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When supported with education, a person’s integrity can give him something to rely on when his perspective seems to blur, when rules and principles seem to waiver, and when he’s faced with hard choices of right or wrong.” –James Stockdale
Answer the following questions accordance with the Open Dialogue instructions:
1. Is it important to have integrity? If so, why? If not, why not?
a. Should we ever sacrifice our integrity for the greater good of humankind? (Cf. Module 5 on Utilitarianism) Explain your answer.
b. How would Aristotle defend the virtue of integrity? (Cf. Module 5) Explain your answer.
2. Using Stoic Ethics as discussed in “The World of Epictetus,” and Plato’s “The Ring of Gyges respond to the following questions:
a. What would you do if you had the ring of Gyges? Would you use it for good or for evil? Why?
b. How is the Stoic ethic, an ethics of integrity, contrary to Glaucon’s contention that the best form of justice is doing wrong with impunity? Use the “Ring of Gyges” story to explain your answer.
3. How is Stoic Ethics helpful for keeping one’s integrity especially when under enormous pressure to give it up? Be sure to examine Stockdale’s eight year stay in a Vietnam prisoner of war camp to explain your answer. And also be sure to explain how the Bible especially the lessons from Job and the works the Stoic Philosopher Epictetus help him through these horrific years.
The World of Epictetus
I
! “#$% I &'( a forty-one-year-old commander, the senior pilot of Air
Wing “$, flying combat missions in the area just south of Hanoi from
the aircraft carrier Oriskany. By September of that year I had grown
quite accustomed to briefing dozens of pilots and leading them on daily air
strikes; I had flown nearly )** missions myself and knew the countryside
of North Vietnam like the back of my hand. On the ninth of that month
I led about thirty-five airplanes to the +anh Hoa Bridge, just west of that
city. +at bridge was tough; we had been bouncing %**-pounders o, it for
weeks.
+e September # raid held special meaning for Oriskany pilots because
of a special bomb load we had improvised; we were going in with our big-
gest, the )***-pounders, hung not only on our attack planes but on our F–
fighter-bombers as well. +is increase in bridge-busting capability came
from the innovative brain of a major flying with my Marine fighter squad-
ron. He had figured out how we could jury-rig some switches, hang the big
bombs, pump out some of the fuel to stay within takeo, weight limits, and
then top o, our tanks from our airborne refuelers while en route to the
target. Although the pilot had to throw several switches in sequence to get
rid of his bombs, a procedure requiring above-average cockpit agility, we
routinely operated on the premise that all pilots of Air Wing “$ were above
average. I test-flew the new load on a mission, thought it over, and approved
it; that’s the way we did business.
Our spirit was up. +at morning, the Oriskany Air Wing was finally
going to drop the bridge that was becoming a North Vietnamese symbol of
resistance. You can imagine our dismay when we crossed the coast and the
weather scout I had sent on ahead radioed back that ceiling and visibility
were zero-zero in the bridge area. In the tiny cockpit of my A-! at the front
of the pack, I pushed the button on the throttle, spoke into the radio mike
in my oxygen mask, and told the formation to split up and proceed in pairs
to the secondary targets I had specified in my contingency briefing. What
a letdown.
“e adrenaline stopped flowing as my wingman and I broke left and
down and started sauntering along toward our “milk run” target: boxcars
on a railroad siding between Vinh and “anh Hoa, where the flak was
light. Descending through #$,$$ feet, I unsnapped my oxygen mask and
let it dangle, giving my pinched face a rest—no reason to stay uncomfort-
able on this run.
As I glided toward that easy target, I’m sure I felt totally self-satisfied.
I had the top combat job that a Navy commander can hold and I was in
tune with my environment. I was confident—I knew airplanes and flying
inside out. I was comfortable with the people I worked with and I knew the
trade so well that I often improvised variations in accepted procedures and
encouraged others to do so under my watchful eye. I was on top. I thought
I had found every key to success and had no doubt that my Academy and
test-pilot schooling had provided me with everything I needed in life.
I passed down the middle of those boxcars and smiled as I saw the results
of my instinctive timing. A neat pattern—perfection. I was just pulling out
of my dive low to the ground when I heard a noise I hadn’t expected—the
boom boom boom of a %&-millimeter gun—and then I saw it just behind my
wingtip. I was hit—all the red lights came on, my control system was going
out—and I could barely keep that plane from flying into the ground while I
got that damned oxygen mask up to my mouth so I could tell my wingman
that I was about to eject. What rotten luck. And on a “milk run”!
“e descent in the chute was quiet except for occasional rifle shots from
the streets below. My mind was clear, and I said to myself, “five years.” I
knew we were making a mess of the war in Southeast Asia, but I didn’t
think it would last longer than that; I was also naive about the resources I
would need in order to survive a lengthy period of captivity.
“e Durants have said that culture is a thin and fragile veneer that super-
imposes itself on mankind. For the first time I was on my own, without
the veneer. I was to spend years searching through and refining my bag of
memories, looking for useful tools, things of value. !e values were there,
but they were all mixed up with technology, bureaucracy, and expediency,
and had to be brought up into the open.
