The Orc Problem

Timdalf said:
Sorry, Rob, you have it backwards. Orcs are not evil because of the way they look. The way they look is caused by their evilness. They "othered" themselves. Gollum is another example of this. He looks the way he does because he isolated himself in order to continue being evil.
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I’m not talking about how their physical appearance came to be. Physical appearance is neutral. They don’t look evil. They look how they look. It is considered evil as it’s associated with evil beings. Thus those traits become shorthand for denoting evil. Any description is selected by its author to tell us something. The fact orcs are described as they are by our hobbit and later human narrators is an indicator of something. We know we are meant to see them as evil and as such the traits we are directed toward are to be seen as signs of this. Othering occurs in the mind. It’s not an issue of the work having any racial bias, it’s just that our narrators have one. Which we can ignore or not depending on the validity we want to give to orcs as lifeforms.

In trying to root his own works within his fictional reality, Tolkien gave narrators within the world. Inevitably they have biases of their own. Tolkien removed the validity of an omniscient voice. If we buy into the secondary world, we also buy into the fact that our window into that world comes with a filter. It makes the world arguable more believable but less known. All we have are the stories and legends, not the unquestionable truth
 
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Now i have some weird idea...

What if there is SOMETHING we are not told because the narrators do not know it, the orcs themselves do not know and even the author (JRRT) himself did not know:

What if Illuvatar himself does have a certain plan for the orcs? What if they are what they are or have become what they have become, and this might be something entirely different from elves/humans/demons/beasts...
What if he altered their fate for something, for some reason? If they still serve some purpose...
 
Oooh intriguing. Seems to coincide with the philosophy and mythology
 
I've thought something similar to that before. Eru keeps passing out souls to the Orcs, but for reasons of his own that even the Valar are not privy to. He works in mysterious ways, after all, and evil can cause good things to happen in spite of itself.

Edited because I cannot spell, apparently.
 
But then you run into the issue of Eru creating evil beings (rather than creating beings who are good, but have free will and may choose to turn to evil).
 
No One in Particular said:
Yup. I don't really see any good workable answer to the issue.
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JJ48 said:
But then you run into the issue of Eru creating evil beings (rather than creating beings who are good, but have free will and may choose to turn to evil).
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That is exactly why I do think there elvish souls are already created at the beginning of Arda and stored in some "vault of souls" from where they are being summoned at their bodies conception. So when orcs multiply, they empty this "vault of souls". Eru is little involved with the Elves directly. They are made for Arda and are under the Valar. And Valar are private enough not to look into this private elvish matter too much and leaving it up to elvish parents when they wants or not to conceive. As orcs are programmed to breed like orks, they just summon most of those souls for themselves. One coherent possibility working fine in the given context. There are probably others. But still this is not an unresolvable problem imho. We just cannot project human free will onto elves 100%, as elves themselves note that human free will has a greater range then their own.
 
I feel this is a tad more like headcanon than textual extrapolation though
 
Rob Harding said:
I feel this is a tad more like headcanon than textual extrapolation though
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I do not claim it is the only valid position, but just, that the problem is not as difficult to solve as it is assumed to be. It can be resolved in a manner which makes sensei and does not contradict the text. There are probably other solutions which would worki as well. But there is no inherent theological contadiction in the orcs per se imho.
 
I don't think it is about free will when the elves note that men are not bound by fate...
What exactly they mean by it is hard to define but it is not that elves don't have 100% free will, i believe that is a misunderstanding.
 
Haerangil said:
I don't think it is about free will when the elves note that men are not bound by fate...
What exactly they mean by it is hard to define but it is not that elves don't have 100% free will, i believe that is a misunderstanding.
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I have not claimed that elves have no free will but that is does not equal human free will. Being bound by fate limits the choices available considerably per default.
 
Odola said:
That is exactly why I do think there elvish souls are already created at the beginning of Arda and stored in some "vault of souls" from where they are being summoned at their bodies conception. So when orcs multiply, they empty this "vault of souls". Eru is little involved with the Elves directly. They are made for Arda and are under the Valar. And Valar are private enough not to look into this private elvish matter too much and leaving it up to elvish parents when they wants or not to conceive. As orcs are programmed to breed like orks, they just summon most of those souls for themselves. One coherent possibility working fine in the given context. There are probably others. But still this is not an unresolvable problem imho. We just cannot project human free will onto elves 100%, as elves themselves note that human free will has a greater range then their own.
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This doesn't work. If we assume some elf souls go to become orcs, were the souls corrupted prior to this? If so, how? And if not, are they uncorrupt souls that are then forced to become corrupt?
 
