Soccer Dads of Antiquity: Laches 178a-194b

Laches opens as two fathers declare that they want their sons to turn out better than they themselves did, so they seek advice from two illustrious generals, Nicias and Laches. The generals then enlist Socrates’s help to determine the best plan for the boys, in particular whether they should take lessons in fighting in armor. Socrates asks what the goal would be of such lessons. The group eventually decides that the boys’ character development is what matters most, in particular their ability to develop bravery. At this point, Socrates asks the seemingly innocent question, What, then, is bravery? The philosophical gloves come off as Socrates proceeds to grill the two generals about this central wartime virtue. It is tempting to skip straight to Laches’s attempt to define bravery, which begins halfway through the dialogue. But if we translate the work’s initial question into modern-day terms, the reason for this suspenseful buildup becomes much clearer. Thinking broadly, we might ask why parents encourage sports teams and music lessons when it is unlikely that their children will later play sports or music professionally. What are students supposed to get out of these extracurriculars?

Such questions drive the first half of Laches. Nicias points out that fighting in armor along with horsemanship and gymnastics are all fitting for a free citizen (Greek, eleutheros; Latin, liberalis; 182a). Greece was a slave-owning society, so he means this literally. What education does a free person need in order to succeed as a citizen? Side by side with this discussion of freedom is a wide-ranging discussion of whether the art of fighting in armor is worthwhile, whether it is an “art” in the first place, and stepping even further back, what even is an art? The Greek term for “art” here is technē (185b), from which we get the English terms technique and technical. The Greek refers to a body of knowledge with some practical application; its Latin equivalent is ars. Combined, these two terms come down to us by way of their Latin forms as the artes liberales. In other words, the group is trying to figure out whether fighting in armor has a place in the liberal arts.⁵

How do we answer this question? We can start by returning to Socrates’s question: What is any of this training for? As we arrive at the second half of the dialogue, Socrates turns to Laches and Nicias and invites them to define bravery. Given that Plato wrote in Greek, the question is not how to define the English word bravery. The Greek term here is andreia, which literally means “manliness” and can be translated as “bravery,” “courage,” and even “valor” (indicating a strong military connection).⁶ But the characters in the dialogue want a substantial definition of the thing, not just a dictionary definition of the word. To take a modern example, anyone reading this book knows what the word plastic means and can use the word accurately in a sentence. But if you actually want to make some plastic, you need to find a chemist to give a substantial definition. Likewise, if you want your children to be brave, you should find an expert on bravery, someone who is actually knowledgeable about the subject.

Laches is the first to take the bait. Who better, after all, to talk about bravery than a general? A liberal-arts theme enters the dialogue here, as Laches himself talks about “the truly musical person” whose words are in harmony with his deeds (188d-e). As it proceeds, the dialogue follows a pattern that we will see frequently in Plato’s Socratic dialogues. Laches’s first attempt to define bravery, “keeping one’s post” (190e), is dismissed as merely an example. It might be a good example, but it is too narrow to capture every instance of bravery. Since Socrates might have taken this example a bit more literally than intended, Laches takes a second pass, defining bravery as “endurance of the soul” (192c). This is problematic, though, as it covers instances of mere stubbornness and addiction. While Laches’s first definition was too narrow, this second one is too broad.

To accommodate these counterexamples, Laches presents a third attempt: “wise endurance” (192d). Here, Socrates notes that there are times when less wisdom actually makes someone braver. Experts might be wiser about a field, but would not the novice who steps up in spite of his ignorance show more bravery? Imagine two scenarios where a pilot has a heart attack, and someone needs to land the plane. In one scenario, a passenger on the plane happens to be a pilot, so she steps into the cockpit and takes over. In the other scenario, no one on board knows how to fly, but a passenger steps into the cockpit and follows instructions radioed from the ground. Surely this second person is showing considerably more bravery. But still, what is bravery? In the dialogue, Laches admits defeat.