Education should take care to illuminate values, not bury them amongst
the trivia. Are our students getting the message that without personal
integrity intellectual skills are worthless?
Integrity is one of those words which many people keep in that desk
drawer labeled “too hard.” It’s not a topic for the dinner table or the cocktail
party. You can’t buy or sell it. When supported with education, a person’s
integrity can give him something to rely on when his perspective seems to
blur, when rules and principles seem to waver, and when he’s faced with
hard choices of right or wrong. It’s something to keep him on the right
track, something to keep him afloat when he’s drowning; if only for practi-
cal reasons, it is an attribute that should be kept at the very top of a young
person’s consciousness.
!e importance of the latter point is highlighted in prison camps, where
everyday human nature, stripped bare, can be studied under a magnifying
glass in accelerated time. Lessons spotlighted and absorbed in that labora-
tory sharpen one’s eye for their abstruse but highly relevant applications in
the “real time” world of now.
In the years since I’ve been out of prison, I’ve participated several times in
the process of selecting senior naval o”cers for promotion or important
command assignments. I doubt that the experience is significantly di#er-
ent from that of executives who sit on “selection boards” in any large hier-
archy. !e system must be formal, objective, and fair; if you’ve seen one,
you’ve probably seen them all.
Navy selection board proceedings go something like this. !e first time
you know the identity of the other members of the board is when you walk
into a boardroom at eight o’clock on an appointed morning. !e first order
of business is to stand, raise your right hand, put your left hand on the
Bible, and swear to make the best judgment you can, on the basis of merit,
without prejudice. You’re sworn to confidentiality regarding all board
members’ remarks during the proceedings. Board members are chosen
for their experience and understanding; they often have knowledge of the
particular individuals under consideration. !ey must feel free to speak
their minds. !ey read and grade dozens of dossiers, and each candidate
is discussed extensively. At voting time, a member casts his vote by select-
ing and pushing a “percent confidence” button, visible only to himself, on a
console attached to his chair. When the last member pushes his button, a
totalizer displays the numerical average “confidence” of the board. No one
knows who voted what.
I’m always impressed by the fact that every e”ort is made to be fair
to the candidate. Some are clearly out, some are clearly in; the borderline
cases are the tough ones. You go over and over those in the “middle pile”
and usually you vote and revote until late at night. In all the boards I’ve sat
on, no inference or statement in a “ jacket” is as sure to portend a low con-
fidence score on the vote as evidence of a lack of directness or rectitude of
a candidate in his dealings with others. Any hint of moral turpitude really
turns people o”. When the crunch comes, they prefer to work with forth-
right plodders rather than with devious geniuses. I don’t believe that this
preference is unique to the military. In any hierarchy where people’s fates
are decided by committees or boards, those who lose credibility with their
peers and who cause their superiors to doubt their directness, honesty, or
integrity are dead. Recovery isn’t possible.
!e linkage of men’s ethics, reputations, and fates can be studied in even
more vivid detail in prison camp. In that brutally controlled environment
a perceptive enemy can get his hooks into the slightest chink in a man’s
ethical armor and accelerate his downfall. Given the right opening, the
right moral weakness, a certain susceptibility on the part of the prisoner, a
clever extortionist can drive his victim into a downhill slide that will ruin
his image, self-respect, and life in a very short time.
!ere are some uncharted aspects to this, some traits of susceptibility
which I don’t think psychologists yet have words for. I am thinking of the
tragedy that can befall a person who has such a need for love or attention
that he will sell his soul for it. I use tragedy with the rigorous definition
Aristotle applied to it: the story of a good man with a flaw who comes to
an unjustified bad end. !is is a rather delicate point and one that I want
to emphasize.
We had very very few collaborators in prison, and comparatively few
Aristotelian tragedies, but the story and fate of one of these good men
with a flaw might be instructive. He was handsome, smart, articulate, and
smooth. He was almost sincere. He was obsessed with success. When the
going got tough, he decided expediency was preferable to principle.
!is man was a classical opportunist. He befriended and worked for
the enemy to the detriment of his fellow Americans. He made a tacit deal;
moreover, he accepted favors (a violation of the code of conduct). In time,
out of fear and shame, he withdrew; we could not get him to communicate
with the American prisoner organization.
I couldn’t learn what made the man tick. One of my best friends in
prison, one of the wisest persons I have ever known, had once been in a
squadron with this fellow. In prisoners’ code I tapped a question to my
philosophical friend: “What in the world is going on with that fink?”
