Fantasy Morality

[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.

[Galin]

As an aside: as Bethberry noted, Verlyn Flieger does argue that the Children of God have free will, yet she seemingly argues this distinction as well: that Elves do not have Free Will in the same sense as Men -- that the decisions of the Elves don't alter external outcome (as they are bound to the Music)! She looks at Feanor's decision concerning the Silmarils and notes: 'I take the operation of free will in this instance to be along the lines of Feanor's in saying ya or nay to Yavanna -- an internal process not affecting events but deeply influencing the inner nature of individuals involved in those events.'

My brevity here does not intend to be unfair to her actual (and full) case in detail however, so I'll refer people to Tolkien Studies VI (in this volume Carl Hostetter also provides some previously unpublished text from JRRT that touches upon the matter).

Also I'm a bit hazy on whether or not she allows for exceptions to that rule (Galadriel when offered the Ring for example), but in any case: I disagree, as do others.

Tolkien once noted...

'According to the fable Elves and Men were the first of these intrusions, made indeed while the 'story' was still only a story and not 'realized'; they were not therefore in any sense conceived or made by the gods, the Valar, and were called the Eruhini or 'Children of God', and were for the Valar an incalculable element: that is they were rational creatures of free will in regard to God, of the same historical rank as the Valar, though of far smaller spiritual and intellectual power and status.'

JRRT, from letter 181, probably 1956

In Splintered Light (Splintered Light and Splintered Being, page 53) Verlyn Flieger explains:

'In a letter to a reviewer of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien declared that both races were "rational creatures of free will in regard to God" (letters 236). The key may lie in the phrase "in regard to God", suggesting that in the sub-created world God, Eru, who proposed the theme but had the Ainur make the music, is himself beyond and above it. This implies a kind of Boethian concept in which the mind of God encompasses any design perceivable by any of his creatures and is explicit in such statements by Eru to the Ainur, as "no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my respite" (Silm 17)

'(...) This seems to make it clear that in Tolkien's cosmology, which encompasses both fate and free will, the mind of the Prime Mover extends beyond the Creation to leave room for what to earthbound perceivers may appear as exceptions to the rule. (...)'

In 'The Music and the Task: Fate and Free Will in Middle-earth' (Tolkien Studies) Flieger writes:

The trouble lies not with free will, but with fate. Readers who assume (and most do) that characters in Tolkien's invented world are free to choose, find the opposing notion that they are predestined hard to accept. And the idea that both principles are concurrently at work (and apparently at odds) is a concept even harder to encompass. It is, nevertheless, a concept integral to a mythology whose overarching scheme is that fate, conceived as kind of divinely inspired and celestially orchestrated music, governs the created world -- with one exception. of all Middle-earth's sentient species, the race of Men (including Hobbits) is the only group given the "virtue" to "shape their lives" beyond the scope of this music. In contradistinction, the otherwise generally similar race of Elves, (both races being the Children of [the godhead] Iluvatar) is, together with the rest of Creation, ruled by fate.

As I say I must disagree that Elves only have Free Will in this internal sense, but as this is a longish aside...

[Bêthberry]

Pardon my delay in "asiding" to this aside, Galin. The thread has moved faster than RL allows me time.

Originally Posted by Galin

As an aside: as Bethberry noted, Verlyn Flieger does argue that the Children of God have free will, yet she seemingly argues this distinction as well: that Elves do not have Free Will in the same sense as Men -- that the decisions of the Elves don't alter external outcome (as they are bound to the Music)! She looks at Feanor's decision concerning the Silmarils and notes: 'I take the operation of free will in this instance to be along the lines of Feanor's in saying ya or nay to Yavanna -- an internal process not affecting events but deeply influencing the inner nature of individuals involved in those events.'

My brevity here does not intend to be unfair to her actual (and full) case in detail however, so I'll refer people to Tolkien Studies VI (in this volume Carl Hostetter also provides some previously unpublished text from JRRT that touches upon the matter).

Also I'm a bit hazy on whether or not she allows for exceptions to that rule (Galadriel when offered the Ring for example), but in any case: I disagree, as do others.

Tolkien once noted...



In Splintered Light (Splintered Light and Splintered Being, page 53) Verlyn Flieger explains:



In 'The Music and the Task: Fate and Free Will in Middle-earth' (Tolkien Studies) Flieger writes:




As I say I must disagree that Elves only have Free Will in this internal sense, but as this is a longish aside...

I must admit that I deliberately omitted Fleiger's idea about the elves, for several reasons.

First of all, I mentioned her mainly because I wanted to be clear that the distinction between coming with the music rather than being part of the music was not my own idea. I read it in her Splintered Light (revised edition)and felt she deserved the acknowledgement.

Secondly, I'm not completely satisfied I understand why she makes that distinction between elves and men, unless it is to bolster her claims about the nature of splintering and of Light in Tolkien's mythology.

As far as I can see, she bases her idea on this passage:

Originally Posted by Of the Beginning of Days, The Silm

For it is said that after the departure of the Valar there was silence, and for an age Iluvatar sat alone in thought. Then he spoke and said: 'Behold I love the Earth, which shall be a mansion for the Quendi and the Atani! But the Quendi shall be the fairest of all earthly creatures, and they shall have and shall conceive and bring forth more beauty than all my Children; and they shall have the greater bliss in this world. But to the Atani I will give a new gift.' Therefore he willed that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and should find no rest therein; but they should have a virtue to shape their life, amid the powers and chances of the world, beyond the Music of the Ainur, which is as fate to all things else; and of their operation everything should be, in form and deed, completed, and the world fulfilled unto the last and smallest.

But Iluvatar knew that Men, being set amid the turmoils of th epowers of the world, would stray often, and would not use theirs gifts in harmony; and he said, 'These too in their time shall find that all that they do redounds at the end only to the glory of my work.'

In reading this passage as excluding the elves from freedom from the music, she appears to dismiss the earlier passage from The Silm I quoted where both of the Children have free will from the determination of the Music.

My guess is that she established her theory before HoMe was published and has not taken any of the new texts into account in her reading of this passage (in the revised edition). I could be wrong, though, as I have not followed her work and that of others in Tolkien Studies.

As you suggest, Fleiger doesn't, as far as I recall, discuss this difference between inner effect and outer events in the instance of Galadriel's gift of the Phial to Frodo.

This does not, I think, discount the existence of free will among men.

Originally Posted by tumhalad2

In CoH, Eru, as conceived in the Ainulindale, does not, or cannot, be said to exist. Were he omnipresent, omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent, he would possess the capability and desire to save Turin because he is
1. everywhere at once,
2. has an infinitely good will , and so would under no circumstances allow suffering to occur,
3. would know at all times Turin's whereabout and actions and
4. has no restrictions on his power.

As every parent who has successfully navigated the stormy shoals of their child's adolescence knows, sometimes you have to step aside and, in the true benevolence of acknowleding your child's freedom and adulthood, allow your child to make mistakes and thus suffer. For the benefit of allowing your child to reach maturity, you have to impose a restriction on your own benevolence. It is one of the most difficult lessons of parenting. And how much more this applies to adult children.