Philosophy-RAG-demo/transcriptions/HoP 092 - King of Animals - Porphyry.txt

 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson of the LMU in Munich. You're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, still brought to you with the support of King's College London and the Leverhulme Trust, online at www.historyoffilosophy.net. Today's episode, King of Animals, Porphyry. Never underestimate the importance of a good introduction. As you may have noticed, I've been trying to begin each episode of this podcast series with an attention-grabbing example or anecdote which may be of dubious relevance to the actual topic, but highlights a central theme of the episode. And today's offering will be no exception, as I begin by paying tribute to a man who made an entire career out of introductions. His name was Danny Ray. He performed a crucial role in one of the best stage shows of all time. As the main act prepared to hit the stage, Danny Ray would warm up the audience by telling them that they were about to witness an artist who would make their liver quiver, their bladder and their knees freeze. Godfather of soul, King of soul, soul brother number one all over the world, James Brown. At the end of the show, Danny would return to escort James Brown off the stage while draping a cape over his shoulders, which Brown would then cast aside repeatedly to return to the microphone for one last verse. The Danny Ray of ancient philosophy was named Porphyry. Actually, this was a nickname. It means purple in Greek, and he was called after this royal color because his real name meant king, albeit not King of soul. Not only did Porphyry write the Life of Plotinus as an introduction for his edition of Plotinus's writings, which he organized as the Enneads, he also wrote a short little treatise with the wonderfully imaginative title Introduction, in Greek, ezegeogae. In due course it would become Porphyry's most influential and famous work, in fact what I think must be the most frequently read philosophical treatise of late antiquity. In just a few pages, Porphyry deftly sketched some of the basics of Aristotle's logic as he understood it. He focused on the notions that came to be called the five Porphyrian words or expressions, genus, species, specific difference, accident, and property. Drawing especially on Aristotle's topics, Porphyry is here offering an alternative, and perhaps more general, classification of predicates than the one we find in Aristotle's categories. In other words, every term we use to describe something will fall into one of these five types. The most familiar are genus and species, and I suppose listeners will be disappointed if I don't illustrate with the contrast between animal and giraffe. What marks out a species from its genus is its specific difference. For instance, if among animals, humans and humans alone are rational, something Porphyry elsewhere questions, as we'll see shortly, then rationality can serve as a specific difference for the genus of animal. Of course, every individual falls under a unique genus and species, and will have many of its features by virtue of belonging to that genus and species. Thus, Hiawatha will be alive and capable of sensation because she is an animal, and be vegetarian, and have a long neck because she's a giraffe. But individual members of the same species will also differ from one another. The features that distinguish them are called by Aristotle accidents, so Porphyry adds this to his list. The fifth class is the trickiest, the property or proper accident. This is a feature possessed by all members of a species, which is nonetheless accidental to them rather than essential. The usual example is humans' ability to laugh. Every human can laugh, yet we can imagine a human that can't laugh, and see that he or she would still be a human. Indeed, Buster Keaton's on-screen persona seems to depict just such a creature. Lurking just offstage, like James Brown during Danny Ray's introduction, are various metaphysical questions. Porphyry declines to investigate them in his introduction precisely because it is meant to be introductory. Elsewhere, though, he suggests that any individual is simply a unique collection of distinguishing features that fall under the five kinds of predicate. Each of its features may be shared by many other individuals, but no individual will have all the same features, so each individual can be understood as nothing more than the union of those features. Other questions are raised in the introduction without being answered. Should universals like genera and species be counted among the things that really exist? If so, how do they exist? Are they immaterial? If so, are they independent and separate from the individuals that fall under the universal? This series of questions without answers was one reason for the popularity of the introduction. Later authors who were commenting on it had a chance to give their own solutions to the so-called problem of universals. The introduction was used to teach many generations of students, and thus commented upon by later Platonists who wrote in Greek. Once it was translated into Latin and Arabic, it received new commentaries in those languages. When the 9th century Muslim philosopher al-Kindi attacked the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, he structured his criticism around concepts taken from Porphyry's introduction, explaining that this was a text so familiar to his opponents that all of them could be expected to own a copy. Back in the episode on Alexander of Aphrodisias, I explained that he was used for centuries as a guide to Aristotle. But Porphyry went him one better. His introduction was actually incorporated into the group of Aristotle's logical writings, the so-called Organon. Ironically then, nearly all late ancient and medieval students of Aristotle began to study him by reading something written by a Platonist. Porphyry himself would probably have been bemused to learn that his vast body of writings would be overshadowed by the little introduction he devoted to Aristotle's logic. Still, he would have been quite pleased to play such a central role in the integration of Platonism and Aristotelianism. If the introduction was his most influential work, his most influential idea was that Plato and Aristotle are fundamentally in harmony. Actually, this idea goes back earlier, even to the so-called middle Platonists before Plotinus. Generations after Porphyry, a Platonist by the name of Hierocles claimed that the harmony idea