Laches

Author: Plato · Year: c. 4th c. BCE (trans. Rosamond Kent Sprague, Hackett 1997) · Type: dialogue

A short aporetic Socratic dialogue. After watching a display of fighting-in-armor (hoplomachia), two undistinguished fathers (Lysimachus, Melesias) ask two distinguished generals — the blunt man-of-deeds Laches and the reflective Nicias — together with Socrates, how their sons should be educated. The question narrows from should the boys learn fighting-in-armor? through who is the expert in care of the soul? to the ti esti demand: what is courage (andreia, of wide scope — "manliness," not merely battlefield prowess)? Three definitions fall: Laches' standing firm at one's post (too narrow), his wise endurance of the soul (self-contradicting), and Nicias' knowledge of the fearful and the hopeful — which Socrates refutes by the unity-of-virtue squeeze: since knowledge is not divided by time, knowledge of future goods and evils is knowledge of all goods and evils, i.e. virtue entire, so courage cannot be the part it was agreed to be (198a–199e). The dialogue closes in aporia with a call to keep searching together. Its hidden hinge: the same courage-as-knowledge formula is Socrates' own positive reduction in the Protagoras (360c) but a refuted definition here.

Core Arguments

  1. Claim: Educational decisions belong to the one who knows, not to majority vote. Because: on a question of training one is persuaded "by whoever has been educated… under a good trainer," not by "the four of us"; decisions go by knowledge, "not by majority rule." Against: Lysimachus' default — vote for whatever the majority approves. Location: 184c–185a.

  2. Claim: We are not deliberating about fighting-in-armor at all but about the souls of the young men; the expert we need is an expert in care of the soul. Because: "whenever a man considers a thing for the sake of another thing," he takes counsel about the latter — as one deliberating about eye-medicine deliberates about the eyes; hoplomachia is for the sake of the soul. Against: Nicias' literal framing ("aren't we investigating the art of fighting in armor?", 185b). Location: 185b–e.

  3. Claim: An expert must exhibit credentials — teachers he learned from, or good products made — and Socrates can exhibit neither. Because: a craftsman is trusted only on "some well-executed product… not just one but more"; Socrates declares he "had no teacher in this subject" and has no pupils to show. Against: Laches — some "become more expert without teachers than with them" (185e). Location: 185e–187b (closed at 200e); "don't begin pottery on a wine jar" (187b) — don't experiment on your own sons.

  4. Claim: To say how virtue may be added to the boys' souls we must first know what virtue is — and, the task being large, what courage is (one part). Because: just as one who did not know "what sight in itself was" could not counsel about the eyes, one cannot say how virtue is best obtained "if we are not absolutely certain what it is." Courage is the part to which fighting-in-armor leads. Against: nothing internal — both generals grant they can state it (190c). Location: 189e–190d (the ti esti turn).

  5. Claim (Laches, def. 1 — refuted): courage is standing firm at one's post and not running away. Because: "if a man is willing to remain at his post… he is a man of courage." Against: too narrow — it omits the Scythians and Spartans who fight by retreating, and courage at sea, in illness, poverty, politics, and against pleasure and pain; what is wanted is "the courage that is the same in all these cases" (the common eidos, modeled on swiftness, 192a–b). Location: 190e–192b.

  6. Claim (Laches, def. 2 — refuted into aporia): courage is endurance of soul (karteria), refined to wise endurance. Because: pressed for what is "the same in pleasure and in pain," Laches offers "a sort of endurance of the soul"; since courage is fine (kalon) but foolish endurance is harmful, courage must be wise endurance. Against: the refinement self-destructs — wise endurance (the soldier fighting at advantage, the trained diver) is admired less as courage, while foolish endurance (fighting outnumbered) seems braver; so "foolish endurance" turns out courageous, contradicting that courage is fine. Location: 192b–193e (the Dorian-mode self-rebuke at 193e: "our deeds are not harmonizing with our words").

