1

Porphyry on Matter

1. Matter in the Sententiae

In his Sentences, a work we probably wrote while attending the

classes of Plotinus at Rome, Porphyry gives a highly negative account of
matter. In Sentence 20, he writes that it is incorporeal, lifeless, formless,
irrational, infinite, powerless, genuine not-being, a shadow/image. It is an
appearance of mass (phantasia onkou), because what is primarily in mass
is what is powerless. As the desire for existence (hypostasis), standing
although not at rest, it always appears to be great and small, less and
more, lacking and excessive. Always becoming, neither remaining nor
able to flee, it is a complete lack of being (elleipsis pantos tou ontos).
According to the ancients, says Porphyry in Sent. 42, matter is conceived
by privation (kata stersin). Whatever it proclaims, it's lying, and if it
appears large it's small. It's a toy fleeing toward not-being. The things
within it are like images within an inferior image. It seems to be filled,
but possesses nothing. It is idle and resistant to form, and limitless in its
formlessness1.
Particular hypostases such as the human intellect and soul, which
can have an inclination for many things, can turn towards (epistrephein
pros) what they produce, and this is what constitutes error (hamartia) for
them. It is in this sense that matter is an evil for them: viz., the fact that
these particular hypostases can turn toward it, whereas they can and
should turn to what is above them2. As in Plotinus, matter is something

1
Porphyry, De antro nympharum 5-6, a work heavily influenced by Numenius.
Sent. 30: ,
.
2

evil (kakon)3 in that it represents a temptation for the human mind and
soul: the temptation of turning or converting towards it, whereas they
should be turning and focusing their attention upon the higher hypostases.
Elsewhere (Sent. 37), following Plotinus' exegesis of the myth of
Poros and Penia in Plato's Symposium4, in which Poros is identified with
the intelligible and Penia with matter, Porphyry declares that if we do
turn towards matter, we are seized or dominated by it (kekrattai). The
result is a lack or want of all things (aporia pantn) and an emptying out
(kensis) of our own power, which can only be cured by turning toward
the Intellect 5 . More specifically, it is the soul's desiring faculty (to
epithumtikon) that is weakened and submerged by the floods6 of matter,
which, as Heraclitus said (fr. 77D), is death for intelligible souls7.

2. Matter in Porphyry's exegesis of the Timaeus

One of the most influential passages on matter in Greek philosophy

comes from the creation narrative in Plato's Timaeus:
...he [sc. the Demiurge] took over all that was visible not at rest but in discordant
and disorderly motion (oukh hsukhian agon alla kinoumenon plmmels kai

3
On matter as the prton kakon, cf. Enn. I 8 [51], 14, 49-51
4

Cf. Enn. II 4 [12] 16, 21-24; III 5 [50], 9,45-53.

Cf. De abstinentia 3, 27, with its reference, in the context of the same myth of
Poros and Penia, to the soul's fall toward matter (h pros tn huln ts psukhs ptsis).
6

Rheumasi; on matter as rheust cf. De ant. nymph. 5-6, and on the imagery of
matter as a flowing liquid in Numenius, F. Jourdan, La matire l'origine du mal
chez Numnius: un enseignement explicit chez Macrobe? 2, La doctrine de la
matire affectant l'me lors de sa descente vers le corps terrestre, Revue de
Philosophie Ancienne 31 (2) (2013), 149-178, at p. 152-3.
7

In Tim., I, 13. There is, moreover, a class of demons consisting in material

powers (hulikai dunameis), whose role is to train the soul's character (In Tim. 1, 23)

3
atakts) and brought it from a state of disorder into one of order, because he
believed that order was in every way better than disorder8.

In order to create the universe, Plato's Demiurge takes up

something that was moving in a disorderly way, and imposes order upon
it. Clearly this something plays the role of matter, but what precisely was
it?
One influential interpretation was that of the so-called Middle
Platonists, i.e. Platonist philosophers of the first two centuries of our era
such as Atticus and Plutarch of Chaeronea. They argued that since the
material used by the Demiurge was in motion, it must have been
animated by a soul; but since it was moving in a discordant and
disorderly way, that soul must have been irrational, and hence evil.
Combining the Timaeus passage with one from the Laws (X, 896E), they
then concluded to the existence of two eternal souls, one rational and one
irrational. They also inferred that matter is co-eternal with the Demiurge,
and that it is evil.

