still
stretches out over the world "a vast threatening hand, terrible but
impotent," before the wind blows him away.
The question
remains how far Tolkien wishes his treatment of evil to be considered not only
moral but metaphysical. As remarked in Chapter III, Tolkien does not write in
the technical language of philosophy. In one passage of his essay "On
Fairy-stories" he deliberately sidesteps the epistemological problem of
whether and in what form a physical world exists apart from man's perceptions. Recovery he defines as "a regaining of a clear view" of things,
and adds, "I do not say 'seeing things as they are' and involve myself
with the philosophers, though I might venture to say 'seeing things as we are
(or were) meant to see them'—as things apart from ourselves." 6 The philosophers with whom he prefers not to involve himself are probably those
of the idealist school from Berkeley down to our modem phenomenologists who,
each in his own way, echo Coleridge's dejection, ". . . we receive but
what we give/And in our life alone does Nature live." Yet of course
Tolkien cannot escape metaphysics. By introducing the word meant he
implies intention, and only a person of some kind can have an intent for
mankind. He is merely turning an epistemological problem into a theological one.
Without using blatantly theological terms his ideas are often clearly
theological nonetheless, and are best understood when viewed in the context of
the natural theology of Thomas Aquinas, whom it is reasonable to suppose that
Tolkien, as a medievalist and a Catholic, knows well. The same is true in the
area of metaphysics. Some of Thomas' less specifically Christian propositions
about the nature of evil seem highly congruent with those which Tolkien
expresses or implies in laymen's terms in The Lord of the Rings. We must
be very tentative, of course, and alert not to force a literary masterpiece
into any tight philosophical mold, Thomistic or otherwise. Middle-earth is
avowedly pre-Christian.
"Nothing is
evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so." It is well to repeat often
Tolkien's basic moral and ontological dictum. Before he succumbed to the
promptings of Morgoth, Sauron had the excellence native to the species into
which he was born, whatever that species was. So did Saruman; so did Gollum; so
did the Nazgûl, and all the rest. Grima Wormtongue, even, did Théoden honest
service before he sold himself to Saruman. Sauron may have been a valar, as
Auden suggests, 7 or he may have belonged to some other powerful
race. It is not very important. What matters is that he had great gifts of
mind, a full range of perceptions, a handsome body, and a sense of fellowship
that made him welcome to everyone. After his fall, his moral vision narrowed
down to what could serve his ambitions. This is a grievous loss of perceptive
faculties, resulting in the blindness and lack of imaginative insight we have
so often noted. It is also monomania. After a time his body became black and burning
hot, so ugly that he had to hide himself away in Mirkwood and Mordor. This
process describes not merely an almost Platonic loss of personal beauty but a
diminution of physical existence. It is also a loss of normal intercourse with
others, a retreat into a loneliness cut off from equals. Literally and
figuratively, light is exchanged for darkness. Sauron's every change is a
deterioration from those good and healthy norms with which he began. Aquinas
would call them all losses of Being. Evil is not a thing in itself but a
lessening of the Being inherent in the created order.
Tolkien does not
write in so many words about Being, any more than he does about form,
substance, essence, existence, and other metaphysical concepts. But as his
evildoers suffer loss after heartbreaking loss from origins which he holds up
as admirable these losses cry out for ontological interpretation. One of the
few detailed descriptions we get of Sauron's omnipresent Eye overtly pulls us
along
stretches out over the world "a vast threatening hand, terrible but
impotent," before the wind blows him away.
The question
remains how far Tolkien wishes his treatment of evil to be considered not only
moral but metaphysical. As remarked in Chapter III, Tolkien does not write in
the technical language of philosophy. In one passage of his essay "On
Fairy-stories" he deliberately sidesteps the epistemological problem of
whether and in what form a physical world exists apart from man's perceptions. Recovery he defines as "a regaining of a clear view" of things,
and adds, "I do not say 'seeing things as they are' and involve myself
with the philosophers, though I might venture to say 'seeing things as we are
(or were) meant to see them'—as things apart from ourselves." 6 The philosophers with whom he prefers not to involve himself are probably those
of the idealist school from Berkeley down to our modem phenomenologists who,
each in his own way, echo Coleridge's dejection, ". . . we receive but
what we give/And in our life alone does Nature live." Yet of course
Tolkien cannot escape metaphysics. By introducing the word meant he
implies intention, and only a person of some kind can have an intent for
mankind. He is merely turning an epistemological problem into a theological one.
Without using blatantly theological terms his ideas are often clearly
theological nonetheless, and are best understood when viewed in the context of
the natural theology of Thomas Aquinas, whom it is reasonable to suppose that
Tolkien, as a medievalist and a Catholic, knows well. The same is true in the
area of metaphysics. Some of Thomas' less specifically Christian propositions
about the nature of evil seem highly congruent with those which Tolkien
expresses or implies in laymen's terms in The Lord of the Rings. We must
be very tentative, of course, and alert not to force a literary masterpiece
into any tight philosophical mold, Thomistic or otherwise. Middle-earth is
avowedly pre-Christian.
"Nothing is
evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so." It is well to repeat often
Tolkien's basic moral and ontological dictum. Before he succumbed to the
promptings of Morgoth, Sauron had the excellence native to the species into
which he was born, whatever that species was. So did Saruman; so did Gollum; so
did the Nazgûl, and all the rest. Grima Wormtongue, even, did Théoden honest
service before he sold himself to Saruman. Sauron may have been a valar, as
Auden suggests, 7 or he may have belonged to some other powerful
race. It is not very important. What matters is that he had great gifts of
mind, a full range of perceptions, a handsome body, and a sense of fellowship
that made him welcome to everyone. After his fall, his moral vision narrowed
down to what could serve his ambitions. This is a grievous loss of perceptive
faculties, resulting in the blindness and lack of imaginative insight we have
so often noted. It is also monomania. After a time his body became black and burning
hot, so ugly that he had to hide himself away in Mirkwood and Mordor. This
process describes not merely an almost Platonic loss of personal beauty but a
diminution of physical existence. It is also a loss of normal intercourse with
others, a retreat into a loneliness cut off from equals. Literally and
figuratively, light is exchanged for darkness. Sauron's every change is a
deterioration from those good and healthy norms with which he began. Aquinas
would call them all losses of Being. Evil is not a thing in itself but a
lessening of the Being inherent in the created order.
Tolkien does not
write in so many words about Being, any more than he does about form,
substance, essence, existence, and other metaphysical concepts. But as his
evildoers suffer loss after heartbreaking loss from origins which he holds up
as admirable these losses cry out for ontological interpretation. One of the
few detailed descriptions we get of Sauron's omnipresent Eye overtly pulls us
along
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