While we have not yet reached a viable definition of bravery, we have made some progress in narrowing down what a viable definition would look like. Socrates’s process of cross-examination (elenchos) often follows a pattern where candidate definitions are shot down as being too narrow, too broad, and then self-contradictory in some mind-bending way. Given how Laches goes wrong, we can infer that Socrates is looking for something that covers all instances of bravery and nothing else, while getting at its real nature, not some superficial quality of it. That is a daunting task, but if we want to raise our children to be successful, should we not expect their teachers to say clearly what success even means? Again, the gym context is helpful. Some today think that going to the gym will make them fit, but fit can mean a lot of things. It is only by specifying concrete goals and laying out plans to pursue them that people make real progress in training. Laches invites such questions by thinking about fighting in armor, and it is but a small step from these to questioning the purpose and methods of education systems as a whole. A clear, coherent explanation of educational practice is exactly what Laches has failed to provide. Having reached perplexity (aporia), Laches hands the baton to Nicias.

Bravery vs. Virtue: Laches 194c-201c

Nicias has more experience with Socrates and his elenchos. When he is asked to take over the attempt to define bravery, he runs with an idea that he has heard from Socrates in the past, that bravery is a kind of wisdom (194d): in particular, “wisdom of the fearful and the hopeful in war and every other situation” (194e-195a). The Greek text suggests harmful things that should be avoided and daring moves that should be attempted. Thus, bravery is knowledge of how to act in the future. This seems promising: a brave person knows which risks to take, which to avoid, and she acts accordingly.

Socrates probes deeper and gets Nicias to admit that fearful things are simply future ills, and hopeful things are merely future goods. But if someone knows about goods in the future, Socrates argues, he should know about them in the present and the past as well. If the goods in question are health, harvests, and victory, then doctors, farmers, and generals can talk intelligently about such things existing at any time. It turns out, therefore, that the person who has knowledge of future goods and ills has knowledge of all goods and ills (198b-199d). This is a problem for Nicias. In setting out ground rules for their search, Laches stipulated that bravery is merely one part of virtue (190c-d), and Nicias agreed (198a). But, as we near the end of the dialogue, Socrates has shown that Nicias’s definition, knowledge of the fearful and the hopeful, makes bravery the whole of virtue: a person with such knowledge would be moderate when dealing with present goods, wise when reflecting on goods from any time, and so on. Since such knowledge cannot be both a part and the whole of virtue, they conclude that they have not in fact discovered bravery.⁷ At this point, everyone is perplexed, Socrates included (200e). Laches closes as the group resolves to go find someone else who can teach them what bravery is (201a-c).

We may rightly ask what the point of Laches’s rambling discussion is. Socrates’s examination of Laches and Nicias failed to turn up a viable definition of bravery. In the process, though, we got a clearer sense of what a viable definition would look like. It is not just a list of brave deeds or even criteria for determining if an action is brave or not. Socrates wants to look under the hood: What is it that makes brave people act as they do? The right kind of knowledge sounds like a pretty good candidate. As Nicias said, it is an idea he has heard Socrates himself talk about. Just as the historical Socrates never wrote down his thinking, from what we can tell he also never defended his own theories, but merely questioned other people’s. That said, he seems to have flirted with certain ideas. One of them, which turns up in multiple dialogues, is that all virtues are a form of knowledge.⁸

The Greek term for “virtue,” aretē, literally means “excellence.” In slightly old-fashioned English we could say it is a virtue of a wicking shirt that it keeps you cool in summer. Wicking shirts are good at being shirts. When applied to humans, virtue is being good at being human. If we were to ask someone on the streets of ancient Athens to point out human excellence, they would likely name an Olympic victor.⁹ The two fathers at the start of Laches are looking for their sons to excel, to live full and flourishing human lives. That might include what we today would think of as being moral individuals, but it is larger than that. The question is, Can we define virtues clearly enough so that we can nurture them in our young?

The particular account of virtue that Nicias and Socrates flirt with, that it is a form of knowledge, has counterparts in current psychology. While Freud and his followers hold that many of our actions are shaped by subconscious forces, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) seeks to establish mental health by aligning the reality of situations with how we consciously think about them through inner self-talk.¹⁰ We all have bad days, make mistakes, and lose games. But do we respond by throwing in the towel and deciding “I am worthless” or do we look more clearly at the scenario, saying, “I did not get enough sleep last night. I made mistakes in the final round,” and move on with our lives? Practitioners of CBT do not usually talk in terms of wisdom, yet they share the basic idea with Socrates: life would be a lot better if we could think clearly and realistically about challenges we have to face. This parallel also makes both views susceptible to the same challenge: Is clear thinking all we need to get our lives right? Freud did not think so. And, as we will see, neither did Plato or Aristotle.

