Chapter 3
The Ring of Gyges
I said in Chapter 1 that Plato, by the time he came to write his great work, the Republic, seems to have soured on the idea of doing philosophy with children. But I added that, if we were to put the passage in Republic VII that is so negative about doing philosophy with children together with a passage from the Theaetetus on how to conduct philosophical discussions fairly, we would get a more balanced picture. We could then understand the Republic passage as condemning mainly those who do philosophy with children irresponsibly.
In any case, we would not expect from what Plato has Socrates say about doing philosophy with kids in Republic VII that he would elsewhere in the same work introduce material ideally suited for use with children. Nevertheless, that is just what he does. In this chapter I want to show how one famous passage in particular is perfectly suited for use with children.
Early on in Book I of the Republic Plato has Socrates refute a suggestion about what justice is by producing a thought-experiment. Thought-experiments are the life-blood of philosophy and this particular thought-experiment from the first book of the Republic is one of the best-known thought-experiments in philosophy. It is also a thought-experiment that can be easily grasped by kids and readily discussed with them.
The question up for consideration throughout the whole of the Republic is ‘What is justice?’ However, Plato notion of justice here is such a broad one that the question he is pursuing is very close to this: ‘What is it for an individual or a society to be morally upright ?’ The first reply Socrates gets in the dialogue to his question, ‘What is justice?’ comes from an old man of simple moral convictions named ‘Cephalus.’ Cephalus say that justice (or moral uprightness) is just telling the truth and paying your debts.
In reply Socrates asks Cephalus if we should return a weapon to someone who has, in the meantime, gone mad. No one seems to think that giving a weapon back to someone who has subsequently gone mad, even if one had borrowed the weapon only after giving a firm and explicit promise to return it at the first opportunity, would be the just or morally upright thing to do. So Cephalus’s simple claim about what justice requires is refuted by the counter-example embedded in this famous thought-experiment. .
The thought-experiment I want to focus on for this chapter is, however, rather different from the one about the man gone mad. It appears early on in Book II. It is also meant to help us think about the nature of justice, or moral uprightness. But it is put forward by Socrates’s interlocutor, Glaucon, as a challenge to Socrates. It is meant to force us to admit that we agree to accept certain moral constraints in what we do only because we think that doing so may protect us against something worse. Here is the thought-experiment:
Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the ruler of Lydia. One day there was a violent thunderstorm, and an earthquake broke open the ground and created a crater at the place where Gyges was tending his sheep. Seeing the big hole, Gyges was filled with amazement and went down into it. And there, in addition to many other wonders of which we are not told, he saw a hollow bronze horse. There were window-like openings in it, and peeping in, he saw a corpse, which seemed to be of more than human size, wearing nothing but a gold ring on its finger. He took the ring and came out of the crater. He wore the ring at the usual monthly meeting that reported to the king on the state of the flocks of sheep. As he was sitting among the others, he happened to turn the setting of the ring towards himself to the inside of his hand. When he did this, he became invisible to those sitting near him, and they went on talking as if he had gone. He wondered at this, and, fingering the ring, he turned the setting outwards again and became visible. So he experimented with the ring to test whether it indeed has this power – and it did. If he turned the setting inward, he became invisible; if he turned it outward, he became visible again. When he realized this, he at once arranged to become one of the messengers sent to report to the king. And when he arrived there, he seduced the king’s wife, attacked the king with her help, killed him, and took over the kingdom.
Glaucon, Socrates’s challenger, then adds this comment:
Let’s suppose, then, that there were two such rings, one worn by a morally good person and the other by a morally bad person. Now no one, it seems, would be so good as to stay on the path of morality, or stay away from the other people’s property, who could steal without danger of being caught, break into people’s houses without anyone knowing it, and do other things that would make that person a god among human beings. Rather the actions of a formerly good person now given the ring of Gyges would be no different from those of the morally bad person; both would follow the same path. This is a proof that no one really wants to be morally good; those of us who do morally good things act that way simply to be praised by others and so as not to have to worry about being caught doing something bad. (Republic II, 359c-360c, Grube trans., slightly adapted)
Some years ago I was asked to conduct a demonstration class with fifth-graders in St. Paul, Minnesota. I must admit that conducting demonstration classes is not my favorite way of doing philosophy with children – especially when I have had no opportunity to work with the kids beforehand. (I remember all too well conducting a demonstration class many years ago with first-graders in a village school in Austria. Several teachers and administrators stood around, waiting for one of the children to say something impressive. A video cameraman aimed his camera at us while I tried, in vain, to get any response at all from the kids beyond a barely audible ‘Ja’ or ‘Nein.’)