  7. Claim (Nicias, def. 3): courage is a kind of wisdom — the knowledge of the fearful and the hopeful (deina kai tharralea), in war and everywhere. Because: Nicias invokes a thesis he has "often heard" Socrates state — "every one of us is good with respect to that in which he is wise and bad in respect to that in which he is ignorant"; so the courageous man is wise. Against: Laches — "I take wisdom to be quite a different thing from courage" (195a). Location: 194d–195a (the intellectualist premise + definition).

  8. Claim: Nicias' knowledge is neither the craftsman's nor the seer's — it is knowledge of whether it is better to suffer a thing. Because: doctors know health and disease but not "when a man's recovery is more to be feared than his illness"; the seer knows only "the signs of what is to be," not for whom suffering is better. "The general should command the seer." Against: Laches mocks this as Prodicus-style word-play, unworthy of a city's leader (196a–197d). Location: 195b–199a (carving the knowledge off from technē and mantikē; the no-courageous-beasts corollary, 196d–197c).

  9. Claim (Socrates' refutation — the unity-of-virtue squeeze): courage-as-knowledge-of-the-fearful-and-hopeful expands into knowledge of all goods and evils, i.e. virtue entire, so it cannot be the part it was agreed to be. Because: the fearful = future evils, the hopeful = future goods; but "the same knowledge has understanding of the same things, whether future, present, or past" (knowledge is not divided by time); so courage becomes knowledge "of practically all goods and evils put together" (199c) — and a man knowing all goods and evils "would not be lacking in temperance or justice and holiness," i.e. would have virtue entire, not a part. Against: Nicias concedes each step but offers no escape ("So it seems"). Location: 198a–199e (the engine; the time-undivided-knowledge premise at 198d–199a is load-bearing).

  10. Claim (closing aporia): "we have not discovered what courage is" — and all parties are equally ignorant, so they must keep searching, beginning with themselves. Because: "we were all in the same difficulty"; the remedy is not to "remain as we are" but to "join in searching for the best possible teacher, first for ourselves." Against: Laches and Nicias each want to hand the boys to Socrates — which he refuses, redirecting to a shared search ("Modesty is not a good mate for a needy man," 201b). Location: 199e–201c.

Key Findings

  • The corpus's clearest ti esti of courage. The whole dialogue is the "what is courage?" question, with the Greek andreia ("manliness," of wide scope) licensing the repeated widening of the field (sea, illness, poverty, politics, pleasure, pain, 191d–e) that defeats the battlefield-only intuition.
  • The Protagoras mirror. The same formula — courage = knowledge of the deina kai tharralea — is Socrates' positive reduction in the Protagoras (360c, pressed against Protagoras' separability of the virtues) but a refuted definition here, attributed to Socrates by Nicias. Same content, opposite dialectical valence; J.M.C.'s intro note flags the link.
  • Unity-of-virtue run as a reductio. Distinctively, the Laches treats courage's expansion into the whole as a defeat of the definition (courage must be a separable part, 199d–e), not as welcome intellectualist unification — the cost of taking the formula seriously once knowledge is granted to be time-undivided.
  • The elenchus described from inside. Nicias supplies the corpus's most explicit in-dialogue description of the method (187e–188a): converse with Socrates and you end up "answering questions about himself… the life he has lived."

Concepts Developed

  • courage-andreia — andreia ("manliness," wide scope); the ti esti of courage; Nicias' definition "knowledge of the fearful and the hopeful" and its collapse into whole-virtue via the time-undivided-knowledge premise (198d–199e), with unity-of-virtue treated as a reductio that defeats the definition.
  • elenchus — the most explicit in-dialogue description of the Socratic method (Nicias, 187e–188a); enacted on all three definitions.
  • aporia — the dialogue's terminal state (199e) plus the productive call to keep searching together (201a).

Concepts Referenced

  • socratic-intellectualism — courage-as-knowledge (the premise "good in what one is wise, bad in what one is ignorant," 194d) here refuted, not endorsed; the Laches exhibits the cost of the identity-reading.
  • plato-protagoras — THE mirror: the same formula is Socrates' positive reduction at Protagoras 360c but a refuted definition here; opposite dialectical valence.
  • socrates — the disavowing elenctic Socrates (no teacher, no product, 186b–c); valor in the retreat from Delium (181a–b, cf. Symposium 220e).

