Quote:
Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin
I think we should be leery of overdoing the "sentient ring" business, which PJ stretched way out of proportion. It may have a vague awareness at an insectoid level, but its action menu seems to be limited to "put me on" and "fall off finger."
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I agree. I think the Ring's power over wills and its ability to betray its bearer were a result of its evil nature rather than any sentience on its part.
The Ring's evil derived very substantially from the fact that it was designed and existed to dominate the wills of others and deny them their mental freedom, which was something of an Original Sin even before Eä came to be. In my view, it is only natural that such an object is similarly capable of other evils as a fact of its metaphysical makeup.
What I mean by this is that, in my opinion, the Ring, for instance, slipped off Isildur's finger because it was so innately evil that it almost spontaneously did other evil things, without needing any sentience to do so. The existing metaphysical evil of Morgoth, whose spirit was insinuated into all matter but gold especially, as well as the metaphysical evil of Sauron, by design, were present in it. I don't think it needed a mind to do evil: it was infected by evil at a fundamental level. Evil is, I would argue, a "thing in itself" (in ontological terms) in Arda.