MACHIAVELLI AND HOBBES

MACHIAVELLI AND HOBBES

“A CRITIQUE ON THE VIEW OF INJUSTICE AND JUSTICE PRESENTED BY GLAUCON”

In Book IV of Plato’s most controversial and renowned work, the Republic, Justice is defined as the action of doing what one ought to do, or of doing what one does best, according to one's class within society. A just society is one in which the organization of the polis, or city-state, mirrors the organization of the tri-partite soul.
At the start of Book II, Glaucon argues that the just as well as the unjust man would do the same if they had the power to get away with injustice exempt from punishment. This is true in the sense that if there is no punishment or existing laws that limits a man in his action he would naturally be tempted to use that as a power to abuse that freedom. Whether a man is from head to toe a just or unjust he would naturally be tempted to taste the glory of no restrictions.
If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice. Lets say a man, a just man who has never performed an evil act, he had lived a life of a noble but unfortunately he was imprisoned for 10 years for a crime that he did not commit, although innocent he still served his sentence. While in prison he had a found a ring that had the power to make him invisible. Would he take the chance to free himself from the institutionalized prison walls? Or would he stay and be the just man that he really is even if he was imprisoned for the wrong reasons? Will he set his self free or will he not?
As a reference, Glaucon narrated the legend of Gyges who found a ring, if he turned the collet of the ring to the inside of his hand, he became invisible. Gyges with the power of invisibility was able to enter the royal...