JJ48 said:
This doesn't work. If we assume some elf souls go to become orcs, were the souls corrupted prior to this? If so, how? And if not, are they uncorrupt souls that are then forced to become corrupt?
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The souls are of Arda. As such they are as much/little marred as Arda itself is, or at least are bound to become so the moment they incarnate. But they have no personal guilt on then as yet. But they become bound by the fate of the line they are born into. So their choices are limited to it, similar to Maedhros and Maglors being bound to steal the Silmarills. Have they been humans, they would had the resources to change their fate by their own choices. But they are not, so they could not do so. And beyond that this approach provides also an explanation why the elves wane and later also the orcs disappear and the age of men begins. Tolkien explained the dying out of dwarves by the few dwarf woman of whom even fewer got married but left as far I knows the vanishing of orcs and Avari unexplained. There should still be some around if they were able to have children still.
 
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Odola said:
The souls are of Arda. As such they are as much/little marred as Arda itself is, or at least are bound to become so the moment they incarnate. But they have no personal guilt on then as yet. But they become bound by the fate of the line they are born into. So their choices are limited to it, similar to Maedhros and Maglors being bound to steal the Silmarills. Have they been humans, they would had the resources to change their fate by their own choices. But they are not, so they could not do so. And beyond that this approach provides also an explanation why the elves wane and later also the orcs disappear and the age of men begins. Tolkien explained the dying out of dwarves by the few dwarf woman of whom even fewer got married but left as far I knows the vanishing of orcs and Avari unexplained. There should still be some around if they were able to have children still.
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This only works if Elves are not moral beings. And yet we see that they do make moral choices and are judged accordingly. Whether they are less free than Men or not, they still do make some choices, and are responsible for the choices they make. I don't see any way of reconciling this idea with the portrayal of Elves in the text.
 
JJ48 said:
This only works if Elves are not moral beings. And yet we see that they do make moral choices and are judged accordingly. Whether they are less free than Men or not, they still do make some choices, and are responsible for the choices they make. I don't see any way of reconciling this idea with the portrayal of Elves in the text.
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They seems to be moral in "mortal eyes", but I do doubt they have commandments, conscience or developeed moral reasoning. They just naturally do what we would consider "morally right" most of the time. I doubt they would get what we meant by "moral" more than what we meant by "magic".
 
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Odola said:
They seems to be morał in "mortal eyes", but I do doubt they have commandments, conscience or developeed morał resining. They just naturally do what we would consider "morally right" most of the time. I doubt they would get what we meant by "morał" more than what we meant by "magic".
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You don't think they understand good and evil? Don't they talk about it somewhat?

Furthermore, as far as I understand this, you seem to be basing this on the passage:
"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 that appears to apply to the Ainur as well as to the Elves. Do they, too, lack morality? In what sense, then, can Morgoth or Sauron be called "evil"?
 
JJ48 said:
You don't think they understand good and evil? Don't they talk about it somewhat?

Furthermore, as far as I understand this, you seem to be basing this on the passage:
"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 that appears to apply to the Ainur as well as to the Elves. Do they, too, lack morality? In what sense, then, can Morgoth or Sauron be called "evil"?
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Morgoth and Sauron rebelled against Eru. Elves never do that. Men do. As men have rebelled against Eru, they know evil to a grater degree that elves do. From that knowlegde comes morality as men need to be "told what good is". To elves corruption is something that comes from outside and then succumb to it, see e.g. Maeglin. There is never a moment he can make a moral choice and turn around. His fate guides his path completely.
 
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Do souls exist in Tolkien mythology. It’s a very specific sort of concept. Maybe it’s just a terminology issue but we ought to map out what we mean
 
Odola said:
Morgoth and Sauron rebelled against Eru. Elves never do that. Men do. As men have rebelled against Eru, they know evil to a grater degree that elves do. From that knowlegde comes morality as men need to be "told what good is". To elves corruption is something that comes from outside and then succumb to it, see e.g. Maeglin. There is never a moment he can make a moral choice and turn around. His fate guides his path completely.
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That doesn't address the issue I raised: are the Valar and Maiar also guided by fate? The quoted passage seems to suggest that Men hold a special place even apart from the Ainur. And if being more bound to fate doesn't eliminate the free will of the Ainur, then we have no reason to believe it would eliminate the free will of the Elves.

I know many people tend to think that fate automatically equals a lack of free will. However, I don't think that's the stance Tolkien takes in his works. Throughout The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion; Tolkien shows us a world where events are fated to happen, yet at the same time, it's the choices of the characters which bring the events about.
 
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