Dialogue On Phaedo, Session 2: Infinite Potential

The nature of wisdom was a focus at the outset of our second session on Plato’s Phaedo, when members of the Toronto Philosophy and Calgary Philosophy Meetup groups met on February 6, 2022, to cover passages 77(d)-98(b). Socrates states the soul experiences wisdom when it is free from the continual change and motion of the body and the physical world to which the body belongs, and in such freedom, the soul is able to investigate the unchanging, ever-existing nature of a thing. When the soul understands the limits of a thing – the two points that are the beginning and end of a thing – it can establish the common factor that is equal to both and therefore eternal and unlimited in its potential in the state of becoming in the present. We discussed the distinction that Socrates draws between composite and visible things, such as physical objects, and the soul which is noncomposite and invisible. This led to consideration of Plato’s theory of forms, the things in themselves that require nothing other for their definition, and knowledge as information about different things that becomes wisdom when applied to the goal of happiness that all souls are equal. We ended with what might be a practical application of the wisdom in Socrates’ question about the order in the generation of a thing. Does the logic of 96(b)-97(e), questioning the order of cause in the becoming of two from one, have relevance to what is now called superposition in quantum physics and quantum computing where two possible states exist simultaneously? Can mathematics correlate to wisdom, as one participant asked?