Published in The Philosophy Hub April 5, 2022 Gyges’s Ring as a Test of Justice An ethical thought experiment for all times Credit: Unsplash and Sabrianna F or fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the story of Gyges’s ring is a familiar tale: A ring that makes the person who wears it invisible frees the wearer to commit unspeakable acts without accountability, eventually corrupting the wearer’s soul. But the story of this magical ring wasn’t Tolkien’s creation. It was the philosopher Plato’s. Or at least it was a myth making the rounds in 4th century BC Greece. Published in The Philosophy Hub April 5, 2022 What gives the story a timeless quality? I’d like to suggest that the historical accuracy of the story is irrelevant. (Fanciful stories about rings that make you invisible are fiction, not fact.) What matters is that, like most philosophical thought experiments, the story of Gyges’s ring pumps our intuitions — in this case, about the requirements of justice. The myth of Gyges’s ring According to legend, the historical king, Gyges of Lydia, rose to power through less than honorable means. He seduced the Lydian King Candaules’s wife and then murdered the king himself. Nobody could comprehend how Gyges achieved this great coup except by magic or betrayal. If the tale is correct, Gyges, a shepherd at the time, discovered the magical ring by accident. While grazing his flock, he noticed a cave that had been uncovered by a recent earthquake. Inside the cave was a tomb. Inside the tomb was a corpse twice the size of a normal man wearing a golden ring. The shepherd took the ring and went to the King of Lydia disguised as a messenger. He became invisible and seduced the queen, killed the king, and assumed the throne. Published in The Philosophy Hub April 5, 2022 Glaucon’s telling of the tale Gyges’s ring first features in Plato’s Republic in a dialogue between Socrates, Plato’s teacher, and Plato’s two brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus. The story of the ring and its corrupting influence serves as a test of Socrates’s concept of justice. It’s a crucible to determine whether being just depends ultimately on the egoistic pursuit of reputation or the selfless cultivation of virtue. Glaucon tells the story of Gyges’s ring to defend his thesis that justice is always a matter of self-interest. Glaucon addresses Socrates: 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 Published in The Philosophy Hub April 5, 2022 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. Glaucon tries to persuade Socrates that self-interest motivates the moral agent to be just. According to his reasoning, we treat others fairly because it benefits our reputation; not because we’re altruists; not because it’s good in itself (or independent of the reputation effects). (Of course, to be virtuous is not simply good in itself. It’s also instrumentally good insofar as it brings about the Good, eudaimonia or happiness.) The proof that we aren’t just because of altruism or intrinsic goodness is that the just and the unjust man behave the same when wearing Gyges’s ring. They both do terrible things to benefit themselves, knowing full well that they’ll get away with it and nobody will ever know. Gyges’s ring truly corrupts the soul. Published in The Philosophy Hub April 5, 2022 Socrates’s response In the Republic, Socrates retorts that Gyges was a slave to the power of the ring. He wasn’t motivated to seduce the Lydian queen and kill the king because of reason. Instead, he was controlled by his passions. (Indeed, the ring is a metaphor for a moral agent’s passions unrestrained by reason.) If Gyges revealed the truth, how he actually became king, then his reputation would have become a casualty. Instead, Gyges’s treachery was undertaken in secret and then surrounded by a bodyguard of lies. Justice without truth is no longer justice. It’s merely self-serving reputation laundering. Justice motivated by unbridled passion is blind. It’s no longer a virtue. Cicero on the ring’s corrupting influence Three centuries later, the story of Gyges’s ring reappears in Book 3 of Cicero’s De Officiis. The Roman philosopher calls the story a ‘thought experiment’ — that is, whether historically true or not, it helps to clarify what is at stake by positing a what-if hypothetical. Specifically, the story of Gyges’s ring primes our intuitions about the moral requirements of justice. Cicero didn’t care much about the loss of reputation or escaping punishment. At least not as so much as he cared about the purity of the soul. He thought that Gyges’s ring degrades the owner’s moral Published in The Philosophy Hub April 5, 2022 capacities, the ability to distinguish between right and wrong and to consistently do what is right. Moral degradation or corruption of the soul wasn’t Cicero’s only concern. He thought that the story of Gyges’s ring, whether fictional or not, assisted the moral reasoner in seeing through the fog of temptation to what was quintessentially true: It requires a pure heart and a clear mind to discern what justice requires. Thought experiments like the story of Gyges’s ring facilitate clear reasoning about justice and its demands. A timeless test of justice A common-sense way to test whether a course of action is just or ethical is to ask: If my actions were made public or written about in the Sunday newspaper, would I be proud of them? If not, then don’t do them, even if, in all probability, nobody will ever discover that you’re the author of those actions. It might be objected that this hypothetical contradicts Plato’s point — justice is not dependent on reputation. However, in at least one way, it actually reinforces the point: whether or not one’s unethical actions are made public, one should act as if they will be, and thus always choose to do the right or just action. In other words, act as if perfect secrecy or Gyges’s ring is an impossibility. Justice requires truth and transparency. Otherwise, justice is not a virtue. Published in The Philosophy Hub April 5, 2022 Shane J. Ralston, Ph.D., is a Teaching Fellow and the Dean of Wright College, Woolf University.