When I went into the auditorium in St. Paul where I was to conduct my demonstration class, I saw that seats for the children had been set out in a semi-circle facing the amphitheater-style seats for the adult audience, which rose up before them. I immediately asked that the chairs for the kids be turned around to face the blackboard so that, with luck, the kids might be less aware of the adult faces staring at them.
As things turned out, the kids in the fifth-grade class were quite confident and remarkably articulate. My worries had been misplaced. They got into the story of the Ring of Gyges right away and had no hesitation about sharing their reflections with anyone in hearing distance.
I asked those children what they thought they would do if they had the ring of Gyges. Most of them seemed ready to admit that, if they had that magical ring, they would probably do more bad things than they do now. But one girl, let’s call her “Laura,” had a special observation of her own to add.
“Sure, most of us would do some bad things,” admitted Laura, “things we wouldn’t have done otherwise; but then, with a magical ring like that, some of us would also do some good things we might not otherwise do. “
I asked Laura what she had in mind.
“Well,” she said, “it could be fun to do something nice for someone who wouldn’t be able to find out who had done the good deed.”
I must admit that Laura’s point is not something I had ever thought of in my previous reflections on Plato’s story of the Ring of Gyges. In fact, it has taken me some time to appreciate its full significance. Plato has Glaucon, Socrates’s interlocutor at this point, set things up in the Republic so that we are under some moral pressure to “come clean” and admit that, with the ring of Gyges, we would each of us do many terrible things. But the assumption that we are each of us motivated solely by self-regarding desires needs to be questioned. Laura questioned it and rejected it.
It is worth reflecting on what Laura rejected and the significance of rejecting it. Let’s call the assumption that whatever we do, we do for selfish motives, “psychological egoism.” One might be moved to accept psychological egoism by a kind of general cynicism. Even the most altruistic-seeming actions, one might insist, are really done for a selfish motive. Suppose I risk my life by jumping into raging waters to save a child who has fallen overboard. The psychological egoist may insist that I want to become famous, or at least, well-thought-of by others. It may be hard to show that this is false. But what Laura went on to say is a promising follow-up.
Having the ring of Gyges, Laura suggested, might actually free her to perform an act of pure kindness on occasion. She added that one would not need to be an especially good person to want to take advantage of that opportunity from time to time.
To be sure, some people who give gifts anonymously hope that others will eventually find out who the donor was and then, when eventually they do find out, will credit the donor with special altruism for having given a gift anonymously. But sometimes people give anonymous gifts and genuinely don’t want to be discovered as the benefactor. Having the ring of Gyges would give us a specially protected chance to be anonymous donors, as well as a protected opportunity to be anonymous thieves.
Laura made her point in a rather unassuming way. But its implications are quite profound. It helps us think a little more clearly about some of the complexities of human motivation. I don’t recall hearing anyone make this point before in the many discussions I have had of the Ring of Gyges with university students.
Another line of thought stands out in my memory of that Minnesota fifth-grade discussion class. It was started by one of the boys. Let’s call him “Andrew.”
To the question of whether he would do more bad things if he had the ring of Gyges Andrew responded, “Well, it might depend on how the ring actually works.” I asked him what he had in mind.
“Well,” Andrew went on, “if you were using a walking stick, would the walking stick, too, become invisible? Or would people see the walking stick walk along by itself out of the room?”
At this suggestion everyone laughed, the kids in the class and the members of the audience as well. But Andrew went on.
“And what about your clothes?” he asked; “would they become invisible, too?” We all realized that we had assumed they would, but had not thought to ask whether they would, and if so, why. Then Andrew got onto an even more interesting point.
“And what about, say, a TV set you were trying to steal?” he asked; “would that become invisible just because you were carrying it, or would people see a TV set float across the room and out the door?” Clearly a floating TV set might alert everyone in the store to the fact that a theft was underway.
Again, Andrew’s question was both imaginative and original. In the many discussions of the Ring of Gyges I have participated in, I don’t recall anyone ever raising it before (although I did get a somewhat similar question from a kid in a group of second and third-graders I worked with a few years later in Hamburg).
Andrew’s question about the floating TV is, I think, quite profound. No matter how much power we let Socrates’s interlocutor assign to the ring of Gyges, there will always be the question of whether having the ring could, by itself, guarantee success in wrong-doing. Here the question of what exactly the ring would make invisible becomes crucial. If the ring makes everything the wearer touches invisible, then the thief better not go barefoot, or else the ground under him will become invisible and he may stumble or trip over a stone or fall into a pit. And even if the ring makes it somehow possible to get the TV set home, undetected, the set would have to become visible again at home, or else there would be no value in having stolen it. Someone might see it and recognize where it came from.
