Select Works, Section 59

Platonic recollection: knowledge as the soul's recovery of what it knew before birth, with learning as remembering rather than acquisition.

The passage explicitly describes relying on the memory of past forms of beauty as a resource when present experience is lacking.

Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.

The condition is defined by a 'lack' of beauty in the present, aligning with the Plotinian doctrine that deficiency constitutes the negative state.

Diotima's staged ascent from love of beautiful bodies → beautiful souls → beautiful pursuits → beautiful knowledge → Beauty itself; the canonical scala amoris that grounds Plotinus's On the Beautiful and Bruno's Eroici Furori — distinct from generic spiritual_ascent in that eros is the specific motive force.

The reference to 'various forms of beauty' alludes to the hierarchical stages of ascent through beautiful things central to Plotinus's discourse.

The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.

The text depicts a state of life 'without beauty in the present,' indicating an existential distance from the divine source of Beauty.