“Laches” by Plato (translated by Rosamond Kent Sprague)

This dialogue is on the Greek concept of andreia, literally meaning manliness, but most often translated by moderns as courage. Socrates and his interlocutors begin by seeking to define the concept and then to ruminate on its worth. As in many of Plato’s Socratic dialogues, there is no satisfactory conclusion to the debate. The pretext of the conversation is the proper manner for the general education of two particular noble youth and, only secondarily, the benefits of instilling courage in them. To that end, Socrates initially comments, “I think it is by knowledge that one ought to make decisions, if one is to make them well, and not by majority rule.”

Nicias gives due praise, of sorts, to Socrates’ methods, “Whoever comes into close contact with Socrates and associates with him in conversation must necessarily, even if he began by conversing about something quite different in the first place, keep on being led about by the man’s arguments until he submits to answering questions about himself concerning both his present manner of life and the life he has lived hitherto. And when he does submit to this questioning, you don’t realize that Socrates will not let him go before he has well and truly tested every last detail…. I think that a man who does not run away from such treatment but is willing, according to the saying of Solon, to value learning as long as he lives, not supposing that old age brings him wisdom of itself, will necessarily pay more attention to the rest of his life.”

For Socrates, it is necessary to strip away the layers and to get down to the nature of the thing in itself—in this case, courage. “Whenever a man considers a thing for the sake of another thing, he is taking counsel about that thing for the sake of which he was considering, and not about what he was investigating for the sake of something else.” As is his want, Socrates leads the debate around in circles, questioning conclusions just previously agreed to and pushing the point of argument to all its extremes, “Now foolish daring and endurance was found by us to be not only disgraceful but harmful, in what we said earlier…. But now, on the contrary, we are saying that a disgraceful thing, foolish endurance, is courage.” There is no conclusion to this dialogue, but Socrates does propose, “In addition to courage, I call temperance and justice and everything else of this kind parts of virtue. Don't you?”