According to the Socratic maxim, every evil action is actually ignorance, because no one
“does evil voluntarily” (Protagoras 358b).
We are so accustomed to refer the problem of action to the will
that it is not easy for us to accept that the classical world thought
it, by contrast, almost exclusively in terms of knowledge. As has
been effectively observed, one could say that for the Greek person
“as soon as the good is known, freedom of action, which is for us
in the last analysis the decisive thing, is abolished.” In the Gorgias, Plato can thus write that the
intention expressed by the verb boulesthai is not directed toward
action, but toward its object, and that “a man doesn’t want this
thing that he is doing, but the thing for the sake of which he’s
doing it” , which as such can be nothing other than a
good, real or supposed .
Action is always secondary with respect to its end, and the
meaning of the word boulesthai, which is most often translated
as “to desire, to will,” is more similar to an intellectual judgment
than to an act of free will. And it is not only for love of paradox
that Gorgias’s Palamedes, in the imaginary trial brought against
him by Odysseus, defends himself by affirming that, if he is as
wise as people claim him to be, he cannot have committed the
crime of which he is accused because, if he had committed it,
then he could not be considered wise. The principle from which guilt springs—if one can speak of guilt—is not
“evil will,” but ignorance. People do not act because they want to
act, but because they know what is good for them, and what they
know, they can also do.
https://anarch.cc/uploads/giorgio-agamben/karman.pdf
