Philo of Alexandria
25 BC-50 · Middle & Neo-Platonism · Known
Philo was a Jewish philosopher in first-century Alexandria who read the Torah as a coded map of the inner life, with Adam for the mind and Eve for the senses. He put the Logos, God's reason and his instrument in making the world, between God and creation, so as to hold Moses and Plato together. Alexandrian Christians took the idea over, and his way of reading founded a long allegorical tradition.
Signature
The position Philo is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Universals
- leans Realism
- Knowledge
- Pure Reason / Receptive Intellect
Positions on the 10 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- The Divine
- leans Indescribable (88 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Beauty
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Universals
- leans Realism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (29 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (79 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
10 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Philo refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Eidetic Intuition
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Pure Reason / Receptive Intellect
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Divine Command
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will / Synergism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo / Demiurgic
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Linear Progressive
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Divine Revelation
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Logos
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Divine Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Obstacle to Reason
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?