On Manly Courage: A Study of Plato's "Laches" (review)

128 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:1 JANUARY 1994 improvement of Kleinias at the hands of Socrates and the corruption of Ktesippus at the hands of the two sophists. It also makes sense of the cryptic remark of Socrates at 297D, "But if my Iolaus should come, he would do more harm than good." On the other hand, the activities of Ktesippus could be regarded simply as revenge for the treatment of his favorite in the First Eristic Display, and also as an illustration of the warning issued to the sophists by Socrates at 3o4A "to be careful not to talk in front of a large group; the listeners are likely to master [the eristic technique] right away and give you no credit." Ktesippus is, after all, supporting the side of Socrates in attacking Euthydemus and Dionysodorus; he is not employing eristic to confound or corrupt the young. A striking point in Chance's favor is, however, tucked away in the notes: it is that at Ly.~ 211B-C Ktesippus appears as the teacher of Menexenus, and Menexenus is described as er/st//ms (269). Chance has here opened an intriguing discussion, in which, quite rightly, Repub//r 539B-D also has its place. Chance is particularly good at tracing the chains of "trigger-questions" utilized by the two sophists. I think, however, that he has not altogether thought through what he means by the Shoreyian phrase "mature logic." (Perhaps Shorey did not do so either.) This task would be a fruitful one for some other researcher. If Chance at times displays a certain siege mentality, such an attitude is, regrettably, still something of a necessity. I welcome his book not only as a devoted defense of an important dialogue but also as containing some excellent advice on how to read Plato: "each Platonic dialogue is an adequate account of the subject matter that it treats; as such it is complete and final, and so each work can be read as his last" (2o9). There are, sad to say, no indices. ROSAMOND KENT SPRAGUE Universityof South Carolina Walter T. Schmid. On Manly Courage:A StudyofPlato's"Laches."Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 199u. Pp. xvii + 926. NP. All too frequently readers of Plato's dialogues pay scant attention to Socrates' interlocutors . Infatuated as they rightly are by the strange brilliance of Socrates, they dismiss the other characters as mere "yes-men" or as literary appendages whose purpose is only to enliven the labor of philosophical analysis. Such a truncated view of the dialogues not only fails to do justice to Plato's artistry, but inevitably leads to philosophical myopia as well. Each and every speech in a dialogue is spoken by someone to someone; it takes place in a specific place and time; it is, in short, located firmly within a dramatic context. A full interpretation of the speech, therefore, requires a full understanding of this context and of its speaker. Perhaps no Platonic dialogue offers a pair of speakers whose speeches are more provocatively related to their characters than the Laches. This short piece, whose main question is, What is courage?, features two noted Athenian generals, Laches and Nicias, whose own courage during the Peloponnesian War was (as related by Thucydides ) dramatically problematic. Laches commanded the troops at Mantinea and appar- BOOK REVIEWS 12 9 endy made the disastrous decision to leave the security of an elevated position and fight the Spartans on level ground (V.65-73). Nicias was famous for failing to retreat quickly enough to avoid the utter catastrophe in Sicily. The fact that thesetwo men help constitute this particular conversation is essential to an interpretation of the dialogue. Walter T. Schmid, in On MaNy Courage:A Study ofPlato's "Laches," understands this point well. Schmid says that he aims to correct "the largely ahistorical manner of reading the Platonic dialogues that dominates contemporary scholarship" (196). What he means is that he takes the characters, as well as the definitions of courage that they offer to Socrates, to be instrumental in forming the overall teaching of the dialogue. Other scholars have, of course, commented on Laches and Nicias, but none so extensively and sensitively...