another thing about the Laches

As Josh Shepperd of the University of Wisconsin pointed out to me last night, Plato’s Laches is interesting for its conclusion no less than for its odd beginning (“Socrates, what do you think about practice fights in suits of armor?”).

Namely, the conclusion runs something like this: “Well, I guess we have no idea what courage is. But let’s meet again tomorrow to talk about it some more.” No other such cases in Plato occur to me immediately where an agreement is made to have the discussion all over again, though perhaps I’m overlooking an obvious further example.

The dialogue also has a fairly unique dynamic in the sense that Laches and Nicias start giving each other a pretty hard time, and Socrates sometimes tells one of them to cool down and be nice, and at other times joins forces with one of them against the other. I think Josh is right that this is one of the more interesting of the neglected short dialogues.