Abstract

This work divides the dialogue into its distinct parts, and examines each with an eye to how it advances the argument of the whole. The evident reasoning employed by Socrates and his interlocutors is identified and analyzed. Ambiguities, inconsistencies and other problems of syntax and logic are noted; where possible, suggestions are made for their resolution. ;The Laches is seen generally as a dramatic occasion in which a conventional inquiry into education is supplanted by a Socratic inquiry. While the former operated upon presuppositions about what constitutes virtue and how one acquires virtue, the latter aims to investigate these presuppositions themselves, particularly the first. ;Among aspects in the dialogue receiving substantial attention are the interplay of logos and ergon, which serves as a rich literary motif, and the 'ti esti' question, whose peculiar emergence in the Laches may help significantly in establishing its precise meaning in this dialogue. ;As regards the much sought after answer to 'What is courage?', the answers given by Nicias and Laches are seen to complement each other in a way that suggests that individual virtues are defined in terms of both characteristic action and the "psychic" account of that action. Since all virtues have the same account, however, an attempt to give an account for one that will distinguish it from another is doomed to fail