Good and evil

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Tolkien was at great pains to avoid a Manichaean world. It's inherent in his work that Power Corrupts- it's not really possible in Fallen Arda for there to be a powerful wholly Good being (except Manwe, who, tellingly, is very largely passive).

JRRT as above defined Absolute Evil as Zero- he indicated in one essay that Morgoth had reached a stage of 'nihilistic madness' and, left to his own devices, would have gone on raging until all Ea was reduced to chaos, and continued raging because the Chaos was not of his own making.

Evil in Tolkien is, I think ultimately Selfishness: greed, imposition of will, absence of compassion, ego, solipsism.

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The absence of religious observance in LR (not Silmarillion) is really very easily explained: Tolkien couldn't conceive his Good peoples as being pagan or anything inconsistent with Judaeo-Christianity. Therefore he felt it was safer to make them largely cult-less 'pure monotheists.' Temples and priests and the like were for the minions of Sauron, who ruled as a God-King.

[Boromir88]

Great job alatar and William in bringing this topic up.

Tolkien was at great pains to avoid a Manichaean world.~William

For the most part I agree...although I think The One Ring is a different matter.

Tom Shippey makes the argument that Tolkien encorporates both Boethian and Manichaen types of evil in The One Ring. Although this has gone contested by others, I think Shippey's got a point.

The Ring has a lust and power that actually exudes evil itself:

'so great was the Ring's power of lust, that anyone who used it became mastered by it...'~Letter 131

This is Tolkien's Letter to Milton Waldman, and he makes the point that the Ring has it's own innate evil that it exudes on people. There is further mentioning in Letter 246:

'It was part of the essential deceit of the Ring to fill minds with imaginations of supreme power.'

Also from Letter 246, so great was the Ring's power (its influence would reach a 'maximum' when brought into the Sammath Naur) that it was impossible for Frodo (or anyone to destroy):

'I do not think that Frodo’s was a moral failure. At the last moment the pressure of the Ring would reach its maximum - impossible, I should have said, for any one to resist, certainly after long possession, months of increasing torment, and when starved and exhausted.'

With that being said when dealing with the Ring, it is not purely Manichaen. If it was I think The Ring would be this all-corrupting force that just corrupts everyone that's around. I think what Gandalf says points to the duality of evil 'within' (Boethian) and evil without (Manichaen):

'Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me!...'~The Shadow of the Past

The Ring would not only be able to use Gandalf's 'positive purposes' (pity and a desire to do good), to turn him into virtually another Sauron. But we see here Gandalf's rejection of the Ring ('Do not tempt me!'). Also, there were several others who rejected the Ring (Sam, Galadriel, Bilbo), and I don't think I can put it any better than Faramir's words to Frodo:

'But fear no more! I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo.'~The Window on the West

So, there is also the factor of dealing within the person. Or how would characters like Gandalf and Faramir be able to reject the Ring, yet others (like Gollum and Boromir) fall to it?

I don't know about any other examples but with The One Ring I do think we see a duality of the two aspects of evil. Not only does the Ring exude evil itself on to others, but it is Boromir and Gollum's predisposition to greed, glory, and power, from within themselves which led to their corruption by the Ring. While others who did not desire such 'triumphs' were able to reject it.

[Bêthberry]

Surely "good and evil" means someone who is worse than someone who is just "plain old evil."

[davem]

The problem is the Ring gives the power to do good as well as evil. It wouldn't be so seductive to the Wise if it didn't. Gandalf fears that he would use the Ring to do good, so does Galadriel, & that's what they want to do. Gandalf would begin righteous & become self righteous. He would seek to bring about good & the end result would be evil. What the Ring would give him would be the power to defeat evil absolutely, but in this defeat he would become absolute dictator - an absolute dictator who would only do good, but who would have the power to stop anyone doing 'evil' (ie anything he considered 'evil'. And this is the point. Sauron (& Morgoth) probably didn't ever consider themselves 'evil' at all. They intended to re-shape the world in their own image. Hence, it could be argued that 'evil' is a label you stick on your enemy. Sauron quite probably considers Gandalf 'evil'. Remove Eru from the story & it all becomes subjective.

And yet, Eru makes the rules & lays down what is good & what is evil, & he does this with no better justification than that its 'his movie' - he's in charge & has ultimate power. Surely if Gandalf or Galadriel took the Ring they would do good. There's no reason to believe that they would behave like Sauron. Yet they would be evil simply because they had taken control & usurped the role of Eru. So, evil is not necessarily judged on what someone does, but on whether or not they attempt to be 'more' than Eru made them to be. If Galadriel took the Ring & made the whole of Middle-earth into Lorien that wouldn't be an 'evil' act in an objective sense - it would be quite a nice place to live. But it would be against Eru's plan. So, evil is whatever is against Eru's plan - even if the result was everyone living happily in peace & safety - not simply what Sauron (for example) did. Turning Middle-earth into Lorien is as 'evil' an act as turning it into Mordor. There's no way Galadriel, even with the Ring, would be responsible for the Mordorisation of Middle-earth.

Its not what most people would instantly think of as evil. Many readers of Tolkien would consider the Lorienisation of M-e as a victory for good. So, Sauron & Mordor are not 'ideals' of evil. Absolute power - whatever one does with it - is evil, because it is an attempt to take control away from Eru. Hence, if Eru destroys Numenor & slaughters thousands it is a 'good' act, because such destruction is Eru's prerogative. If Sauron had done exactly the same thing it would have been 'evil'. Its down to what you have an innate right to do rather than whether what you do makes things better or worse from a practical point of view. Gandalf with the Ring may have made the world a much nicer, safer, more pleasant place to live, but it would still have been 'evil', because he didn't have the right to do it.