[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

Perhaps "fate" is merely the natural outcome of choices made, not predestined, but all the same known to the Children's creator.

Originally Posted by Ainulindale

. . . the Ainur know much of what was, and is, and is to come, and few things are unseen by them. Yet some things there are that they cannot see, neither alone nor taking counsel together; for to none but himself has Iluvatar revealed all that he has in store, and in every age there come forth things that are new and have no foretelling, for they do not proceed from the past. And so it was that as this vision of the World was played before them, the Ainur saw that it contained things which they had not thought. And they saw with amazement the coming of the Children of Iluvatar, and the habitation that was prepared for them; and they perceived that they themselves in the labour of their music had been busy with the preparation of this dwellling, and yet knew not that it had any purppose beyond its own beauty. For the Children of Iluvatar were conceived by him alone; and they came with the third theme, and were not in the theme which Iluvatar propounded at the beginning. . . . Now the Children of Iluvatar are Elves and Men, the First-born and the Followers . . . .

The Children of Iluvatar come with the third music, but they are not part of the music.

Fleiger argues this means that the Children have free will. The Ainur are said to like the Children because of the very fact that they, unlike the Ainur themselves, are free.

Originally Posted by Ainulindale

Therefore the more did they [the Ainur] love them [the Children], being things other than themselves, strange and free, wherein they saw the mind if Iluvatar reflected anew. . .

So, what Mnemo said:

Originally Posted by Mnemo

I don't buy the idea that Turin's "fate" is external to him at all: as many things go wrong that are the result of his own actions (the sack of Nargothrond, which is a direct result of Turin's more open style of confrontation) as the result of the curse acting through chance (Beleg's knife slipping as he cuts Turin's bonds). The same goes for the rebellious Noldor: it is not the Doom of Mandos which made the Silmarils burn Maedhros and Maglor, but the evil of their own deeds in getting them.

Indeed, part of the beauty of CoH is that you simply don't know how much of the horrible things that happen are due to the curse, and how much of them are due to Turin himself. If you say it's all one or all the other, the work loses its nuance and subtlety. I don't think that the morality in Silm-era works is necessarily incompatible with that in LotR: the only difference between the two eras is the extent to which the gods got involved in others' affairs.

Nietzsche is the philosopher known for the line "God is dead". (Whether that is an exact statement, I cannot recall, I'm simply remembering a generally known comment.) So it would be a bit strange to use him to analyse a text which fits into a mytholgoy of Iluvatar without discussing that possibility.