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All Tolkien’s Villains Are Nihilists

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Tolkien Lore

Tolkien Lore

Күн бұрын

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@Enzaio
@Enzaio 3 жыл бұрын
It's so cool that you don't just talk about plot points, 'what ifs' and theories (which are interesting too), but also about stuff like this!
@TolkienLorePodcast
@TolkienLorePodcast 3 жыл бұрын
It’s one of the reasons I love Tolkien so much-everything is miles deep. :)
@ThePa1riot
@ThePa1riot 3 жыл бұрын
@@TolkienLorePodcast But hopefully not too deep. “Shadow and flame.”
@bateboy714
@bateboy714 3 жыл бұрын
Eol the dark elf. Rather than let his son live peacefully he tried to kill him, it killed his wife instead and he was sentenced to death. He knew thise would likely be the outcome.
@GirlNextGondor
@GirlNextGondor 3 жыл бұрын
He tells Turgon "You shall not hold what is mine!" Could be directly quoting Morgoth.
@exharkhun5605
@exharkhun5605 3 жыл бұрын
I like this analysis for every villain you mention, except Ungoliant. Her evil is more primal, more of a first cause to her being. In my reading Ungoliant is either: 1. A defective or "unfinished" being, maybe a distorted echo that lacks certain tones or 2. The personification of a force of nature like entropy.
@TolkienLorePodcast
@TolkienLorePodcast 3 жыл бұрын
You could say that. She’s kind of a nihilist-by-accident in a way, and not strictly a philosophical nihilist.
@skatemetrix
@skatemetrix 3 жыл бұрын
Ungoliant was nihilism personified for she would take every thing good, consume it, rob it of its goodness, and still hunger for more. Her life was utterly devoid of meaning or value, many years she suffered from hunger and ultimately ate herself.
@exharkhun5605
@exharkhun5605 3 жыл бұрын
@@skatemetrix Respectfully, no. What you describe falls under Apathy. "To be apathetic is to be without pathos, to be without feeling, to be without desire." The Greek word pathos means "suffering," "experience," or "emotion." I can't find as succinct a quote as the above for nihilism but try this from Nietsche: “Nihilism is . . . not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one’s shoulder to the plough; one destroys” (Will to Power). That would be true for Morgoth, Sauron has almost arrived there and Saruman has certainly gotten on that train. But Nihilism has to be driven by purpose or choice. Ungoliant is only driven by hunger, by emptiness. A thought experiment: If Ungoliant could sate her hunger equally by doing something good, like holding a charity drive for the local dog shelter, or something evil, like perpetrating a mime performance on innocent bystanders. What would she choose? She wouldn't see it as a choice, she'd do the first thing that would sate her appetite. So there is no conscious effort to "put one’s shoulder to the plough, to destroy". That's at least my reading of her. Have a great weekend, and thank you both for allowing me to think a bit more on this.
@kevinrussell1144
@kevinrussell1144 Жыл бұрын
​@@exharkhun5605 No.....Ungoliant has the desire to consume, the will to pursue and consume anything she can reach with her clawed limbs and gob. She's not apathetic....she is an insatiable organic vacuum cleaner. But she IS a created being. Does she possess free will? Shelob was her last daughter, but who, we might ask, was Shelob's Daddy? Did Ungoliant have her tender moments? Nihilism is the belief that there is no intrinsic meaning or value to anything, that all of this is a construct that means nothing. Do you have to have conscious destructive intent to be evil? If Ungoliant is JUST a spider, is she truly evil? Since JRRT says she was perverted into the engine of destruction that first appears in the Silmarillion by (you guessed it, The First prince of Evil, Melkor) by an evil angel, by association, she's evil. That still doesn't find the root. That, of course, is the Origin of Evil. Tolkien Lore repeats the statement from Fellowship that Sauron (and Melkor) were not at first (before they did evil deeds, we can agree), but I would argue that in the original music, Melkor, of his own accord, began to sow discord even then. His INCLINATION toward evil was baked into his cake from Inception. Eru (like Jehovah) allows evil because it is necessary.