2.1 Numenius on matter

Although he is often classified as a Neopythagorean, Numenius of

Apamea (fl. mid-2nd century CE) seems to have been influential on
subsequent Middle Platonists, such as Atticus 9 . Following what he
claimed was the opinion of Pythagoras, Numenius held that matter is
equivalent to the Indeterminate Dyad (aoristos duas). Unborn and

8

, ,
.
9

Numenius' dates are uncertain, but literary and doctrinal evidence seems to
indicate that he preceded Atticus (fl. 176 CE). Cf. Frede 1039; Karamanolis 2013.

ungenerated, matter is just as much a principle as is God, otherwise

known as the Monad. Although matter is fluid and qualityless, it is
nevertheless frankly evil (plane noxiam)10. There are two souls of the
world, one beneficent, the other evil; but the latter is to be identified with
matter 11 . This irrational, malevolent soul originates and governs the
irrational part of the human soul, whereas the rational part of our soul
derives from God. Matter contains within it a great deal of intemperance,
improvident impulses, chance, and exaggerated presumptions; it is the
seat of blind, gratuitous temerity. As must be concluded from the creation
story of the Timaeus, this material soul is opposed to divine providence12.
It is tamed somewhat when brought into order by divine Providence, but
only to a certain extent.

2.2 Porphyry against the Middle Platonists

Although Porphyry, like his teacher Plotinus 13 , was deeply
influenced by Numenius, he could not accept the views of such Middle
Platonic philosophers as Atticus, who espoused Numenius' doctrines of
an eternal, evil matter and an evil world soul. One theory Porphyry
devised to combat these views was that of the distinction between the
creation or coming-into-being (genesis) of the world (kosmos), and the

10
Numenius fr. 52, p. 92, 33-37 Des Places = Calcidius, In Tim., CCXCVI:
fluidam et sine qualitate silvam esse (...) sed plane noxiam. Cf. Calcidius, In Tim., ch.
CCXCVII: Silvam igitur informem et carentem qualitate (...) Pythagoras malignam
quoque.
11

Numenius, fr. 52, p. 97, 66-67 = Chalcidius, In Tim., CCXCVII:...malignam

alteram, scilicet silvam.
12

Ibid., p. 98, 94-95 = Chalcidius, CCXCVIII: silvae anima

providentiae.
13

(...) adversatur

We recall that Plotinus was accused of plagiarizing Numenius, cf. Porphyry, Vita
Plot. 17.

creation or coming-into-being of bodies 14 . Bodies and the world,

Porphyry affirms, have different presuppositions or principles (arkhai). In
order to come into existence, the world requires only God and bodies,
which have already been brought into existence by God. Bodies, in
contrast, need God, matter, and the elementary figures described in the
Timaeus, as well as something that will serve to transform bodies into
matter presumably form , and finally something to set the resulting
bodies in order.
A passage from the Commentary on the Timaeus by Chalcidius15,
which probably goes back to Porphyry, provides a picturesque metaphor
of this distinction:

But as in a pond, when the surface of the water is immobile, if a mass that is
heavy enough comes to fall into it, first the beginning of a motion is born, and then
when the agitation overcomes the entire element, it is not only the mass of water that
is set in motion, but it too in its turn sets in motion the very object that has fallen and
brought about this motion, so matter, receiving the motion which came, at the
beginning, from bodies, was not only set in motion itself in all directons, but in turn
sets in motion the bodies that are at the origin of this motion.

In this metaphor, matter is considered as an immobile pond of

water. When a rock is thrown into the pond, waves are brought into
existence which first move the water, and then eventually the rock itself.
Here, the rock is an image of the traces of the elements which Plato tells
us agitated the receptacle (khra). The end result is that one cannot
conclude from matters eternal disorderly motion to its possession of an
evil and eternal soul. Matter is itself inanimate, neither mobile nor