should above all be credited to Plotinus's teacher, Ammonius Sacchus. And Porphyry himself says in his Life of Plotinus that his master's writings are full of Aristotelian ideas, which is true enough. Still, Porphyry played a crucial role in adopting Aristotle on behalf of the Platonist family. He was the first Platonist to write commentaries on Aristotle, and proposed a way of reconciling these two greatest philosophical authorities. For Porphyry, Plato was the more advanced thinker, a philosopher who teaches about divinity and the highest causes. Aristotle, by contrast, tells us mostly about the world of nature, about living things, about bodies at rest and in motion, and about human thought and language as it relates to this physical realm. By demoting Aristotle himself to a relatively introductory level, Porphyry made his work safe for Platonists to study. And study them they did, to the point that they wound up producing more commentaries on Aristotle than on the more exalted Platonic dialogues. Porphyry's own extensive commentaries on both Plato and Aristotle are mostly lost, but we know a fair amount about them because they were used and quoted, sometimes without attribution, in other surviving Greek commentaries. For Boethius, a Christian philosopher who wrote in Latin and served as a conduit for ancient ideas to the medieval world, Porphyry was the most important source for understanding Aristotle's logic, even more important than Alexander. This is another irony, given that Porphyry was also known for his critique of the religion which he considered the greatest abomination of his age, Christianity. He was not the first pagan philosopher to attack the Christians. In the second century, an author named Celsus had raised objections that are preserved in a refutation by the Church Father Origen. We'll return to this in a future episode. Like Celsus's anti-Christian writing, Porphyry's criticisms of Christianity are known only in the form of quotations, especially amongst Christians like Augustine who were stung into a response. It isn't even clear whether Porphyry wrote a single large work called Against the Christians, or whether later authors are quoting from a range of texts in which Porphyry complained about what he saw as a new and irrational faith. Porphyry turned the interpretive skills he had sharpened, reading Plato and Aristotle, against the Bible. He complained about the implausibilities of the supposed revelation, for instance Jonah's survival in the belly of a whale, and the forced allegorical readings offered by Christians. Again ironically, given that the Jewish Philo of Alexandria was a great pioneer of this sort of interpretation, Porphyry shows himself much more respectful towards Judaism, which he respects as a venerable faith. What bothers him about the Christians is not just their lack of ancient pedigree, though. It is also the unjustified nature of their beliefs. He uses the word alogos, meaning irrational, to describe these beliefs. This raises the intriguing possibility that Porphyry may have thought less of Christians than he did of animals. His characteristic blend of an independent mind and respect for ancient authority is on full display in his most fascinating work entitled On Abstinence from Animal Food. It is a lengthy and impassioned plea for vegetarianism addressed to a colleague named Firmus Castricius. Firmus was a wealthy admirer of Plotinus, mentioned in Porphyry's Life of Plotinus. Given the good taste Firmus showed in attaching himself to this Platonist group, Porphyry is distraught and disappointed that Firmus has given up on vegetarianism and acquired another taste, for meat. On Abstinence is intended to show Firmus the error of his new meat-eating ways, and of course to convert other readers to abstinence. Porphyry is not in fact the first ancient philosopher to recommend vegetarianism. This diet had long been associated with Pythagoreans and the presocratic thinker Empedocles, both of whom are mentioned by Porphyry. He also draws extensively on a work about animals by the more recent Plutarch. We know from Porphyry's own Life of Plotinus that Plotinus, too, was a vegetarian. But there is no other surviving ancient treatise that explores the topic so fully. Porphyry not only argues for vegetarianism, but also presents the anti-vegetarian arguments of Epicureans, Stoics, and Aristotelians before going on to refute them. Porphyry's main reason for not eating meat is that it tastes good. Following his master Plotinus, he believes that our true selves are intellectual souls. Anything that ties the soul to the body is counterproductive, since it hinders our ability to focus on the things of the mind, and nothing ties the soul to the body more powerfully than pleasure. It is, as Porphyry says, like a nail that attaches us to our bodies, which he compares to mere garments made of skin. And, by the way, it isn't only the pleasure that is problematic. For curing meat, he says, is difficult and often expensive, a point that held rather more weight in the ancient world than it would today. Far better is to partake of light and simple foods, whatever comes easily to hand, and to eat just enough to keep ourselves alive and in good health. For all his disdain for the body, Porphyry considers it wrong to kill oneself, though we know, again from the Life of Plotinus, that he was once tempted to do so. Because this is Porphyry's main argument against eating meat, he recommends vegetarianism only for those people who are actually trying to concentrate on intellectual activity, rather than their embodied lives. At one point, he explicitly says that he is addressing his arguments only to philosophers, and not to soldiers, craftsmen, or politicians. Such people are not trying to free their soul from the distractions of the body so that they can concentrate on intellectual contemplation. So, why should they restrict themselves to eating plants? That may make Porphyry's treatise seem disappointing for modern-day vegetarians, who typically want as many people as possible to abstain from meat, and not just an intellectual elite. It's also worth noting that so far, Porphyry's reasons for vegetarianism would also rule out, say, driving out of one's way to pick up a tub of organic artisanal hummus. Food that is hard to procure and dangerously tasty can be vegetarian, after all, and Porphyry would think that putting effort into and enjoying such foods would be another way of tying oneself to one's body. From what we have seen so far, he seems to