tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post546635920143846869..comments2024-03-11T16:29:13.619-05:00Comments on Lingwë - Musings of a Fish: Do Tolkien’s Elves have free will? Do we?Jason Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-6168928887408097732008-09-08T14:42:00.000-05:002008-09-08T14:42:00.000-05:00Hi Cat. Thanks for the comment! The TORn thread ha...Hi Cat. Thanks for the comment! The TORn thread has finally wound down, but not before gathering more than 150 replies. That should keep you busy for a little while, hahae. It’s not a question we can ever really answer — frankly, I think it’s beyond the limits of our human understanding — but the debate itself can be rewarding. :)Jason Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-51595879925308833092008-09-08T14:08:00.000-05:002008-09-08T14:08:00.000-05:00That's a quite beautiful question if I'm understan...That's a quite beautiful question if I'm understanding your meaning. Of course its the ones who go against the grain who are the most interesting .. but then they are following the authors pen still so yeah ....<BR/><BR/>I'll have to follow your Torn thread to see what wiser souls than I are saying :)Cat (darklingwoods)https://www.blogger.com/profile/06191107705895656760noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-4066798245425974042008-08-30T16:09:00.000-05:002008-08-30T16:09:00.000-05:00Thanks for setting me straight, Julian. I’m not su...Thanks for setting me straight, Julian. I’m not sure why I thought Sayers was Catholic, or if I read it, where. More likely, it was a fault of memory, not misinformation. Thanks again. :)Jason Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-10999389973712179402008-08-30T14:36:00.000-05:002008-08-30T14:36:00.000-05:00Dorothy Leigh Sayers was not a Roman Catholic, she...Dorothy Leigh Sayers was not a Roman Catholic, she was Church of England. At the time of her birth, her father was headmaster of the Choir School of Christ Church College. She was christened in the Christ Church chapel, which boasts the distinction of being a Church of England Cathedral.<BR/><BR/>At the end of her life, Sayers was associated with the C of E parish of St. Anne's, Soho, and her ashes are buried in its tower. (The church was destroyed during World War II, but a new church was built in the 1990s. The parish has a web site at http://www.stannes-soho.org.uk/home, and the history page on the site mentions Sayers.)<BR/><BR/>Sayers also wrote a play, _The Zeal of They House_, for the (C of E) Canterbury Festival, presented in 1937.<BR/><BR/>I don't know to what extent Sayers concerned herself with the differences in doctrine between the Roman Catholic Church and the C of E, but she was associated wih the latter.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-20364954953753700152008-08-28T16:57:00.000-05:002008-08-28T16:57:00.000-05:00Robert, thanks for your insightful thoughts. I thi...Robert, thanks for your insightful thoughts. I think free will is one of those perennial questions we will never — and <I>can</I> never — answer definitively. No appeal to religion or science is sufficient, and appealing to philosophy tends to lead us around in circles, focused mainly on defining our terms and formulating largely futile <I>gedankenexperimenten</I> that are no more conclusive. Still, the question nags at us, and we can’t let it go, can we?<BR/><BR/>To your point about whether Elves makes judgments, they do. Part of the discussion in Tolkien’s unpublished notes revolves around <I>ambar</I> (= “the world”) and <I>umbar</I> (= “fate”) as descendents of a root whose meaning was something like <I>settlement</I>. In the one case, physical settlement, and in the other, in the sense of judgment, settling a question.<BR/><BR/>(P.S. Some time ago, I happened onto a post on your blog about “Elven Latin”, in which you linked back to something I wrote about Gandalf and Albus Dumbledore; I’ve been meaning to revisit that. Keep an eye out for it. ;)Jason Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-90775871747131022842008-08-28T16:14:00.000-05:002008-08-28T16:14:00.000-05:00I haven't the Tolkien scholarship to assess the li...I haven't the Tolkien scholarship to assess the literary aspect of the question, but one thing I'd drop into the debate based on what I've been exposed to as a student of philosophy is: are Elves rational? Do they make 'judgments'?<BR/><BR/>There's an argument in circulation which loosely states that rationality presupposes free will. (The idea is to shove psychologists back out of the debate by contending that science is supposed to be a rational process, and therefore science can never prove we don't have free will without undermining its own authority and the attempted proof.) So the question as applied here would be: before an Elf makes, or thinks he makes, or appears to make, a 'choice', is his appraisal of what options are open to him basically that of a hugely intricate calculator (programmed for correctness or not), or is what's going on psychologically what we might prefer to call 'judgment'?<BR/><BR/>I'm not sure anyone would wish to deny that Elves can make rational judgments, so maybe that's why the TORn thread looked so heavily concerned with external concepts like fate/destiny.Robert Seddonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01716313716335678798noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-1234726318005201592008-08-28T09:31:00.000-05:002008-08-28T09:31:00.000-05:00Tom Stoppard as fanfic author, yes, that’s come up...Tom Stoppard as fanfic author, yes, that’s come up before. I can’t recall where or when or in what conversation (helpful, I know!), but describing him in that way definitely rings a bell in the back of my memory.Jason Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05809154870762268253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9050528436539921312.post-5892848145054360532008-08-27T17:34:00.000-05:002008-08-27T17:34:00.000-05:00I've never thought of Tom Stoppard as a fanfiction...I've never thought of Tom Stoppard as a fanfiction author before, though I imagine others have described him that way.N.E. Brigandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17601573470596905112noreply@blogger.com