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Ring of Gyges
1
Ring of Gyges
second book of Plato's Republic
How do you get people in your new city to be good and fair to one another?
Glaucon: No person who can take anything they want will willing submit to laws.
Laws and justice protect the weak from being overtaken by the strong.
Glaucon's Thought Experiments
#1 Give any person the power to become invisible and they will shortly become King.
- no chance of getting caught and punished
- no judgment from those around
- everyone desires to be unjust
- the laws are not for those who are brave enough to break them.
#2 If you give two people, one perfectly just and the other perfectly unjust, a ring, then the just person would STILL be tempted.
Glaucon: Justice does not serve the individual, so individuals have no reason to want to be just.
Are we obligated to be like the perfectly just person in Glaucon's thought experiment?
The just person may want to do illegal things for the greater good, but they may not break the law.
Twist!: The perfectly unjust person will always appear to be just!
#3 In order to prove that they are just, the just person would have to be loathed by everyone in order to prove that their belief in justice isn't self-serving.