Plato

[Ogodei]

Why does Plato’s Laches fail to define courage? I’m lookming for a structure at how to tackle this essay, any help would be very much appreciated! [/i]

[gavtmcc]

Essay help is not provided here.

[PaE95]

gavtmcc, please don’t be hostile, i’m new. I don’t believe the context of his question is to help with an essay, it’s simply to help with his understanding of Plato.

Ogodei… to answer your question, I don’t know if I’m correct, or over 2000 years of Philosophers agree with with me… but I’ll give you a shot on my interpretion, being I’ve heavily studied Plato…

Courage is a kind of salvation.
Plato

Courage is knowing what not to fear.
Plato

Socrates proceeds: We might ask who are our teachers? But a better and more thorough way of examining the question will be to ask, ‘What is Virtue?’—or rather, to restrict the enquiry to that part of virtue which is concerned with the use of weapons—‘What is Courage?’ Laches thinks that he knows this: (1) ‘He is courageous who remains at his post.’ But some nations fight flying, after the manner of Aeneas in Homer; or as the heavy-armed Spartans also did at the battle of Plataea. (2) Socrates wants a more general definition, not only of military courage, but of courage of all sorts, tried both amid pleasures and pains. Laches replies that this universal courage is endurance. But courage is a good thing, and mere endurance may be hurtful and injurious. Therefore (3) the element of intelligence must be added. But then again unintelligent endurance may often be more courageous than the intelligent, the bad than the good. How is this contradiction to be solved? Socrates and Laches are not set ‘to the Dorian mode’ of words and actions; for their words are all confusion, although their actions are courageous. Still they must ‘endure’ in an argument about endurance. Laches is very willing, and is quite sure that he knows what courage is, if he could only tell.

Nicias is now appealed to; and in reply he offers a definition which he has heard from Socrates himself, to the effect that (1) ‘Courage is intelligence.’ Laches derides this; and Socrates enquires, ‘What sort of intelligence?’ to which Nicias replies, ‘Intelligence of things terrible.’ ‘But every man knows the things to be dreaded in his own art.’ ‘No they do not. They may predict results, but cannot tell whether they are really terrible; only the courageous man can tell that.’ Laches draws the inference that the courageous man is either a soothsayer or a god.

Again, (2) in Nicias’ way of speaking, the term ‘courageous’ must be denied to animals or children, because they do not know the danger. Against this inversion of the ordinary use of language Laches reclaims, but is in some degree mollified by a compliment to his own courage. Still, he does not like to see an Athenian statesman and general descending to sophistries of this sort. Socrates resumes the argument. Courage has been defined to be intelligence or knowledge of the terrible; and courage is not all virtue, but only one of the virtues. The terrible is in the future, and therefore the knowledge of the terrible is a knowledge of the future. But there can be no knowledge of future good or evil separated from a knowledge of the good and evil of the past or present; that is to say, of all good and evil. Courage, therefore, is the knowledge of good and evil generally. But he who has the knowledge of good and evil generally, must not only have courage, but also temperance, justice, and every other virtue. Thus, a single virtue would be the same as all virtues (compare Protagoras). And after all the two generals, and Socrates, the hero of Delium, are still in ignorance of the nature of courage. They must go to school again, boys, old men and all.

By looking at that tranlation, I’d have to say that he fails to define courage is because it can have so many meanings, it’s one of those words that could be meant in so many different ways, you can’t just put on definition on it… like knowing what not to fear, is a much more broad sense of it… just some input

[zenofeller]

as a very side approach to your essay, you might decide to argue that socrates uses sofisms to keep a power structure within the body of his students. essentially the argument would be

socrates has a position of preminence in a group
the rules of the group offer the position of preminence to whomever is most able to confuse his conversation partners
socrates uses equivocation and various other rhetoric tricks to keep any others member of that group from forming a coherent set of definitions and beliefs

2 and 3 will be very hard if not impossible to prove, but they still can be argued, on something like he who knows the real reality is to be revered, and socrate must know the real reality, although he never says anything about it, because look how able he is to make fools of any others.

[Impenitent]

socratic ignorance aside (which is a fitting point albeit tangential), simply look at plato’s form of justice…

-Imp

[Matt]

gavtmcc, please don’t be hostile, i’m new. I don’t believe the context of his question is to help with an essay, it’s simply to help with his understanding of Plato.

He’s not being hostile, no essay questions is one of the rules of this forum. I’m only leaving this here as others have replied, but I just deleted someone else’s essay question post.

[zenofeller]

if im permitted, and not to be argumentative matt, id like to say :

it might be beneficial to reverse that rule and allow essay questions. maybe, if people dont want legitimate topics to be swamped by mere spongers, make a special place where the needy beg for help and anyone who feels inclined to help them can go and post.

point is, there is no reason to suspect somebody who has an essay assignment and seeks our help could not in fact grow to be a very valuable asset for this community. furthermore, there is no good reason to not help those seeking help. granted most will conceivably abuse it, but how many ways can you abuse essay help in this forum anyway ? get bigger marks than you deserve ? since when is that our problem ?

after all, people seeked socrates because they had essay assignments more often than just because they were oh so smart to come to him on their own. right ?