Are the palantiri corrupting?

toddhoffious

New Member
You may or may not be aware that there's a controversial company call Palantir the makes surveillance software.

In an article Does Palantir See Too Much? (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/21/magazine/palantir-alex-karp.html):

When I asked Thiel about the risk of abuse with Palantir, he answered by referring to the company’s literary roots. “The Palantir device in the Tolkien books was a very ambiguous device in some ways,” he said. “There were a lot of people who looked into it and saw more than they should see, and things went badly wrong when they did.” But that didn’t mean the Palantir itself was flawed. “The Tolkien point I always make is that at the end of the day, it was actually a good device that was critical to the plot of the whole story. The way it worked was that Aragorn looked into the Palantir, and he showed Sauron the sword with which the One Ring had been cut off Sauron’s fingers at the end of the Second Age. This convinced Sauron that Aragorn had the One Ring and caused Sauron to launch a premature attack that emptied out Mordor and enabled the hobbits to sneak in to destroy the One Ring.” He continued: “The plot action was driven by the Palantir being used for good, not for evil. This reflected Tolkien’s cosmology that something that was made by the good elves would ultimately be used for good.”


What is your opinion of this take? The Palantir has always seemed a corrupting influence to me. Like the rings, it was made by elves, so I don't think that provides any cover.
 
The palantiri were simply communication devices - and were they made by elves or in Numenor?

In any event, the corruption isn't in the palantiri themselves. It results from Sauron having taken possession of one of them, and by his strength drawing everyone who looks in the others to his. It's Sauron who manipulates the minds of those who look in the other remaining palantiri. Thus Sauron's downfall frees them (though the imprint of the burning hands of Denethor would make use of the Minas Tirith stone difficult).

And I disagree with the article's take on Aragorn's looking into the Orthanc stone. First of all, Elendil's sword didn't cut the ring from Sauron's hand, did it? Didn't Isildur use his own sword, which he had been using in the battle, or do I have that wrong? Aragorn showed himself at his most kingly, in all his strength, holding the sword which had been reforged. But I think the most frightening thing to Sauron was Aragorn's being able to turn the stone away from him and to use it for his own purposes. I don't think Sauron becomes sure that Aragorn has the Ring, he is just added to list of possible wielders. But the sight of Aragorn weakens his will temporarily, a sort of post-traumatic reaction.
 
First of all, Elendil's sword didn't cut the ring from Sauron's hand, did it? Didn't Isildur use his own sword, which he had been using in the battle, or do I have that wrong?

"I was at the Battle of Dagorlad before the Black Gate of Mordor, where we had mastery: for the spear of Gil-galad and the Sword of Elendil, Aeglos and Narsil, none could withstand. I beheld the last combat on the slopes of Orodruin, where Gil-galad died, and Elendil fell, and Narsil broke beneath him; but Sauron himself was overthrown, and Isildur cut the Ring from his hand with the hilt-shard of his father's sword, and took it for his own."
 
Hi toddhoffious,

The palantiri were a source of power. As they say, 'power corrupts'.

The ability to communicate across vast distances, and to spy across vast distances, is a source of power. The more limited, and less widespread, control of objects which confer those abilities is, the more power the objects confer on those who possess or control them. In the case of the palantir, they are originally possessed by Sauron, Saruman, and Denethor. They are mostly (though not totally) controlled by Sauron. The temptation to access the power conferred by the palantir, combined with the hubris to believe that they could overcome any control exerted over them by Sauron, played its part in the downfall of Saruman and Denethor.

So, the palantiri were certainly corrupting for Saruman and Denethor.

Does that mean that the palantiri themselves were corrupt? No, they were marvelous and powerful subcreations. Capable of corrupting, because powerful, but not necessarily corrupting (as demonstrated by Aragorn). They would have been less power conferring (and therefore less corrupting) if instead of seven of them, thousands had been made, so pretty much everyone in Middle-earth carried one in his pocket, as we do today.
 
"I was at the Battle of Dagorlad before the Black Gate of Mordor, where we had mastery: for the spear of Gil-galad and the Sword of Elendil, Aeglos and Narsil, none could withstand. I beheld the last combat on the slopes of Orodruin, where Gil-galad died, and Elendil fell, and Narsil broke beneath him; but Sauron himself was overthrown, and Isildur cut the Ring from his hand with the hilt-shard of his father's sword, and took it for his own."

I stand corrected. That raises the question of whether the apparently dead Sauron would have been aware of his doing so. But the sword was one that had defeated him in battle, so he sight of it reforged would be triggering even without that.
 
The palantíri were rumored to be made by Fëanor in Valinor before the First Age. 'Rumored' in that Tolkien had characters in later times say they were, which is less direct confirmation than some details of Middle-earth's history. Still, the most likely scenario is that they were made by Fëanor, eventually made their way into the hands of the Elves of Tol Eressëa, who gifted them to the Numenoreans. And then Elendil and his sons brought 'seven stones' to Middle-earth with them from the destruction of Numenor. If you want to know more about the palantíri, you should read what Tolkien had to say about them in Unfinished Tales.

As far as the moral compass of these objects goes....um, well, they're not inherently evil, the way the One Ring is, no. So, on a spectrum of 'don't touch that, it's evil!' to 'don't touch that, it's blessed!' (ie, the silmarils), they are not at either extreme. How corrupting they are depends upon two things - the mind on the other end of the connection, and whether or not you naturally have the right to look into one.

Basically, everyone stopped using the palantíri once Sauron got ahold of one, because one could not risk looking into it without having Sauron join in on the party line. Which is not good for your mental stability or moral fortitude, generally speaking.

Pippin obviously was drawn to the palantir after touching it, and this temptation was somewhat like the lure of the Ring. So...definitely not a good thing. Now, what was the cause of that draw? Was it Sauron exerting his will through the stone? Quite possibly. If so, that's a clear case of 'it's not the stone that's evil; it's Sauron that's evil, so you shouldn't touch stones he has his eye on.' But it is also quite possible that magical devices exert a draw or fascination based solely on their inherent power. For that reason, they should be handled carefully even if there is no evil Sauron on the other end of the line.

It is important to note that Aragorn was the rightful owner of the stone. So, there was nothing illicit about his using it...though the danger of 'Sauron is on the other end' was very much present and something he knew about, ie, a risk he willingly took.
 
Thank you MithLuin.
Pippin obviously was drawn to the palantir after touching it, and this temptation was somewhat like the lure of the Ring. So...definitely not a good thing. Now, what was the cause of that draw? Was it Sauron exerting his will through the stone? Quite possibly. If so, that's a clear case of 'it's not the stone that's evil; it's Sauron that's evil, so you shouldn't touch stones he has his eye on.' But it is also quite possible that magical devices exert a draw or fascination based solely on their inherent power. For that reason, they should be handled carefully even if there is no evil Sauron on the other end of the line.
I think there was probably a bit of the fascination we all get looking into a crystal ball, but it seems to me that Sauron was calling Saruman, who apparently had not been in contact for a while, according to his first words to Pippin.

I've been reading LOTR for decades, and the Silmarillion when it first came out and several times since, though not always the whole thing. But the whole legendarium is new to me, and since I discovered this series and other Signum classes, I've also read the History of Middle Earth volumes about LOTR, and most of the Unfinished Tales. An interesting thing to do while sheltering in place.
 
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