ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Dictionary of Islamic Philosophical Terms Fah Firfuriyus Porphyry (233-c. 304 C.E.), Neoplatonic philosopher, disciple, biographer and editor of Plotinus (Fulutin, q.v., also called al-Shaikh al-Yunani, q.v.). Brought up in Tyre, he studied at Athens and from 263 under Plotinus at Rome. He wrote commentaries on Aristotle and Plotinus which seem to have reached the Muslim philosophers.

Around a score of his numerous works survive in whole or part, including Against the Christians (fragments), Lives of Pythagoras and Plotinus, commentaries on Homer, Plato's Timaeus (fragments), Aristotle's Categories, and Ptolemy's Harmonica.

His chief source of fame, however, comes from Eisagage (Isaghuji, q.v.) which has been preserved in Arabic in its complete form -that quickly became and long remained a standard textbook- and used for centuries both in the East and in the West as the clearest and most practical manual of Aristotelian logic. The so-called Tree of Porphyry traces a species (commonly man) from its summum genus (substance) through differentiae (e.g. corporeal) that yield successive subgenera (e.g. body).

The Muslim tradition ascribes to him a commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, but the work seems to have been lost now. He wrote a history of philosophy in four books which was known to the Muslim philosophers, but of which only Life of Pythagoras is extant. It is interesting to note that according to Ibn Rushd’s estimation of him, Porphyry cannot be counted among the most subtle of the philosophers. farq Lit.

"difference" or "separation"; technically the difference or separation between the corporeal and the incorporeal, for example between body and soul or between the physical world and the world of pure intelligences (‘alam al-mufariqat, q.v.); to be distinguished from fasl (q.v.) which is difference in respect of the different attributes possessed by the corporeal or bodily objects. fasl Differentia; i.e. one of the five predicables (al-alfaz al-khamsah).

In logic fasl signifies the attribute or attributes by which a thing is essentially distinguished from other things. Fasl is to be distinguished from farq (q.v.) which also signifies difference between things: whereas the former denotes the essential differentia between the bodily or corporeal things, the latter refers to complete separation between the corporeal and the incorporeal, e.g.