Courage

Andreia (ἀνδρεία) is courage or bravery — and literally 'manliness', from anēr (andros), 'man'. One of the four cardinal virtues, it is the steadfastness of soul that endures danger, pain, and fear for the sake of what is noble.

The Laches

Plato devotes the Laches to the question 'what is courage?', and characteristically leaves it in aporia. The brave general Laches proposes that courage is standing firm in battle, but Socrates presses him toward something deeper — a knowledge of what truly is and is not to be feared. If courage is at bottom a kind of wisdom, then the virtues begin to converge, as the Socratic thesis that virtue is knowledge implies.

A virtue of the spirited soul

In the Republic courage belongs especially to the spirited part of the soul and to the city's guardians: it is the power that preserves, through pleasures and pains, the right judgment about what should be feared. Aristotle in turn placed it as the mean between cowardice and rashness, its finest form being the readiness to face even death in a noble cause.