@GirlNextGondor
@GirlNextGondor 3 жыл бұрын
Thanks for linking to my video! Hope it helps people who might be interested in TNS but can't get their hands on the super-obscure later volumes of HoME. Denethor isn't a pure 'villain,' but in the moment of his moral failure he tells Gandalf if he can't have things stay the same "then I will have *naught*"... and then jumps into a pyre. Seems to fit with the other examples. As usual, a well-done and thought-provoking video 😊
@TolkienLorePodcast
@TolkienLorePodcast 3 жыл бұрын
I had forgotten that precise quote. It’s a great point, though it’s from a different angle (despair). Denethor kind of skips the long downward road and just hurls himself headlong into the abyss when he cracks.
@celtofcanaanesurix2245
@celtofcanaanesurix2245 3 жыл бұрын
Perhaps in a way, this explains Orcs completely as to what exactly they are. It’s almost like they’re under the influence of the ring, like Gollum, but less powerfully, and in a way that has influenced their personalities sense birth. This basically solves tokens one main problem with the existence of Orcs within his own world in the sense that they clearly aren’t automatons like the dwarves where before Eru Ilúvatar stepped in, but they are not as free willed as men and elves. This is because they basically are just being corrupted through a magical exposure mentally in the same way the ring does....
@TolkienLorePodcast
@TolkienLorePodcast 3 жыл бұрын
I don’t think so, because Orcs existed in the same way long before the ring.
@horseradishpower9947
@horseradishpower9947 3 жыл бұрын
@@TolkienLorePodcast Maybe it is a relay baton effect, and the Ring is the latest in a line of corrupting influences on the Orcs? Just a speculation, not certain it could hold up.
@Vandervecken
@Vandervecken 3 жыл бұрын
Smaug and the dragons present a problem with this thesis maybe. They really seem to like to possess stuff, gold and jewels especially. They don't do anything with it, and they create a lot of destruction acquiring it, but they do seem to be driven quite a lot by pure acquisitiveness. Smaug counts and knows his hoard down to the coin, such that he knows when even one cup is missing, so this stuff is important to him. And it seems they can even take some delight in their possessions---Smaug was "absurdly pleased" by Bilbo's spoken appreciation of the gems and gold crusting his underside, like a person wearing jewlery and enjoying a compliment about it.
@TolkienLorePodcast
@TolkienLorePodcast 3 жыл бұрын
Yeah, well my statement is admittedly hyperbolic lol
@hydradominatus3641
@hydradominatus3641 3 жыл бұрын
Agreed. Narcissistic, not Nihilistic.
@William_Seahill
@William_Seahill 2 жыл бұрын
4:25 Ungoliant devouring herself is terrifying.
@istari0
@istari0 3 жыл бұрын
I would be interested in your thoughts on this topic as it pertains to Fëanor, his sons, and their oath. They caused an enormous amount of death and destruction to their own kin and allies in their single-minded pursuit of the Silmarils, so much so that at the end of the First Age, Maedhros and Maglor could not even hold the Silmarils they finally stole. Fëanor even went so far as to remind his sons of the oath as he was dying even though at his end he finally realized they could not defeat Morgoth.
@hbreckenridge
@hbreckenridge 3 жыл бұрын
One example I can think of is Ar Pharazon. He was well on the road to nihilism if he wasn't there already.
@Alfonso88279
@Alfonso88279 3 жыл бұрын
Yeah, to be honest I think that orcs are not a representation of soldiers, but the representation of war itself. In early versions of the stories of the Silmarillion, I read somewhere that the dragons were described as tanks. The villains in Middle Earth are not actually persons, are different aspects of war. Saruman the White, the politician, the enemy in home, the betrayer, who ruins your home while you are fighting the supposed enemy. Sauron the Black, the enemy without face that projects "the destruction of the world". You can change places or make slightly different interpretations of the roles, but the roles are obviously there. One can get out of the war but I am not sure the war can get out of one, once that person has been there, if you get what I say. I honestly think that most of what Tolkien wrote was inspired by war. Nihilism? Maybe not. I think that's an accident. However, the atrocities of war from both sides tend to change the values of some veterans. Moral relativism is a natural consequence of war. Of suffering.