Key Passages

"it is by knowledge that one ought to make decisions … and not by majority rule" (184e) "whenever a man considers a thing for the sake of another thing" (185d) — redirection to the soul "I have had no teacher in this subject" (186b–c) — Socratic disavowal "isn't it necessary for us to start out knowing what virtue is?" (190b) — the ti esti "if a man is willing to remain at his post" (190e) — def. 1 "what is the courage that is the same in all these cases" (191e) — the common eidos "I think it is a sort of endurance of the soul" (192b) — karteria "a disgraceful thing, foolish endurance, is courage" (193d) — the def. 2 contradiction "every one of us is good with respect to that in which he is wise" (194d) — intellectualist premise "it is the knowledge of the fearful and the hopeful" (195a) — Nicias' def. "the general should command the seer" (199a) — knowledge of the future belongs to the art "the same knowledge has understanding of the same things, whether future, present, or past" (199a) — time-undivided knowledge "would not be a part of virtue but rather virtue entire" (199e) — the collapse "Then we have not discovered, Nicias, what courage is" (199e) — aporia "led about by the man's arguments until he submits to answering questions about himself" (187e–188a) — the elenchus described

What's Not Obvious

  • The same formula, opposite verdicts. Courage = knowledge of the deina kai tharralea is Socrates' own positive reduction in the Protagoras (360c), pressed against Protagoras' separability of the virtues — yet in the Laches it is placed in Nicias' mouth (who attributes it to Socrates, 194d) and refuted by Socrates (199e). The two dialogues are mirror images: the Protagoras welcomes the collapse into one knowledge; the Laches runs the same collapse as a reductio. J.M.C.'s intro note pre-installs the puzzle.
  • The refutation rests on a single, almost-unnoticed premise. The whole unity-of-virtue squeeze turns on time-undivided knowledge — "the same knowledge has understanding of the same things, whether future, present, or past" (198d–199a). Restrict Nicias' knowledge to the practical domain of danger and the reductio never starts; but Nicias concedes the premise ("So it seems") and never resists, so the dialogue's load-bearing move goes untested.
  • The dialogue describes its own method — and a layman does it. The corpus's most explicit account of the elenchus is spoken not by Socrates but by Nicias (187e–188a): to converse with Socrates is to "submit to answering questions about himself," turning argument into self-examination. The method is thematized as the examined life before it defeats Nicias' own definition.

Critique / Limitations

The unity-of-virtue refutation is only as strong as its time-undivided-knowledge premise (198d–199a), which is asserted via craft examples (medicine, farming, generalship) rather than defended; a defender could confine courage's knowledge to the practical sphere of danger without conceding it spans all goods and evils. Def. 2's refutation likewise trades on an unargued ranking of "wise" versus "foolish" endurance by admiration (192d–193d). And courage is assumed throughout to be a part of virtue (190c–d) — precisely what the squeeze contradicts — without that assumption ever being examined. The dialogue ends in aporia by design: no definition survives.

Connections

  • contrasts with plato-protagoras — the same courage-as-knowledge formula functions as Socrates' positive reduction there (360c) and as a refuted definition here (199e): opposite dialectical valence within the Socratic corpus.
  • critiques socratic-intellectualism — exhibits the cost of the courage-as-knowledge identity: extended consistently (knowledge is time-undivided) it swallows all of virtue, leaving courage no distinguishable part.
  • enacts elenchus — performs the refutative method whose most explicit in-dialogue description it also contains (Nicias, 187e–188a).
  • is a case of aporia — closes without a definition ("we have not discovered… what courage is," 199e) yet converts failure into a shared call to keep searching (201a).
  • is the condition of intelligibility of courage-andreia — the dialogue is the corpus's primary ti esti anchor for courage, establishing the wide-scope andreia the concept page tracks.

Sources

  • Laches, trans. Rosamond Kent Sprague, in Plato: Complete Works (Hackett, 1997), Stephanus 178a–201c; raw file lines 19151–19707.
  • Depth layer: wiki/sources/.extraction-plato-laches.md.