The ring of gyges, plato, the republic, book ii (paraphrased by tom gengler, © 2009) here is the starting point: those who practice justice do so against their will. people simply do not have the power to be unfair. there is a way to prove this point. let's say there are two main groups of people: the righteous (those who do the right thing) and the unfair (those who don't do the right thing). if you give both groups the power to do what they want, then and only then can you say who is fair and who is unfair. let's give these two groups the power to do whatever they want, and then let's see what they do! did you see how this works? if you give the two different types of people the ability to get what they want, by any means, this will really tell you what people are like. when you get to it, it is only the law that makes people do the right thing. if you take away the law, the true nature of people will come to light and you can see it in plain sight. the power to do whatever you want, without being afraid of the law, was given to a man named gyges pron. guy-jeez). gyges was the king of lidia, a province of greece. gyges had the power to do what he wanted using the powers of a very special ring. here is the story. pastor who lived a long time ago in ancient greece. it served one day that there was a great storm and an earthquake opened the earth just where the place where gyges was feeding his flock. astonished, he descended into the opening, where, among other wonders, he saw a hollow bronze horse. interestingly, this horse had doors. gyges reached down and looked through one of the doors. inside he saw a large corpse. the body seemed to be human and had nothing but a gold ring. he took this gold ring from the corpse's finger and went out through the opening again. that night he and the other pastors met. it was customary to do so, because they had to send their monthly report on the flocks to the king. gyges wore the gold ring in the king's courtroom. while gyges was sitting there, he fiddled with his ring and turned it in a special way. when he did this, he discovered that he instantly became invisible. immediately, his fellow pastors were surprised and talked about gyges as if he had disappeared. gyges was amazed by this. then he tried to turn out and instantly reappeared. he did it several times and discovered that he could disappear and reappear. when he became convinced that he could completely control whether it was visible or invisible, he plotted a terrible plot. he discovered a way to be sent to the king's court. when he got there, he turned the ring and disappeared. with that he seduced the queen. later, with his , gy ges and the queen conspired against the king, killed him and took over the kingdom. now imagine that there are two rings like this. if those who are fair (who always do the right thing) wear a ring like this, they will do the wrong thing, just like gyges. no one is so fair and so straight that he would do the right thing without considering what was not his when he could safely take out what he liked from the market, or go to the houses and sleep with anyone to his liking, or kill or release from prison to whomever he wanted. with such a ring, all people would act like a god and would do the same even with such a ring. no person could keep what they wanted. with such a ring, therefore, the actions of the righteous and the actions of the unrighteous would be the same. then we can say that this test shows whether a person is fair or not. because it is not a person's willingness to do the right thing, or because he thinks justice is good for him individually, that proves whether it is really fair. rather, justice comes from the refusal to act unfairly, even if a person knows they can get away with it. because, if a person thinks he can get away with it, that is the heart of the unfair action. when the end is reached, all people believe in their hearts that injustice is much more profitable for them than justice. anyone who agrees with this argument (position) will say that he is right. if you can imagine someone getting this power to become invisible (using a ring like gyges's) and never doing anything wrong, most people would think that a person with an invisibility ring is a miserable idiot. after all, who wouldn't use such a ring to their advantage? people could praise him in public or in newspaper articles, but in private they would consider him a complete fool. people would remain hypocrites, keeping up appearances among themselves mainly because they would fear that the person with an invisibility ring could take advantage of them. in other words, people would say something like this: "wow, if i had an invisibility ring, i could use it to get what i wanted, at least once." but in reality, they would fear that someone with that ring would do the same to them.
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