From the Beginning to Plato

308 FROM THE BEGINNING TO PLATO
Consider first the Laches. When Laches proposes wise endurance as the
proper definition of courage (192d10–12), Socrates enquires whether he thinks
that those who endure the relevant dangers with the expertise of horsemen, or the
expertise of the sling, or the expertise of the bow, or the expertise of well-divers,
or any other expertise of this sort are more or less courageous than those who
endure without the relevant expertise (193b9–c8). Laches answers that they are
less courageous, and so abandons his definition. The suggestion is that whatever
the proper definition of courage may be, it appears not to be wise endurance
when wisdom is understood as these sorts of expertise. 47 Moreover, when
Socrates turns to Nicias’ definition that courage is knowledge of fearful and
daring things, he asks Nicias whether knowledge of fearful and daring things is
anything other than knowledge of future goods and evils. Nicias responds that it
is not. Next, Socrates asks whether it belongs to the same knowledge to know
future, past and present things. When Nicias answers that it does, Socrates points
out that it follows on Nicias’ view that courage is knowledge of all goods and
evils, which is the whole of virtue and not its part, contrary to Nicias’ initial
claim that courage is part of virtue. Again, whatever we take Socrates’ view to be
concerning the proper definition of courage, the suggestion here seems to be that
in so far as courage is defined as knowledge of the good and the bad it will be
identical to virtue, not a part of it. 48 Virtue, according to Socrates in the Laches,
appears to be knowledge of the good and the bad. Here, then, we have a hint of
Socrates’ answer to the question with which we were left at the end of the second
protreptic of the Euthydemus. The knowledge or expertise that is virtue—that is
necessary to make us happy and fare well—is not a knowledge or expertise like
horsemanship or well-diving, but the knowledge or expertise of the good and the
bad.
Finally, we can turn to the Charmides. The last half of this dialogue consists
of a long, complicated, and often tortuous discussion of Critias’ definition that
temperance is knowledge of oneself (164d3–5). By 173a this definition has been
modified to mean that temperance is knowledge of what one knows and does not
know (172c9), and as Socrates conceded earlier, life in accordance with that
knowledge would be free from error (171d6–172a3). Now Socrates relates a
dream in which temperance—understood as knowledge of what one knows and
does not know—rules (archoi he sōphrosunē). He grants that in such a situation
one would live according to knowledge and so be free from error, but he
wonders whether one would fare well and be happy (eu an prattoimen kai
eudaimonoimen). Ultimately, Socrates and Critias agree that one would not. After
denying that it is the knowledge of draught-playing (petteutikon), calculation
(logistikon), or health— presumably medicine—that makes one fare well or be
happy, Critias asserts that it is knowledge of the good and the bad (174b10). This
leads Socrates to ask whether the doctor is any less successful in producing
health or the shoemaker is any less successful at making shoes when knowledge
of the good and the bad is lacking. Critias responds that they are not and Socrates
concludes that it is the production of these things ‘well and beneficially’ that is