“You’re going to be surprised at what I have to say,” he meticulously
tapped back. “In a squadron he pushes himself forward and dominates the
scene. He’s a continual fountain of information. He’s the person everybody
relies on for inside dope. He works like mad; often flies more hops than
others. It drives him crazy if he’s not liked. He tends to grovel and ingrati-
ate himself before others. I didn’t realize he was really pathetic until I was
sitting around with him and his wife one night when he was spinning his
yarns of delusions of grandeur, telling of his great successes and his pend-
ing ascension to the top. His wife knew him better than anybody else; she
shook her head with genuine sympathy and said to him: ‘Gee, you’re just
a phony.’ ”
In prison, this man had somehow reached the point where he was will-
ing to sell his soul just to satisfy this need, this immaturity. !e only way
he could get the attention that he demanded from authority was to grovel
and ingratiate himself before the enemy. As a soldier he was a miserable
failure, but he had not crossed the boundary of willful treason; he was not
written o” as an irrevocable loss, as were the two patent collaborators with
whom the Vietnamese soon arranged that he live.
As we American #$%s built our civilization, and wrote our own laws
(which we leaders obliged all to memorize), we also codified certain princi-
ples which formed the backbone of our policies and attitudes. I codified the
principles of compassion, rehabilitation, and forgiveness with the slogan:
“It is neither American nor Christian to nag a repentant sinner to his grave.”
(Some didn’t like it, thought it seemed soft on finks.) And so, we really gave
this man a chance. Over time, our e!orts worked. After five years of self-
indulgence he got himself together and started to communicate with the
prisoner organization. I sent the message “Are you on the team or not?”; he
replied, “Yes,” and came back. He told the Vietnamese that he didn’t want
to play their dirty games anymore. He wanted to get away from those will-
ful collaborators and he came back and he was accepted, after a fashion.
I wish that were the end of the story. Although he came back, joined
us, and even became a leader of sorts, he never totally won himself back.
No matter how forgiving we were, he was conscious that many resented
him—not so much because he was weak but because he had broken what
we might call a gentleman’s code. In all of those years when he, a senior o”-
cer, had willingly participated in making tape recordings of anti-American
material, he had deeply o!ended the sensibilities of the American prison-
ers who were forced to listen to him. To most of us it wasn’t the rhetoric of
the war or the goodness or the badness of this or that issue that counted.
#e object of our highest value was the well-being of our fellow prisoners.
He had broken that code and hurt some of those people. Some thought
that as an informer he had indirectly hurt them physically. I don’t believe
that. What indisputably hurt them was his not having the sensitivity to
realize the damage his opportunistic conduct would do to the morale of a
bunch of Middle American guys with Middle American attitudes which
they naturally cherished. He should have known that in those solitary cells
where his tapes were piped were idealistic, direct, patriotic fellows who
would be crushed and embarrassed to have him, a senior man in excel-
lent physical shape, so obviously not under torture, telling the world that
the war was wrong. Even if he believed what he said, which he did not, he
should have had the common decency to keep his mouth shut. You can sit
and think anything you want, but when you insensitively cut down those
who want to love and help you, you cross a line. He seemed to sense that he
could never truly be one of us.
And yet he was likable—particularly back in civilization after release—
when tension was o!, and making a deal did not seem so important. He
exuded charm and “hail fellow” sophistication. He wanted so to be liked
by all those men he had once discarded in his search for new friends, new
deals, new fields to conquer in Hanoi. #e tragedy of his life was obvious
to us all. Tears were shed by some of his old prison mates when he was
killed in an accident that strongly resembled suicide some months later.
!e Greek drama had run its course. He was right out of Aristotle’s book,
a good man with a flaw who had come to an unjustified bad end. !e flaw
was insecurity: the need to ingratiate himself, the need for love and adula-
tion at any price.
He reminded me of Paul Newman in !e Hustler. Newman couldn’t
stand success. He knew how to make a deal. He was handsome, he was
smart, he was attractive to everybody; but he had to have adulation, and
therein lay the seed of tragedy. Playing high-stakes pool against old Minne-
sota Fats (Jackie Gleason), Newman was well in the lead, and getting more
full of himself by the hour. George C. Scott, the pool bettor, whispered to
his partner: “I’m going to keep betting on Minnesota Fats; this other guy
[Newman] is a born loser—he’s all skill and no character.” And he was
right, a born loser—I think that’s the message.
How can we educate to avoid these casualties? Can we by means of educa-
tion prevent this kind of tragedy? What we prisoners were in was a one-way
leverage game in which the other side had all the mechanical advantage. I
suppose you could say that we all live in a leverage world to some degree; we
all experience people trying to use us in one way or another. !e di”erence
in Hanoi was the degradation of the ends (to be used as propaganda agents
of an enemy, or as informers on your fellow Americans), and the power
of the means (total environmental control including solitary confinement,
restraint by means of leg-irons and handcu”s, and torture). Extortionists
always go down the same track: the imposition of guilt and fear for having
disobeyed their rules, followed in turn by punishment, apology, confes-
sion, and atonement (their payo”). Our captors would go to great lengths
to get a man to compromise his own code, even if only slightly, and then
they would hold that in their bag, and the next time get him to go a little
further.