14
Porphyry, In Tim., fr. 47 Sodano = Philoponus, aet mundi, p. 164, 13ff. Rabe. Cf.
Chalcidius, In Tim., 301
15

Calcidius, In Tim., 352

immobile, but bereft of qualities and the mere capacity for form. Only
when God makes it into a body by adding qualities to it does it come to
be in motion or at rest. What causes motion, then, are the bodies or traces
of the elements, whose natural movements and tendencies16 matter, in its
weakness, is unable to resist17.
Porphyry justified his interpretation18 from the text of the Timaeus.
What the Demiurge took up (paralabn) and was moving in a
discordant and disorderly way (oukh hsukhian agon alla kinoumenon
plmmels kai atakts) was visible (horaton): but matter is invisible and
shapeless. Therefore, what the Demiurge takes up and sets in order at
Timaeus 30 A 26 is not matter but bodies19, which have already been
constituted by the Demiurge out of form and matter, but have not yet
received their appropriate order, which they will also receive from God20.
Plato will not discuss the coming-into-being of bodies out of matter, says
Porphyry, until much later in the Timaeus (53c).

A key component of Porphyry's thought is that all these various

stages (formation of matter, corporealization of matter or formation of

16
As Porphyry explains (fr. 48, p. 32 Sodano), Bodies move naturally, because
they are physical, and nature (physis) is the principle of rest and motion. Yet they
move in a disorderly way before reciving order from God, like a chariot with a driver
or a ship without a helmsman.
17

Calcidius, In Tim., 352

18

Porphyry ap. Philoponus, aet. mundi 14.3. Porphyry's argument, which

Philoponus follows closely throught the first two-thirds of Aet. 14.3, has been
chopped up by Sodano in his collection of fragments in such a way as render it almost
incomprehensible.
19

Porphyry, In Tim., fr. 49; 50.

Porphyry, In Tim., fr. 48:

. Similarly, Chalcidius (In Tim., par. 301) speaks of those who
see the source of disorderly motion ot in matter, but in the bodies that enter into it.
The reference may well be to Porphyry; cf. Brisson/Bakhouche t. II p. 857 n. 1092.
20

bodies, setting of those bodies in order to form the kosmos) take place
simultaneously21, in a way that is both eternal and instantaneous. Plato's
exposition of stages of creation taking place over time in the Timaeus,
according to Porphyry, is for instructional purposes only, so that his
readers might be able to tell which characteristics body and matter
possess on their own account, and which properties are bestowed upon
them by the deity22. Nevertheless, Porphyry adds, all the elements out of
which bodies derive and that must include matter are generated from
god ( )23.

Porphyry thus discarded the Middle Platonic view that matter was
an evil principle, co-eternal with the Demiurge. Instead, he went on to
develop two views that became canonical in subsequent Neoplatonism:
that evil is a mere epiphenomenon, and that matter is created by the First
Principle.

3. Porphyry on evil

In his arguments against Atticus, Porphyry insists that evil cannot

be eternal. Good and evil are not of equal rank, he argues, nor are they

21
Porphyry, In Tim., fr. 47 Sodano:
, .
22

For a clear statement of this argument, attributed to the followers of Porphyry

and Iamblichus , cf. Proclus, In Tim., I, 382, 12-383, 1 Diels
23

Porphyry's views on these subjects are very close to those of Hierocles, the
student of Plutarch of Alexandria, on the demiurge and his way of creating the world
without pre-existing matter, for all eternity and by his being alone; cf. I. Hadot,
Studies in the Neoplatonist Hierocles, translated by Michael Chase, coll.,
Philadelphia: American Philological Association, 2004 (Transactions of the American
Philosophical Society, Vol. 94, Part 11), p. 15-36. This lends some credence to Willy
Theiler's view that these doctrines go back to Ammonius Saccas.

equally ungenerated24: if they were, then both would be equal, with

neither principle being more immutable than the other.
In an influential paper first published in 1933, Willy Theiler argued
persuasively that the Neoplatonic conception of evil as privation of good
originated in Porphyry25. All that exists is good, insofar as it is endowed
with form, which derives from God. Unlike the intelligible world, which
possesses all things simultaneously, things in the sensible world possess
their goodness in succession and the change of their forms. This means
that apparent evils, such as death, are merely the change from one form to
another. The processes of generation and its necessary complement,
perishing, contribute to the fullness, beauty and perfection of the whole,
which requires that all possible forms be realized in it. It follows that evil
is not a being (to on), but a mere subsidiary or parasitical existence
(parupostasis, the same word Porphyry uses to designate time in his
Sentence 44). Matter, for its part, far from being an independent
substance existing eternally alongside God, as it was for the Middle
Platonists, is the mere capacity for form26.

