The Modern-Day Ring of Gyges

In Plato’s Republic there is a dialogue about virtue—whether it is better to be just or unjust. Do I do the good thing because it is good? Do I avoid doing the bad thing only because I fear being caught and punished? Is virtue something real, or just a performance?

During the dialogue, Glaucon tells a story about a shepherd named Gyges. It goes something like this: Gyges is tending his flock when an earthquake occurs. The violence causes the ground to split open, revealing a hidden cavern. Curious, Gyges descends into the cave and discovers a golden sarcophagus containing the body of a giant. On the hand of the giant is a gold ring. Gyges takes the ring, and places it on his own hand. When he returns to the shepherd’s camp and sits among his friends, they discuss him as if he wasn’t there. Gyges soon learns that the ring on his finger has made him invisible.

Realizing that he may now act with impunity, Gyges uses the ring to engage in a series of corrupt acts—killing the king, usurping the throne, taking the queen as his wife. Glaucon’s cynical thought experiment endeavors to show that everyone, given the opportunity, chooses injustice when it benefits them personally and that virtue is just a performance done in fear of reprisal from others.¹ He says:

[A]ll men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another’s, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another’s faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice.

I’ve been thinking about this story a lot lately. Our modern world presents a similar tale of invisibility, except ours is a magic device that can write essays, solve problem sets, compose code, analyze data, summarize readings, and produce other work just for the asking. You can take credit for work that isn’t yours, and no one will see. The power is there for the taking; what do we do when no one can see us?

Socrates asks us to take such private actions seriously. In the dialogue, he puts aside the question of whether acting justly will result in material gains or social awards to focus on something more important: the idea that virtuous acts produce a well-ordered soul. Socrates argues that the just person acts virtuously not because they fear the sting of punishment or reproach; instead, they are virtuous because they know that acting unjustly will deform them. Socrates’ concern is not that you will be caught at this, but that you’ll get away with it and therefore become someone who must always get away with things.

I think Socrates would say that the invisibility granted by the ring is fundamentally an illusion. Although Gyges could avoid detection by shepherds and kings, he could not conceal what he’d done to himself. Similarly, when you turn in work you didn’t complete, you incur a weight of self-deception that you must carry forever. While you can submit the essay and get a good grade, you can never feel the accomplishment of having done it, or the benefit of growth that it was supposed to cause. You can never feel an increase in confidence and self-belief that comes from completing hard things. Instead, you’ll have to pretend that you do. Although the transcript may never reflect the truth of what happened, you will carry that knowledge and forever be deformed by it.

I know that there are many determined cynics out there who would laugh at my idea that something called “integrity” actually exists and that it matters. But I still believe it. I think the person who refuses the ring is building something inside themselves that the person who uses the ring destroys each time they use it. I think the struggle actually matters, and that who you are is more important that something you produce. I acknowledge that it is impossible to find the reasoning or logic that will convert someone to this view. In the end, you just have to decide what you think a human life is for and then choose to live that life. It’s not really about whether you can get away with it, because you probably can. It’s about what happens to you if you do.