In Chapter 2 of the The Republic Glaucon, the brother of Plato,
challenged Socrates to provide a reason to act morally even when
immorality appeared more profitable. He related the story of the ring of
Gyges, a ring which gives the wearer invisibility and hence preserves
his (or her) anonymity in committing the most egregious of crimes. Such
a person may maintain his reputation for good while stealing, pillaging
and seducing at will.
Is such a challenge asking too much? Is
the only way to provide a valid reason to act morally an appeal to
virtue as its own reward, without any consideration of the external
benefits? Is it enough that morality is more profitable than immorality
MOST of the time, even if not in the wildly implausible thought
experiment of the Ring of Gyges?
The story of the ring of Gyges certainly presents a formidable challenge to the notion that morality inherently provides its possessor with a better, more rewarding life than immorality. Unless the fable is inaccurate in some way (which has to be proven with further philosophical analysis in the dialogue), it seems to demonstrate that self-centered or immoral acts do not ALWAYS make a person worse off in the long run than selfless or moral acts. Socrates' goal, which I think is a noble and necessary one, is to remove this condition on morality's benefits by logically concluding that a person is worse off acting immorally with the utility of the ring than they are acting morally with or without the ring. If Socrates can achieve this, than he need not prove that acting morally is better than acting immorally in any real world scenario where penalties for immoral acts are applicable.
ReplyDeleteIf Socrates is unsuccessful in proving that morality is more beneficial than immorality in the scenario of the ring of Gyges, all hope for morality is not lost. Such an outcome merely implies that immorality benefits its possessor more than morality when immoral acts go unpunished. While this isn't the most heartwarming conclusion, it is not horrible given the realities of the political and social systems that govern our communities. As was mentioned in Socrates' initial counter to Thrasymachus, communities are founded on a mutual recognition of the fact that wrongdoing harms others. All understanding of wrongdoing stems from the recognition of how it feels to be wronged. Nobody enjoys being hurt or harmed or insulted. On the flip side, everyone enjoys incurring benefits for themselves. The problem is that when humans come into contact, as they inevitably must, one person's gain ends up being another person's loss. If I steal your money, I benefit from the ability to buy food and whatnot while you suffer the opposite result. If I choose to hold the door for you, you save the energy exerted by opening the door while I lose some time I could be doing other things as well as a marginal amount of energy. It happens that no physical or social exchange in the material world is beneficial for everyone that is affected. Even burning fossil fuels falls into this principal as it is beneficial in the short term but may be contributing green house gasses that will prove problematic for future generations. What a society does is establish what acts are more detrimental to some people than they are beneficial to other people and forbids such acts. Such acts include murder, theft, etc. When we, in principal, agree to belong to a society, we are agreeing to forfeit our right to murder people and steal from people in exchange for the promise that other people around us will forfeit their right to kill us and steal from us. This is the tangible benefit of morality. While morality itself might not benefit us, the moral principles that we all agree to submit to inevitably benefit us because they ensure that we are not victims of immorality.
This analysis of the benefits of morality might be troubling for many people because it maintains that breaking laws benefits us so long as there are no or minimal repercussions. Some might argue that acting immorally does not benefit us because it makes us feel guilt and therefore morality is inherently more beneficial. I would argue that guilt is a byproduct of the social contract one makes within a community. Because we all have an idea of how it feels to have wrongdoing done to us, the guilt we feel when doing wrong is really just sympathy from ourselves to our victim, be he anonymous or not.
So in conclusion, morality might only be beneficial as a regulating force within society or it might be intrinsically beneficial depending on what Socrates can come up with.
I think Charlie makes an excellent point in his second last paragraph --the idea that morality is ultimately the better choice because it means a lack of guilt (forgive me if I misinterpreted what you are saying, Charlie). It is a similar argument, in a broad sense, to the one we discussed in class today: that morality will make one happy; thus morality is advantageous. This just adds an extra layer of complexity to the argument. Because we know we are doing something wrong if we act immorally, the guilt we feel will make us unhappy, even if the result of our immoral action otherwise benefits us. The Challenge of the Ring of Gyges simplifies the argument--there is no need to discuss if fear of getting caught plays into that unhappiness.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that the guilt of doing something immoral would make me far uhappier than any benefits could make me happy. On the other hand, thinking back to Peter and Will's argument earlier today, what if someone feels absolutely no remorse or guilt for doing something immoral? How can we qualify the argument that morality will make one happy then? I know we still have one more argument to go over in class, but I also know argument three for 'morality is more advantagous' is an intellectual argument that discusses the difference between genuine pleasure and false pleasure. I guess I was hoping for some kind of universal argument that would convince the immoral man to act morally in the moment, but if that existed, we would all probably be more aware of it, right?
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ReplyDeleteWhen looking at this specific situation of the Ring of Gyges, it needs to be looked at on both an individual scale and a societal scale. As Charlie has correctly pointed out, when one acts immorally, it is a zero-sum game. This means that while the person who has acted immorally benefits, another person suffers the consequences. In this situation, Socrates is trying to prove that it is worth acting morally even if one has no chance of being caught while acting immorally. In this case, there are two ways to prove that morality is beneficial: first, acting morally is a reward within itself, or secondly, that there are external benefits to acting morally. Socrates argues that acting morally is beneficial in and of itself, as he claims that if everyone only acts upon his/her necessary desires and does his/her specific job, which he phrases as "the principle of specialization", then it will create the perfect state and there will be no need for injustice. While I agree with Socrates argument that acting morally is beneficial in and of itself, I believe that there are also many external benefits to acting morally.
ReplyDeleteFirst lets look at it on an individual level. As both Ally and Charlie have pointed out, there is the chance the guilt of acting immorally would affect the person to the point where the detriments of guilt would outweigh the benefits that come from acting immorally. While this is plausible, it seems unlikely, as in order to act immorally the person must have a certain resolve to gain what he/she is achieveing through acting immorally under the guise of the Ring of Gyges. One idea that must be considered as an external benefit to acting morally is the karmic cycle. The karmic cycle states that general circumstances for a person reflect his/her actions. Therefore, if one acts immorally, the karmic cycle states that there will be repercussions down the road for acting immorally. If an individual acts immorally, he/she is sacrificing short-term gain for long-term pain. While it will not come in the form of being punished for the specific immoral action, as the person will be invisible, there will be an equal negative reaction down the road, whether it is in this life or the afterlife. Clearly, this idea lends itself to the individual acting morally. The picture is much clearer on a societal scale. As already stated, for everyone person that benefits from acting immorally, someone else suffers. When one person acts unjustly, everyone else can be harmed, leading to mayhem in the state if the immorality gets out of hand. To keep society in order, morality is definitely beneficial.
In short, I don't believe the challenge of acting morally is too much, even in the situation of the Ring of Gyges. While the individual may benefit initially from acting immorally, either guilt or the karmic cycle will come back to haunt him/her later in life. If an individual can understand what the consequences of acting immorally are, even if he/she isn't caught for his/her actions, then morality always is the better choice.