At the beginning of Laches, Socrates, Laches, Nicias, Melesias, and Lysiamachus are gathered to discuss whether the sons of Melesias and Lysiamachus should learn to fight in armor . Socrates argues that Melesias and Lysiamachus are truly concerned with "the question of how virtue might be added to the souls of their sons to make them better" (190b). The first step in answering this question is to determine what exactly virtue is (190c). Socrates, however, thinks that trying to determine what virtue is might be "too heavy a task", and so he suggests that they first check whether or not any of them have any knowledge of part of virtue and, because the purpose is to Determine whether or not the sons of Melesias and Lysiamachus should fight in armor, Socrates decides that the part of virtue they are investigating should be courage (190d). Socrates gives the following reasoning in response to Nicias' argument that courage is the knowledge of the fearful: Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayCourage is the knowledge of the fearful (195a)Courage is part of virtue. (198a) Fear is the expectation of future harm. (198b) Knowledge of future evil is the same as knowledge of present and past evil. (198d) Courage is therefore the knowledge of past, present and future evil. (199c) Anyone with knowledge of past, present, and future evil cannot lack courage, temperance, justice, or any other element of virtue. (199e) Knowledge of past, present, and future evil describes virtue as a whole, not just a single part of it. (199e) Courage is not the knowledge of fearful things. Socrates begins by defining fear: “fear is not produced by evils that have occurred or are occurring but by those that are anticipated. Because fear is the expectation of future evil” (198b). In other words, when we are afraid, it is because we anticipate that something bad will happen to us in the future. Along the same lines, fear of something is the expectation that something bad will happen to you in the future. If a person is afraid of roller coasters, then he expects that something bad will happen to him if he rides one, maybe he will fall. Using this definition of fear, Socrates asserts that knowledge of future evil is the same as knowledge of future evil. present and past evil. To explain what he means, Socrates says about the relationship between medicine and health that "there is no other art linked to the past, the present and the future than that of medicine” (198d). The important thing to note here is the use of the word "art", which implies technical knowledge, an ability, as opposed to knowledge of facts. From this perspective, then, a person's technical ability does not distinguish between things that have happened in the past, those that are happening in the present, and those that will happen in the future. Knowledge thus conceived gives courage to the knowledge of the past, the present and the future. future evil (199c), or “practically all goods and all evils combined” (199d). Continuing his argument, Socrates says: "Then a man endowed with this kind of knowledge seems to deviate from virtue in any respect if he really knows, in the case of all goods whatever 'they are, what they are, what they will be and what they have been, and in the same way. in case of illness? (199d). In other words, a person who possesses courage (knowledge of "virtually all good and evil combined").