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Select Works of Plotinus · 330 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor

Select Works, Section 314

Section 27 27. But of what soul; of that which we envisage as the more divine, by which we are human beings, or that other which springs from the All? Memory must be admitted in both of these, personal memories and shared memories; and when the two souls are together, the memories also are as one; when they stand apart, assuming that both exist and endure, each soon for gets the other's affairs, retaining for a longer time its own. Thus it is that the Shade of Hercules in the lower regions- this "Shade," as I take it, being the characteristically human part- remembers all the action and experience of the life, since that career was mainly of the hero's personal shaping; the other souls [soulphases] going to constitute the joint-being could, for all their different standing, have nothing to recount but the events of that same life, doings which they knew from the time of their association: perhaps they would add also some moral judgement. What the Hercules standing outside the Shade spoke of we are not told: what can we think that other, the freed and isolated, soul would recount? The soul, still a dragged captive, will tell of all the man did and felt; but upon death there will appear, as time passes, memories of the lives lived before, some of the events of the most recent life being dismissed as trivial. As it grows away from the body, it will revive things forgotten in the corporeal state, and if it passes in and out of one body after another, it will tell over the events of the discarded life, it will treat as present that which it has just left, and it will remember much from the former existence. But with lapse of time it will come to forgetfulness of many things that were mere accretion. Then free and alone at last, what will it have to remember? The answer to that question depends on our discovering in what faculty of the soul memory resides.
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Themes
Anamnesissoteriology

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

[auto] The passage explicitly discusses and analyzes 'Recollection' (Platonic Anamnesis) in relation to the soul's memory of ideas.

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Apophatic Theologytheology

Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.

[auto] The passage defines divine beings by negating attributes like memory, time, and experience rather than affirming positive qualities.

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Body As Obstacleanthropology

The material body viewed as a prison, tomb, or source of error that hinders spiritual knowledge and return.

The inquiry concerns souls that have 'quitted the places of earth,' implying a separation from the material realm is necessary for this state.

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Divine Simplicitytheology

The doctrine that God has no parts, divisions, or composite attributes; pure undivided being.

[auto] It describes the higher principles as possessing an 'unbroken state of identity' free from temporal division or composition.

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Emanation Hierarchycosmology

A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.

[auto] The text distinguishes between earthly souls and the timeless Intellectual-Principle, implying a structured order of existence.

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Monadcosmology

The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.

The 'Authentic-Existent' and 'Intellectual-Principle' function as the simple, undivided first principles from which lower levels derive.

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Opposites Transcendedanthropology

The dissolution of binary oppositions (male/female, inner/outer, above/below) as a mark of spiritual completion.

[auto] The divine nature is characterized by transcending the binary opposition of past and future time.

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Self Knowledgesoteriology

The recognition of one's own true divine nature as the primary path to liberation; 'know thyself' as soteriology.

The text references 'self-intellections' of the higher beings as distinct from memory or external perception.

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Soul Migrationcosmology

The transmigration of the soul across lives.

The inquiry focuses on the state of souls after they have departed from earthly life, touching upon post-mortem existence.

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Tripartite Soulanthropology

Division of the human being into three principles: spirit (pneuma), soul (psyche), and body/matter (hyle or soma).

The author investigates which 'constituents of our nature' hold memory, distinguishing between the Soul, the Animate, and the Couplement.

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Unity Of Beingtheology

The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.

The passage describes the higher hypostases as possessing an 'unbroken state of identity' where all is one without past or sequent.

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