The Ring of Gyges (Book II)

With these words I thought I had done with the discussion; but it turned out to be only the prelude. For Glaucon, who is always most courageous in everything, would not accept Thrasymachus's retreat.

"Socrates, do you want to seem to have persuaded us, or truly to persuade us, that it is better in every way to be just than unjust? Then I will revive Thrasymachus's argument, not because I believe it, but because I want to hear justice defended for its own sake, and I have never yet heard it done."

He set out his case in three parts. First, what people say justice is and where it comes from. To do injustice is by nature good, and to suffer it is bad; but the evil of suffering it is greater than the good of doing it. So those who are not strong enough to do injustice without suffering it make a compact among themselves neither to do it nor to suffer it. That is the origin of law and of justice: a compromise between the best, which is to do wrong unpunished, and the worst, which is to be wronged without being able to take revenge.

Second, no one is just willingly. Imagine, he said, the ring of Gyges, the ancestor of the Lydian kings. Gyges was a shepherd. After a storm and an earthquake, a chasm opened in the ground where he was grazing his flock, and he went down into it and found, among other marvels, a hollow bronze horse, and inside it the corpse of a man larger than human, wearing a gold ring. He took the ring and came out. Later, sitting among the other shepherds, he happened to turn the bezel of the ring toward the inside of his hand, and became invisible; turning it back, he became visible again. As soon as he understood this, he arranged to be sent as a messenger to the king; he seduced the queen, plotted with her against the king, killed him, and took the kingdom.

Now give one such ring to a just man and another to an unjust man. No one, Glaucon said, would be so adamant as to keep his hands off what is not his, when he could take what he liked from the market without fear, go into houses and lie with whomever he wished, kill or release from prison whomever he wished, and act among men like a god. The just man would do exactly what the unjust man does. And if anyone with such power refused to do wrong, people would think him the most wretched fool, though they would praise him to each other's faces, for fear of suffering injustice.

Third, imagine the two lives at their extremes. Give the unjust man perfect injustice, with a perfect reputation for justice: he does the greatest wrongs and is honored as the most just of men. Give the just man perfect justice with the reputation of the greatest injustice. Such a just man will be scourged, racked, bound, have his eyes burned out, and at last, after suffering every evil, he will be impaled. Then he will learn that one should not want to be just, but to seem just. Which of these two is happier?

Then his brother Adeimantus added that even those who praise justice praise it badly: fathers tell their sons to be just for the sake of reputation and the rewards it brings, in this world and the next. No one praises justice for what it does to the soul of the man who has it. "That is what we want from you, Socrates: show us what each of them, justice and injustice, does to the one who has it, by its own nature, whether gods and men see it or not."

I was delighted with the two brothers, and also at a loss. But I proposed a way forward. Suppose, I said, that people with weak eyes were asked to read small letters from far away, and one of them noticed that the same letters were written somewhere else, bigger and on a bigger surface. They would be glad to read the large ones first. Justice exists in a single man, and also in a whole city; and a city is larger. So let us first look at justice in a city, and then look for its likeness in the individual. And if we watch a city come into being in our discussion, we may see justice and injustice come into being too.

A city arises, I said, because none of us is self-sufficient; we need many things. The first need is food, the second shelter, the third clothing. So there will be a farmer, a builder, a weaver, a shoemaker. And it is better for each to do one thing that suits his nature than for each to do everything. So we add carpenters, smiths, herdsmen, merchants, sailors, retailers, laborers. And these people will live simply: they will eat bread and barley cakes, with salt and olives and cheese, and figs and chickpeas for dessert, and drink wine in moderation, and sing hymns to the gods, and live in peace and health to a good old age.

"If you were founding a city of pigs, Socrates," Glaucon said, "what else would you feed them?" He wanted couches and tables, relishes and sweets, the comforts of civilization.

Very well, I said. Let us look at a feverish city, a luxurious one. It will need painters, embroiderers, gold and ivory, poets, actors, dancers, beauticians, cooks, pigs (which we did not need before), and many more doctors. The land that was enough will no longer be enough; we will need a slice of our neighbors' land, and they of ours. And so we have discovered the origin of war. And for war we need an army, a whole class of guardians.

What sort of nature should a guardian have? Like a noble dog, he must be gentle to his own people and fierce to enemies. A dog is gentle to those it knows and fierce to strangers, even if they have done it no harm; it judges by knowing and not knowing. In that sense the dog is a lover of learning, a philosopher. So our guardians must be by nature spirited, swift, strong, and philosophical.

And how shall we educate them? With music for the soul and gymnastics for the body. And education begins with stories. We must therefore supervise the storytellers. The stories of Homer and Hesiod about the gods are often false and evil: how Ouranos was castrated by his son Kronos, how Kronos devoured his children, how gods make war on gods and deceive men. These must not be told to the young, even if some of them are allegories, for the young cannot tell what is allegory and what is not, and what they take in at that age becomes indelible.

Two principles must govern all stories about the gods. First, God is good, and is the cause only of good things, not of evil. Second, God is simple and true; he does not change his form, and he does not deceive men in word or deed.

(End of Episode 2 — continued in Episode 3: The Education of the Guardians)