@Alfonso88279
@Alfonso88279 3 жыл бұрын
@Indigo Rodent I agree with that. I never said otherwise. But one of the ways to solve the dissonance that results of witnessing atrocities is to embrace a certain level of nihilism. There are other ways, like thinking that your way is the only right way. Radicalization. Nihilism would imply that there's no right or wrong way. I honestly prefer some degree of nihilism. Just a little bit.
@margaritamarin7526
@margaritamarin7526 3 жыл бұрын
Fantastic video! I've been watching many of your videos over the last few days! I haven't seen the video in which you mention Ungoliant! I'm going to check out the links. (On a side note, I really wish Tolkien had finished his Odyssey-inspired story of the voyage of Eärendil in which Ungoliant's death was to be depicted.) I suppose Gandalf may have interpreted Saruman's words about "knowledge, rule, and order" as pertaining to the will of Eru and the "rule" of the Valar over Arda, who seek to find such things in sustainable form within goodness and not at the exclusion of free will. Most traditional societies, including those in Tolkien's universe, tend to emphasise order. Greater emphasis upon freedom is a modern phenomenon, and most societies still emphasise order to some degree. For Tolkien, evil seems to be the result of "good" coming into contact with the Void, though the Void is not "evil" because it be what it is and seeks nothing but itself, being the pure absence of life, Eru, and the Flame Imperishable. If we were to make a Tolkienian moral spectrum, on one side would be perfect goodness and creation as represented by Eru, and on the other side would be the Void which is its absence; on this spectrum, normal imperfect goodness in its myriad forms would be proximate to Eru and his ways, and evil in its myriad forms would be proximate to the Void. Evil for Tolkien seems to be the result of taking some aspect of creation, like independence in the case of Morgoth or order in the case of Sauron, which is fundamentally good because creation is fundamentally good, and taking it to an extreme that comes at the expense of other aspects of existence. That's why I think it's probably foolish to figure out "who's more evil" in the Dark Lords' late stages, because Tolkien was influenced by the ideas of C.S. Lewis (and vice versa), who also talked about different "kinds" of evil. Morgoth's futile quest for pure creativity is just as evil as Sauron's futile quest for pure perfection; Sauron was only less evil in that "he long served another", but once he started serving himself alone his evil only differed from Morgoth's in kind and not degree. Sauron sought ever greater power, and Morgoth sought ever greater corruption, but even though Morgoth gave up personal power and Sauron always sought to dominate if he could manage it, these differences did not make their goals less futile. Of course this futility is exactly why evil in all its forms marches towards the nothingness of the Void; even if evil-doers never quite merge completely with pure nothingness, evil inevitably creates monotony and suffering as you rightly pointed out in your other video. The end results only differ in the kind of monotony and suffering. I wonder what Tolkien would make of self-destructive behaviors that don't harm other people or violent actions in defense of others? Are these also proximate to the Void? Maybe Tolkien would say that actions needlessly sacrificing the self are closer to the Void than normal actions, but not as much as evil on account of how evil acts directly upon others, and that destruction of life by means of violence is only ever regrettable even if it becomes necessary to stop evil (which is why Tolkien values mercy so much). My apologies for writing a whole essay! You've given me a lot to think about. (And I've been re-reading a lot of Tolkien recently!)
@brucealanwilson4121
@brucealanwilson4121 3 жыл бұрын
You forgot Denethor, who said that if he couldn't continue the status quo in Gondor as Ruling Steward, but had to accept playing second-fiddle to a revived monarchy (". . . to become the dotard chamberlain of an upstart," whas his phrase), he would have NOTHING, and proceeded to try to murder his remaining son and commit suicide. Not quite as strong as Morgoth or Sauron, or even Saruman, but still nihilistic in it's way.
@TolkienLorePodcast
@TolkienLorePodcast 3 жыл бұрын
A good point, though strictly speaking he’s not a villain he certainly bends that way.
