Porphyry: to Gaurus on How Embryos Are Ensouled: With Proclus: Ten Questions on Providence

Porphyry: To Gaurus On How Embryos are Ensouled and On What is in Our Power

Translated by James Wilberding

Concerning embryos, Porphyry takes an original view on issues that had been left undecided by his teacher Plotinus and earlier by the doctor Galen. What role is played in the development of the embryo by the souls or the natures of the father, of the mother, of the embryo, or of the whole world? Porphyry's detailed answer, in contrast to Aristotle's, gives a big role to the soul and to the nature of the mother, without, however, abandoning Aristotle's view that the mother supplies no seed.

In the fragments of On What is in Our Power, Porphyry discusses Plato's idea that we choose each of our incarnations, and so are responsible for what happens in our lives.

The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle

General Editor: Richard Sorabji Research Professor of Philosophy at King's College London

The 15,000 pages of the ancient Greek commentators on Aristotle, written mainly between 200 and 600 AD, constitute the largest corpus of extant Greek philosophical writings not translated into English or other European languages. The works in question are not only invaluable as commentaries. They represent the classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic schools in a crucial period during which pagan and Christian thought were reacting to each other. This series of translations draws attention to their high philosophical interest; but their significance extends far beyond the period in which most of them were written. They incorporate precious fragments of earlier Greek philosophy from the Presocratics onwards, and the subsequent history of Philosophy cannot be understood without them. Aquinas' reading of Aristotle was partly mediated by the commentators, who gradually transmuted Aristotle to make him agree with Plato and ended by turning his God into a Creator and so making him more acceptable to Christianity. In the time of Galileo the commentaries were seen as a repository of ideas alternative to Aristotle's which could be used in the new science of the Renaissance. The projected series, planned in some 100 volumes, fills an important gap in the history of European thought.

James Wilberding is Lecturer in Ancient Thought, School of Historical Studies, Newcastle University.