Some people are psychologically, if not physically, at home in extor-
tion environments. !ey are tough people who instinctively avoid getting
sucked into the undertows. !ey never kid themselves or their friends; if
they miss the mark they admit it. But there’s another category of person
who gets tripped up. He makes a small compromise, perhaps rationalizes
it, and then makes another one; and then he gets depressed, full of shame,
lonesome, loses his willpower and self-respect, and comes to a tragic end.
Somewhere along the line he realizes that he has turned a corner that he
didn’t mean to turn. All too late he realizes that he has been worshipping
the wrong gods and discovers the wisdom of the ages: life is not fair.
In sorting out the story after our release, we found that most of us had
come to combat constant mental and physical pressure in much the same
way. We discovered that when a person is alone in a cell and sees the door
open only once or twice a day for a bowl of soup, he realizes after a period
of weeks in isolation and darkness that he has to build some sort of ritual
into his life if he wants to avoid becoming an animal. Ritual fills a need in
a hard life and it’s easy to see how formal church ritual grew. For almost all
of us, this ritual was built around prayer, exercise, and clandestine commu-
nication. !e prayers I said during those days were prayers of quality with
ideas of substance. We found that over the course of time our minds had
a tremendous capacity for invention and introspection, but had the weak-
ness of being an integral part of our bodies. I remembered Descartes and
how in his philosophy he separated mind and body. One time I cursed my
body for the way it decayed my mind. I had decided that I would become
a Gandhi. I would have to be carried around on a pallet and in that state I
could not be used by my captors for propaganda purposes. After about ten
days of fasting, I found that I had become so depressed that soon I would
risk going into interrogation ready to spill my guts just looking for a friend.
I tapped to the guy next door and I said, “Gosh, how I wish Descartes could
have been right, but he’s wrong.” He was a little slow to reply; I reviewed
Descartes’ deduction with him and explained how I had discovered that
body and mind are inseparable.
On the positive side, I discovered the tremendous file-cabinet volume
of the human mind. You can memorize an incredible amount of material
and you can draw the past out of your memory with remarkable recall by
easing slowly toward the event you seek and not crowding the mind too
closely. You’ll try to remember who was at your birthday party when you
were five years old, and you can get it, but only after months of e”ort. You
can break the locks and find the answers, but you need time and solitude
to learn how to use this marvelous device in your head which is the greatest
computer on earth.
Of course many of the things we recalled from the past were utterly use-
less as sources of strength or practicality. For instance, events brought back
from cocktail parties or insincere social contacts were almost repugnant
because of their emptiness, their utter lack of value. More often than not,
the locks worth picking had been on old schoolroom doors. School days
can be thought of as a time when one is filling the important stacks of one’s
memory library. For me, the golden doors were labeled history and the
classics. !e historical perspective which enabled a man to take himself
away from all the agitation, not necessarily to see a rosy lining, but to see
the real nature of the situation he faced, was truly a thing of value.
Here’s how this historical perspective helped me see the reality of my
own situation and thus cope better with it. I learned from a Vietnamese
prisoner that the same cells we occupied had in years before been lived in
by many of the leaders of the Hanoi government. From my history lessons
I recalled that when metropolitan France permitted communists in the
government in “#$%, the communists who occupied cells in Vietnam were
set free. I marveled at the cycle of history, all within my memory, which
prompted Hitler’s rise in Germany, then led to the rise of the Popular
Front in France, and finally vacated this cell of mine halfway around the
world (“Perhaps Pham Van Dong lived here”). I came to understand what
tough people these were. I was willing to fight them to the death, but I
grew to realize that hatred was an indulgence, a very ine&cient emotion.
I remember thinking, “If you were committed to beating the dealer in a
gambling casino, would hating him help your game?” In a pidgin English
propaganda book the guard gave me, speeches by these old communists
about their prison experiences stressed how they learned to beat down the
enemy by being united. It seemed comforting to know that we were united
against the communist administration of Hoa Lo prison just as the Viet-
namese communists had united against the French administration of Hoa
Lo in the thirties. Prisoners are prisoners, and there’s only one way to beat
administrations. We resolved to do it better in the sixties than they had
in the thirties. You don’t base system-beating on any thought of political
idealism; you do it as a competitive thing, as an expression of self-respect.
Education in the classics teaches you that all organizations since the begin-
ning of time have used the power of guilt; that cycles are repetitive; and
that this is the way of the world. It’s a naive person who comes in and says,
“Let’s see, what’s good and what’s bad?” !at’s a quagmire. You can get out
of that quagmire only by recalling how wise men before you accommo-
dated the same dilemmas. And I believe a good classical education and an
understanding of history can best determine the rules you should live by.
!ey also give you the power to analyze reasons for these rules and guide
you as to how to apply them to your own situation. In a broader sense,
all my education helped me. Naval Academy discipline and body contact
sports helped me. But the education which I found myself using most was
what I got in graduate school. !e messages of history and philosophy I
used were simple.
