Talk:Tolkien's moral dilemma/Archive 1

Archive 1

Rampant misuse of "sentient" in place of sapient.

The general tone of the article is speciesist but Tolkien himself is responsible for most of that. Changing the title would be a good place to start. 82.129.89.42 (talk) 09:46, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. The article takes no sides on any of the issues raised, describing all of them neutrally. It notes that some sources have asserted that racism is implied. The terms used are those used by the scholars and other sources cited. For example Tally 2019 states "Whatever else orcs may be, they are most assuredly sentient"; Hartley 2014 discusses "problems of sentience". Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:59, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

However, the fact that the scholars have misused common terms doesn't mean that we have to do the same. I've retitled the article and adjusted the text. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:14, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

A needlessly difficult to understand article

A few things about this article do not make any sense. It seems to be presupposing that (1) beings that can talk have souls; (2) beings that have souls ought not be slaughtered without good reason; (3) Orcs can talk, and therefore they have souls and ought not to be slaughtered without good reason. (The article states this nowhere so clearly, but that is my interpretation of the article. It would be nice to have this written plainly somewhere.)

You have it correct. It's summarized in the lead and in a table; and it's explained in the article body.

So, it begs several questions:

First, according to whom? According to Tolkien? If so, did he write this anywhere? Did he state this is how morality works in his universe anywhere? If not, is this a part of Catholic doctrine? There is a link to a page about Christianity in Tolkien, but it doesn’t provide any answers to this. If this is Catholic doctrine and that is being applied to Tolkien’s universe, then that too should be stated somewhere plainly.

Yes, Tolkien, as a devout Catholic, as the title, lead, and body all state.

Second, is this really a dilemma? In other words—are Orcs indeed slaughtered without good reason in Tolkien’s universe? If so, where and when? What portion of Tolkien’s writings implicate this dilemma? If it’s the entire war, that too should be stated. It otherwise seems like the Just War doctrine would justify killing orcs, and therefore orcs are not slaughtered without good reason.

Tolkien thought so. I've added links to the main Orc-slaughtering battles in the Context.

Or, is “the dilemma” whether or not orcs have souls to begin with? Does Tolkien say they do not? and that contradicts the morality scheme in place? If that’s the case that too could be fleshed out somewhere. It’s hard to tell what the dilemma actually is.

Tolkien hums, hahs, and havers continually on the matter, as the article illustrates and cites.

Lastly, there are two specific areas in the article that are confusing:

1. There is a quote supposedly about an Orc’s view of morality, but the quote itself is about a big guy, a small guy, and elf tricks. With no context it is difficult to discern how this is an orc’s view of morality.

Glossed the speaker as "an Orc".

2. There is a chart at the bottom that is indecipherable. Is that an X and Y axis? How does any of it relate, I am not sure and I can’t tell how it explains what the dilemma is.

The table? It's just a table of the issues and their consequences for, as its title says, "the Catholic Tolkien". The dilemma is that the conflicting choices (top) each have different moral implications (middle) and problematic results (bottom). Tolkien didn't like any of the options depicted but couldn't see any other options.

I don’t mean to criticize but I just get the sense that the author knows much more than they are writing. On a niche article such as this it’s okay to assume the reader knows some things about Tolkien and all that, but I think the article goes a little far in assuming what the reader knows. It is a difficult article to understand and, I think, needlessly so. The subject matter doesn’t seem that complex, there are just lots of unanswered questions which all feel like pretty major points that should be addressed. 107.77.223.31 (talk) 02:31, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Um thanks. I've added glosses to ensure that everything is attributed. On the dilemma, the scholars agree that Tolkien felt it acutely. There's already a fair bit of context; it's always a judgement how much basic stuff to give in an article - too much is boring, too little and it's unrooted. We can certainly revisit the ease of reading and such. The Just War aspect is interesting but we'd need to find a scholar who's written about it in this context to be able to include it. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:17, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Trolls in the LotR

Trolls in the LotR are able to speak according to Appendix F. "Trolls therefore took such language as they could master from the Orcs; and in the Westlands the Stone-trolls spoke a debased form of the Common Speech. ... They (Olog-hai) spoke little, and the only tongue that they knew was the Black Speech of Barad-dûr." Ангон (talk) 02:09, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

But the scholars are right that we never get to hear them say anything.

Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:46, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

We technically do - in the song about the old troll that Sam sang the troll was speaking. Sure it is not the main text and is an in-world folklore, but since all of the LotR is presented by Tolkien as a translation of an in-world book, the difference is not that significant. Ангон (talk) 20:24, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes. Actually I did tweak the article for you. T did hesitate over the Trolls. Chiswick Chap (talk) 23:37, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Introduction - Original research inline, and lack of sources.

The introduction is a personnal interpretation with no quotes nor sources from Tolkien :

J. R. R. Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, created what he came to feel was a moral dilemma [Source ?] for himself with his supposedly evil Middle-earth peoples like Orcs [Personnal interpretation : Tolkien has written : "Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted". Source when he made them able to speak. This identified them as sentient and sapient; indeed, he portrayed them talking about right and wrong. This meant, he believed, that they were open to morality [Personnal Interpretation, source needed] like Men. In Tolkien's Christian framework, that in turn meant they must have souls [Personnal Interpretation, source needed, there is no fixed statement about soul in Christianity, but a a common belief is that Angels don't have soul, nor Demons, so why would Orc have throught Tolkien's Christian framework], so killing them would be wrong without very good reason. [Personnal Interpretation : that's author speaking about his own moral]

Orcs serve as the principal forces of the enemy in The Lord of the Rings, where they are slaughtered in large numbers in the battles of Helm's Deep and the Pelennor Fields in particular. If Tolkien wanted killing Orcs not to be such a problem, then [Personnal Interpretation] / Contradiction, it was previously says "killing them with a good reason is no wrong" they would have to be without any moral sense, like ordinary animals [Personnal Interpretation : that's the author speaking about his own moral about animals being moraly acceptable to be killed]

Both Tolkien and other scholars have been aware of the contradiction implied by this position: [Source ?] if Orcs were essentially "beasts", then they should not have had a moral sense; if they were corrupted Elves, then treating them as "other" to be slaughtered was straightforward racism. Tolkien made repeated attempts to resolve the dilemma, trying different approaches but not arriving at what he felt was a satisfactory solution. [Source ?] Complicated8 (talk) 03:50, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Hallo, and welcome to Wikipedia: I see these are your very first edits. I'll say at once that I'm sorry you feel as you do about this article, but that there is no foundation for those feelings. Let me explain why.

The lead section (that you name the "Introduction", per common practice supported by policy, is only a summary of the body of the article, and is fully supported by the citations in the body. It is not an "Introduction" in the usual sense, something written by an author or editor to describe their personal approach to a book or essay; it is rather a summary or precis, constructed from the body of the article.

Many editors object to the presence of citations in the lead, and during the Good Article process demand that such citations be removed. This article has passed such a review. Therefore, the uncited appearance of the two paragraphs of the lead does not mean that the materials there are not cited. Instead, they were created by summarizing the body of the article; and the review checked that all the statements there are in fact supported by the article's citations. There is therefore no original research, editorializing, or personal interpretation in the lead section, or anywhere else in the article.

You specifically state that the lead section is not supported by "quotes from Tolkien" (primary) or other (secondary) sources. From what I've just explained, that is untrue. The article has 18 primary and 21 secondary citations, from 10 Tolkien sources (including his Letters edited by Carpenter), and 8 secondary sources, mostly scholarly books. The article is, in a word, robustly sourced to the best available authorities on the subject.

You further request that the lead section be cited inline. As I've explained, this is not Wikipedia's normal procedure, and it's actually considered a defect by many editors and reviewers. The options are to direct you to read the article, study the citations, and to come to the realization that my statements above are correct, namely that the citations do not need to be repeated in the lead section; or to cite the lead redundantly, so that you and anyone with a similar outlook in future can immediately see that the article is robustly cited. I'll take the second route, for the reason I've just given. I will then remove the tag as soon as I've demonstrated that it is inappropriate.

For the future, and for what I hope will be your long and successful editing career here on Wikipedia, I'd recommend that you familiarize yourself with policy before making very strong but demonstrably wrong assertions about articles and their editors. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:41, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Hello Chiswich, and thank you for your kind answer ! It makes me feel very welcomed, even if I didn't fully agree with the form of the article !

Also, I'll try to do better next time !

Having The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien: Revised and Expanded edition and The Road to Middle-Earth, first and 2005 edition under my eyes, I still disagree tho, and think some parts of this article are "not so good" retranscription of sources.

But I am new here, and still have to learn, so...I agree to say I am wrong, so we can close the discussion.

Thanks again, I really appreciated the time you took to answer me ! 86.247.144.166 (talk) 11:42, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Many thanks. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:13, 1 September 2024 (UTC)