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Originally Posted by davem
It would seem that Good= freedom to choose (even to choose bad things) & evil is having no freedom, even if that lack of freedom means that you will do 'good' because that's all you are allowed to do. Yet if you do good won't you be assured of a reward? Wouldn't Gandalf actually be throwing open the gates of Paradise to his subjects by making it impossible for them to do anything that would get them sent to hell? So why would he be 'worse than Sauron' if he did that?
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I think that the idea here is that to do 'good' the person needs to be
proactive in doing good, not passive in that they have no choice but to do good. If there is no choice in the matter, then that person has never had the opportunity to weigh up right and wrong and come to the correct decision. Even though good is being done, it is effectively being carried out by a machine.
It has much to do with rights and responsibilities; we have things to which we are entitled, but to have those things we must also be responsible for our actions. Comparing this to the real world, a Gandalf in possession of the Ring would be a benevolent dictator; he would not have been chosen by the people, nor would he have necessarily earned the right to be the leader. He might indeed be very 'good' and have everyone's best interests at heart, but the simple fact that he had overwhelming power would be wrong as it would negate any sense of responsibility in the people. The closest example I have any experience of is the 'nanny state', where people are fined or punished for not doing 'the right thing', whether it be recycling their newspaper or only taking children on holiday outside term time. These are things which people
ought to do, but removing the choice also takes away their freedom to choose to act in the right way.
We know that Gandalf has been sent to Middle-earth to help in the struggle against Sauron, but he has not been asked to take
control of this struggle, he is there to advise, to offer counsel. With the Ring he would possibly succeed in the first sense of his mission in that he could overthrow Sauron, but he would also fail in the second sense of his mission, in that he would have done so by taking power, taking the decisions away from the leaders of the races of Middle-earth.
One of the strongest messages of the story is that there is no one, overarching power that can fight Sauron, it is the ordinary people who must do so, the Theodens and Aragorns and Frodos. Gandalf can only advise, and even though he is most persuasive in his arguments, he cannot
force.
In that sense, Gandalf is the cat, using his wits and his powers of persuasion to get his way, to get his message across and achieve his mission.
