Plato and the Virtue of Courage

Chapter Three: Courage and Wisdom: Socrates and Nicias

nicias’ socratism Laches’ inability to decide whether courage is prudent or foolish steadfastness leaves him and Socrates without a coherent account of courage. Socrates therefore appeals to Nicias to help them discover one. Acceding to Socrates’ plea, Nicias claims that he is repeating something that he has often heard Socrates say. Purporting to quote Socrates, he says that “each of us is good in those things with respect to which he is wise and bad in those with respect to which he is without learning.” He therefore concludes that “if the courageous man is good, clearly he is wise” (194d). But Nicias’ conclusion does not accurately paraphrase Socrates’ formulation. What Nicias reports Socrates as saying makes wisdom primary; it suggests that goodness derives from wisdom. A strict paraphrase of Socrates’ formulation would say that if the courageous man is wise, he must be good. Nicias’ paraphrase reverses the priority. Nicias assumes that the courageous man is good and that he must therefore be wise. Thus, while appearing to make virtue depend on wisdom, Nicias actually does the opposite: he assumes the courageous man is wise because he is good. Nicias’ peculiar paraphrase suggests that while Nicias is attracted by the argument that intimately connects wisdom and courage, he may not see how Socrates understands that connection. Moreover, simply tying virtue to wisdom does not explain much. It does not explain, for instance, in what the wisdom that underlies virtue consists. At any rate, Nicias sides with the part of Laches that resists equating courage with foolishness. Yet Laches seems not to understand him, so in order to explain to the Courage and Wisdom Socrates and Nicias chapter three uncomprehending Laches what Nicias means, Socrates rephrases Nicias’ definition of courage as “a certain wisdom” (194d). Mocking this suggestion, Laches asks Socrates to explain himself. Socrates diverts Laches’ attention to Nicias, encouraging Laches to ask Nicias what it means to say that courage is a certain wisdom, thereby giving the latter the responsibility of explaining a definition that he, Nicias, did not, after all, quite o=er. In order to make Nicias o=er a more precise version of the definition he has put in his mouth, Socrates asks Nicias to state what kind of wisdom courage is. Laches chimes in: “Let him say what he asserts courage is” (194e). Nicias rises to the challenge: “This, Laches, is what I say it is: the scientific knowledge (epistêmê) of terrible and emboldening things in war and in all other things” (195a1–2, emphasis added).1 If this is more precise than the first definition Socrates attributed to him, it is hardly crystal-clear. What exactly is this knowledge? And does it make courage both noble and good in the way that Laches wants it to be? Nicias’ definition, as many scholars note, bears a striking resemblance to what Socrates says about courage elsewhere. In the Protagoras Socrates calls courage wisdom (sophia) about what things are terrible and what things are not (Protagoras 360d5). Indeed, some commentators suggest that Nicias here is the mouthpiece for Socrates’ famous claim that virtue is knowledge.2 This is incorrect. While there is a great similarity between the two definitions, Nicias’ view cannot be understood as a stand-in for that of Socrates. The claim that Nicias and Socrates define courage the same way ignores two details: first, Socrates coaxes Nicias into giving his own definition of courage (cf. 194d1 with 195a1) and, second , his definition di=ers from what Socrates says in the Protagoras. Socrates there speaks of wisdom rather than of scientific knowledge (cf. 195a1 with 194d5).3 Moreover, in the Laches Nicias not only speaks of knowledge and not wisdom, but he includes knowledge of “emboldening things” as part of the knowledge that is courage, and he says that courage is knowledge of these things “both in war and in all other things” (195a1, emphasis added). Staying within the confines of the Laches, we can discern a glaring di=erence between Nicias’ second (or own) definition and his first (or parroted) account. To say, as Nicias initially does, that the courageous man is wise if he is good is to say only that the goodness of courage is accompanied by wisdom, that is, that courage requires wisdom. This does not necessarily imply, as in Nicias’ later formulation , that courage is some kind of wisdom or knowledge. Another indication that the two...