Ring of Gyges Case

To emphasize his arguments, he uses the example of Ring of Gyges in Book 11 to show the readers that "people value it [justice] not as a good but because they are too weak to do injustice with impunity." (359b) The story of Ring of Gyges is about a shepherd, Gyges, who founds a gold magical ring on a corpse with a hollow bronze horse when an earthquake broke open the ground. Under excitement, Gyges grabbed the ring from the corpse and came out of the chasm. With the help of this ring, he was able to turn invisible and visible when he wanted to. "If he turned the setting inward, he became invisible; if he turned it outward, he became visible again." (360a) As soon as he realized the power of this ring, he seduced the queen, killed the king and took control over the realm. In the Book 11 of the Republic, Glaucon, one of Socrates' companions, states that "all who practice it [justice] do so unwillingly, as something necessary, not as something good." (358c) Glaucon asks the readers to imagine the ring, which gives its wearers the ability to be invisible, that allows "a just and an unjust person the freedom to do whatever they like." In support of his tale, he makes the claim that no single person is steady follower of justice and that anyone, who is free to be unjust, would be unjust. Under compulsion, men will act justly and by nature, everyone desires more than they actually need. According to the example, Glaucon argues that once the just man achieves this ring, he will act unjustly because he's in possession of this ring that allows him to "take whatever he wanted from the market place with impunity, go into people's houses and have sex with anyone he wished, kill or release from prison anyone he wished, and do all the other things that would make him like a God among humans" (360c) He, in his example, believes that every single human being realizes that being unjust rewards himself more in life than being just. The unjustified life is rewarded with honor, power and wealth whereas men, on the track of a just life, is in a disdain and miserable condition. He also makes the claim that the person who has the power to carry out crimes for his own personal benefit would be a fool to not do so. His evidence for this statement is an inference that he creates that all men "desire to outdo others and get more and more." (359c) Glaucon begins to counter his argument by stating that men find it desirable to impose wrongdoings on other fellow human beings but these criminals considered being on the receiving side of malefaction as undesirable. In this case, its is fair to ague that "to do injustice is naturally good but those who have done it and suffered injustice and tasted both and came to an agreement that it is profitable to neither do injustice nor to suffer it." (359a) Justice is an agreement between the undesirable end and the undesirable end that an individual favors