4. Matter as created by god

In several of the fragments of his Commentary on the Timaeus,

Porphyry denies the Middle Platonic view that the Demiurge had need of
an independently-existent matter in order to create the universe27. Instead,

24
Porphyry, In Tim., fr. 51:
.
25

This needs to be qualified, because the doctrine is already present in Origen, for
instance (De princ. II 9 2, p. 166, 1-2 K.).
26

Porphyry, In Tim., fr. 51 Sodano.

Porphyry, In Tim., fr. 51 Sodano = Proclus, In Tim., I, 396, 21

.
27

the Demiurge, or more specifically the Paradigm, which is the

Demiurge's intellect28, creates all the matter necessary for the intelligible
world, while the matter necessary for creating individual instantiations of
the Forms within the sensible world is provided by the cosmos,
presumably in the form of the four elements29.
Precisely how matter was created is not clear from most of
Porphyry's remaining works. One fragment adresses the question directly,
but its interpretation is extremely delicate.

4.1 Porphyry and Moderatus

In his commentary on the Physics (CAG IX p. 230, 24-231, 5

Diels), Simplicius provides the only sure and substantial quotation30 from
Porphyry's lost treatise On Matter, in which he cited the 1st-century CE
Neopythagorean Moderatus of Gades. It seems to be a legitimate working
hypothesis that Porphyry, athough he need not have agreed with
Moderatus in every detail of his cosmological scheme, quoted him
because he thought at least the broad outlines of Moderatus' thought
agreed with his own31. Therefore, a study of Moderatus' views may
provide us with at least a starting point for understanding the origins and
nature of Porphyry's doctrines.

28
The Ideas are not separated from the Intellect, says Porphyry, but the Intellect
sees all the Forms when turned back upon itself (
, Porphyry, In. Tim., fr. 51 Sodano = Proclus, In
Tim., I, 394, 3-4 Diehl).
29

Porphyry In Tim., fr. 55, p. 41, 19-20 Sodano

30

Another mention occurs in the scholia to Basil's Hexaemeron; cf. G. Pasquali,

Doxographica aus Basiliusscholien, Nachrichten von der Kniglichen Gesellschaft
der Wissenschaften zu Gttingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse, 1910, 194-229, at
200. Pasquali considers the testimony to be a summary of our Moderatus quotation.
31

Cf. Baltes 1996, 481 n. 2: Porphyrios bei Moderatos offenbar eine Besttigung
der eigenen Lehre und der seines Lehrers zu finden meinte.

10

Porphyry begins with a sketch of Moderatus ontology, which is

remarkably some would say suspiciously similar to that of the
Neoplatonists. The first principle is the One beyond being, followed by
the second One, otherwise known as the world of forms; and a third One,
corresponding to the realm of soul, which participates in the two higher
realms. This is as far as participation goes: the realm of sensible things,
which may or may not derive from the psychic realm 32 , does not
participate in the levels that precede it, but is set in order (kekosmsthai)
by a reflection from them. The matter of the sensible world, for its part, is
enigmatically called an inferior shadow of the not-being that is primarily
in the quantified (
). We will see in a moment what this might mean.
As far as the actual generation of matter is concerned,
Moderatus/Porphyry is no less enigmatic. A new metaphysical principle
appears on the scene, whose nature and status is not explained: the
heniaios logos33, which appears to be a faculty or sub-hypostasis of the
One beyond Being. Wishing to bring about the generation of beings from
itself (aph' heautou), this logos, which itself contains the logoi and forms
of all beings, performed a process of abstraction, stripping itself34 of all

32
This depends crucially on the interpretation of a single preposition in
Simplicius/Porphyry's report. The sensible world is referred to as
[sc. o o] : but does the preposition apo mean that this
ultimate nature derives from the psychic world, or merely that it is final or ultimate
counting from that world? I follow Pierre Hadot in accepting the latter interpretation
(la nature qui vient en dernier aprs celui-ci, 1968, I.166).
33