!e first one is this business about life not being fair. !at is a very
important lesson and I learned it from a wonderful man named Philip
Rhinelander. As a lieutenant commander in the Navy studying political
science at Stanford University in “#$”, I went over to philosophy corner one
day and an older gentleman said, “Can I help you?” I said, “Yes, I’d like to
take some courses in philosophy.” I told him I’d been in college for six years
and had never had a course in philosophy. He couldn’t believe it. I told him
that I was a naval o%cer and he said, “Well, I used to be in the Navy. Sit
down.” Philip Rhinelander became a great influence in my life.
He had been a Harvard lawyer and had pleaded cases before the Supreme
Court and then gone to war as a reserve o%cer. When he came back he
took his doctorate at Harvard. He was also a music composer, had been
director of general education at Harvard, dean of the School of Humani-
ties and Sciences at Stanford, and by the time I met him had by choice
returned to teaching in the classroom. He said, “!e course I’m teaching
is my personal two-term favorite—!e Problem of Good and Evil—and
we’re starting our second term.” He said the message of his course was from
the Book of Job. !e number one problem in this world is that people are
not able to accommodate the lesson in the book.
He recounted the story of Job. It starts out by establishing that Job was
the most honorable of men. !en he lost all his goods. He also lost his
reputation, which is what really hurt. His wife was badgering him to admit
his sins, but he knew he had made no errors. He was not a patient man and
demanded to speak to the Lord. When the Lord appeared in the whirlwind,
he said, “Now, Job, you have to shape up! Life is not fair.” !at’s my inter-
pretation and that’s the way the book ended for hundreds of years. I agree
with those of the opinion that the happy ending was spliced on many years
later. If you read it, you’ll note that the meter changes. People couldn’t live
with the original message. Here was a good man who came to unexplained
grief, and the Lord told him: “!at’s the way it is. Don’t challenge me. !is
is my world and you either live in it as I designed it or get out.”
!is was a great comfort to me in prison. It answered the question
“Why me?” It cast aside any thoughts of being punished for past actions.
Sometimes I shared the message with fellow prisoners as I tapped through
the walls to them, but I learned to be selective. It’s a strong message which
upsets some people.
Rhinelander also passed on to me another piece of classical informa-
tion which I found of great value. On the day of our last session together
he said, “You’re a military man, let me give you a book to remember me by.
It’s a book of military ethics.” He handed it to me, and I bade him good-bye
with great emotion. I took the book home and that night started to read it.
It was the Enchiridion of the philosopher Epictetus, his “manual” for the
Roman field soldier.
As I began to read, I thought to myself in disbelief, “Does Rhinelander
think I’m going to draw lessons for my life from this thing? I’m a fighter
pilot. I’m a technical man. I’m a test pilot. I know how to get people to do
technical work. I play golf; I drink martinis. I know how to get ahead in my
profession. And what does he hand me? A book that says in part, ‘It’s better
to die in hunger, exempt from guilt and fear, than to live in a”uence and
with perturbation.’ ” I remembered this later in prison because perturba-
tion was what I was living with. When I ejected from the airplane on that
September morn in #$%&, I had left the land of technology. I had entered
the world of Epictetus, and it’s a world that few of us, whether we know it
or not, are ever far away from.
In Palo Alto, I had read this book, not with contentment, but with
annoyance. Statement after statement: “Men are disturbed not by things,
but by the view that they take of them.” “Do not be concerned with things
which are beyond your power.” “Demand not that events should happen as
you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen and you will go on
well.” !is is stoicism. It’s not the last word, but it’s a viewpoint that comes
in handy in many circumstances, and it surely did for me. Particularly this
line: “Lameness is an impediment to the body but not to the will.” !at was
significant for me because I wasn’t able to stand up and support myself on
my badly broken leg for the first couple of years I was in solitary confine-
ment.
Other statements of Epictetus took on added meaning in the light of
extortions which often began with our captors’ callous pleas: “If you are
just reasonable with us we will compensate you. You get your meals, you
get to sleep, you won’t be pestered, you might even get a cellmate.” !e
catch was that by being “reasonable with us” our enemies meant being
their informers, their propagandists. !e old stoic had said, “If I can get
the things I need with the preservation of my honor and fidelity and self-
respect, show me the way and I will get them. But, if you require me to lose
my own proper good, that you may gain what is no good, consider how
unreasonable and foolish you are.” To love our fellow prisoners was within
our power. To betray, to propagandize, to disillusion conscientious and
patriotic shipmates and destroy their morale so that they in turn would be
destroyed was to lose one’s proper good.
What attributes serve you well in the extortion environment? We
learned there, above all else, that the best defense is to keep your con-
science clean. When we did something we were ashamed of, and our cap-
tors realized we were ashamed of it, we were in trouble. A little white lie is
where extortion and ultimately blackmail start. In “#$%, I was crippled and
I was alone. I realized that they had all the power. I couldn’t see how I was
ever going to get out with my honor and self-respect. !e one thing I came
to realize was that if you don’t lose integrity you can’t be had and you can’t
be hurt. Compromises multiply and build up when you’re working against
a skilled extortionist or a good manipulator. You can’t be had if you don’t
take that first shortcut, or “meet them halfway,” as they say, or look for that
tacit “deal,” or make that first compromise.
