Dialogue on the Philebus, Part 1: The Universe of Memory, Knowledge, and Limits

What is the good? Why do we each measure the good differently, and what calculation do we apply to know the more from the less? Can we really know the good unless we fall in love with the good? These and other questions echoed many of Plato’s other dialogues throughout the first of three discussions on the Philebus, when members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups met on January 15, 2023. In Plato’s dialogue, Socrates and Protarchus quickly reach a conclusion that the good life consists of a mixture of knowledge and pleasure, not a life that is purely one or the other. The question then becomes the ratio of knowledge and pleasure in the ideal mixture, a matter in which the soul applies calculation, reason and memory to determine probabilities in time to come.