@markspeeney291
@markspeeney291 2 жыл бұрын
So back in the salad days of my Tolkien fandom, before the love of shiny things and textual accolades darkened the heart of the Professor's son and interlocutor, there existed a book by Paul Hocher, titled Master of Middle Earth. It was a collection of essays--presented in chapter form--that addressed a variety of themes and character analyses. By far the most profound was a chapter entitled "Sauron And The Nature of Evil". Now please note that this book, like the fandom of that particular period (the mid to late 1970s), lived in a world where the epic legendaria of the doomed war the Eldar waged against Morgoth had not yet been widely read by the fandom of the Trilogy. Hocher's book came out in 1978, which was maybe a year or so after the first edition of The Silmarillion hit the shelves, so he really doesn't write about how those tales played out (and certainly doesn't anticipate the canonical chaos that would be wrought among the fans when Christopher Tolkien started publishing the earlier drafts, unpublished writings, and sheer speculation in those volumes soon to be called The History of Middle Earth.) Hocher's premise in the essay (Sauron And the Nature of Evil) was very simple but highly profound as well. He starts by comparing what characteristics the Free Peoples of Middle Earth possess that are viewed as 'good' and then contrasts them with how the evil characters in the Trilogy--Sauron in particular--behave. Now some of it is the usual (and important to the readership of the time period) discussion of nature and growing things vs. industry and making things. But Hocher doesn't stop with that. He argues that making things in and of itself isn't evil...but that it has a strong tendency to open the door to evil. For the making of objects like magic rings or gems that hold the blended light from the Two Trees can awaken a lust to possess. Trees are grown. As long as they live they cannot be owned...the beautiful world that is Arda and all the beings that possess life within it (save that which was corrupted by you know who) belong to themselves. That which has a good nature understands this and doesn't seek to make a claim to it...But objects are like the baubles that end up piled in the hoards of dragons (along with the bones of the previous owners), they are made fundamentally to be possessed. If they are cleverly made or of extraordinary beauty, the desire for them and to keep them selfishly, secretively, almost always leads in the tales to tragedy, death, and ever widening cycles of evil. Evil=possessiveness. If you are the maker of the thing you desire, you don't want to share it. If someone else has made it, and you can't stop thinking about it, you endeavor to take it from them. Sauron made the One Ring in secret, with the intention of controlling all the other rings that were already made (but not yet distributed). He didn't just want the rings he wanted/coveted the power and beauty inherent in the bearers, too. It didn't work because his business partner had made a trio of new rings right before Sauron forges the One, and hands them out to the most powerful remaining representatives of the Eldar in Middle Earth, and thus Sauron is caught out before he has a chance to spring his trap. And since the Three were made by Celebrimbor alone and specifically for the use of their bearers and not himself, the desire for them is mitigated by the selflessness associated with their use. But they still get tainted nevertheless. But of course it doesn't stop there. Plenty of metaphorical examples exist in other parts of the legendarium. The Silmarils of course are the obvious example, given the body count associated with their mere presence. The fact that they are stolen by a god with the impulse control of a two year old is bad enough, but then the mad genius who made them (and who has been living in a winter of discontent for a great part of his fabulous life) and his only slightly less fabulous sons, 7 of them (clearly Feanor's discontent did not extend to sexual relations) swear an oath to get them back and that oath includes from the hands of folks who somehow find them or win them on their own. The Men of Numenor want to possess more life, and more land, and build great monuments of stone and treasure houses with the world's wealth stored within. The kings of Men who become the Nazgul take their Rings and are over time consumed by them...until they are mere objects themselves, owned by their Rings which they don't wear any longer. Their master holds those rings, and the undead obedience of some of the mightiest of mortal kingdoms. Dragons are pure covetousness, and do nothing with their hoards save sit upon it. Morgoth himself kept the Silmarils hidden in the darkest part of Angband, set in his Iron Crown. And of course poor Smeagol's love for his Precious, which sort of represents the coup de grace where the selfishness that drives one to take the Ring undoes the Ring and it's maker at the end. And thus in the cycles of evil might evil by evil be undone. Anyway it's worth reading for a slightly different take on this topic, written at a time long before social media and when very few dared to take the Professor and his great work seriously at all, let alone write serious literary analyses (but in a popular style). www.amazon.com/MASTER-MIDDLE-EARTH-paul-h-kocher/dp/034527850X
@eeleye21
@eeleye21 3 жыл бұрын
Love the content brother!
