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Analysis Of Plato's Story Of The Ring Of Gyges

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1 What is the moral of Plato’s story of the Ring of Gyges? Is he correct in his basic assumption?

The moral of Plato’s story is that when a person has the opportunity to be unjust they will be unjust. If there were no laws people would act in unjust ways and I would tend to agree with this train of thought. I think that if people could get away with things such as stealing items they desire they really would. Plato using the story of Gyges finding a ring that made him invisible and with this seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom (Pojman and Vaughn, 2014, pg. 499-500). I would find it very hard to believe that someone with the power of the ring to be invisible wouldn’t use it to gain something that they truly desired. It is …show more content…

Rand has a very dark perspective in my opinion while I believe that humans do what they must in order to survive I wouldn’t necessarily agree that this is their only objective. I disagree when she says, “Value is that which one acts to gain and keep, ‘virtue’ is the action by which one gains and keeps it” (Pojman and Vaughn, 2014, pg. 505-506). I think that virtue isn’t always the one all about gaining and keeping. While I think that people do actions in order to receive awards not everyone is seeking to be recognized. I agree when Rachels says that the best argument in establishing Ethical Egoism as a viable theory of morality is Thomas Hobbes principle that we should do unto others because if we do, others will more likely to do unto us (Pojman and Vaughn, 2014, pg. 527). People should avoid harming others because we should care about the interests of other people for the very same reason we care about our own interests; for their needs and desires are comparable to our own (Pojman and Vaughn, 2014, pg. 532). Therefore, I believe that Rachel makes the better case regarding ethical

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Plato’s Allegory of the Cave was an interpretation of the aversion humans have to things that are outside of their experienced reality, as well as a proposed solution. Firstly, I can’t help but notice that there is a racist, classist, sexist, and ableist element to Plato’s proposal. Allegory of the Cave is found within The Republic, which is a book that describes “the education required of a Philosopher-King”. Racial minorities, poor people, women, and disabled people are all immediately eliminated from the selection of potential candidates.

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Aristotle, according to me, has a rather satisfactory counter-argument to Glaucon’s opinions in the Ring of Gyges Story. It is true that what is good for one might not be necessarily good for another and if doing something evil makes one feel good then that particular individual is essentially very immoral. An individual who is not as deep into immorality as this particular person would feel a level of guilt if they did something evil. Glaucon’s proposal that good people lack the good things evil behavior brings is, therefore, nullified.

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Still, Plato’s full psychological theory is much more complicated than the basic division of persons would suggest. First, there are different kinds of appetitive attitudes (558d–559c, 571a–572b): some are necessary for human beings; some are unnecessary but regulable (“lawful”), and some are unnecessary and entirely uncontrollable (“lawless”). So there are in fact five kinds of pure psychological constitutions: aristocratically constituted persons (those ruled by their rational attitudes), timocratically constituted persons (those ruled by their spirited attitudes), oligarchically constituted persons (ruled by necessary appetitive attitudes), democratically constituted persons (ruled by unnecessary appetitive attitudes), and tyrannically constituted

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Then, once he turned the ring again, he reappeared. With this ring on his finger, Gyges was sent to the court as a messenger, and upon arrival, he seduced the queen. Gyges and the queen then plotted against the king, resulting in the king’s death, and Gyges taking over the kingdom.

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