Would you be good if nobody was watching?
In Plato's Republic, a shepherd named Gyges finds a gold ring that grants him invisibility. Freed from the fear of social ruin and punishment, Gyges uses this power to depose the king and take over the kingdom. Plato uses this story to ask a haunting ethical question: do we behave morally because we genuinely care about justice, or do we only do so out of fear of getting caught?
The Shepherd, the Chasm, and the Ring
In the second book of Plato's Republic, the character Glaucon introduces a provocative thought experiment centered on an ancient ancestor of Gyges of Lydia. According to the story, Gyges was an ordinary shepherd tending flocks in the service of the ruling monarch of Lydia. Following a violent storm and an earthquake, the earth cracked open, revealing a deep chasm at the site where he had been pasturing his sheep. Astonished by the sight, the shepherd descended into the opening to see what lay below.
Inside the chasm, Gyges discovered an enormous hollow bronze horse fitted with small doors. Peering inside, he saw a corpse of superhuman size bearing nothing upon its body except a single golden ring on its finger. Gyges took the ring, climbed out of the fissure, and later joined the monthly gathering where the king's shepherds assembled to prepare their reports on the state of the royal flocks.
While sitting among the other shepherds, Gyges absentmindedly turned the collet, or setting, of the ring inward toward the palm of his hand. Instantly, the men around him began speaking as if he had vanished from the room. Astonished, he turned the setting outward again and reappeared. After testing the ring repeatedly to confirm its power, Gyges realized he possessed complete, undetectable invisibility at will.
Power Without Consequence
Once Gyges realized he could act without any danger of detection, his behavior shifted dramatically. He secured a position as one of the messengers sent to deliver the shepherds' report directly to the royal palace. Upon his arrival, he used the ring's invisibility to enter the king's private quarters, seduce the queen, and conspire with her to assassinate the monarch.