@DrFranklynAnderson
@DrFranklynAnderson 3 жыл бұрын
I’m just picturing a trio of Uruk-hai with over-the-top German accents going “We don’t believe in anything. We are nihilists!”
@di3486
@di3486 3 жыл бұрын
Or Russian...
@nicholasarvanggavaleromita5999
@nicholasarvanggavaleromita5999 3 жыл бұрын
"Vi dont believe in nuzing!"
@HarpoMarxTheSpot
@HarpoMarxTheSpot 3 жыл бұрын
And then John Goodman beats them with a bowling ball in a bag
@andrewlivingston1590
@andrewlivingston1590 3 жыл бұрын
“NUUUUZZING!”
@fleetstreet11
@fleetstreet11 3 жыл бұрын
"We believe in NOTHING, Aiwendil, NOTHING!"
@KorpsePaintKlown
@KorpsePaintKlown 3 жыл бұрын
My nihilism is very passive, I would make a terrible dark lord
@Valdagast
@Valdagast 3 жыл бұрын
"Once down the Dark Path you go, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you it will, as it did Aulë's maia!"
@Vladislak
@Vladislak 3 жыл бұрын
So I have a somewhat unrelated question regarding orcs, something my brother brought up to me a while back and I was curious to hear your thoughts on it. In The Hobbit when the company is brought before the Great Goblin, one of the ways they decide Bilbo and the dwarves are enemies is by exposing Thorins sword Orcrist. My brothers question is, how do they all recognize it immediately at a glance? The book says they knew it because of how it was used in the days of Gondolin, but that was thousands of years ago. Even if they remember the stories about the sword it's remarkable that they'd be able to recognize it as the sword from those stories so quickly! Does Tolkien ever give any indication that orcs have some form of strong oral tradition with a detailed description of the blade? Or that they keep some sort of secret libraries?
@TolkienLorePodcast
@TolkienLorePodcast 3 жыл бұрын
You could explain it that way, but really it’s probably due to the fact that he didn’t plan for the Hobbit to actually be part of the greater mythology and he was just borrowing names. You could also, I suppose, assume the goblins read the name of the sword but that doesn’t seem plausible.
@Vladislak
@Vladislak 3 жыл бұрын
@@TolkienLorePodcast Fair enough. I think I'll go with the possibility that the orcs remember it in song or something, they did do some singing in the Hobbit after all so a verse that describes the blade seems plausible to me. Thanks for the input!
@earlwajenberg
@earlwajenberg 2 жыл бұрын
Well, it's there glowing in their faces, so they know it's an elven sword. Maybe those aren't too common. Design details or sheer size might tell them this is a big, _important_, *Gondolinian* elven sword, and finally it might well have "Orcrist" written on it, and I see no reason why the orcs couldn't read that. They have learned Westron well enough to talk (disagreeably) with Gandalf and the dwarves, so they (or some of them) might know tengwar script too.
@Vladislak
@Vladislak 2 жыл бұрын
@@earlwajenberg The problem with that is that Tolkien makes it clear the moment the sword is drawn that the Goblins not only recognize it as an Elven blade, but also the specific history of the blade. They even have their own name for that particular sword: Biter. So it's not just that it's glowing and has Orcrist written on it, that specific blade means something to them.
@loukasgate7
@loukasgate7 3 жыл бұрын
Great work! I think i have an observation to make about your point that Sauron and Saruman are more alike eachother than Morgoth. Saruman and Sauron were both Maiar spirits under Aule. So it's only natural that even in their corrupt states, they essentially are all about constructing things, order and control. And so they were not so purely evil and nihilistic like Morgoth. What do you think?
