"We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious. They stole it from us. Sneaky little hobbitses."-Gollum, The Lord of The Rings:The Two Towers
When speaking of the Ring of Gyges, I felt that a Lord of the Rings quote was most appropriate, because in the end the Lord of the Rings can be seen to represent both sides of the argument in the second book of the Republic. If confronted with a ring that would make us invisible with no fear of reprisal, would we become immoral and deranged like Gollum, or would we do the honorable thing and destroy the ring?And in the end, what good could come from invisibility?
This question really bothered me in the end, because I honestly couldn't decide what I would do. I mean, invisibility sounds like allot of fun! But after thinking about it...why would you want to be invisible? There seems to be little good in this situation that doesn't come at the expense of others. After all, if it is something you feel you shouldn't be seen doing, is it something you should be doing at all?
Socrates, and our own conscience, would tell us most decidedly no. It would harm our souls, and we should feel something inherent within us telling us that what we are doing is wrong. The answer is so simple on paper, but it seems much harder in reality. Would it be like in the Lord of the Rings, with the ring of Gyges holding a certain power, bewitching those that held it, or would we be able to lean towards Socrates's counter argument, and be able to resist the temptation of the ring because it would harm our psuche, our souls?
In the end, this is a question that is up to the reader to answer for themselves. Is the ring of Gyges "precious", or is it a soul damaging artifact to be tossed into mount Doom?
P.S. (Yes, I know I am a dork.)
P.P.S. I commented on Treya's blog The Philosopher that must not be named.
1. Most AMAZING blog to date. (I haven't really read them all, but this has to be up there in the tops.)
ReplyDelete2. I don't really know what to say, but since I really want to comment on this, and I don't think just an "AMAZINNG!" will suffice for the counsel, I'm going to come up with something.
3. I've been thinking about that a lot too, on my own, before reading The Republic. - Not the LOTR part but the consciency part. - I feel like with the freedom that I have now coming to college from high school has given me opportunities to be "invisible" to my parents. They don't see what's up, or they don't look so hard, so I can get away with more. Not that I would do anything too far out there, that they would disapprove of. But, yeah, I still live in their house, they still completely support me, so I have to think about it all the time because I feel like I owe it to them to make them proud. Basically, what I'm trying to get out is: My dad is Socrates and freedom/college is my ring.