Scholars have identified the heniaios logos with the First One (Festugire Rv.
4.38 n. 2; Merlan 94; Theiler Einheit 477; Tornau); the Second One (Dillon 348;
Hadot P&V. I 116; Theiler P&V 200; Tarrant 156; Halfwassen metaphysische 345 n.
18); the hen on (Dodds 137; or the soul (Baltes). That this entity played some role in
(neo-)Pythagorean metaphysics is suggested by Aristides Quintillianus, De musica I,
3, who tells us it was the term used by some divine and wise men to designate the
creative principle of the universe, which others call the Demiurge, Form, or Monad.
ktl. I read separated,
following Zeller's conjecture for the ms. reading , a conjecture accepted by
34

11

its own logoi and forms. All that is left after this act of self-spoliation35 is
pure quantity (posots), and it is this quantity that Plato means by all the
epithets he uses in the Timaeus to designate the mysterious khra36. The
matter of bodies is not intelligible quantity, however, but quantity (poson)
that has undergone a process which Moderatus/Porphyry characterizes by
a number of terms that connote extension, scattering, spatialization and a
diminution of value: Stersis (privation), paralusis (paralysis), ektasis
(stretching) 37, diaspasmos (dispersion or scattering)38, h apo tou ontos
parallaxis (deviation from being)39.

Festugire, Hadot, and as self-evident by Tarrant 155, but rejected, on unpersuasive

grounds, by Baltes and Tornau (2000, 207 n.33; 210 n. 39).
35

It certainly seems as though Numenius alludes to this doctrine (fr. 52 Des Places
= Chalcidius, In Tim., ch. 195): ...dici etiam illam indeterminatam et immensam
duitatem ab unica singularitate institutam recedente a natura sua singularitate et in
duitatis habitum migrante. Cf. Frede 1052; Halfwassen 349, n. 29. Adduced by
Merlan (94), the relevance of this parallel has been questioned by Hagar (129 n.62)
and by Tornau (2000, 204 n. 26).
36

All-receiving (pandekhes) Tim. 51A7; shapeless (amorphon) Tim. ibid; 50D7;

invisible (aoratos) Tim 51A7; it takes part in the intelligible in a most puzzling
way Tim. 51A7f., and is scarcely graspable by bastard reasoning Tim. 52B2.
Compare the epithets bestowed on matter by Hermodorus, On Plato, as cited by
Dercyllides apud. Simplicius, In Phys., p. 256, 24f. Diel: matter is unstable (astaton),
shapeless (amorphon), limitless (apeiron), and not-being (ouk on).
37

In his Commentary on the Timaeus, Porphyry states that the Demiurge creates
the sensible world by thinking alone (auti ti noein), by stretching out in a partless
way what is extended ( ). According to
Porphyry's Sentence 28, the soul, for its part, is conjoined to the body by an
unspeakable stretching (di' ektases arrhtou).
38

The term connotes the dismemberment of living beings associated with the
Dionysiac religion; cf. Euripides, Bacchae 339 (of Actaeon torn apart by his dogs). In
the Commentary on the Parmenides (I, 10-2 Hadot), Porphyry speaks of the many, as
opposed to the One, as torn asunder from one another and dismembered and many
and having become a multiplicity from one ( ...
).
39

This notion of a deviation from being, which Simplicius (In Phys., p. 232, 17-18)
glosses as extension (diastasis) and material mass (onkon hulikon), seems to have
made a lasting impression on Simplicius and his teacher Damascius. Cf. Simpl., In
Phys., 255, 31-32: ,
, . Damascius, ap. Simpl., In Phys., 774, 6-8:

12

Since they represent a flight from the Good, says Moderatus, these
characteristics explain why matter seems to be evil40. At any rate, this
pure, intelligible quantity is a model (paradeigma), and it produces a kind
of inferior shadow of itself (
) that is the matter of bodies in the sensible world, a
matter which, confusingly enough, Plato and the Pythagoreans also called
quantity (poson). This formless quantity is then rendered determinate in
a twofold process: its stretching out (ektasis) is delimited and defined by
the logos of intelligible magnitude, while its scattering or dispersion
(diaspasmos) is specified by numerical differentiation41.
In summary, Simplicius concludes, perhaps following Porphyry,
matter is nothing other than the deviation or difference (parallaxis) of
sensible forms with regard to intelligible forms, as the sensible forms
descend, in the course of procession (proodos), toward not-being42.

