Examples Of Injustice In Plato's Republic

In Plato’s Republic, Glaucon tells the tale of a shepherd who finds a ring that

makes him invisible and uses it to become the king of his country through unjust means.

Glaucon believes that this parable shows that if people were given the opportunity

to do injustice with impunity they would choose to do so without fail, because in his

formulation injustice is a better way of securing one’s desires than justice is. Put another

way, people who are able to do injustice with impunity would always act unjustly, even

if they would behave justly if they weren’t able to perform injustice with impunity (as

was the case of the shepherd before he found the Ring). Because of this, he believes that

justice is not something that people practice …show more content…
Of course, there could be possible objections to this argument. Critics might say

that someone who could do justice with impunity would ignore the rights and

intrinsically good values of other people in favor of their own self-interest. It would also

be possible to point to many examples of people who, even when they have to fear

redress for doing injustice, do it anyways. Indeed, one would only have to turn on the

evening news to find examples of people killing, raping, or otherwise violating each

other’s rights to life or personal security. It would be hard to argue that these people,

were they in possession of the ability to do the same actions without having to face any

recourse for those actions, would not simply go about harming whomever they pleased.

Taking the second argument first, it is easy to refute these claims if one simply

thinks in terms of what actions constitute practical wisdom. For example, take the case