'The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy'

[Lord of Angmar]

Burra - I'd say killing someone and taking his wife and crown is rather immoral. His ring did not cause him to be immoral, however, he just took advantage of it.

Are we are speaking of immortality as action or as belief and virtue? The ring certainly did cause the sheperd Gyges to act immoraly, giving him the power to kill and to usurp, but it was not necessarily the reason for his rationalizing this immoral action.

Immorality as a way of life, as Plato said, starts with simple immoral actions as a means of achieving goals, and ends with the alteration of one's mind and spirit for the irreparably worse. In this case, Gyges's immoral action stemmed from an opportunity to attain a previously impossible goal, and from that one immoral action he became an immoral man.

The Ring in Professor Tolkien's work is far different, I think. The Ring is inherently a corrupter, and though the moral characters in Tolkien's works can fight it, it will ultimately overcome even the most moral mind (as long as that mind belongs to a being of lesser power than Sauron). In the case of Gyges, the ring is but a springboard into the immoral, a means of achieving a great feat through immoral action.

In other words, Tolkien's Ring is corrupts and demoralizes by nature. Plato's ring tempts by its virtue (invisibility) alone, not by any actions or 'mind-control' of its own.

The book you bring up, Estelyn, sounds like an excellent read. I think I have seen it at my local Barnes & Noble, but I usually have no patience of the nit-picking of Professor Tolkien's works by scholars in philosophy and English.