In the doctrine of Moderatus, then, we have a process by which a

divine metaphysical principle strips itself of its qualities and forms to
produce formless quantity, which then, by a process that unfortunately
remains vague, produces a shadow or reflection of itself that can also be

.
40
. Some modern
commentators, basing themselves on this formulation, claim that that for Moderatus,
matter simply is evil; but this seems rash. Matter seems or is considered to be evil:
this leaves entirely open the question of whether or not it actually *is* evil.
41

There is a (suspicious?) parallel here with the ideas of Damascius, for whom four
noetic measures stop, guide, and control the process of emanation: number,
magnitude, place, and eternity. We have two of the four measures here, playing
precisely the same role as they do in Damascius. Did Damascius take over this
doctrine from Moderatus, or is Simplicius reading his teacher's doctrine back into the
thought of Moderatus? I am inclined toward the former alternative, but I cannot prove
it.
42

13

called quantity: the matter of the sensible world. This matter seems to be
evil, although this leaves open the question of whether it actually is evil
or not.

5. Porphyry (?) in Philoponus, Against Proclus on the Eternity

of the World

We may have an example of how Porphyry adapted Moderatus's

scheme of creation in a passage from the Against Proclus on the Eternity
of the World (XI, 1), by the Christian Neoplatonist John Philoponus, who
describes a creation scheme which he attributes to Plato and the most
eminent among the ancients43. Here, one starts out with prime matter,
otherwise known as the first substrate, which is incorporeal and formless.
Many, says Philoponus and here one thinks of Numenius and his
followers - maintain that this matter is perpetual (aidion). In a second
stage, this prime matter is combined (sunduazomenon) with quantity (to
poson), which combination gives rise to the three-dimensional (to trikhi
diastaton), otherwise known as the qualityless body (to apoion sma) or
body simply so called, indeterminate mass (onkos aoristos), or the second
substrate. This entity is then further determined by the differentiae of the
Large and Small (to mega kai to mikron), the first qualities, which give
rise to the elements (stoikheia). Finally, the elements give rise to
compound bodies. There are thus, as Philoponus summarizes, three main
stages to creation:
1. Formless matter (= first substrate)
2. Three-dimensional, qualityless body (= second substrate)

43
It is not certain that Porphyry is meant, of course but given the prominence of
Porphyry in the aet. mundi and the fact that nothing in Philoponus' report contradicts
what we know of Porphyry's doctrine, it seems probable.

14

3. The four elements44.

6. Porphyry and creatio ex nihilo

Finally, as Willy Theiler pointed out long ago, some texts on

matter by Porphyry come close to the Christian view of creatio ex nihilo.
As we have seen, Porphyry stresses that the demiurgic logos can produce
all things without any need for matter45. If Plato calls the Demiurge
Father and maker (patr kai poits)46, says Porphyry, it is because a
father is one who generates the whole from himself (
), like Ariston generated Plato, while a
maker (poits) is like a house-builder who does not himself generate the
matter he uses ( ). Porphyry envisaged
the Demiurge's creative activity as taking place both instantaneously and
eternally47, by virtue of his thinking; that is, since his thinking is his
being, by virtue of his being alone. More specifically, for Porphyry48 it is
the model itself (paradeigma) that brings into existence all the
(intelligible) matter it needs49, while the cosmos (i.e. the four elements)

44
Compare the three degrees of corporeality according to Chalcidius: 1. corpus
(cohaerens sine qualitate /apoios); 2. corpus compos qualitatis; 3. corpus formatum. In
his lost commentary on the Categories addressed to Gedalios (Fragment 55 Smith =
Simplicius, In Cat., p. 48, 11-33K), Porphyry distinguished between two substrates:
the first, consisting of qualityless matter (apoios hul), and the second substrate.
However, here Porphyry identifies the second substrate with individuals such as
Socrates.
45

Porphyry ap. Procl., In Tim., I, 396 20 ff. = fr. LI Sodano: .....the demiurgic
logos is able to bring all things into existence, since it has no need at all of matter for
its existence (
)
46
47

Porph. In Tim. fr. 40 = Procl., In Tim., I.301.ff.:

Procl. In Tim. II 102.6ff.:

.

