SOURCE: Smith, Andrew. Introduction to Porphyry's Place in the Neoplatonic Tradition, pp. xi-xviii. The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974.

In the following excerpt, Smith compares Porphyry's main ideas with those of his influential teacher, Plotinus, and examines Porphyry's relationship to and attitude toward his teacher.

Porphyry, who was born some twenty-eight years after Plotinus in 232-3 A.D. and probably about twenty years before Iamblichus,¹ occupies in many ways a unique position in the history of Greek philosophy. He stands at the end of the final creative phase of Greek thought which culminates in Plotinus and at the beginning of that, at times brilliant but relatively unoriginal, period of later Neoplatonism whose main distinction seems to many to have been the sacrifice of genuine Greek rationalism to occult magico-religious practices which were meant to secure the salvation of the soul. He stands also geographically between east and west...