Laches (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide)
By SparkNotes
()
About this ebook
Making the reading experience fun!
SparkNotes Philosophy Guides are one-stop guides to the great works of philosophy–masterpieces that stand at the foundations of Western thought. Inside each Philosophy Guide you’ll find insightful overviews of great philosophical works of the Western world.
Read more from Spark Notes
As You Like It (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King Lear: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bird by Bird (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Richard III (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Macbeth: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Autobiography of Malcom X (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Tempest (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Fear Shakespeare Audiobook: Romeo & Juliet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Measure for Measure (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Much Ado About Nothing (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNo Fear Shakespeare Audiobook: Julius Caesar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Romeo and Juliet SparkNotes Literature Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Outsiders (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRomeo and Juliet: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Merchant of Venice: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Winter's Tale (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Years of Solitude (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwo Gentlemen of Verona (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAtlas Shrugged SparkNotes Literature Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMerchant of Venice (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dune (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsComedy of Errors (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tempest: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Henry V (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Raisin in the Sun (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNo Fear Shakespeare Audiobook: Othello Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Richard II (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5East of Eden (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRomeo and Juliet (No Fear Shakespeare Graphic Novels) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKing Lear (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Laches (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide)
Related ebooks
Meno, Parmenides, and Theaetetus (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Apology (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPlato (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsConversations with Socrates (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Phaedo (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEuthyphro (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAntiquity's Greatest Philosophers: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsConversations with Socrates (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Trial and Death of Socrates (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading): Four Dialogues Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCharmides (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Symposium (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTimaeus and Critias Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGorgias Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Plato - Quotes Collection: Biography, Achievements And Life Lessons Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Neoplatonic Socrates Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGale Researcher Guide for: An Overview of Socrates and His Work Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSocrates - Quotes Collection: Biography, Achievements And Life Lessons Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRepublic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLysis (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMeno (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsProtagoras (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSocratic Discourses Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSophist: "Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment" Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Laches: "For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Plato: Literary Analysis: Philosophical compendiums, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPlato and Aristotle: The Lives and Legacies of the Master and Pupil Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Republic (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGorgias: "The greatest wealth is to live content with little" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLegendary Philosophers: The Life and Philosophy of Plato Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTheaetetus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Book Notes For You
Untamed by Glennon Doyle: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by John Gottman: Conversation Starters Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Summary of Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of How to Know a Person By David Brooks: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summary of Ichiro Kishimi's and Fumitake Koga's book: The Courage to Be Disliked: Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence | Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Midnight Library: A Novel by Matt Haig: Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery by Brianna Wiest : Discussion Prompts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInvisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy: Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The 5 AM Club Summary: Business Book Summaries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summary of Young Forever by Mark Hyman M.D.: The Secrets to Living Your Longest, Healthiest Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerican Dirt (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel by Jeanine Cummins: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related categories
Reviews for Laches (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide)
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Laches (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) - SparkNotes
Context
Background Information
Plato's dialogues, written twenty-three hundred years ago, form the foundation of western thought. Throughout ancient times, the middle ages, the renaissance, as well as in contemporary philosophy, Plato has served as a guiding light, exemplifying what philosophy is or ought to be. Plato is considered by most philosophers to be the father of the subject, having invented the philosophies of religion, science, aesthetics, metaphysics, love, ethics, political theory, and epistemology.
Plato is unique for being one of the first thinkers to conceive of philosophy as being its own discipline with its own distinctive intellectual method. He believed that since philosophy scrutinized presuppositions and assumptions that other subjects merely took for granted, it alone could grant true understanding. Philosophy, for Plato, was a tool for discovering realms of objects, inaccessible to the ordinary senses. Plato used philosophy to understand organized systems of truths, which go far beyond our common sense and everyday observations. In his dialogues, even when Plato does not solve a particular problem entirely, he has often laid out a philosophical framework, which furthers discussions of such problems even today.
It is of course impossible to understand the philosophy of Plato without understanding his teacher, Socrates. Socrates is not only the logical philosopher figure in almost of all of Plato's dialogues, but he was a real philosopher as well. All of the things that we know of Socrates, the philosopher and the man, are pieces of information that have been handed down to us by his students, most notably Plato and a philosopher named Xenophon. Socrates himself never wrote any of his own philosophy down but preferred to focus on pedagogy and was exclusively a teacher of students. (Interestingly, Socrates's own teacher, Cratylus, was so focused on his own thoughts of wisdom that he even refused to speak!)
Socrates began his quest for knowledge originally because the Oracle at Delphi told him that he was the wisest man in Greece. Socrates claimed that this was impossible because he felt that he knew absolutely nothing. To discover what the Oracle possibly could have meant, Socrates traveled around Athens speaking to wise men so that he could see how wise he was in comparison. Upon speaking to these men, Socrates realized that what the Oracle must have meant is that whereas he knew that he knew nothing, these other men were often mistaken and did not even know that they knew nothing. They were convinced that they had knowledge and were therefore less wise than Socrates. Socrates made it is life's work to make others wiser by revealing to them that in fact they have no knowledge. This is the task of the Socrates character that we see portrayed in the Laches. He asks questions of his friends to show them that they in fact cannot answer his questions, thereby deepening their wisdom.
Historical Context
Plato lived a relatively long life, even according to modern standards. We know that he was born about 427 B.C.E. and died at the age of eighty or eighty-one about 347 B.C.E. Born into a prominent Athenian family, Plato was expected to pursue a career in politics. However, after the trial and execution of his mentor, Socrates, at which Plato was present, Plato became disgusted with Athenian political life, and devoted himself instead to teaching and philosophical inquiry. To that end, he founded the Academy around 385 B.C.E., which counted the famous thinker Aristotle among its students. In addition to his dialogues, the Academy was Plato's great contribution to philosophy and civilization, lasting 912 years until 527 A.D., and serving as the prototype for the Western university system.
Socrates himself lived amidst a time of war and transition. Born in 469 B.C.E. and executed in 399 B.C.E., Socrates lived in Athens during the transfer of power from Athens to Sparta, following Athens's defeat in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 B.C.E) With this war, in