48

Proclus In Tim. I, 440, 3 = Porph., In Tim. fr. 55 Sodano.

49

The same doctrine is found in Chalcidius; cf. Van Winden p. 65.

15

provides all the matter needed for the instantiations of a Platonic Form
like Man Himself.

The most explicit testimony to Porphyry's doctrine of the creation

of matter is one preserved by Aeneas of Gaza50:

Theophrastus, p. 45, 4-9 Colonna =

fr. 368A Smith
, Matter is not un-generated or
without beginning. The Chaldaeans

teach

you

this

too,

as

does

Porphyry, who gives to the book

, he published the general title The

, Oracles of the Chaldaeans. Here,
, he insists that matter came into

being,

and,

commenting

on

Plotinus' book Where does evil

, come from?, he says somewhere,

<> stating

that

matter

is

not

{} ungenerated, that to reckon it as a

first principle is to be rejected as an

impious doctrine.

This text presents textual difficulties, most of which concern the

title of the Porphyrian work in question51, but this much seems clear:

50
Cf. I. Hadot, Le problme du noplatonisme alexandrin Hirocls et Simplicius,
Paris: tudes Augustiniennes, 1978, p. 80.

16

Porphyry rejected as impious the Middle Platonic belief that matter is an

ungenerated principle. Instead, matter is generated or has come into
being, as Porphyry claimed, citing the Chaldaean Oracles (cf. fr. 34 Des
Places), and also in the context of his commentary on Plotinus' treatise
Whence come evils?52

Theiler may be right, moreover, in attributing to Porphyry's

influence a passage from Johannes Lydus' treatise On months (p. 175, 2-9
Wnsch):

[sc. it [sc. matter] is timeless but not

]

, beginningless,

, generated

but

and

nevertheless

caused;

from

perpetuity awaiting the activity of

<> , the

father,

in

general

having

received a timeless existence from

His will. Whence it is that the

51
For a survey of the textual problems and solutions proposed, cf. Pierre Hadot,
Bilan et perspectives sur les Oracles chaldaques, in H. Lewy, Chaldaean Oracles
and Theurgy. Mysticism, Magic, and Platonism in the Later Roman Empire, Cairo
1956 (Publications de l'Institut Franais d'Archologie Orientale, Recherches
d'Archologie, de Philologie et d'Histoire 13). Troisime dition par Michel Tardieu
avec un supplment Les Oracles chaldaques 1891-2011, Paris: tudes
Augustiniennes, 2011., 703-720, at p. 713.
52

This is presumably one of the very few remaining traces of the summaries,
commentaries and arguments Porphyry claims to have added added to his edition of
Plotinus' Enneads (Vita Plot. 26).

17

Chaldaean calls matter Father .

born in the Oracles53.

If this text does indeed go back to Porphyry, we may be able to

detect in it a trace of the sense in which Porphyry thought that matter was
generated by the Father: it is not generated in time (akhronon), but
causally54, in that the Father bestows existence upon it throughout all
perpetuity.

Conclusion

Based on the texts we have studied so far, we can hasard the

following reconstruction of Porphyry's cosmogonical scheme. First the
Demiurge, or more precisely the divine paradigm, which is his intellect,
produces matter, which he then organizes by means of the elementary
geometrical figures described at Timaeus 53c. This corporealization of
matter results in the coming-into-existence of bodies, and it is these
bodies which, at Timaeus 30a, the Demiurge sets in order to form the
world (kosmos). Although, in view of our human cognitive limitations,
we must represent this process as taking place in stages over time, we
must not forget that all these stages in fact occur instantaneously and
eternally.

53
Cf. Psellos,
, in Opuscula psychologica, theologica, daemonologica, ed. D.J. O'Meara,
Michaelis Pselli philosophica minora, vol. 2. Leipzig: Teubner, 1989, p. 151, 9.
54

Matter is aitiatn, a term which reminds us of Porphyry's doctrine that the world
as a whole is generated not in time (kata khronon) but in a causal sense (kat'aitian).

