Porphyry of Tyre
234-305 · Middle & Neo-Platonism · Known
Porphyry studied under Plotinus, who left his writings in a heap, and sorted them into the Enneads, six sets of nine. His own beginner's guide to Aristotle's Categories, the Isagoge, taught Europe to sort the world into branching kinds of genus and species. Later scholars called that scheme the Porphyrian tree, and it held the school curriculum for a thousand years. He argued that killing animals for food is unjust, and wrote fifteen books against the Christians.
Signature
The position Porphyry is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence
- Knowledge
- Intuition / Pure Reason / Receptive Intellect
Positions on the 12 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Society
- mildly leans Individualism (62 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- mildly between Describable and Indescribable (41 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Beauty
- leans Objective (72 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Opposition
- leans Concurrence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Ethics
- leans Means (72 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- Conviction
- leans Certain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
8 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Porphyry refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Panentheism / Polytheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God / Knowledge
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism / Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Conceptual Mediation / Eidetic Intuition
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Intuition / Pure Reason / Receptive Intellect
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will / Hierarchical Will
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Emanation
What is the origin of reality? - Law
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Union with the One
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Obstacle to Reason
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Redeemably Corrupted
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?