introduction is simple and elementary. In face, there are sometimes difficulties and doubts on the surface of the text - and beneath the surface there are occasional profundities. For the work raises, directly or indirectly, a number of perennial philosophical questions...
The Syriac treatise published in the present volume is in many respects a unique text. Though it has been preserved anonymously, there remains little doubt that it belongs to Porphyry of Tyre. Accordingly, it enlarges our knowledge of the views of the most famous disciple of Plotinus. The text is an important witness to Platonist discussions on First Principles and on Plato’s concept of Prime Matter in the Timaeus. It contains extensive quotations from Atticus, Severus, and Boethus. This text thus provides us with new textual witnesses to these philosophers, whose legacy remains very poorly attested and little known. Additionally, the treatise is a rare example of a Platonist work preserved in the Syriac language. The Syriac reception of Plato and Platonic teachings has left rather sparse textual traces, and the question of what precisely Syriac Christians knew about Plato and his philosophy remains a debated issue. The treatise provides evidence for the close acquaintance of Syriac scholars with Platonic cosmology and with philosophical commentaries on Plato’s Timaeus.
None
Porphyry's On Abstinence from Killing Animals is one of the most interesting books from Greek antiquity for both philosophers and historians. In it, Porphyry relates the arguments for eating or sacrificing animals and then goes on to argue that an understanding of humans and gods shows such sacrifice to be inappropriate, that an understanding of animals shows it to be unjust, and that a knowledge of non-Greeks shows it to be unnecessary. There are no Neoplatonist commentaries on Aristotle's Ethics from the period AD 250-600. Thus, although this work is not a commentary on Aristotle, it fills a gap in this series by going to the heart of ethical debates among Neoplatonists around AD 300, and revealing one ascetic Neoplatonist's view of the ideal way of life. It also records rival positions taken on the treatment of animals by Greek philosophers over the previous six hundred years.
The Homeric Questions of the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry (3rd cent. CE) is an important work in the history of Homeric criticism. In contrast to the philosopher’s allegorical readings of Homer in De Antro and De Styge, in the Homeric Questions Porphyry solves problemata by applying the dictum that “the poet explains himself”. Based on a new collation of the manuscripts, this edition of Porphyry’s Homeric Questions on the Iliad is the first since 1880. The preface contains sections on Porphyry’s life and works, the manuscript tradition of the text, scholarship on the Homeric Questions, and the principles of this edition. The editor has eliminated much that had been wrongly attr...
This volume is a translation of fragments and testimonia of Porphyry's lost work Against the Christians. The first part of the work examines Author, Title, date of composition, and sources. The second part discusses the structure of Against the Christians. The third part focuses on the religious, philosophical, and cultural background of this text. The fourth section constitutes the translation of the fragments and testimonia of Against the Christians. This work is especially important for historians of religion, philosophy, and Biblical Studies for it is an excellent example of a pagan tradition of scriptural interpretation and criticism of Christianity.
This monograph looks at the stone material par excellence of the Roman Empire, the most expensive in the Edict of Diocletian - Red Egyptian Porphyry. Starting from the study of this marble, the author traces the history, art, architecture and historiography that over the course of two millennia have recounted the political, artistic, religious and symbolic values of Porphyry. The colour of porphyry represented royalty in the time of the Lagids, the authority of the Roman Empire and the power of the Catholic Church - it was a fundamental colour in the Cosmati middles ages, highly sought after by the grand dukes of Tuscany and the richest element of Baroque opulence and the neoclassical renaissance. The strength of this study, in addition to its historical and photographic components, lies in the corpus of almost 1,000 profiles on porphyry objects, more than half of which are previously unpublished.