Would you be good if no one could see?
A shepherd finds a ring that makes him invisible. He uses it to seduce a queen, kill a king and take the throne. Would anyone do differently?
- Reading time
- 4 min
- Difficulty
- Introductory
- Branch
- Ethics
- First posed
- Plato, Republic, Book II, c. 375 BCE, in the mouth of Glaucon
The setup
In Plato's Republic, Socrates is challenged by Glaucon, Plato's own brother, who wants Socrates to prove that justice is worth having for its own sake, not just for its rewards. To sharpen the challenge, Glaucon tells a story.
A shepherd named Gyges, serving the king of Lydia, is out with his flock when an earthquake opens a chasm. He climbs down and finds a bronze horse with a corpse inside, wearing a gold ring. He takes the ring. Later, sitting with the other shepherds, he idly turns the ring on his finger and discovers that it makes him invisible. Turn it back, and he reappears.
Gyges arranges to be one of the messengers sent to the king. At the palace, he seduces the queen, conspires with her to kill the king, and seizes the kingdom.
Glaucon's point is provocative. Give the same ring to a just person and an unjust person, and they would behave the same way, because no one is just willingly, only from fear of being caught. 'No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked.' Justice, on this view, is a compromise among the weak, who agree not to harm each other only because they cannot get away with it.
“No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked.”
Glaucon, in Plato, Republic, 360b (trans. Benjamin Jowett)
Why it matters
The ring poses one of the oldest questions in ethics: why be moral? If you could do wrong with no chance of being caught or punished, would you still have a reason not to?
It is also a question about human nature. Modern invisibility is easier to come by than Gyges's ring: anonymous accounts, unwatched transactions, actions whose effects fall on strangers far away. How people behave in those settings is a running test of Glaucon's claim.
Key terms
- Social contractThe idea that political authority and moral rules can be justified as what free and equal people would agree to.
- VirtueA stable trait of character that makes someone good and helps them act and feel well, such as courage, honesty or kindness.
- Psychological egoismThe descriptive claim that people only ever act from self-interest, even when they appear to act for others.
- EudaimoniaGreek for flourishing or living well. For Aristotle, the highest human good: an active life of reason and virtue over a complete lifetime.
The positions
Justice benefits the just
Being just is in your own interest, even if no one could ever see. Injustice damages the soul of the person who commits it.
Justice is a social contract
Morality is an agreement among people to restrain themselves for mutual benefit. With a ring of invisibility, the reason to comply disappears.
The question is confused
Asking for a self-interested reason to be moral misunderstands morality. Moral reasons are reasons in their own right.
Arguments and objections
Justice benefits the just
- Best argument
- Socrates spends the rest of the Republic answering Glaucon. He argues that justice is a kind of health of the soul, in which reason, spirit and appetite each play their proper role. An unjust person, ruled by appetite, is like someone with a disease: inwardly chaotic, never satisfied, a slave to their desires. Gyges gained a kingdom but became the kind of person who could murder his king. Even unseen, he was harmed.
- Strongest objection
- Many apparently unjust people seem to live content, untroubled lives. And the argument depends on a contested theory of the soul.
Justice is a social contract
- Best argument
- This is Glaucon's own view, later developed by Thomas Hobbes. Without rules, everyone is at risk from everyone else, so we agree to limit ourselves. The reason to keep the agreement is that others enforce it. Someone who could break it with impunity would have no self-interested reason not to.
- Strongest objection
- This makes morality a matter of not getting caught, which seems to miss what morality is. Most people feel that a person who refrains from cruelty only out of fear is not a good person at all.
The question is confused
- Best argument
- H. A. Prichard argued in 1912 that seeking a non-moral reason to be moral is a mistake: if someone needs to be told what is in it for them before they will refrain from murder, no argument will reach them. Immanuel Kant held that acting from duty, rather than self-interest, is precisely what gives an action moral worth. The good person refrains from harm because it is wrong, not because they might be seen.
- Strongest objection
- This seems to give up on persuading the person Glaucon describes. And it leaves the motivation to be moral mysterious if it does not connect to anything we care about.
Who argued what
- Justice benefits the just Socrates, Plato, Aristotle
- Justice is a social contract Glaucon (as devil's advocate), Thomas Hobbes
- The question is confused Immanuel Kant, H. A. Prichard
Variations
The honest wallet
In 2019, researchers led by Alain Cohn dropped more than 17,000 'lost' wallets in 40 countries. In most countries, people were more likely to return wallets that contained money than empty ones, and more likely still when the wallet held a larger amount. Is this evidence against Glaucon, or just evidence that people fear being thought dishonest, even by themselves?
Gyges online
Anonymous online platforms are, in some ways, rings of invisibility. Do they reveal people's true characters, as Glaucon would predict? Or do they change people, removing ordinary social cues that would otherwise guide them?
Go deeper
Glaucon's second challenge
Glaucon goes further than the ring. He asks Socrates to imagine the perfectly unjust person who has a reputation for perfect justice, and the perfectly just person with a reputation for perfect injustice, who is tortured and killed. Which is happier? Socrates must show that the just person is better off even then. This extreme version makes it impossible to appeal to reputation, rewards or social consequences.
Schools of thought: Virtue ethics
Related ideas
Further reading and sources
- EncyclopediaStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: search “ring of Gyges”
- WikipediaRing of Gyges
- BookRepublic, Book II, Plato
- BookLeviathan, Thomas Hobbes
Open questions
- What would you do if you knew you could never be caught?
- Is someone good if they are only good when watched?
- Can being unjust harm you even if no one ever knows?