Human Ethics: The Myth The Ring of Gyges

Human Ethics
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Human Ethics
Question 1.
The moral point of the myth “The Ring of Gyges” is about how power changes people and what they are likely to do to others when they ascend to the helm of power. A powerless person changes quite drastically once they are in power and without proper accountability, they are likely to abuse it and use it to advance their personal interests while at the expense of the interests of those who bestowed power in them. The abuse of power would subsequently result in injustices that could cause social conflicts and unrest as the people get fed up by the unending ever rising cases of injustice.
Question 2
Plato is pitiful to the tyrant who has everything he wants because he (the tyrant) is always at the risk of facing vengeful retaliations from the people for the injustices that he has perpetrated while in power. He always lives in fear of facing justice and eventually his freedom is curtailed as he cannot interact freely with those around him and he prefers living within the confines of his highly secured home. This, in Plato’s view, is like self-imprisonment which translates to self- punishment by the tyrant to himself for the wrongs he has done to the people.
Question 3
At the end of the Euthyphro, Socrates comes to a conclusion that there is no difference between service to the gods and service to humanity. He viewed the duty of humans towards divine beings as being inseparable from their duty towards fellow human beings. He also concluded that the main purpose of religion in one’s life is to harmonize their own life with the will of God and it’s not a tool to get what one wants in life. Socrates, further argued that religion and morality go hand in hand and neither of the two can exist without the other.
Question 4
K. M. Sen asserted that religion brings forth morality and that morality ensures that we make out of the life we live as much utility as we can. Morality compels us to serve humanity and God with dignity to the maximum based on the beliefs that we derive from our religious teachings. According to Sen, a moral action is one that maximizes utility of the resources used such as energy and time spent to do it while having immense benefits to as many people as possible. He believed that human actions that did not maximize utility were unethical.
Question 5
A statement is a claim that declares something that could be true or false. A descriptive statement is one that avers that such and such is the case or how things in the world are. For example, “One plus one is equal to two“. On the other hand, a normative statement is one that ...