I knew two ants to come out first would be winding davem and hedged fordim...
Well, the real start of the morality issue was when we talked about Truth/truth back on page 7 and 8 of current thread.
The argument presented by SpM was that every [wo]man may have his personal moral and personal truth, which was responded by yours truly with a question should a murderer still be accused on moral grounds if the murder s/he committed have been approved of by his/her personal 'truth' and moral code. The morality in numbers issue came as the answer to that.
Back to matters at hand:
Authorship/Readership and shareholding - an analogy, a bit one-sided, but still valid, may be applied to LoTR and my statement on page 6 [without God there is no understanding of LoTR – i.e. suppose someone read only LoTR and haven’t heard of Eru]. Let me explain myself:
There may be two assumptions about moral, or Moral Law:
1. Moral Law as directly implemented by Eru
2. Moral Law as the product of social evolution.
In case one, there can be no place for calculation/weighting - if action A, than consequence B, which is good for society, therefore A is morally good. Case 2 allows such calculations. In LoTR, calculations are somehow out of place - characters merely act because 'thus shall I sleep better', (I have had my example, btw, I wanted to see your reaction first - I've quoted Theoden here, whose decision to take part in the war is mostly socially inefficient - he probably risks the very existence of the whole of the society he's in charge of).
That in the end morally good actions bring about good of society, is expression of Tolkien's sense of justice, or so it seems
Or, back to shareholders analogy – if the Moral Law is a company created by Eru, than He has the casting vote of what is moral and what is not, no democracy. If, on the other hand, Moral Law is the product of social development, than my previous post shows that the actions evaluated as most moral are least socially efficient. But moral democracy is dangerous – yes, question of ‘why should I do this’ can be answered with ‘because this is good for society’, but following question of ‘why should I prefer good of society over my personal good’ can not be answered by means of moral democracy. The logical chain may be than extended to state that any moral is good in itself – brings us to ‘bag-end’ (i.e. cul-de-sac) – murderer may be in his/her right, as his actions were in accordance with his/her personal moral.
If the option two – moral democracy - be right, than Aragorn, Theoden etc act senseless in the book, and Jackson’s Aragorn is more true than one of the book – his choice is determined by ‘democracy’ – he’s nagged by Arwen, Elrond brings him his sword, he’s constantly pushed on by ‘public opinion’, ‘moral of numbers’. If not that stimuli, he may have even fallen for Eowyn, one can’t help wondering. Jackson’s Theoden is even better expression of democracy moral – ‘Where have been Gondor when Rohan needed help’, instead of book’s ‘we will fulfill our oath of allegeance, whatever befell us’
But why opinion of two should be preferred over opinion of one? Can someone convince me that taller people are better than shorter ones, or vice versa?
Back to Canonicity: My intended answer was posted for me by
davem already
:
Quote:
|
So, for a story or interpretation to be in line with canon, it must not contradict either clear statements of the author about his world or its inhabitants, or interpret certain actions of a character in a way that isn't consistent with what we know of them
|
End of democracy, long live the King
(m-m, constitutional monarchy?)