A man named Gyges is a humble shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia. One day, an earthquake opens a hole in the ground where he’s tending his flock. He descends into it to find, among other strange things, a ring on a dead body, which Gyges takes and puts on. Later, at a shepherds’ meeting, Gyges discovers that when he turns the ring toward the inside of his hand, others can’t see him. He’s invisible! Gyges, realizing this, gets up to some really bad stuff. He finds an excuse to deliver a message to the court, then seduces the queen. The two of them conspire to murder the king to whom Gyges has sworn loyalty, and Gyges takes his place as ruler. We set things aside without knowing we are doing so; that is precisely where the danger lies. Or, which is still worse, we set them aside by an act of the will, but by an act of the will that is furtive in relation to ourselves. This faculty of setting things aside opens the door to every sort of crime. The ring of Gyges who has become invisible – this is precisely the act of setting aside: setting oneself aside from the crime one commits; not establishing the connection between the two. Gyges says: ‘I have become king, and the other king has been assassinated.’

Oedipus annihilated the Sphinx and saved the people from the Plague but pretends not to know how the former King was assassinated. No connection whatsoever between these two things. There we have the ring in the story of Plato. The owner of a factory proudly says ‘I enjoy this and that expensive luxury and my workmen are miserably poor.’ He may be very sincerely sorry for his workmen and yet understands not the connexion. The Church may be in flames but the leaders do not understand where the link lies. We can Imagine a perfectly unjust person and a perfectly just person whose normal fates are reversed. Perhaps Gyges frames someone else for his misdeeds. That innocent person is then tortured and executed for crimes he didn’t commit, while Gyges relishes all the advantages of a good reputation. Some have thought that there’s no ultimate answer to the question of what we ought to do when our reasons of self-interest and moral duties conflict. The intuitive possibility of a rational person who doesn’t care about morality continues to make the question “why be moral?” a pressing philosophical topic. Gyges had the power of doing wrong with impunity, will we like him discontinue our efforts to be moral? Do we believe that eventually everyone would become unjust if they could get away with it? Are we moral for the sake of being seen as moral?

The other claim that gives many people trouble is that it is an ethical subjectivity that prefigures moral experience. The other is given as that which suddenly lays claim to me in their very infinite transcendence. One might find the whole notion of another’s givenness in the face-to-face encounter somewhat suspicious. How can the demand of that face place upon me an infinite obligation in a world of finite possibilities? The infinitizing sense of the ethical comes from an order of givenness that is Holy. A God so intimated with capitalist economy will succumb to limits. We continuously hear the “health and wealth Gospel” preached. There are a lot of pretensions and disguises in the Church. Christianity and “the public” are opposite terms. The Church must witness to the Public in authentic honesty. There is a theology that resonates well across cultures and nations, as everyone dreams of a better, more successful and comfortable future. It blends comfortably into a materialistic, success-driven society and it is no surprise that the Churches that embrace this theology are the largest and fastest growing. What’s clear is that the Holy doesn’t manifest in the way Holy manifests in specific ways we prefer.

The infinite is the content of the Holy and so when God is invoked as the source of that infinite value – whether it is agapic love or simply the value of the person’s face, requires the Holy to manifest in the ethical responsibility. The infinite is the content of what and how that infinite value of the person is given. The infinitizing sense of the ethical comes from an order of givenness that is Holy. Thus the appeal of this infinite has to do with how open we are to register in evidence born out of religious overtones in our experience.