With respect to Socrates
She turned the ring back the other way and became visible. She double-checked: When she turned the ring inward, she disappeared; when she turned it outward, she became visible.
She decided to get herself invited to the publisher’s home. She arrived early and seduced the publisher’s husband, on whom she had her eye for some time. Then with his consent and cloaked in her invisibility, killed the publisher, and together they took over the magazine.
Adapted from Gyges’ Ring in Plato’s Republic.
(Steve Tigner inspired this adaptation)
Imagine a teacher choosing to share this version of Plato’s Gyges Ring with her students. She raises questions of character: “Why does the woman choose to gain power with the ring rather than decide to serve others?” “What else might she have done with her new-found power?” “Is it more tempting to get away with doing something clandestine rather than doing the right thing?”
If you were there, how would you have responded to these provocations?
The teacher then proposes, as Glaucon postulated to Socrates: “Suppose, then, there were two such rings, one worn by a just and the other by an unjust person.” Towards the end of the discussion, she adds: “The test of one’s character is what people do when no one else is looking.”
How do you relate to this premise in this story? Have you ever been tempted to do less than what you know you should have done? Have you thought that you might get away with something when no one was around? How did you feel? How did you learn right from wrong?
We all need to be moral agents, to act on behalf of good in the world. Now with the influx of AI, it is necessary now more than ever.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forward” (Kierkegaard)
I write to bring ideas and methods from my life as a teacher in the latter half of the 20th century to help teachers and the public to “live forward” in this century. My latest book, Teacher in the Rye: Doing It My Way is available on Amazon. And I welcome comments here on my Substack or by email at frankthoms3@gmail.com.
