“Well,” replies Nicias, “you seem to me, Socrates, to be making a mess of your definition of courage. What I have heard you yourself aptly saying, you have not used.”
“What’s that, Nicias?”
“I have often heard you say that each of us is good in that in which he is wise, and bad in what he is ignorant.”[16]
Here Nicias recalls a Socratic principle that he has heard from the horse’s mouth. Socrates interprets him to be saying that courage is some kind of wisdom. With help from Laches, who is skeptical of the definition, Socrates asks what kind of wisdom he means. Not surely flute-playing or lyre-playing.
“I declare, Laches,” says Nicias, “that it is the knowledge of what is to be feared and trusted in war and every other circumstance.”[17]
Laches by now is becoming irritated with his fellow general. “He’s talking nonsense!” Laches gives a list of knowledgeable people—doctors, farmers, craftsmen—who know what is to be feared and trusted, but who are not thereby courageous. Nicias replies that in the example of healing a sick person, the doctor has no more insight than the patient about whether it is better to live than to die. Even a seer who can see the future does not necessarily know the answer to this question. Socrates infers from Nicias’ statements that only a few people will have the requisite knowledge.
But then, Socrates points out, you will have to say that fierce animals such as lions and bulls are not courageous, since they lack knowledge of what they are doing. “Good point, Socrates!” cheers Laches. “By no means, Laches,” Nicias counters, “do I call courageous either wild beasts or anything else that confronts dangers by unthinking fearlessness, but rather I call them fearless and stupid. Do you think I would call children brave who fear nothing because of their thoughtlessness? But I distinguish between fearlessness and courage. … Those you and people in general call courageous I call daring, while only the judicious do I designate as courageous.”[18]
This is one of the more successful rejoinders made by an interlocutor in a Socratic dialogue. Nicias recognizes the paradoxical implications of his position: on this view, animals and children are disqualified from being courageous. He bites the bullet and accepts the implication. Whatever people may say, on a considered analysis, these cases don’t count. They are not counterexamples, but cases to be reclassified in light of a superior understanding of the phenomena. Nicias holds his ground bravely–and intelligently. Laches complains that he is just splitting hairs like a sophist.
Socrates continues to test Nicias. Does he hold that courage is just a “part” of virtue, like temperance and justice? He does. Nicias has defined courage as a knowledge of what is to be feared. Fear, by contrast, is “an expectation of a future evil.”[19] But when we are speaking of knowledge proper, we are not speaking just of future events. “Of what things there is knowledge or science, there is not one knowledge which knows how past events happened, another concerning how present events are happening, and still another concerning how events which have not yet happened best might or will happen, but it is the same knowledge.”[20] For instance, medicine does not distinguish between past, present, and future health, but studies them all equally. Similarly, agriculture and military science do not divide events into past, present, and future, but treat all relevant events equally. So the same science understands past, present, and future.
So then courage, if indeed it is a rigorous kind of knowledge, must not be a study of what is to be feared and hoped for, that is, of future evils and goods, but of evils and goods of the past, present, and future alike. “Now, it turns out, according to your account, that courage is a knowledge not just of what is to be feared and hoped, but a knowledge of virtually all goods and evils taken together.”[21] But if that is the case, then Nicias has not defined courage as a part of virtue, but rather the whole of virtue.
Laches gloats at Nicias’ failure, while Nicias resents Laches’ Schadenfreude. But both agree that they lack the relevant understanding of courage. They turn to Socrates for guidance. Lysimachus and Melesias are eager to participate. Socrates promises to join with them on the morrow to continue their search.
What are we to make of this episode? Sharing an inquiry into the virtue of courage with two of the most famous generals of his time, Socrates reveals the inadequacies of their understandings. We see them quarreling like schoolchildren over their precious ideas. Nicias, however, shows himself capable of advancing an attractive definition and defending it manfully. Yet he has, by his own admission, borrowed the idea from Socrates. Then Socrates refutes what seems to be Socrates’ own definition. He does so by showing that on this definition, there is no difference between courage and the other “parts” or species of virtue. Yet in the Protagoras Socrates had made a point of arguing that the virtues were, in some important sense, one. Has Socrates refuted Nicias just because he is not willing to accept the larger implications of the definition? Perhaps Nicias needs to bite the bullet once more. Socrates seems to conduct his inquiries ad hominem rather than ad rem: he is more interested in testing the beliefs of his interlocutor than in proving his point. Even if Nicias mouths the right definition, he must understand the meaning and implications of that definition to defend the view adequately.
[16].Plato Laches 194c-d.
[17].Plato Laches 194e-195a.
[18].Plato Laches 197a-c.
[19].Plato Laches 198b.
[20].Plato Laches 198d.
[21].Plato Laches 199c-d.