LachesPlato
About Laches
The is Plato's dialogue on courage (andreia). Lysimachus and Melesias, sons of famous fathers, ask the generals Laches and Nicias whether their own sons should be trained to fight in armor. Nicias favors the training; Laches does not. Socrates redirects the question. What matters is the care of the young men's souls, and the relevant virtue under discussion is courage. The bulk of the dialogue is the attempt to define it.
Laches first says that the brave man holds his place in the ranks and does not run. Socrates shows that the definition covers only one kind of fighting and fails for cavalry, for retreats that are tactically sound, and for courage outside war. Laches then says that courage is a certain endurance of the soul. Socrates objects that endurance without wisdom can be reckless, and that a virtue cannot be a form of foolishness. Nicias, drawing on what he has heard from Socrates and from the sophist Damon, defines courage as knowledge of what is to be feared and hoped for, in war and in all other matters. Animals and children, on this view, cannot be brave. Socrates presses further: knowledge of future goods and evils, fully understood, is knowledge of goods and evils in past and present as well. That knowledge is the whole of virtue, not a part of it. The definition of courage has become a definition of goodness.
The dialogue ends in aporia. The three men agree that they need teachers. Laches and Nicias both died in the Peloponnesian War, Laches at Mantinea and Nicias in Sicily. The places the question of courage at the meeting of military practice, moral education, and the Socratic claim that virtue is knowledge. Aristotle's treatment of courage in the answers the same problem under different terms.