Speaking more generally, the significance of Andrew’s line of questioning concerns how the wrong-doer can actually get away with doing wrong and still enjoy the fruits of wrong-doing. When we start imagining the details of Gyges’s life with his ring, the assumption of invulnerability that wearing the ring seemed to bestow becomes questionable. Plato’s thought-experiment itself becomes much more questionable, no doubt more questionable in ways that Plato himself would have been glad for us to appreciate, and to discuss.
That discussion with fifth-graders in St. Paul was, I think, the most fruitful consideration of the Ring of Gyges I have ever taken part in. But I have certainly had other good discussions of the story, including especially other discussions of it with kids. For example, I also had a good discussion three years ago with a group of ten and eleven-year-olds in Hobart, Tasmania, in Australia.
The Hobart group, as it turned out, was rather large. To encourage broad participation I asked those kids to begin our discussion by individually making comments and asking questions that we would write down on the blackboard. Only after we had heard from most of the kids would we start our discussion of their comments and questions.i
I got a large number of interesting comments and questions, as well as, of course, several less promising ones. Here are some of the more interesting ones I got:
- I do morally good things at school and it makes me feel good about myself. (Victoria)
- The story tells us that we will take advantage of doing bad things if [the opportunity} arises. (Charles)
- There’s a difference between morally good and morally bad people. (Nika)
- Morally good people are good because they don’t like the consequences of being bad. Morally bad people don’t care. (Joe)
- Once Gyges had power over the kingdom, what was left? (Brock)
- Maybe he took over the kingdom because he was bored of tending sheep. (Sam)
- Was he a good person before he found the ring? (Miranda)
Although all of these comments are worth reflecting on I shall concentrate briefly on (5) and (7). Let’s first consider (5), ‘Once Gyges had power over the kingdom, what was left?’
In the traditional stories of our culture, kings and queens have vastly more power and wealth than anyone else in the kingdom. Does that mean they also have a corner on happiness? With his question, (5), Brock suggests that Gyges, having gained great power and wealth by illicit means, may well become restless and dissatisfied with his undeserved position. This may be especially likely if the King’s subjects, once they learn of the fate of their previous king and of the way Gyges seized power, become restive and resentful. The ring’s magical power to make Gyges invisible may make it possible for him to kill the King and assume the throne all right. But just being able to make himself invisible whenever he wants to seems irrelevant to the task of functioning well as a king. One suspects that he will soon move on to other escapades that will also yield no more than temporary satisfaction. That seemed to be Brock’s point.
Let’s now consider Miranda’s question. She asked, “Was he a good person when he found the ring?” Miranda’s question is also, I think, very profound. Let’s see if we can tease out something of what makes it profound.
The Ring of Gyges is meant to get us to admit that neither we nor anyone else would be constrained by morality apart from a fear of being found out when we do wrong and punished accordingly. Laura, in Minnesota, undercut the force of this thought when she said that having the ring would actually free her to do some good things that she might not otherwise have done, as well as some bad things. Miranda, in Hobart, asked for a moral appraisal of Gyges’s character before he discovered the ring. What can Plato’s story-teller, Glaucon, say in answer to Miranda? If he says that Gyges was a good person, he undermines the plausibility of the story. Surely, a good shepherd would not, upon discovering the Ring, do the terrible things Gyges did. If he says that Gyges was bad all along, the story is robbed of its point. Of course bad people will try to get away with whatever they think they can. If he says that Gyges was neither good nor bad, again, it seems implausible that someone who is neither good nor bad would, when in possession of the ring, would do all the terrible things Gyges did.
What Plato’s character, Glaucon, in the Republic wants to maintain is that morality is simply a matter of convention. He must suppose that, in themselves, people are neither good nor bad. But if we have to assume that all people are psychological egoists, with no moral character at all, good or bad, in order to made the story plausible, then, it seems, we have to assume the truth of Glaucon’s conclusion to find his thought experiment plausible. Yet the thought experiment was supposed to awaken intuitions that would render Glaucon’s conclusion plausible. So to find the thought-experiment plausible is already to accept the conclusion the thought experiment is meant to make plausible. And so it begs the question.
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What should we conclude from these discussions of Plato’s Ring of Gyges with schoolchildren in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Hobart, Tasmania? For myself, I must say that I have come to a better understanding of the limitations of the Ring-of-Gyges thought-experiment from having had discussions with those schoolchildren in Minnesota and Australia. That assessment is not meant to disparage discussions of this passage I have had with college students. It is meant only to emphasize the special virtues of discussing such philosophically interesting stories with schoolchildren. Kids are often able to approach a philosophical issue with a freshness that it is hard for adults, even college students, to match. But the main point I want to emphasize is that schoolchildren are certainly capable of actually doing philosophy, real philosophy, with a real philosophical text. The proof that it is real philosophy is that an experienced and well-read philosopher like me finds that he has learned something philosophically important from these remarkable discussions with schoolkids.