Select Works of Porphyry Volume 1 by Thomas Taylor Full Audiobook On Abstinence & the Soul

Porphyry of Tyre (c. 234-305) was the student who made Plotinus readable: he gathered his teacher's scattered treatises after his death and arranged them into the six Enneads. This first volume of Thomas Taylor's selection opens with Taylor's life of him, then gives the four books of On Abstinence from Animal Food complete. It is not a health tract. Porphyry wrote it to argue a friend, Firmus Castricius, out of returning to meat after he had given it up - and the argument runs through the nature of the soul, the demands of justice toward animals, the practices of the Egyptian priests and the Brahmins, and what a philosopher owes to the body he is lodged in. Read slowly and calmly for deep listening, study, or sleep. Chapter markers are in the description. Public domain: Thomas Taylor's translation, 1823. #porphyry #neoplatonism #thomastaylor #plotinus #philosophy #mysticism Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 1:25 The Life of Porphyry 26:16 On Abstinence from Animal Food, Book I 2:00:49 On Abstinence from Animal Food, Book II 5:04:24 On Abstinence from Animal Food, Book IV … +1 more chapters in the video timeline — About this book — Volume one of two of Thomas Taylor's "Select Works of Porphyry" (1823): Taylor's life of Porphyry, then the four books of On Abstinence from Animal Food complete. On Abstinence is addressed to Firmus Castricius, a friend who had taken up abstinence and then abandoned it; Porphyry names him directly in the text. The argument is philosophical rather than dietary - it runs through the nature of the soul, the justice owed to creatures that share in soul, the practice of the Egyptian priests and the Indian Brahmins, and the question of what the philosopher owes to the body. Book I answers the objections, Book II treats sacrifice, Book III the rationality of animals, and Book IV the customs of nations. — About the author: Porphyry of Tyre (c. 234–305) — Born at Tyre in Phoenicia and originally named Malchus, "king" in his native tongue; the Greek name Porphyrios, from the purple dye for which Tyre was famous, was given to him by his teacher. He studied at Athens under Longinus, then went to Rome in 263 and spent six years with Plotinus. After Plotinus died, Porphyry collected his treatises and arranged them into six sets of nine — the Enneads — and wrote the Life of Plotinus that prefaces them. Nearly everything known about Plotinus comes through him. He also wrote fifteen books Against the Christians, which were condemned and burned by imperial decree; only fragments quoted by opponents survive. — About the translator: Thomas Taylor (1758–1835) — Known as "the English Platonist". Largely self-taught, he worked as a clerk at Lubbock's bank in London and spent his life translating the Platonic and Neoplatonic corpus — Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, Iamblichus and the Orphic Hymns — much of it into English for the first time. His versions reached Blake, Shelley and Emerson. The prose is dense and deliberately archaic: he preferred fidelity to the Greek over ease in English. — Pronunciation — Porphyry: POR-fih-ree · Malchus: MAL-kus · Plotinus: ploh-TY-nus Castricius: kas-TRISS-ee-us · Ennead: EN-ee-ad · naiads: NY-adz — Sources & further reading — • Internet Archive (scans & editions): https://archive.org/details/selectwor... • Porphyry's own Life of Plotinus is the source for the biographical details above. — Image credits — All artwork in this video is in the public domain: • Codex Bodmer 127 120v Detail.jpg (between 1170 and 1200date QS:P,+1500-00-). Wikimedia Commons, Public domain • "School of Athens" by Raphael, Raphael Rooms, Vatican Museum (48466167851).jpg — Gary Todd from Xinzheng, China (Taken on 5 August 2019, 19:23). Wikimedia Commons, Public domain • Iamblichus, Theologumena arithmeticae, Milan, & 157 sup., fol. 5v.jpg — Iamblichus (circa 1292date QS:P,+1292-00-00T00:00:00). Wikimedia Commons, Public domain • Platon, Hermeias, Timée de Locres, Proclus-Pachymère - btv1b10507219n (227 of 624).jpg — Plato. Auteur du texte Hermias Alexandrinus. Auteur du texte Timaeus Locrus. Au (between 1250 and 1300date QS:P571,+1500-). Wikimedia Commons, Public domain • Iamblichos, De vita Pythagorica.jpg — Iamblichus (14th centurydate QS:P,+1350-00-00T00:00:). Wikimedia Commons, Public domain • Aankondiging promotie van monsieur Brillon de Joüy, 1707 La verite recherchée pas les phil — Rijksmuseum (1707). Wikimedia Commons, CC0 — About this recording — “Select Works of Porphyry (Volume 1 of 2)” by Thomas Taylor (1823) is a public-domain work. This video pairs a human-recorded introduction with an AI-narrated reading of the public-domain text, produced by Strange Books Read Aloud. All sources are public domain — text: Internet Archive selectworksporp00taylgoog; imagery: public-domain artwork. The AI narration and the ambient audio are our own production. We claim no copyright over the public-domain text or artwork. #Audiobook #neoplatonic #Sleep