Socratic Dialogue: Definition Of Andreia

Laches is a 'definition' Dialogue, which aims to give definition of andreia (courage). Socrates and other characters scrutinize a number of possible definitions of courage as part of pursuit to discover that excellence is an introduction to an enquiry into how it might be taught and who will be qualified to teach it. The latter stages are never reached as it is characteristic of Socratic dialogues that the definitions all fail and discussion ends in confusion. At the start of the dialogue there is an extensive 'introduction', one which has a purpose to explore a problem stated by Lysimachus which prompts and underlies the dialectical search. Socrates demands the conceptual refocusing of this problem by changing the course of dialogue’s flow; which gives way to dialectic. …show more content…
The introduction (i.e. the material which precedes the elenchos) extends, in Laches, to almost one half of the Dialogue which has a number of ramifications for the dramatic structure: there has been a lot taken into account for the development of the 'problem'-the need to find a suitable education for the potentially idle youths, the Socrates' concern of the