The Ring of Gyges

(I need 5 unique copies for this assignment mine and my other 4 classmates )

The Republic and the Ring of Gyges

The Republic (written by Plato around 375 BCE) in is a long dialogue in which Socrates and others ask a basic question: what is justice, and why should anyone want to be just? While there are numerous people in the dialogue, we will focus on a particular conversation between Socrates and Glaucon.

Early in Book II (The Republic is divided into Books, but you can think of them as chapters), Glaucon basically says: You havent really proven justice is worth it. To sharpen his challenge, he tells the story of the Ring of Gyges to show that if someone could act unjustly without consequences, they would. Both a just and unjust person, given the ring, would eventually behave the same wayproving (he thinks) that people are only just out of fear or convenience.

This forces Socrates to spend the rest of The Republic (Books IIX) trying to demonstrate the oppositethat justice is valuable in itself, because it brings order and harmony to the soul, just as it does to a city.

Here is a shortened version of The Ring of Gyges story. Read it and answer the discussion questions below. Then, respond to at least one of your classmates:

Discussion Question: Do you agree with Glaucon that somebody who got such a ring and didn’t use it for their benefit would be an idiot? If you had the Ring of Gygesso you could do anything without ever being discovered or punishedwould you still choose to act justly? Why or why not? Spend some time really thinking through and justifying your response.

For those interested, here is an optional lecture from Yale on the topic. It provides history background on Plato, the reading, etc: