Porphyry the Oddball

[sdi]

You know, the more I dig into it, the more it seems Porphyry is a little bit of an oddball among Platonists. (This is funny, since scholarship seems to treat him as the very definition of orthodox!) A couple examples of this that stand out to me:

1. Porphyry agrees with the Hermetists and the Chaldean Oracles that some daemons can be evil. (The mainstream Pythagorean and Platonic view is that they are always good. This is because that gods always know the truth and always know the reasons for it, and we know neither, and so in order to mediate, dæmons must always know the truth but do not always know the reasons for it. Knowing truth prevents them from making missteps.)

2. Porphyry considers animals to be possessed of a rational capacity because they are capable of learning and communicating (even if not as well as humans are). (The mainstream Platonic view is that plants have a vegetative capacity; animals have vegetative and animative capacities; and humans have vegetative, animative, and rational capacities. Rational capacities in the soul are what make it capable of immortality. Possibly this is why Porphyry agreed with Plotinus but disagreed with Sallustius, Iamblichus, and Proclus about how unethical humans could reincarnate in animal bodies. Plotinus, for his part, considered all creatures to share in all capacities of soul, as a consequence of their existence in the unitive intelligible realm.)

Comments

[sdi]

Hm. Though, it seems that Proclus, in his Commentary on the Cratylus, agrees with Porphyry concerning evil dæmons, saying that there are three categories of dæmons: the angels (which are rational only), the dæmons proper (which are a mix of rational and irrational), and the illustrious heroes (as distinct from heroes proper, and which are irrational only). He says that the angels are good only, while the other two can lead astray from the Good and, in that respect, may be considered "evil."