“The idea of man,” wrote Plotinus, one of Plato’s most distinguished disciples, three hundred years after his death, “is formed after that which is the prevailing and best part of him,” namely his soul.9 This assumption bridged the classical culture of the Greek and Roman world and the Christian culture of the Middle Ages. It permeated the humanism of the Italian Renaissance and animated the great debates of the Reformation and the early modern era. Even today, when scientists try to reduce all forms of consciousness to bioneural states, the existence of the self remains an elusive mystery.
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