@TolkienLorePodcast
@TolkienLorePodcast 3 жыл бұрын
I think you’re onto something there ;)
@KororaPenguin
@KororaPenguin 8 ай бұрын
I wonder if Tolkien ever saw Boito's _Mefistofele._ kzbin.info/www/bejne/kIGkm2SIedunhac
@brovold72
@brovold72 3 жыл бұрын
Think of Sméagol's stance on Oliphants.
@golwenlothlindel
@golwenlothlindel 3 жыл бұрын
No, Sauron is a fascist. What Sauron and Morgoth agree on, is that Morgoth should be in control because he is the strongest. Where their philosophies diverge is that Sauron is perfectly content for the world to exist as it is, if it will willingly bow to Morgoth. Morgoth is still pissed off that the other Valar got to have a say in how the world was made and wants to undo their handiwork. Sauron is a fascist, Morgoth is a toddler with angel powers who won’t share the cosmic sandbox. Of course, fascism is in truth a death-cult. It will destroy all it touches, including itself. But Sauron sincerely believes he is making the world right by bringing it under his dominion as Morgoth’s earthly representative. Note that the last line of the ring verse is “and in the darkness *bind* them”. Sauron’s objective is to rule reality, Morgoth’s end goal is to tear it apart and re-form it according to his desires. While Sauron has become quite frustrated by the 3rd Age, he still values material reality and wants to possess it. He came to this world because he loved it, and in a twisted way he still does.
@payday7679
@payday7679 3 жыл бұрын
Certainly with Morgoth but I’m not sure if the other characters for example ungoliant seems more like a animal that doesn’t know if it eats all the deer there will be none for next year same with a lot of the smaller villains seem more shortsighted then nihilistic though the end result is the same and a being like Sauron might grow to reveal in it
@BIGBOSSMAN-ry5iq
@BIGBOSSMAN-ry5iq 3 жыл бұрын
Lewis was very explicit about that in That Hideous Strength. Also, the destructive (murder-suicide) sense of nihilism mirrors the self-destructive incoherence of professing a belief in nothing. Like oh you believe you don't believe anything? I assume Tolkien and Lewis had the Catholic idea of evil as the absence of good.
@andrewlivingston1590
@andrewlivingston1590 3 жыл бұрын
Lewis was an Anglican who preferred “mere Christianity” but something like that idea does seem to have wound up for one reason or other being in his theology.
@TolkienLorePodcast
@TolkienLorePodcast 3 жыл бұрын
Lewis was Anglican but valued a lot of old ideas so I’m sure he wouldn’t have objected to the idea of evil as the absence of good. Lots of non-Catholics are comfortable with it.
@brethilnen
@brethilnen 3 жыл бұрын
Nice video.
@Valdagast
@Valdagast 3 жыл бұрын
Denethor is going down this path as well. "If I can't rule Gondor, if my line must give way to a vagabond from the North, then let it all burn!"
@1JOE4U
@1JOE4U 3 жыл бұрын
why as a spawn of Ungoliant didn't Shelob consume the Phial of Galadriel but was rather repelled or dazzled by it
@TolkienLorePodcast
@TolkienLorePodcast 3 жыл бұрын
Shelob feared light, and doesn’t seem to have inherited the ability to devour it.
@canonwright8397
@canonwright8397 3 жыл бұрын
I'm not sure if we can consider Gollum to be a Nihilist? Maybe that's because the ring didn't fully corrupt him yet.
@povilzem
@povilzem 3 жыл бұрын
When I hear "Tolkien" and "nihilism", I immediately think Denethor. Having lost his sons, besieged by the Enemy's army and broken in spirit by abusing the palantir, Denethor lost all hope and faith, was ready to lay down arms, to burn the last of his legacy, and ultimately, committed suicide. To me, that's pure nihilism. Even if Denethor isn't exactly a villain, he is certainly the very opposite to a paragon of virtue: a cautionary example of moral failure, a man fallen to nihilism.