18

Anxious to combat the Middle Platonic view of an evil material

soul, co-eternal with the rational world soul, Porphyry sought to destroy
the foundations of this belief. The Middle Platonists had based their
doctrine on their interpretation that what was moving in a discordant and
disorderly way in the Timaeus was matter: this led them to postulate an
evil world soul to animate matter. But Porphyry denies that what was in
motion was matter, by means of his distinction between the creation of
bodies and the creation of the world. Instead, what was in discordant and
disorderly motion was bodies, already constituted out of form and matter.
By denying that matter was in motion, Porphyry eliminated the need to
postulate an eternal material soul to explain such motion; by the same
token, he could argue that the Middle Platonic introduction of two souls,
one rational and one irrational and evil, was superfluous.
Porphyry's doctrine of the creation of matter was influenced by a
variety of sources: Old Academic, Neopythagorean, and Chaldaean.
Indeed, in the debate between Porphyry and his Middle Platonic
adversaries, we can detect echoes of a debate between monistic and
dualistic interpreters of Plato's metaphysics. Thus, Numenius denounces
know-nothing Pythagorean interpreters who think the Monad created the
indeterminate dyad by receding from itself, and it is hard to believe that
this critique is not directed against Moderatus and/or his followers55.
Porphyry reports via the Middle Platonist Dercyllides, that Hermodorus,
the companion (hetairos) of Plato, was already concerned to emphasize
that matter is not a principle according to Plato:

Hermodorus, cited by Dercyllides, Translation J. M. Dillon, The heirs

cited

by

Porphyry,

cited

55
Cf. Frede 1052.

by of Plato, 201 (modified).

19

Simplicius, In Phys., p. 248, 12-17

....so such an entity may be

described as unstable and shapeless

and unbounded and non-existent,

. by virtue of negation of existence.

Such a thing should not be credited
, with

<the

rank

of>

principle

. (arkh) or substance (ousia), but

floats in a kind of indistinctness
(akrisia), for he shows that even as
, , the active principle (to poioun) is
.

the cause (aition) in the strict and

distinctive sense, so it is also a
principle (arkh). Matter (hul), on
the other hand, is not a principle56.

Insofar as we can trust our variegated sources, there seems to be an

unresolved tension in Porphyry's doctrine of matter. On the one hand, in
his Sentences and his History of Philosophy, Porphyry seems to follow
Moderatus and some aspects of the thought of his master Plotinus (who in
turn may have been inspired by Moderatus, Numenius and other
Neopythagoreans) in assuming that matter is not created: the process of
emanation stops after the three hypostases of the One, the demiurgic

56
As John Dillon points out (2003, 202-203), we may have here a trace of intraAcademic polemic, for Speusippius seesm to have maintained that the One would not
be a principle without the role played by the Unlimited Dyad or material principle. On
Speusippus cf. ibid., 56-57.

20

Intellect and the Soul57, so that the matter of sensible things is even
farther down the ontological scale than intelligible matter, which is
already a kind of not-being. As a shadow of not-being, sensible matter is
about as unreal as it can be, but its very distance from reality also seems
to make it evil (kakon). After all, if, as Porphyry asserts in his
Philosophical history, Plato said that the divine substance proceeds (only)
as far as three hypostases, and the divine proceeds (only) as far as the
soul, then matter, which is lower than soul, must be godless (atheos)58.
Yet this doctrine, which Porphyry may have held in the time of his
studies under Plotinus, was dangerously close to the heresies of Middle
Platonism which, as we have seen, Porphyry strenuously fought.
It may, then, have been later in his philosophical career that
Porphyry, now under the combined influence of Plotinus and the
Chaldaean Oracles, hit upon the idea that matter is patrogens, i.e. that
God creates matter, a doctrine which he was to bequeathe to virtually all
subsequent Neoplatonists. It may have seemed to Porphyry that the
Chaldaean Oracles provided divine, or at least semi-divine, justification
for the doctrine of God's creation of matter, a doctrine which eliminated
the ambiguities of Plotinus' doctrine on matter. Qua created by God,
matter cannot be either evil or an independent substance. Matter is a mere
capacity for form, while evil is nothing but an illusion caused by our
particular individual viewpoint, or at most the inevitable side-effect of
Divine Providence's plan for a world that is the best, richest, and fullest
possible.

57
Cf. Porphyry, Philosophical history, fr. 16:

. ,
,

58

Cf. Proclus, In Alc. I, 34.