Imagine you found a ring that made you invisible. You could do anything—take what you wanted, harm your enemies, advance your interests—with absolute impunity. No one would ever know. No consequences would ever touch you.

What would you do?

This thought experiment appears in Plato's Republic (359d-360d), where Glaucon challenges Socrates with the story of a shepherd named Gyges who discovers exactly such a ring. Using its power, Gyges seduces the queen, murders the king, and seizes the throne. The story poses a disturbing question: If we could escape all external consequences, wouldn't we all behave unjustly?

Most people, if they're honest, suspect they might. And many assume that such a person—free from punishment, able to take whatever they want—would be happier than someone constrained by justice and consequences.

If this story sounds familiar, it should. Tolkien's One Ring derives directly from Plato's ring of Gyges—it grants invisibility and power while corrupting whoever possesses it. The hobbits prove safest as ring-bearers precisely because their innocence represents something close to constitutional health: There's less internal disorder for the ring to exploit. Even they cannot escape its corrupting influence indefinitely.

But what if that assumption is exactly backward?

Glaucon pushes Socrates further. He wants proof that justice is worth choosing not just for its results—reputation, rewards, avoiding punishment—but for itself, for what it does within the person who practices it.

To make this case clear, Glaucon constructs an extreme comparison (360e-362c): Imagine the most just person who has the reputation of being completely unjust. He does everything right internally but is universally condemned, punished, and even tortured as if he were the worst criminal. Then imagine the most unjust person who has the reputation of being completely just. He commits every crime but receives universal acclaim, rewards, and honor.

Which person lives better?

Most of us reflexively answer that the unjust person with the good reputation has it better. He gets everything he wants, everyone admires him, and he suffers no........

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