Abstract
The image of the historical athlete who enters the ancient Greek stadium is a perfect medium for clarifying the conceptual philosopher’s liberation from material bonds and ascent to the higher causal order in Porphyry’s On the Abstinence from Eating Flesh. The image is emphasized when Porphyry prescribes the practice of vegetarianism and immaterial sacrifice for the conceptual philosopher’s preparation for the specific ‘contest’of freeing from material concerns such as food and sacrifice and eventual transformation in to the as the priest of the Highest God.
Highlights
The image of the historical athlete who enters the ancient Greek stadium is a perfect medium for clarifying the conceptual philosopher’s liberation from material bonds and ascent to the higher causal order in Porphyry’s On the Abstinence from Eating Flesh
The athletic motif, which has been the focus of many writers before Porphyry, such as Socrates, the Cynics, medical writers, Marcus Aurelius and Plotinus begins to be treated in a different context, by approximately the late 3rd and 4th centuries AD, in terms of the Christian ascetic’s commitment to abstain from material pleasures
The attitude of hostility towards the body, which formed a significant role in Hellenic culture, philosophy as well as Gnosticism and Christianity, is addressed in Abst. with more consistency and concern when Porphyry perceives the historical image of the Greek athlete who strips his clothes as a relevant metaphor to describe the soul’s freedom from material bonds and eventual ascent to the celestial region
Summary
ISHA GAMLATH writers, Marcus Aurelius and Plotinus. The historical Greek athlete who labors in the arena (athlētḗs) for perfection of athletic prowess (agon) exemplifies the pain (ponos) and struggle (agon) which formed a central part of his pursuit of personal excellence (arete). Emphasis in the Cynic school becomes more marked on features associating behavioral patterns such as simplicity, frugality, freedom from social restraint, self-sufficiency, endurance, self-control, homelessness and above all voluntary poverty: This was a basic part of the thorough going training which sought to insure the Cynic to a haphazard fortune. Such ascesis in the wider sense included what we may recognize as ascetic practice in the narrower sense of a training in character through physical hardship and renunciation. He stressed the importance of exercise – that of the mind and the body.[5]
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