Plato and Thomas Grassey

Exploring Justice and Morality

By: Ryan Webb

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

In Plato’s, The Ring of Gyges, Glaucon believed that man created justice by coming to an agreement not to inflict injury or suffer it. Glaucon also pointed out that man struggled to act justly since his natural tendency was to be unjust. This hypothesis is demonstrated in the story of the ancestor of the Lydian Gyges. In this story, a man found a ring that could make him invisible. Leaving his life as a quiet shepherd, he decided to engage in an affair with the king’s wife, killed the king, and then took over the kingdom. Would other men act similarly? Glaucon believed the only way to determine whether the just or unjust life is better would be to create perfect justness and perfect unjustness in two different individuals and then observe their lives.