The Ring of Gyges
from
Plato, Republic 359d-360c
Glaucon disagrees with Socrates and insists that justice and
virtue are not in fact desirable in and of themselves. In support of his claim,
Glaucon offers the following story:
Gyges was a shepherd in the service
of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an
opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the
sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a
hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a
dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing
on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended.
Now the shepherds met together,
according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks
to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as
he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his
hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they
began to speak of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at
this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared;
he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result-when he
turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared.
Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the
court; where as soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help
conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom.
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.
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.
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