Alcibiades’ anoia: one man’s folly and damage to the city (between Thucydides and Plato)

Abstract

According to Plato, great natures may develop both great virtues and great vices, but education can help choose the right moral and political behaviour. Vices are soul diseases and they also include anoia. This vice is caused by amathia and can affect a single man and a city too. Plato’s description of the young, rich, and beautiful man refusing philosophy, in the Republic, has been rightly connected to Alcibiades, but also Laws 716a-b might be evoking him. Particularly, this passage seems to have been inspired by Thucydides’ famous portrait of the Athenian politician. The historian depicts him by means of two characteristics also described by the philosopher, youth and anoia. This paper investigates the possible connection between Plato and Thucydides and the relevance of the conceptual pair from a political point of view.