@jonathonfrazier6622
@jonathonfrazier6622 3 жыл бұрын
Neat.
@benbrown8258
@benbrown8258 3 жыл бұрын
Love the comment you kind of doubt that Orcs philosophize. The picture that came to my mind are two orcs at a gentleman's club sitting in their smoking jackets smoking pipeweed discussing the finer points of whether it's ethically better to roast hobbits in a mustard sauce or garlic marinade due to garlic becoming more rare.
@waltonsmith7210
@waltonsmith7210 3 жыл бұрын
A nihilist is a person who doesnt believe theres an inherent meaning to life. Sauron,Morgoth and Saruman know theres meaning-theyve met Illuvatar,after all- and consciously reject it. That seems different to me.
@TolkienLorePodcast
@TolkienLorePodcast 3 жыл бұрын
I’m not so sure. All evil requires a certain amount of self-deception. No villain believes he’s the villain. So I don’t think it’s necessarily true these characters haven’t deceived themselves to that level.
@margaritamarin7526
@margaritamarin7526 3 жыл бұрын
That's a good point. But Tolkien used the word to describe Sauron and Morgoth, presumably because they are moral nihilists rather than existential nihilists. I would argue that Morgoth did have a morality system, just one of advancing evil over good (so long as he survived). And Sauron followed master morality (for himself alone). I agree that Tolkien's usage of the term is debatable; Nietzsche is called "a nihilist" when he considered himself to be "an anti-nihilist" and "an anti-moralist". So maybe Sauron and Morgoth would be nihilists but moralists (inverse morality in Morgoth's case and absolute control in Sauron's case).
@margaritamarin7526
@margaritamarin7526 3 жыл бұрын
​@@TolkienLorePodcast Sauron did not acknowledge how evil he was (at least not after the First Age), but apparently Morgoth did. But Melkor caused evil, so he was probably not inclined to think of evil as "bad" because he invented it. But even Melkor wasn't wholly evil in the beginning; he was an uninhibited creative, but the more he used his "tool" of evil the less creative he became until evil became him as Morgoth: a tyrant.
@earlwajenberg
@earlwajenberg 2 жыл бұрын
Tolkien's friend C. S. Lewis was happy enough to paint evil as nihilistic. In his novel Perelandra, Lewis presents us with the "Unman," a demon in a highjacked human body. When he isn't busy working on the evil plan to corrupt a new world, he whiles away the time catching, tormenting, and killing animals for no reason, or, when the hero stops him from doing that, just tearing up grass. I would guess both Tolkien and Lewis are referencing St. Augustine, who described evil as essentially a lack of good, fundamentally a kind of nothingness.
@beansproutnow
@beansproutnow 3 жыл бұрын
I think it's more a case of "will to power" than straight-up nihilism; Morgoth wanted to, on an almost literal level, put his will into reality itself, recreate it as he saw fit. Sauron/Sarumon wanted to use his mind to control and order the world, thereby exerting a different (more refined, less total) kind of will to power.
@chizoioioi
@chizoioioi 3 жыл бұрын
Its incredible that through these characters Tolkien defines evil as coming down to nihilism. In this way he logically concludes there is an ultimate good and evil
@brucealanwilson4121
@brucealanwilson4121 3 жыл бұрын
You're an educated man, so I presume you are familiar with Hanna Arandt's theory of 'the banality of evil.' Personally, can see it in JRRT's villains; JRRT was, I'm sure, unfamiliar with Arendt's work, but he came to her thought 'through the back door,' as it were.
@PABrewNews
@PABrewNews 3 жыл бұрын
Tried to hit you up on Pateron, In regards to this video what are your thoughts on EOL , most have a very negative view oh him most calming him as evil. I firmly disagree, outcast, bitter a bit misanthropic but I don't consider him as evil. At times the worst crimes are crimes of passion and out of a misguided love. And I think EOL gets a worse wrap then he deserves, since he was never got a real chance from the King of Gondolin. Since he and the king were are blinded by their own "greater good" they make unreasonable rash choices in and of themselves.
