Category: Ring of Gyges

Glaucon and Adeimantus, both Plato’s brothers, were seeking to come to a conclusion on whether justice is better than injustice. The Republic book II begins with Glaucon arguing against Socrates’ position of justice. Glaucon argued that by nature humans are selfish and unjust, and that justice is not good in itself; instead justice is a consequential good (it is only valued for the beneficial consequences). Glaucon told the story of The Ring of Gyges to illustrate his point that justice is always self-interested. Adeimantus supplemented Glaucon’s argument and he further claimed that people are only just because of the benefits it brings; for example, being just gives you a good reputation.

At the start of the Republic book II, Glaucon stated that there are three types of good; the first category is good desired for its own sake (intrinsic goods), for example, happiness. The second category is goods that are desired for their own sake and also for their consequences. The third category is consequential goods (instrumental goods), for example, medicine. Socrates said that he believed justice falls into the second category; according to him justice is good intrinsically and instrumentally. However, Glaucon said many people would argue justice falls into the third category:

It is normally put into the painful category, of goods, which we pursue for the rewards they bring and in the hope of a good reputation, but which in themselves are to be avoided as unpleasant.

Glaucon argued that, by nature, doing injustice is good but the law can force you to act against that. According to Glaucon, justice is naturally bad and injustice is naturally good. No one willingly is just; therefore if you gave people the power to be unjust without suffering any penalty then they would all do it. He then went on to say that by nature we all have these selfish desires; we all want what is best for us. Consequently we will want to commit injustices and not worry about what is good for other people but simply to pursue our own natural good. He argued that we only do the right thing because we have to; anybody with the power to do otherwise would in fact do otherwise-in other words, they would eventually act unjustly.

Glaucon told the story of The Ring of Gyges in an attempt to illustrate his point that justice has a “relative value due to our inability to do wrong.”

Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia. He found a ring, which turned him invisible when he twisted it onto his finger. Gyges used this power of invisibility to commit unjust acts; he seduced the queen and then worked with her to create a plan to kill the king, and take over the kingdom. Because the ring made him invisible, Gyges was protected from the consequences of his actions.

Glaucon then went on to propose a thought experiment; he said if two of these rings existed and we gave one ring to a just man and the other ring to an unjust man, then they would both proceed to do unjust things. If the just man also did become unjust when given the ring, then it would prove Glaucon’s point that people are not just out of choice; justice does not serve us personally and we would always do the wrong thing if we had the chance. Glaucon was challenging the intrinsic value of justice.

If you had the power to do whatever you wanted with no consequences and without punishment, everybody would choose to be unjust and gratify their own desires, no one would worry about whether they are being just or unjust. The story of The Ring of Gyges tells us that if we had this sort of power no one would be able to be trusted and therefore, it shows us that justice is always self-interested and thus really not justice but a form of injustice.

Glaucon concluded his speech by saying that the unjust man will be rewarded and respected, whereas the just man will be wretched. Glaucon said that many people would argue that the unjust person would ultimately benefit more, as the life of the unjust man is better than the life of a just man. Everybody seems to keeps up the hypocrisy of praising justice because they are all afraid of suffering injustice. The real reason people praise justice is not because they actually believe in it; they praise just people to keep up the pretence.

Adeimantus then went on to bolster Glaucon’s argument. Unlike Glaucon who was very much focused on the individual and innovative arguments against justice, Adeimantus was much more concerned with the community, education, and broader opinions of justice and how it affects people. Adeimantus, much like Glaucon, said that when people try to praise justice, they do not praise justice itself; they praise the good consequences and honour that comes with it. Adeimantus wanted to look at the arguments in favour of justice.

