Gyges is a shepherd, a simple man who dreamt of sheep and little things. One day, there is a great storm, and a bolt of lightning strikes open a fissure upon the earth. When the storm has passed, Gyges wanders into the fissure, curious about its contents. Within, he finds the body of a giant, upon whose finger lies a golden ring. Gyges takes this ring and places it upon his finger, and soon discovers that it gives him the power of invisibility. He quickly arranges to have an audience with the king, whereupon he uses the power of the ring to kill the king and assume his throne. He marries the queen, and becomes the most powerful man in the kingdom.
This is the story from Plato's The Republic, and is supposed to constitute an argument for the superiority of injustice over justice. It is argued that we are just and good only because we cannot get away with being unjust and evil. If we could, we would.
Ask yourself this: Would you rather be a good man, and thought to be evil by all, or would you rather be evil, but thought to be good?
Put another way, if there were no rewards for goodness, but purely punishment, would you be good?
I want to say that the right thing would be to choose goodness, even if there were no rewards, this world or the next. However, I understand the position laid out in the story of the Ring of Gyges is a difficult one to refute. After all, what conceivable reason could we have for being good, if it only brought about disadvantage? I offer here a sketch of an answer, a version of Plato's response.
Plato (famously) said that No evil can come to good men. Taken in the modern context, this seems absurd. After all, we can just look around us and see good men getting cancer and going bankrupt and losing their jobs. We can see evil men with happy families and nice cars.
I think this involves a confusion about what goodness and evil is. A good man, in the full sense, is a man with a good life, not just a good character. The full flourishing human life is one that involves both the virtues of character as well as serendipity in the events of his life. The man who is good of character but hated by everyone, and thought to be evil, is not leading a blessed life. We aspire to be like him only in the sense that we want to develop character traits he has. We do not desire his life. His life is, in the full sense, not good, not blessed, not fully flourishing.
The choice then is clear. We want to be good. We want to lead good lives. Goodness cannot admit evil. It will not. We want a good life, which involves a multitude of things: developing courage and patience and honesty and temperance, having a good family, having loyal friends, sufficient funds, and so on. All these are things to be cultivated; to lose sight of this is the obsession with character traits is a sad, sad, mistake.
Consider, furthermore, that advantage and disadvantage seem to be the wrong kinds of considerations in discussions of virtue. Virtue is a good thing, in the same way happiness is a good thing: simply because it is. We don't want happiness for the sake of something else, happiness is good in itself. Similarly, we don't want virtue for the sake of something else, because virtue is a good in itself. In contrast, we have, for instance, taking medicine, which is something not good for itself, but because it brings about other good things.
So, dear reader, be good. Be courageous, and patient, and honest, and true. Be generous, love your family, have loyal friends. Be good, be good, and no evil can come upon you.
This is the story from Plato's The Republic, and is supposed to constitute an argument for the superiority of injustice over justice. It is argued that we are just and good only because we cannot get away with being unjust and evil. If we could, we would.
Ask yourself this: Would you rather be a good man, and thought to be evil by all, or would you rather be evil, but thought to be good?
Put another way, if there were no rewards for goodness, but purely punishment, would you be good?
I want to say that the right thing would be to choose goodness, even if there were no rewards, this world or the next. However, I understand the position laid out in the story of the Ring of Gyges is a difficult one to refute. After all, what conceivable reason could we have for being good, if it only brought about disadvantage? I offer here a sketch of an answer, a version of Plato's response.
Plato (famously) said that No evil can come to good men. Taken in the modern context, this seems absurd. After all, we can just look around us and see good men getting cancer and going bankrupt and losing their jobs. We can see evil men with happy families and nice cars.
I think this involves a confusion about what goodness and evil is. A good man, in the full sense, is a man with a good life, not just a good character. The full flourishing human life is one that involves both the virtues of character as well as serendipity in the events of his life. The man who is good of character but hated by everyone, and thought to be evil, is not leading a blessed life. We aspire to be like him only in the sense that we want to develop character traits he has. We do not desire his life. His life is, in the full sense, not good, not blessed, not fully flourishing.
The choice then is clear. We want to be good. We want to lead good lives. Goodness cannot admit evil. It will not. We want a good life, which involves a multitude of things: developing courage and patience and honesty and temperance, having a good family, having loyal friends, sufficient funds, and so on. All these are things to be cultivated; to lose sight of this is the obsession with character traits is a sad, sad, mistake.
Consider, furthermore, that advantage and disadvantage seem to be the wrong kinds of considerations in discussions of virtue. Virtue is a good thing, in the same way happiness is a good thing: simply because it is. We don't want happiness for the sake of something else, happiness is good in itself. Similarly, we don't want virtue for the sake of something else, because virtue is a good in itself. In contrast, we have, for instance, taking medicine, which is something not good for itself, but because it brings about other good things.
So, dear reader, be good. Be courageous, and patient, and honest, and true. Be generous, love your family, have loyal friends. Be good, be good, and no evil can come upon you.
posted by WhatRoughBeast at 10:33 PM
3 Comments:
Hey J,
I'm hesitant to use Plato's comment, considering that "evil" could easily mean multiple things even in English, and he most certainly was not. But I thought there was some confusion here even in your statement, between "being good" (last sentence) and "living good lives". While Gyges cannot live a good life because of his evil character, there is still a gap between being good and living a good life, a gap you've identified.
I like the sound of "Be good, be good and no evil can come upon you." But I'm not sure that it is true. Instead, I posit that if you live a good life, then when/if evil happens to you, you would know, without a doubt, that you are merely subect to the caprice of sad misfortune, rather than the victim of a karmic outcome of your own actions. And that, in itself, is a kind of comfort, isn't it?
You're right about the confusion in my statement. Sometimes when I fall into rhetoric, I get messy with my words, picking them for sound rather than for meaning. I need to watch that.
The situation you posit is one I think I want to reject. I think, when I uttered the injunction to "be good", I meant in the full sense. Have a good life! Have the kind of life heroes have in stories. Not tragic heroes, but heroes in the full sense. No true evil can befall such a man. Obstacles are overcome, true loves are rescued, death is meaningful. There are no sad misfortunes that are significant to such a man, only hurdles that impell him to greater heights.
I like that idea, actually. So, despite all the evil things that happen to Peter Parker, as long as he has no misfortunes, only hurdles, then he is a hero living a good life. but when he is beaten by his clone and becomes Ben O'Reilly and gives up (for a while), then he is no longer living the good life -- until he picks himself up again?
Or to take another example - Odysseus, who despite setback and "misfortune", never gives up on his journey home?
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