The Role Of Justice In The Ring Of Gyges, By Plato

In his writings and studies, Plato spent a large amount of time focusing his thoughts on the specific topic of justice. Plato seems to want to define justice as something that is alwaysrewarding and worthwhile no matter what. However, justice and being a just person comesthrough personal learning and study, and is not always a rewarding behavior for all partiesinvolved. Even when carried out perfectly, justice can greatly inconvenience individuals,families, and groups. In Plato’s opinion, being just is something that must be learned, not justsomething that is inherited or that someone can be born with.Plato poses the question while using the example of The Ring of Gyges whether peopleare inherently selfish or if we are inherently compassionate.

Do humans naturally lean more toward justice or injustice when put in asituation or given power that will test their character? My objection with this example is that itis way too unpredictable. Each person will react in a different way when given such power andfreedom, so using this experiment would never produce reliable results.Plato claims that a perfectly just society consists of a structure including three specificgroups. The first group is labeled the producers, or otherwise may be known as workers whomay be employed as craftsman, farmers, artisans, etc. The next group has been given the nameauxiliaries; these are the warriors of Plato’s just society. The final group would be theguardians, or the rulers of the just society. Plato says that an entire society will be just whenrelations between these three classes are right. I object with this view because there are somany different factors that can contribute into making a society unjust. An entire society can’tjust claim that their whole society is just only because they have good communication andrelationships between the

It might be a good way to structure a society, and it might work, but therecould be other ways that would be just as successful.Plato makes connections to the just society and the just individual by claimingthat each class in the just society is driven by a main emotion of soul. Producers are controlledmainly by their appetites, which are mainly worldly appetites; for example, money, sex, fame,luxurious living, etc. Auxiliaries are driven by the spirit of courageousness which dwells withineach one of them. The Guardians are driven by their will to learn and their rational mind. Platocannot make this claim and act like people could just fall into their assigned category and ignoreall other urge and emotion to want to do other things. Human beings are born with alldifferent emotions, some may be stronger than others, but it would be a dull existence to onlybe allowed to be in one category or class, and be driven by one specific set of emotions.Eventually there would be people who wanted to explore other options and lifestyles whichcould cause an uprising and havoc within the supposed perfectly just society. Plato makes a lotof very bold claims, and it is hard for me to feel as though I can believe his words. It is so onesided, it seems like he believes he is right so everyone else should just hop on board with him,but I don’t want to jump on the Plato