Bob North, a political science professor at Stanford, taught me a course
called Comparative Marxist !ought. !is was not an anti-communist
course. It was the study of dogma and thought patterns. We read no criti-
cisms of Marxism, only primary sources. All year we read the works of
Marx and Lenin. In Hanoi, I understood more about Marxist theory than
my interrogator did. I was able to say to that interrogator, “!at’s not what
Lenin said; you’re a deviationist.”
One of the things North talked about was brainwashing. A psycholo-
gist who studied the Korean prisoner situation, which somewhat paralleled
ours, concluded that three categories of prisoners were involved there. !e
first was the redneck Marine sergeant from Tennessee who had an eighth-
grade education. He would get in that interrogation room and they would
say that the Spanish-American War was started by the bomb within the
Maine, which might be true, and he would answer, “”.#.” !ey would show
him something about racial unrest in Detroit. “”.#.” !ere was no way they
could get to him; his mind was made up. He was a straight guy, red, white,
and blue, and everything else was “.#.! He didn’t give it a second thought.
Not much of a historian, perhaps, but a good security risk.
In the next category were the sophisticates. !ey were the fellows who
could be told these same things about the horrors of American history and
our social problems, but had heard it all before, knew both sides of every
story, and thought we were on the right track. !ey weren’t ashamed that
we had robber barons at a certain time in our history; they were aware of
the skeletons in most civilizations’ closets. !ey could not be emotionally
involved and so they were good security risks.
!e ones who were in trouble were the high school graduates who had
enough sense to pick up the innuendo, and yet not enough education to
accommodate it properly. Not many of them fell, but most of the men that
got entangled started from that background. !e psychologist’s point is
possibly oversimplistic, but I think his message has some validity. A little
knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Generally speaking, I think education is a tremendous defense; the
broader, the better. After I was shot down my wife, Sybil, found a clipping
glued in the front of my collegiate dictionary: “Education is an ornament in
prosperity and a refuge in adversity.” She certainly agrees with me on that.
Most of us prisoners found that the so-called practical academic exercises
in how to do things, which I’m told are proliferating, were useless. I’m not
saying that we should base education on training people to be in prison,
but I am saying that in stress situations, the fundamentals, the hardcore
classical subjects, are what serve best.
!eatrics also helped sustain me. My mother had been a drama coach
when I was young and I was in many of her plays. In prison I learned how
to manufacture a personality and live it, crawl into it, and hold that role
without deviation. During interrogations, I’d check the responses I got to
di”erent kinds of behavior. !ey’d get worried when I did things irratio-
nally. And so, every so often, I would play that “irrational” role and come
completely unglued. When I could tell that pressure to make a public exhi-
bition of me was building, I’d stand up, tip the table over, attempt to throw
the chair through the window, and say, “No way, Goddammit! I’m not
doing that! Now, come over here and fight!” !is was a risky ploy, because
if they thought you were acting, they would slam you into the ropes and
make you scream in pain like a baby. You could watch their faces and read
their minds. !ey had expected me to behave like a stoic. But a man would
be a fool to make their job easy by being conventional and predictable. I
could feel the tide turn in my favor at that magic moment when their anger
turned to pleading: “Calm down, now calm down.” !e payo” would come
when they decided that the risk of my going haywire in front of some tour-
ing American professor on a “fact-finding” mission was too great. More
important, they had reason to believe that I would tell the truth—namely,
that I had been in solitary confinement for four years and tortured fifteen
times—without fear of future consequences. So theatrical training proved
helpful to me.
Can you educate for leadership? I think you can, but the communists would
probably say no. One day in an argument with an interrogator, I said, “You
are so proud of being a party member, what are the criteria?” He said in a
flurry of anger, “!ere are only four: you have to be seventeen years old, you
have to be selfless, you have to be smart enough to understand the theory,
and you’ve got to be a person who innately influences others.” He stressed
that fourth one. I think psychologists would say that leadership is innate,
and there is truth in that. But, I also think you can learn some leadership
traits that naturally accrue from a good education: compassion is a neces-
sity for leaders, as are spontaneity, bravery, self-discipline, honesty, and
above all, integrity.
I remember being disappointed about a month after I was back when
one of my young friends, a prison mate, came running up after a reunion
at the Naval Academy. He said with glee, “!is is really great, you won’t
believe how this country has advanced. !ey’ve practically done away with
plebe year at the Academy, and they’ve got computers in the basement of
Bancroft Hall.” I thought, “My God, if there was anything that helped us
get through those eight years, it was plebe year, and if anything screwed up
that war, it was computers!”
“The Ring of Gyges” by
Plato
Relief of PlatoThoemmes Press
About the author. . . . Other than anecdotal accounts, not much is known
about Plato’s early life. The association with his friend and mentor Socrates
was undoubtedly a major influence. Plato’s founding of the Academy, a
school formed for scientific and mathematical investigation, not only es-
tablished the systematic beginning of Western science but also influenced
the structure of higher education from medieval to modern times. Plutarch
once wrote, “Plato is philosophy, and philosophy is Plato.”
