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Morality In Socrates 'The Ring Of Gyges'

661 Words3 Pages

If the opportunity arose, where no consequences were given for someone’s actions, do you think that individual will still commit an unfavorable action such as killing for his own personal need? In “The Ring of Gyges” the disposition of justice is called into question. As humans continue to live we must contemplate the true driving force for our morality. A discussion between Socrates and Glaucon is one main focal point into explaining the differences in how humans truly established their morality. Glaucon believes humans are restrained by consequences and human’s happiness comes from being an unjust person rather than Socrates’ belief of being just truly leads to happiness. The passage written by Plato goes in to great detail of how Socrates defends his position and how Glaucon defends his position as well but then leaves the reader to formulate his own opinion. With both Socrates’ position and as well as Glaucons, it is clear to see that Glaucon has the more rational reasoning within the debate of who’s happier, the just or unjust person.
In Plato’s writing, The Republic, Glaucon challenge Socrates to describe justice and to give reasoning to why acting justly should be believed to be in anyone's self-interest. Glaucon claims that all goods can be distributed into three classes: …show more content…

The perfectly unjust life, is more pleasant than the perfectly just life. Glaucon describes both the just and unjust man with examples of the completely unjust man, who indulges all his desires, is respected and rewarded with all his need while no one is the wiser of all his wrong doings and is seen as someone who can do no wrong. The completely just man, on the other spectrum, is scorned and looked down upon and even hated for doing good this is because the perfectly just person does not do just things for recognition but solely for the sake in doing

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Political activists and philosophers alike have a challenging task of determining the conditions under which citizens are morally entitled to go against the law. Socrates and Martin Luther King, Jr. had different opinions on the obligation of the citizens in a society to obey the law. Although they were willing to accept the legal punishment, King believed that there are clear and definable circumstances where it would be appropriate, and sometimes mandatory, to purposely disobey unjust laws. Socrates did not. Socrates obeyed what he considered to be an unjust verdict because he believed that it was his obligation, as a citizen of Athens, to persuade or obey its Laws, no matter how dire the consequences.

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The characteristics Schenck exhibited was a perceived threat to the government and in Socrates’ favor he believed the character of the citizens determined the character of the state as a whole. Knowing Socrates was against this type of behavior in his state, leads to the aspects of his view that what individuals see, read, and experience can have an affect on their character, thus making the argument only more credible to the court’s ruling of “clear and present danger” it would have caused in Socrates “perfect

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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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His statement brings up controversy, making the argument fail to back up its point. Socrates argues that a just soul and a just man will live well, and an unjust one badly. This argument consists of the following: 1. The function of each thing is what it alone can do or what it does better than anything else.

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44 [358e]) the disadvantage of being harmed out weighs the advantage of harming. This shows that we don’t have a moral character and a perfectly unjust man is good if he doesn’t get caught. Although, if one were to get caught, in argument they wouldn’t feel that what they were doing was wrong as Gluacon thinks that justice is good in itself for its consequences. In the fourth premises Gluacon stated, “so that whenever people treat each other unjustly and get a taste of what its like both to do it and to have it done to them,” (Plato, Apology, p. 45 [359a]) meaning you cant escape being harmed or treated unjustly while you are also treating someone unjustly. Gluacon wants to see that justice is as important as for itself as for its consequences.

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Bothered by Socrates’ logic, Thrasymachus presents a revised version of his previous argument. Thrasymachus says that injustice is stronger than justice and that it most definitely results in a happier life. The example he uses (of a powerful dictator who is made happy through injustice is a reference to his earlier example that justice is used to the advantage of the stronger). Thrasymachus has not greatly changed the principle of his argument, just using alternate examples.

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This principle lies at the heart of the great-souled man, the first of Aristotle’s peaks of humanly excellence. The great-souled man is chiefly concerned with—and strikes the mean with—external goods. The greatest of these goods is “the one that we assign to the gods, and at which people of high standing aim most of all, and which is the prize given for the most beautiful deeds; and of this kind is honor” (67:1123b19-21). A man who has achieved greatness of soul is deserving of great honors, but more importantly, he understands his own desert and acts appropriately.

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The world we live in is filled with crime, evil, and injustice, but do people have the desire to do bad things knowing that they are bad, or do they do them thinking that they are good? In this essay, I examine Socrates argument, found in Plato’s Meno, that no one knowingly desires bad things. If Socrates were right, it would mean that it is impossible for someone to perform a bad action based on their desire for that bad thing. Instead, all bad desires result from the ignorance of the person performing the action in falsely believing that the action is good. Though Socrates presents a compelling argument, I argue that it is possible for someone to act badly, all the while knowing that what they desire is bad.

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I actually believe Glaucon is right with his definition of justice. Glaucon definition of justice is a “legally enforced compromise between doing injustice to other and having on justice done unto oneself”. I believe that Glaucon is right because states that there are three types of good. The first class of good

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Karim Fleifel Philosophy 210 First Paper To Do or To Suffer? In Gorgias, Socrates was having a conversation with Polus and through this dialogue Socrates reached to establishing a hierarchy of wrongs. Socrates classified that doing injustice is much worse than suffering injustice. Another idea Socrates states is that doing wrong act and escaping punishment is much worse than being punished on that act since punishment can remove the evil from a person’s soul. I am going to discuss these ideas as I think that doing injustice is not as bad as suffering injustice.

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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.

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The just person’s soul entails motive for certain kinds of objects the most important of which is knowledge. Socrates describes the hardship and extreme effort required to gain knowledge of the forms and the form of the good, thus the just person will seek learning and not spend time to take care of the satisfaction of desires that typically lead to unjust actions. This approach to unite the gap between a just soul and just actions may have some drawbacks. One negative aspect may be that several unjust actions may be motivated by desires that are compatible with the desire for knowledge. For example, why wouldn’t a person with a great fascination for knowledge steal a book if it would contribute to their

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In “Plato’s Gorgias” Socrates debates with fellow philosophers, Polus, Callicles, Chaerephon and Gorgias, of ancient Greece over rhetoric, justice, and power. During these debates, Socrates makes a claim to Polus that it is better to suffer injustices rather than to commit injustice because the positive and negative consequences that come along with committing and suffering injustices. This claim by Socrates that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit injustice is pretty easy to comprehend once all the parts are analyzed. At first, this idea seems crazy that it is actually beneficial to suffer injustice and wrong-doing.

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