ABSTRACT
Porphyry and Iamblichus are, indeed, still used as resources in debate, not only between Christians and latter-day pagans, but between those who approach philosophy and religion as intellectuals and those who are also mystics and sacramentalists. The debate between Porphyry and Iamblichus on the philosophic life was less openly confrontational than their debate on religion, but their conclusions on how to live differed just as radically. Iamblichus, in contrast, clearly did take Pythagoras as exemplifying the philosophic life. It, too, is protreptic for the study of the difficult material it introduces, and it deploys the life of the author and the philosophic life of his students to show why the material is worth the effort. The aim of the philosophic life was always to purify the soul and help it to rise by study and contemplation toward the divine.
