| THE LIFE AND WORK OF PORPHYRY |
Porphyry of Tyre was a philosopher who lived almost 2,000 years ago. According to Gillian Clark's book Porphyry. On Abstinence from Killing Animals, Porphyry came form Tyre in Phoenicia, and was named Malkos, 'king', after his father. However, he related to the world as a Greek and did not write in any other language. His nickname 'Porphyry' comes from the purple associated with kings and the purple dye which came from his home, Tyre. Before going to Rome, he was a student of Longinus, in Athens.
In around 263 CE, at around age thirty, he joined a group of philosophers who studied with Plotinus in Rome. Plotinus came from somewhere in Egypt and lived a frugal life. He was celibate and vegetarian and took little in the way of food, drink and sleep. Nevertheless Plotinus took seriously his responsibilities as a citizen, acting as an arbitrator in legal disputes and ensuring that the children who had come under his guardianship were well supported both financially and educationally. It is likely that there were others who also followed a vegetarian lifestyle and indeed Porphyry's On Abstinence from Killing Animals, was a treatise written in the form of an open letter to his friend Castricius in an attempt to persuade him to return to a vegetarian diet which he had abandoned.
Porphyry believed that animals (unlike plants) although having somewhat less rational souls than humans, nevertheless still had souls. He believed that they were capable of recognising and assessing their situation, making future plans and in a sense communicating and responding to one another and to humans. 'Now it is to be demonstrated that there is also a rational [soul] in animals and that they are not deprived of wisdom (3.9.1). First of all, each animal knows where it is weak and where it is strong, and it protects the former and makes use of the latter, as the leopard uses its teeth, the horse its hoof and the bull its horns, the cock its spur and the scorpion its sting....(3.9.2). Again, the animals that are strong keep away from humans, whereas the less noble animals keep away from stronger beasts but stay with humans, either at some distance, like sparrows and swallows in roof-eaves, or sharing human life as dogs do (3.9.3). Animals have memory, which is of prime importance in the acquisition of reasoning and wisdom (3.10.3). Who does not know how animals that live in groups observe justice towards each other? (3.11.1).
It follows from this that animals should not be killed unless in 'self-defence'. 'Perhaps, then, it is also right to exterminate those of the irrational animals that are unjust by nature and evil-doers and impelled by their nature to harm those who come near them; but it must be unjust to exterminate and to kill those of the other animals that do nothing unjust and are not impelled by their nature to do harm, as it is unjust to kill people like that (2.22.2).
Porphyry believed that it was not only wrong to kill animals for their sake, it also interfered with the philosopher's ability to become like that of God, to be holy and just.
'Moreover, we ought to make only those sacrifices by which we hurt no-one, for sacrifice more than anything else, must be harmless to everyone. If someone says that God gave us animals, no less than crops, for our use, the answer is that when animals are sacrificed some harm is done to them, in that they are deprived of soul' (2.12.3).
God, on the other hand, does no harm to anything. 'The Greater in the universe is altogether harmless, and itself by its power safeguards all, does good to all, and lacks nothing; whereas we are harmless to all by being just, but by being mortal we lack necessities' (3.26.11).
According to Porphyry meat was also unhealthy for the body and the soul. 'Find me someone who is eager to live, as far as possible, in accordance with intellect and to be undistracted by the passions which affect the body, and let him demonstrate that meat-eating is easier to provide than dishes of fruits and vegetables; that meat is cheaper to prepare than inanimate food for which chefs are not needed at all; that compared with inanimate food, it is intrinsically pleasure-free and lighter on the digestion, and more quickly assimilated by the body than vegetables; that it is less provocative of desires and less conducive to obesity and robustness than a diet of inanimate food' (1.46.2).
It is important to note here that Porphyry was not against eating honey and drinking milk for the following reasons: 'As for taking what bees produce, it comes from our efforts, so it is proper that the profit should also be shared: the bees collect honey from the plants, but we look after the bees. So we must share it out in such a way that they suffer no harm, and what they cannot use, but we can, is in a way their payment to us' (2.13.2). Porphyry had this to say about milk. 'But taking necessities does not harm...sheep, when we shall rather benefit them by shearing them and shall share their milk when providing them with our care' (3.27.12).
Clearly, Porphyry was not vegan in the sense that we would speak of someone as being vegan today. However what is extraordinary about him (and indeed other philosophers such as Pythagoras and Plutarch), is that he abstained from the unnecessary killing and eating of animals because he believed in the worth of other beings other than the human and endeavoured to try to live a life that did the least harm.
"Pierre Courcelle concluded that, although On Abstinence probably survived only in the Greek
East, Porphyry's works on the soul and on Aristotelian logic made him the most important
representative of Greek philosophy in the west: 'the master of western thought' " (Clark 2000 :5). REFERENCE E-mail us.
Porphyry's People home page.
NZT: 11/Mar/10 02:40:53. GMT: 10/Mar/10 13:40:53.