SOURCE: Smith, Andrew. “General Conclusion.” In Porphyry's Place in the Neoplatonic Tradition, pp. 145-50. The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974.

In the following excerpt, Smith offers an assessment of Porphyry's views on the human soul and his treatment and exposition of Neoplatonism.

Porphyry's exposition of Neoplatonism led him to adopt a number of phrases and terms which occur again and again in his writings. It is, perhaps, one of the qualities which made him such a good teacher of Neoplatonism. One word which dominates his thought is σωτηρία, the salvation of the soul. It was until recently thought that Porphyry's main, if not sole, contribution to the history of thought lay in his treatment of this theme at different levels. But if Hadot's reconstruction of Porphyry's metaphysics is correct he made an equally important and far more original contribution to that field. Our treatment here has been restricted to...