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Review Of ' The Laches '

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The Laches begins with Lysimachus saying, “You have seen the man fighting in armor, Nicias and Laches” (Laches, 178A) to his two friends Nicias and Laches with his third friend Melesias. He has invited these men to his home to ask them what they think about training their sons, Thucydides and Aristides, with this method so as they are “concerned about the sort of training that would make the best men of them.” (Laches, 179B). Lysimachus and Melesias are worried about how their sons are perceived in society as they have no achievements or merits of worth yet while Nicias and Laches are noted generals that are held in high esteem. Nicias is “ready to take part in it” (Laches, 180A) and so is Laches but he recommends that they bring Socrates …show more content…

This all stems from his experience with people who have used this form of training are cowardly and so this trait would be passed on to the youth, in other words he believes it to be a waste of time. After this Lysimachus asks Socrates for his stance after hearing the two sides of the argument. Socrates then tells him he has no expertise in this field and asks the same to Melesias. Melesias states that he would head the advice of the person who has trained in this field and that the same person’s vote would have as much worth as all four of their votes combined. Socrates agrees to this as he says a good decision is based on the knowledge behind the choice. This pushes him to proceed to find counsel on the situation at hand as they are discussing the most important topic, the future. This leads to Socrates discussing that they should firmly know which sort of art are they searching for before they find someone to help them. This leads to Nicias stating that he believes they are talking about if the boys should be trained in the armor or not and Socrates states that then they are talking about two topics as there are prior areas of art they need to discuss. This would all surmount to him stating that the most important part they have forgotten to mention of the knowledge is that the end is just as important as the way you got there. This means the teacher should know the

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