About the work. . . . Glaucon, the main speaker of this reading from Plato’s
Republic,
1
expresses a widely and deeply-held ethical point of view known
as egoism—a view taught by a Antiphon, a sophistic contemporary of
Socrates. Egoistic theories are founded on the belief that everyone acts
only from the motive of self-interest. For example, the egoist accounts for
the fact that people help people on the basis of what the helpers might get
in return from those helped or others like them. This view, neither rep-
resentative of Plato’s nor of Socrates’s philosophy, is presented here by
Glaucon as a stalking horse for the development of a more thoroughly
developed ethical theory. Although Socrates held that everyone attempts
to act from the motive of “self-interest,” his interpretation of that motive
is quite different from the view elaborated by Glaucon because Glaucon
1. Plato.The Republic. Trans. by Benjamin Jowlett, Book II, 358d—361d.
1
“The Ring of Gyges” by Plato
seems unaware of the attendant formative effects on the soul by actions
for short-term pleasure.
From the reading. . .
“. . . those who practice justice do so involuntarily and because they
have not the power to be unjust. . . ”
Ideas of Interest from “The Ring of
Gyges”
1. According to the Glaucon’s brief, why do most persons act justly?
Explain whether you think Glaucon’s explanation is psychologically
correct.
2. If a person could be certain not only that an action resulting in per-
sonal benefit would not be discovered but also that if this action were
discovered, no punishing consequences would follow, then would there
any reason for that person to act morally?
3. Is it true that sometimes our self-interest is served bynotacting in our
self-interest? Fyodor Dostoevsky writes:
Advantage! What is advantage? And will you take it upon yourself to
define with perfect accuracy in what the advantage of a man consists?
And what if it so happens that a man’s advantage,sometimes, not only
may, but even must, consist in his desiring in certain cases what is harm-
ful to himself and not advantageous.2
Construct an example illustrating this view, and attempt to resolve the
paradoxical expression of the question.
2. Fyodor Dostoevsky.Notes from Underground. Trans. Constance Garnett. 1864.
2 Reading For Philosophical Inquiry: A Brief Introduction
“The Ring of Gyges” by Plato
4. Quite often people are pleased when they can help others. Analyze
whether this fact is sufficient to prove that the motive for helping oth-
ers is ultimately one of pleasure or of self-interest.
5. According to Glaucon, how does the practice of justice arise? On the
view he expresses, would there be any reason prior to living in a soci-
ety to do the right thing? Does the practice of ethics only make sense
in the context of living in a society?
The Reading Selection from “The Ring
of Gyges”
I am delighted, he replied, to hear you say so, and shall begin by speaking,
as I proposed, of the nature and origin of justice. They say that to do injus-
tice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater
than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice
and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and ob-
tain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to
have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which
is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to
be the origin and nature of justice; —it is a mean or compromise, between
the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst
of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and jus-
tice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good,
but as the lesser evil, and by reason of the inability of men to do injustice.
For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such
an agreement if he were able to resist; he would be mad if he did. Such is
the received account, Socrates, of the nature and origin of justice.
Now that those who practice justice do so involuntarily and because they
have not the power to be unjust will best appear if we imagine something
of this kind: having given both to the just and the unjust power to do what
they will, let us watch and see whither desire will lead them; then we shall
discover in the very act the just and unjust man to be proceeding along
the same road, following their interest, which all natures deem to be their
good, and are only diverted into the path of justice by the force of law. The
liberty which we are supposing may be most completely given to them in
the form of such a power as is said to have been possessed by Gyges the
ancestor of Croesus the Lydian.
Reading For Philosophical Inquiry: A Brief Introduction 3
“The Ring of Gyges” by Plato
According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king
of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in
the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight,
he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a
hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in
saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and
having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead
and reascended.
From the reading. . .
“For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more prof-
itable to the individual than justice. . . ”
Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might
send their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assem-
bly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among
them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when in-
stantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to
speak of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this,
and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared;
he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result-when
he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reap-
peared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who
were sent to the court; where as soon as he arrived he seduced the queen,
and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the
kingdom.
Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one
of them and the unjust the other. No man can be imagined to be of such
an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his
hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked
out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure,
or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a
God among men.
4 Reading For Philosophical Inquiry: A Brief Introduction
“The Ring of Gyges” by Plato
Socrates and Æschylus, Antiquities Project
Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they
would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm
to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks
that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever
any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For all men
believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual
than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they
are right. 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. Enough
of this. Now, if we are to form a real judgment of the life of the just and un-
just, we must isolate them; there is no other way; and how is the isolation
to be effected?
