Porphyry, Sententiae or Aphormai (2007) Preface to the online edition

The Sententiae ad intelligibilia ducentes of Porphyry are among the most difficult works transmitted to us by the Greek philosophical tradition.  The 44 sentences cover a great number of the major metaphysical questions posed by Neo-Platonism in a condensed form.  The text also presupposes the positions adopted by Plotinus, so much so that the work is almost an epitome of the teaching of the Enneads, but also containing new ideas.  It can only be understood with reference to authors earlier and later, such as Iamblichus and Proclus.

The translation given here was transcribed from a modern reprint of the translation made by the English Platonist Thomas Taylor (1758-1835) in Select Works of Porphyry (1823) under the title of Auxiliaries to the Perception of Intelligible Natures, and often reprinted since.  He translated from the edition of Holstenius; probably the 1655 Cambridge reprint.  It is an accurate translation.  He made use of various conjectures proposed in the circle of scholars to which he belonged.

Other English translations exist.  Thomas Davidson published The Sentences of Porphyry the Philosopher in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy 3 (1869), p. 46-73.  This was based on the 1855 Paris edition of Creuzer, substantially a reprint of Holstenius, but with the sentences reordered to that of the ideas as they occur in the Enneads.  Lamberz (p. lxiv) considers it accurate, but more elegant than that of Taylor.

In 1918 Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie (1871-1940) published his version as Porphyry's Launching Points to the realm of Mind, also based on Creuzer and ordered accordingly.  He also added titles to each section to explicitly link them to the Enneads.  This was reprinted with a new introduction in 1988 by Phanes Press.  Reviews of this exist in AncPhil 12, 1992, p.240-242 J. Bregman | CPhR 10, 1990, pp.24-31 J. Novak | CW 83, 1989-90, p. 540-41 Miller.  Guthrie was accused for other works of merely translating from the French of M.-N. Bouillet. The latter printed a very literal French translation of this work also in 1857, and a comparison might be interesting.

A translation also was given in English in Brisson (q.v.).

The title of the work is not quite certain.  As given by Lamberz, it reads Ἀφορμαὶ πρὸς τὰ νοητά.  This comes from that given in manuscript U,  Πορφυρίου τῶνπρὸς τὰ νοητά Ἀφορμῶν.  The presence of the genitive is a slip, and probably βιβλίον should be read on the end.  However a scholion on Plotinus Enn. VI, 9,8 3-5 (published by P. Henry, Études plotiniennes, I: Les États du texte de Plotin, Paris/Brussels 1938, p. 373), which quotes sentence 44, attributes it to "book 1 of the aphormai on the intelligibles").  But Stobaeus does not mention any book in his quotations, and he habitually references which book of a work he quotes from; and there is no other evidence that originally the work was longer.

The term aphormai, indicating philosophical reflections, appears on other philosophical works, from Thrasymachus on.  It tends to indicate 'points of departure', and was rendered by Guthrie as Launching points.

The text is preserved in a number of manuscript copies:

There are thus three independent manuscripts, W, U and N.  U and N descend from a common parent; both that parent and W descend from a common ancestor.  The work was first printed in 1497 in Florence, in a Latin translation by Marsilio Ficino at the orders of Lorenzo the Magnificent, by Aldus Manutius, two years after Ficino's death.  The text is one of those derived from γ.  The complete collection of 44 sentences was first assembled by Holstenius (Lucas Holste, 1596-1661) in 1630.  

However none of these manuscripts contain all the sentences, which can also be found quoted in the Anthologium of John Stobaeus (5th century A.D.), a vast anthology of classical texts.  This shows that Stobaeus had access to a manuscript different to the ultimate ancestor of all the manuscripts now known.  Quotations can also be found in the 12th century Byzantine writer Michael Psellus.  

The following are the principal manuscripts of Stobaeus:

Bibliography

• E. Lamperz, Porphyrii Sententiae ad intelligibilia ducentes.  Lipsiae, 1975.

• Luc Brisson et al., Porphyre: Sentences.  Paris (2005).  The source for most of the content of this page, containing a series of studies on all these points.

This text was transcribed by Roger Pearse, Ipswich, UK, 2007. All material on this page is in the public domain - copy freely.

Greek text is rendered using unicode.