Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust they would both come at last to the same point. 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. 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. Since the only point of justice is to protect one's own interests, if one is so powerful that no one else can harm him then the person would revert to the ideal mentioned above: "the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished". To this end Glaucon tells the story of Gyges as an illustration of the fact that anyone who had nothing to fear from other people would discard justice, having no need for it. ( The Republic Book II translated by Benjamin Jowett my emphasis) Such is the received account, Socrates, of the nature and origin of justice. For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist he would be mad if he did. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice - it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and honoured by reason of the inability of men to do injustice. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither hence there arise laws and mutual covenants and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good to suffer injustice, evil but that the evil is greater than the good. Glaucon argues that man would rather be unjust, and justice is a concession to man's own frailty: At that point in the dialogue Socrates and Glaucon were discussing whether justice is something inherent, or whether it is merely a societal construct that people agree to in order to protect themselves from the injustices that others would inflict upon them. "The Ring of Gyges" is narrated by Glaucon, and immediately upon concluding the narrative he provides his commentary. Portraying Gyges as an unredeemable villain is necessary to make "might makes right" look bad. And that point is not served if his readers get distracted and start a literary argument over one of his characters. Plato was trying to make a philosophical point. They're all the rage today, and have been in and out of popularity for thousands of years. Why is that a problem? Many stories involve ambiguous or morally gray antiheroes. If Gyges had not been depicted as a cartoonishly evil villain, some readers would have interpreted him as a hero, under the theory of "might makes right." This leads us to a rather startling conclusion: Plato was arguing against might makes right, particularly in book one, where Thrasymachus quite explicitly makes this argument, but it is a continuous undercurrent throughout the work. Might makes right (exactly what it says on the tin).There was, however, a rather different theory of ethics which people believed in: With the exception of virtue ethics, none of these ethical theories were fully elucidated in Plato's time. Virtue ethics ("The right thing exemplifies virtues such as honesty and integrity."). Contractualism ("Society is an agreement not to harm one another.").Kantian ethics ( very roughly "Don't use people as means to ends.") or deontology generally ("Morality is determined by our adherence to duties.").Utilitarianism ("The right thing creates the greatest amount of total happiness.") or consequentialism generally ("Morality is determined by the consequences of an action.").Gyges's actions are unethical under a broad spectrum of "modern" ethical theories, such as these examples: If you want to understand why Gyges behaves as he does, it's important to recognize the historical context of The Republic. The past is a foreign country they do things differently there.
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