In other words, parents tell their children to be just, but what they focus on is not that justice is good for its own sake. Instead, parents tell their children to be just because they will have a good reputation; people practice justice for the sake of the consequences, for the sake of reputation and the good things that come from the reputation. In addition to gaining a good reputation, Adeimantus said that people are just because they fear the punishment in the afterlife. People do not act just because they think justice is good, but because they believe the gods will reward them for being just. Hence, this suggests that justice is self-interested. It is stated that “the unjust and the irreligious they plunge into some sort of mud in the underworld.” Therefore, according to Adeimantus, this suggests that justice is self-interested as people may act just because they want to be rewarded in the afterlife, and fear punishment from the gods.

Adeimantus is arguing that if there are gods and they care about people, they can be persuaded by sacrifices; in other words people can seek forgiveness from the gods even if they have been unjust. In addition, he says if there are no gods, we may as well be unjust. Either way injustice wins.

Adeimantus is saying that no one really has any respect for justice. Gyges’ ring implies that living a just life is difficult, and if you could get away with being unjust then you would live a better life as Gyges went on to rule the kingdom. Therefore, Adeimantus’ argument tells us that justice is, in a way, a form of injustice as people only act justly because they know they will get a good reputation, or be rewarded by the gods in the afterlife.

In conclusion, it is clear that the story of The Ring of Gyges is significant in the Republic book II as the ring is connected with injustice because it tempted Gyges and gave him the power to do as he pleased. The ring takes away consequences for you and Glaucon seemed to be arguing that if we took away all of the consequences for our actions then people would satisfy every desire; if we could break the rules and get away with it, we would. The story of The Ring of Gyges raises the point that people will most likely act unjust when unobserved, as this seems to be a rational choice. According to Glaucon, only a fool would act morally when unobserved; his actions would be seen as irrational, as people tend to do right only when they cannot get away with doing wrong.

Glaucon believed that justice is something like an arrangement we come to. It is only valuable because it keeps a certain order and security. The reason why we have systems of justice is only because we want to keep people who would commit injustice, and abuse the rules, out. Therefore, he is claiming that justice itself is really a form of self-interested injustice.

Glaucon also stated that by nature people are unjust; for example, if you gave a just person a ring, which made you invisible, they would instantly go out and be unjust because although the law can coerce them to act according to the law out of fear of punishment, it cannot convince them that what is natural is unnatural.

According to Adeimantus, people do not value justice itself; instead, they value the reputation and reward that comes with being just. If people only act justly out of fear, then this shows that justice is purely self-interested, and thus, not really justice, but a form of injustice.

Both Glaucon’s and Adeimantus’ arguments suggest that justice is desirable so you can make sure injustice does not happen to you; so, it appears to be the case that people act justly because they are motivated by selfish reasons. The story of Gyges’ ring bolsters both of their arguments because it tells us that people only act justly out of fear of being found out and punished. Therefore, people act justly for selfish reasons, for example, for a good reputation. Thus, Glaucon and Adeimantus’ arguments suggest that no one acts just willingly, and that justice is always self-intereted.

Given the fantastic premise of this myth, we are able to construct a thought experiment to test out the virtue of the two types of human beings: just and unjust. Do they share something deeper in common, on the basis of their shared human nature?

Glaucon posits that to possess the ring of power is to have the difference between justice and injustice annihilated. No man, be he just or unjust, would be able to maintain the charade of socially-constructed justice any longer. Once he possesses the ring, he would be compelled to reject the social contract of “justice” which he had only accepted earlier as a necessary evil:

“Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right.”

The ring of Gyges, then, is the thought experiment that would prove that absolute power corrupts absolutely. And yet we must ask, is this thought experiment successful? Is there any instance in which it might fail? Glaucon observes:

“If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another’s, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another’s faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice.”

In other words, in evaluating the thought experiment’s success, we need to be cautious of how we may be speaking or thinking in the presence of others. Accordingly, the results of the experiment could be skewed or distorted by the desire to appear to others as a just person. We must keep this in mind, and inquire of ourselves on the deepest interior level, whether or not the thought experiment exposes in our individual self a divided nature. Even if we are unprepared to make the admission of hypocrisy to others, we are invited to make it to our self, at least if we think the common conception of justice, as Glaucon outlined it in his prefatory remarks, is true.