Failing Forward

The payoff of Laches’s failed inquiry lies in how characters respond to that failure. Psychologist Carol Dweck invites us to think about such things in terms of mindsets.¹¹ People with a fixed mindset assume that intelligence is something that you have or you do not. Such people see failure as evidence of intelligence that is already present or absent. They view the world in black and white. Because of this, they see every challenge as very high-stakes. (Think about that from a CBT perspective for a second.) People with a growth mindset, by contrast, assume that intelligence can be improved through hard work. They are thus much more likely to view challenges and failure as an opportunity to grow.

Laches puts mindsets on display in how different characters respond to perplexity. Laches, who is not familiar with Socrates’s style of inquiry (188e), starts out with what seems just the right attitude: “Therefore, Socrates, I offer myself for you to teach and to refute as you wish” (189b). This could be the motto of a school. But once Socrates has finished refuting (elenchō) him, Laches just gets annoyed and admits to being overcome with the “love of victory” (194a-b). The Greek term, philonikia (a distant cousin of Nike shoes), stands in contrast to philosophia, the love of wisdom. Once Nicias takes over, Laches sits on the sideline interrupting periodically with petty snipes (195a-b, 196a-b, 197c, 199e-200a). Nicias’s response is that Laches, since he has failed to define bravery, just wants to drag Nicias down with him (195a-b, 200a-b).

Nicias, by contrast, has dealt with Socrates before. He knows what they are getting into, and that no matter what it is they start out talking about, Socrates will make sure they themselves will eventually become the object of scrutiny (188c). He says he even takes pleasure in Socrates pointing out when he is wrong (188a-b). Unlike Laches, Nicias has the same attitude at the end as at the beginning. When Socrates rips “knowledge of the fearful and hopeful” to bits, Nicias shrugs it off, saying that they have talked enough for the day, and they can come back later and fix whatever needs fixing in their views (200b).

What should we make of the contrast between Laches and Nicias? While Plato certainly was not reading modern psychology, it is tempting to see Nicias’s easygoing demeanor and apparent pleasure in getting his ideas shot down as an instance of growth mindset. Laches, by contrast, flip-flops between brazen confidence and petty sniping. A fixed mindset would explain this: by trading in black-and-white terms, Laches’s stakes are ratcheted up too high. What Nicias sees as a welcome challenge, Laches sees as a threat to his intelligence.

And then there is Socrates. In this work, as in several others, he claims to be perplexed and ignorant of the answers to the questions he poses (186d-e, 200e). A surprising number of scholars do not believe him. Surely, no one would commit his life to surgically pointing out his own and others’ confusion about life’s most important questions! Such scholars assume that Socrates has the right answers in mind, and they set out to find them by reading between the lines. My friend and fellow cycling enthusiast Gareth Matthews has pushed back. In Socratic Perplexity and the Nature of Philosophy, he analyzes several varieties and benefits of perplexity found in Plato’s Socratic works. Laches ends as the assembled group of grown men resolves to come back tomorrow to start working on finding themselves a teacher (200b-201c). Building on Gary’s work, I suggest that this closing scene presents Socrates as a model of growth mindset whose enthusiasm for further inquiry is simply contagious. In the final analysis, even if Socrates might not have taught the group what bravery is, surely he has taught them to care about virtue.¹²

How are schools doing in these regards today? Does the system of standardized testing in our K–12 schools encourage students to embrace failure as an opportunity for growth or to avoid it as evidence that intelligence is lacking? It is ironic that students who come out on top of standardized tests can come out on the bottom when it comes to growth mindset. This has led to a spate of books. In Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life, William Deresiewicz recounts how he left his position teaching English at Yale because he was so fed up with risk-averse and unimaginative students. If the ability to take intellectual risks, fail, and bounce back is necessary for authentic and useful learning, why is our school system rewarding students for doing just the opposite?

One remedy for this might sit in Laches’s opening question about fighting in armor. Playing a sport gives ample opportunity to fail, dust yourself off, and go back into the game. In my experience, student athletes often excel at receiving criticism of their academic work, admitting that they have room for improvement, and digging into revisions. Despite what popular wisdom would tell us, this seems to be an instance when the smart kids have something to learn from the athletes.¹³