‘There you are, then,’ I said. ‘In the course of our discussion we have removed the various objections to our claim. We haven’t had to resort to the rewards and reputation of justice, as you two were saying Homer and Hesiod did. Haven’t we found that the thing itself, justice, is best for the soul itself, and that the soul should do what is just, whether or not it possesses the ring of Gyges — or even the ring of Gyges and the cap of Hades?’
- Plato, The Republic, Book 10
As for the claim that people who practise justice do so reluctantly, being too weak to do wrong, the easiest way to see that it is true is to imagine something like this. Suppose we gave each of them — the just and the unjust - the freedom to do whatever he liked, and then followed them and kept an eye on them, to see which way his desire would take each of them. We would soon catch the just man out. Led on by greed and the desire to outdo others, he would follow the same course the unjust man follows, the course which it is everybody’s natural inclination to pursue as a good, though they are forcibly redirected by the law into valuing equality. Roughly speaking, they would have the freedom I am talking about if they had the kind of power they say the ancestor of Gyges the Lydian once had. They say he was a shepherd, and that he was a serf of the man who was at that time the ruler of Lydia. One day there was a great rainstorm and an earthquake in the place where he grazed his sheep. Part of the ground opened up, and a great hole appeared in it. He was astonished when he saw it, but went down into it. And the legend has it that among many marvels he saw a hollow horse made of bronze, with windows in it. Peeping through them, he saw inside what appeared to be a corpse, larger than human, wearing nothing but a golden ring on its hand. They say he removed the ring, and came out.
‘The shepherds were having one of their regular meetings, so that they could give the king their monthly report on the flocks. And the man turned up as well, wearing the ring. As he sat with the rest of them, he happened to twist the setting of the ring towards him, into the palm of his hand. When he did this, he became invisible to those who were sitting with him, and they started talking about him as if he had gone. He was amazed, and twisted the ring again, turning the setting to the outside. As soon as he did so, he became visible. When he realised this, he started experimenting with the ring, to see if it did have this power. And he found that that was how it was. When he turned the setting to the inside, he became invisible; when he turned it to the outside, he became visible. Once he had established this, he lost no time arranging to be one of those making the report to the king. When he got there, he seduced the king’s wife, plotted with her against the king, killed him and seized power.
- Plato, The Republic, Book 2