Theological table talk: The ring of gyges and the imagination: Platonic and Christian perspectives

Theology Today, Apr 2000 by Danaher, James P, Franco, Seth

At the beginning of the second book of Plato's Republic, Glaucon challenges Socrates, and his idea of justice, with a myth concerning the ancestor of Gyges, the Lydian. The story is that Gyges' ancestor was a shepherd who one day after a great deluge and earthquake noticed a chasm where he was shepherding. Upon entering the chasm, he found a great hollow bronze horse that contained a corpse that seemed to be of a stature more than human. The corpse had a gold ring on its hand that Gyges' ancestor took before returning to the outer world. In wearing the ring, he noticed that when he turned the collet or face of the ring in toward his palm, he became invisible. Upon turning the ring the other way he would reappear. With this power to become invisible at will, the shepherd had acquired the power to do injustice and not suffer for it. With this power, he chose to seduce the king's wife and kill the king in order to take his kingdom.

It is not clear how being invisible enabled him to seduce the king's wife, but the idea that Glaucon is painting is of a man who can do injustice and have the power not to suffer for it. Glaucon's claim is that a man with the power to do injustice and avoid punishment would always choose to do injustice. Glaucon says imagine that there were two such rings, and one were given to a just man and the other to an unjust man. Glaucon claims that both men will succumb to having such a power and will do injustice. Glaucon might be right. Given the power, we may all choose to do injustice.

Of course, Plato does not care what all humans will do but rather what they should do. And what they should do is to resist the desire to do injustice even if they had the power to do the injustice with immunity. His reasoning is that the doing of injustice harms oneself. In particular, it harms the internal condition of one's soul and therefore should be avoided.

To Plato, the great evil of Athenian society was that it followed Homer and believed that virtue or human excellence amounted to excess. A great man or woman is one who has more than others and is better able to indulge one's desire or appetite for pleasure. Many of us today would still agree with that idea of human excellence, or at least we act as if we agree with such a view. Of course, Plato opposed such a view and believed that excessive pleasure leads to the destruction of the soul. This is a major theme that runs throughout the dialogues. According to Plato, we can only have as much pleasure and indulge our appetite to the extent that we have wisdom to control that appetite or desire for pleasure. A desire for pleasure without wisdom to control it brings destruction rather than virtue to the soul. To Plato, the virtuous soul is the result of each part of the soul (namely: appetite, spirit, and reason) functioning properly and being in harmony with each other. If appetite functions properly, it produces the virtue of temperance; spirit functioning properly and being neither excessive nor deficient produces courage; and if reason does not control appetite and spirit too much or too little, it produces wisdom. Justice is the fourth virtue and is the result of the three parts of the soul functioning in harmony together. So, as in the just city where each part of the city must function and be in harmony with the other parts, there must be the same harmony in the soul of the just person. In the Phaedrus, Plato pictures the soul as a chariot with reason as the charioteer, and spirit and appetite as the two horses that the charioteer must either hold back or urge on. Appetite is pictured as an especially wild horse and must constantly be held back.

It certainly does seem that a universal human problem is the threat of being led by an unbridled desire for one pleasure or another. Plato's solution to the problem is to have all of our desires or appetites under the tight control of reason. For Plato, the ring of Gyges would add to the problem rather than the solution. A ring of Gyges would allow our appetite to be ever more excessive and thus more difficult to keep under the control of reason. If my ability to indulge my desire for pleasure is limited, it is easier for reason to keep appetite under control. But if my ability to indulge my desire increases, it becomes more difficult to bring appetite under the control of reason. Thus, the ring of Gyges would tend to pervert the proper function of the soul by giving more power and occasion for appetite and spirit (but especially appetite) to dominate over reason. Such a ring would tend to produce a more bestial nature, over which appetite and spirit ruled, rather than the nature Plato envisioned with reason in control.

This certainly seems to be the case and an increase in empowerment most often leads to destruction rather than virtue. Imagine being given a huge sum of money when you were young and before reason really had a chance to develop fully. Would such a bequest prove a blessing or a curse? From my own perspective, poverty was an enormous blessing to me in that it kept me from excessive pleasure in my youth.