be focusing on meat especially because it was such a luxury item in the ancient world. But to eat meat, of course, you have to kill a sentient being. Although this does not seem to be Porphyry's primary reason for vegetarianism, it is something he discusses at length in his responses to other philosophers. His main opponents here are the Stoics, who argued that it cannot be unjust to kill animals because they simply do not figure into considerations of justice. Why not? Well, on the Stoic theory, rational beings like us can have a relationship involving justice only with other rational beings, but animals are not rational, which means that they are too much unlike us for them to fall within the scope of justice. Porphyry responds by arguing that animals are rational just like humans are, albeit not to the same extent. Porphyry admits that in them reason is blurry, but they are capable of some kind of reasoning, which on the Stoic theory means we do have obligations of justice to them. Porphyry follows Stoic ideas about rationality when trying to prove this. In fact, I've been convinced by my PhD student Faye Edwards that Porphyry may not really believe that animals are rational in any sense a Platonist would recognize. Rather, this whole discussion of animal rationality is simply a way of undermining the Stoics by using their own philosophical principles against them. The Stoic view of reason turns on that difficult Greek word logos. As we've seen before, logos can mean word, account, reason, and several other things. The Stoics thus say that what they call the outer logos is a sign of the so-called inner logos. The inner logos is the process of reasoning that goes on in the soul, while outer logos is spoken speech. The fact that humans use language is proof that they are rational. To defeat the Stoics, then, Porphyry need only argue that non-human animals also have language. He rises to this task with great gusto, relating numerous fabulous tales. These include the case of a Pythagorean sage who understood the chirping of a swallow when it told its fellow birds about a load of grain that had been spilled outside of town. Porphyry himself finds this story difficult to swallow, but is able to tell of a language-using partridge that he owned himself. Besides, it's quite obvious that animals like dogs can understand what humans say, and they seem to communicate well enough with one another, too. If we cannot understand what they are saying, remarks Porphyry, then so what? We don't understand the Persians or Scythians, either, but we don't go around eating them. Porphyry then goes on to argue that whether or not they have language, the outer logos, they clearly have inner logos. This is proven by the clever things they do, like building nests and avoiding traps, and also by the fact that even sense perception is useless if one cannot use reason to interpret it. This claim is proven by the observation borrowed from the Aristotelian philosopher Strato, that we may be unaware of what we are seeing or hearing if we are too lost in thought. Since animals quite obviously use their senses, they must also be using reason. All of this gives Porphyry a problem that doesn't worry too many vegetarians nowadays. If we aren't going to eat meat, how will we sacrifice to the gods? Here I need to explain that it was a standard pagan religious ritual to sacrifice an animal on an altar, roast it for the gods, and then feast upon it. This practice is already described in the Iliad, in fact. But Porphyry argues that in the grand scheme of things it is a relatively new-fangled religious practice. Originally, the gods were offered not animals, but the first fruits of crops, and people began to sacrifice animals only when a famine or a war made this impossible. He draws on his Platonist conception of the divine to argue that the highest gods would not want animal sacrifice anyway. For one thing, the gods are perfectly just, and so they would be appalled by any offering that involved unjustly killing something. But in any case, the whole idea is misconceived, since the gods are immaterial and beyond the reach of physical offerings. What we should give them is not the life of an animal, or even the fruits of our crops, but rather philosophical thoughts. If there are superhuman entities that enjoy the ritual, they must be evil, vaporous demons who fatten themselves on the smoke of the roasting flesh. Porphyry furthermore points out that even if we did need to sacrifice animals to the gods, there would be no need to go on to eat the animals. He reminds us that in some cultures, people engage in human sacrifice without necessarily eating the victims. Porphyry's entreaty to his friend Fermus blends these sorts of religious reflections with arguments that would be at home in any discussion about vegetarianism today. At the core of his diatribe with the Stoics is the question of what animals share with us, and whether the common ground is enough to mean that they deserve our moral concern. Porphyry's vegetarianism may be motivated chiefly by his distaste for bodily things, which seems extreme even for a late ancient Platonist, but he should still get credit for exposing the weakness of ancient attempts to draw a clear line between humans, who deserve justice, and animals, who are served for dinner. Whether or not we are vegetarians, we will probably agree that Porphyry was on the right track in seeking to blur this line. Unfortunately, On Abstinence had nothing like the historical influence of Porphyry's introduction to Aristotle's logic, and it is only recently that it has come to receive its due acclaim. A more immediate reaction was provoked by Porphyry's coolly rational attitude towards antique religious belief. We just saw that he dismissed the need for sacrificing animals to the gods. This was not his only critical discussion of pagan ritual. He also wrote in rather skeptical terms about the religious practice of theurgy, in which pagans used physical objects to contact the gods. Again, Porphyry's disdain for bodily things seems to have made him wonder how such practices could possibly be efficacious. An answer came from a man who would go in the other direction, from the highly rationalist Plotinus and Porphyry, by integrating pagan belief fully into Platonism. In doing so, he set the tone for the rest of late ancient pagan Platonism. So, I hope you won't mind sacrificing another 20 minutes of your time next week, when I'll be looking at Iamblichus, on the history of philosophy without any gaps.