Glaucon proposes that we conduct the thought experiment in its purest possible form in order to gain the truth about human nature that we are asking. In other words, for the sake of the argument of the thought experiment, we should posit “that in the perfectly unjust man we must assume the most perfect injustice”; so too with the just man placed at the side of the unjust man in our thought experiment:

“And at his side let us place the just man in his nobleness and simplicity, wishing, as Aeschylus says, to be and not to seem good. There must be no seeming, for if he seem to be just he will be honoured and rewarded, and then we shall not know whether he is just for the sake of justice or for the sake of honours and rewards; therefore, let him be clothed in justice only, and have no other covering; and he must be imagined in a state of life the opposite of the former. Let him be the best of men, and let him be thought the worst; then he will have been put to the proof; and we shall see whether he will be affected by the fear of infamy and its consequences. And let him continue thus to the hour of death; being just and seeming to be unjust. When both have reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the other of injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the two.”

In short, we have two roads placed before us. One is the road travelled by the just man, the other the road of the unjust. The destination each man reaches is the opposite of what he really is. The destination is seeming; and when it is reached, the truth about being is obscured. We are then invited to ask: would you rather seem to be just, or to be just?

All that the ring of power does is to sharpen the question. The ring allows us to posit the scenario in which the seeming is entirely opposite to the being:

The virtue of the just man is totally hidden. No one sees his justice when it is invisible; so what good is it?

And the vice of the unjust man is totally hidden. No one sees his injustice when it is invisible; so what evil is it?

In short, the ring invites us to inquire into the truth about justice, which seems to be useless in the face of power. To whatever extent that power is gained, to that same extent the utility of justice is lost. Power unleashes the truth about human nature, according to Glaucon’s thought experiment, at least if we accept the ugly thought that power makes justice obsolete to the extent that it liberates us from the social contract constraints imposed on us by the power of other people.

But the key to resolving the puzzle generated by this disturbing thought experiment is found in the difference between peoples’ inner lives and outer lives. To the extent that one’s inner life is different from one’s outer life, then to that same extent the ring of power may vividly highlight the difference. If one’s inner life is concealed, by being at odds with one’s outer life, then the ring of power is the lucid thought experiment that renders visible that contrast.

The thought experiment breaks down, however, if there exists a man for whom there is no divided self. For this man, his inner life is no different from the life he leads on the outside. For such a man, the ring of power poses no threat, because it will make absolutely no difference with respect to how he will live his life. In his case, he has been living his life in harmony—the transparent harmony between his inner and outer self—all along.

The ring of power, then, is a mythical tale that in fact turns out to be true. At least, it is true for anyone who lives a divided life, concealing an inner life that is in any way contrasted with his outer life.

In other words, we all possess the ring of power already: it is the ability to lie; to conceal; to have an inner life that is not fully shown on display in one’s outer life.

But consider the example of Socrates. Socrates is no divided self, i.e., someone showing something different on the outside than on the inside. The ultimate Socratic irony, testifies Plato, is that there was no man more just than Socrates, and yet he was condemned as if he were unjust.

To conclude the thought experiment, then, you must look to Socrates and then you must answer the question about your own life. Do you wish to continue living as a divided self, acting like a Gyges with your ring of power, seeming to be one way, yet actually being another?

Or would you rather be like Socrates? In that case, you have no need of the ring, no need of pretense. You can be your happy self. And even if the entire world were to rain down on you a judgment that would seem to portray you as other than you really are, you would remain undisturbed by such a turn of events.

Instead, you would simply savor the Socratic irony, the irony which the Gygeses of this world can never enjoy. The irony is this: justice is its own reward, and a man does not need the ring of power as an instrument to attain that reward. In fact, the ring itself is the obstacle. And so we joyfully cast it aside.