'Which is as Fate to all Things Else’

[Aiwendil]

Davem wrote:

My reading of Flieger is that she sees Elves having freedom of thought & the freedom to choose how they will do things, but not the freedom to choose what they will do. The problem is, Tolkien says the Music is as Fate to all but Men.

I do think that Flieger's view is an interesting and a valid one; I merely think that she overstates the case for it. There are problems with it, I think - for example, as I said before, it's not at all clear that what Elves will do is fixed irrespective of how they do and think things.

Clearly, Elves (even in Flieger's view) have freedom to choose what they will do immediately, for one's immediate actions have moral value. Also, it's worth noting that even such things as speech are, fundamentally, actions. Flieger's point, then, rests on the assumption that, whatever an Elf's immediate thoughts and actions might be, fate will contrive it that things turn out the same. Again, I don't see how this can possibly be so when one examines a few examples. I noted above Feanor's speech at Tirion, Maeglin's treachery, and Thingol's request for a Silmaril as examples of choices clearly laden with moral value (and therefore, even in Flieger's view, taken freely) that nonetheless have non-trivial consequences. It's hard to see how those large-scale consequences would be the same regardless of the choices of those involved.

I think there are other ways to interpret Tolkien's statement that the Music is as fate to all but Men. My own view is that, in Tolkien's world, fate and free will are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It seems to me that Tolkien, in setting up both fate and free will as real features of his Legendarium, was quite probably reflecting what he saw as a real and strange feature of our world.

In any case, there are, as you note, several examples of 'fate' applied to Men in the Legendarium. Though some might be dismissed as prophecy rather than fate (a distinction that must be made in some cases), others cannot be. The prime example is Morgoth's curse in "The Children of Hurin".