I answer: Let the unjust man be entirely unjust, and the just man entirely
just; nothing is to be taken away from either of them, and both are to
be perfectly furnished for the work of their respective lives. First, let the
unjust be like other distinguished masters of craft; like the skilful pilot or
physician, who knows intuitively his own powers and keeps within their
limits, and who, if he fails at any point, is able to recover himself. So let the
unjust make his unjust attempts in the right way, and lie hidden if he means
to be great in his injustice (he who is found out is nobody): for the highest
reach of injustice is: to be deemed just when you are not. Therefore I say
that in the perfectly unjust man we must assume the most perfect injustice;
there is to be no deduction, but we must allow him, while doing the most
Reading For Philosophical Inquiry: A Brief Introduction 5
“The Ring of Gyges” by Plato
unjust acts, to have acquired the greatest reputation for justice. If he have
taken a false step he must be able to recover himself; he must be one who
can speak with effect, if any of his deeds come to light, and who can force
his way where force is required his courage and strength, and command
of money and friends.
And at his side let us place the just man in his nobleness and simplicity,
wishing, as Aeschylus says, to be and not to seem good. There must be
no seeming, for if he seem to be just he will be honoured and rewarded,
and then we shall not know whether he is just for the sake of justice or for
the sake of honours and rewards; therefore, let him be clothed in justice
only, and have no other covering; and he must be imagined in a state of
life the opposite of the former. Let him be the best of men, and let him be
thought the worst; then he will have been put to the proof; and we shall
see whether he will be affected by the fear of infamy and its consequences.
And let him continue thus to the hour of death; being just and seeming to
be unjust.
When both have reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the
other of injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of
the two.
From the reading. . .
“Now suppose there were just two magic rings. . . ”
Social Contract(http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/soc-cont.htm)The In-
ternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A short summary of the history of so-
cial contract theory.
Prisoner’s Dilemma(http://plato.standord.edu/entries/prisoner-dilemma/)
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. An outstanding summary of a
variety of characterizations of the philosophical and mathematical aspects
of the dilemma.
Opening Pages of the The Selfish Gene(http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Works/Books/selfpage.htm)
The World of Richard Dawkins: Evolution, Science, and Reason. A short
6 Reading For Philosophical Inquiry: A Brief Introduction
“The Ring of Gyges” by Plato
excerpt from Richard Dawkin’sThe Selfish Gene, introducing the biology
of egoism and altruism.
The Parthenon, Library of Congress
From the reading. . .
“For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more prof-
itable to the individual than justice. . . ”
1. Psychological egoism is the view that all persons, without exception,
seek their own self-interest. Ethical egoism is the view that recog-
nizes that perhaps not all persons seek their own self-interest but they
should do so. Explain whether Glaucon’s account supports psycho-
logical hedonism or ethical egoism or both. Explain whether psycho-
logical egoism implies ethical egoism. Can you construct an unam-
biguous example of an action that could not possibly be construed to
be a self-interested action? Would people always steal when the ex-
pected return greatly exceeds any expected penalty? You might want
to consult such subjects as rational decision theory, the oft-termed
Reading For Philosophical Inquiry: A Brief Introduction 7
“The Ring of Gyges” by Plato
“Chicago school” economics, and psychological studies of the Pris-
oner’s Dilemma.
2. A closely related view to egoism is psychological hedonism: the pre-
sumption that all persons seek pleasure. If I go out of my way to help
others, and it gives me pleasure to do so, am I necessarily acting as
a psychological hedonist? Explain this apparent paradox. If psycho-
logical hedonism were true, would that imply that ethical hedonism
is true? Ethical hedonism is the view that all personsought to seek
pleasure, even though some persons might not actually do so.
3. Compare Glaucon’s account of the origin of covenants with the idea
of the social contract described by Hobbes, Locke, or Rousseau. So-
cial contract theory holds that people in a society implicitly agree to
abide by unwritten or written agreements among themselves because
it is in their interest to do so. Does Glaucon presuppose a actual “state
of nature” prior to the formation of covenants or is his account only a
logical justification of mutual agreements?
4. If human beings have a biological nature just as other living things
have a nature, then what arguments can you propose that that the
nature of human beings is primarily social rather than individual?
Aristotle wrote, “A man living outside of society is either a man or
a beast.” In the language of Richard Dawkins, are our genes “self-
ish”? Do human genetic factors favor cooperation among the species?
Do you think this question empirically resolvable?
Antiphon,1, 3
Dawkins, Richard,8
Dostoevsky, Fyodor,2
egoism,1
ethical,7
psychological,7
ethics,3
Glaucon,1
good,3
happiness,6
hedonism
8 Reading For Philosophical Inquiry: A Brief Introduction
“The Ring of Gyges” by Plato
ethical,8
psychological,7
Hobbes, Thomas,8
law, 3
Locke, John,8
nature
biological,8
pleasure,2
Prisoner’s Dilemma,8
Rousseau, Jean Jacques,8
selfish
gene,8
social contract,3, 8
Socrates,1
Reading For Philosophical Inquiry: A Brief Introduction 9
- The Ring of Gyges by Plato
- Ideas of Interest from The Ring of Gyges
- The Reading Selection from The Ring of Gyges
Related Ideas
Topics Worth Investigating
Index
