 There are at least some indications that Plato already saw the need for a holistic conception of the good life when he composed his ‘Socratic’ dialogues. At the end of the Laches, he lets Nicias founder in his attempt to define courage as the ‘knowledge of what is to be feared and what should inspire confidence’. Nicias is forced to admit that such knowledge presupposes the knowledge of good and bad tout court (La. 199c–e). In a different but related way, Socrates alludes to a comprehensive knowledge at the end of the Charmides, in his final refutation of Critias’ definition of moderation as ‘knowledge of knowledge’, by urging that this type of knowledge is insufficient for the happy life without the knowledge of good and bad (Chrm. 174b–e). But pointing out what is wrong and missing in particular arguments is a far cry from a philosophical conception of the good and the bad in human life. The fact that Plato insists on the shortcomings of a purely ‘technical’ conception of virtue suggests that he was at least facing up to these problems. The discussion of the ‘unity of the virtues’ in the Protagoras – regardless of the perhaps intentionally unsatisfactory structure of his proofs – confirms that Plato realized that a critique of the inconsistencies implied in conventional values is insufficient to justify such a unitary point of view. But the evidence that Plato already had a definitive conception of the good life in mind when he wrote his earlier dialogues remains, at most, indirect.