@TolkienLorePodcast
@TolkienLorePodcast 3 жыл бұрын
He’s definitely a character worth exploring. It’s too bad Tolkien didn’t write more about him.
@darthfrodo2733
@darthfrodo2733 3 жыл бұрын
The Ring is Mine.
@PleaseNThankYou
@PleaseNThankYou 3 жыл бұрын
Saruman, aka "Sharkey" merely established a C.H.O.P. Zone. Tolkien's prophesy of American social political reality was unbelievably spot on.
@BNK2442
@BNK2442 3 жыл бұрын
Nihilism is not the same as the desire to destruction, your views of the characters may be correct, but I don't think that the word nihilist (I assume in the moral context, as in, there are no objective 'good' and 'evil') is the best word to describe them.
@BNK2442
@BNK2442 3 жыл бұрын
I don't think the desire to destroy the world is the same as nihilism.
@TolkienLorePodcast
@TolkienLorePodcast 3 жыл бұрын
No, but it could easily follow from it.
@Jeremyhughes86
@Jeremyhughes86 3 жыл бұрын
you're misinterpreting nihilism as it exists here. nihilism could be thought to be the furthest extreme of pessimism. it is essentially the belief that nothing holds meaning, nothing, holds purpose. so no drive for anything exists, except maybe the drive to destroy... note the "maybe." note it, because destructive tendencies aren't a prerequisite of nihilism, it is merely a "possible" byproduct of it. now I could just be missing what you're getting at here, but it seems you're confusing a desire to destroy with nihilism, and that simply is not the case. Sauron, was by no means a nihilist. the desire to rule all creation, all of Arda, and force it, and it's inhabitants to follow the order he set before it gives him a purpose, to him this has meaning. then later, his hunt for the One Ring, and his wish to regain it, his former power, and the ability to carry out his plans has meaning to him, he has a sense of purpose right up to the destruction of the one. this is the opposite of nihilism, Sauron is not a nihilist. ...and that is just one example. remember, the desire to destroy is not a nihilistic tendency... it is just the only possible impulse that can have meaning to a nihilist. because if nothing has purpose, or meaning than the only possible purpose or meaning that can be found...is to put an end to the meaningless. the same with Morgoth as you described him here. not wanting anything to exist but what he creates, so he wishes to destroy all not of his making isn't nihilism. he sees meaning in what he might bring to the universe. his issue is ego, he sees himself as being more worthy of creating his vision than Eru Illúvatar. he is corrupted, a despot, a tyrant suffering from delusions of grandeur, but sees purpose and meaning in what he can forge from his own hands and mind. this is not nihilism. revenge was the meaning, it was the purpose of The Scouring of the Shire, Saruman ascribed purpose and meaning to this act, destruction was a meant to cause pain and suffering... this is meaningful... there is a purpose...this is not nihilism. the closest thing you get to a showing of true nihilism by the end of LotR is Frodo... who was on the verge of not seeing meaning or purpose in anything...at the base of Mount Doom. nihilism also isn't an inherently evil trait. yes, it is a negative out look, but negativity isn't necessarily evil. a couple examples of nihilists in other fiction that would be considered the heros in their stories... Deadpool... Guts from Berserk is a nihilist... and while at times both have shown behavior akin to the "sociopathic anti-hero" protagonist in their stories, they are the "hero" and neither man, though a nihilist is evil...
@TolkienLorePodcast
@TolkienLorePodcast 3 жыл бұрын
My point isn’t that all these characters were pure nihilists, but were at some stage on that road. Morgoth was the furthest down the road. Bear in mind nihilism is from the root meaning “nothing.” Morgoth effectively wanted nothing to exist since he didn’t want anything he couldn’t create, which was nothing. Nihilism is about negation, and that’s the ultimate negation. The others in the list are just less far down the road to that same end.
@Jeremyhughes86
@Jeremyhughes86 3 жыл бұрын
@@TolkienLorePodcast the root word doesn't matter... it is merely where it draws it's root in latin and holds no bearing on the modern language and how the word is defined. which has nothing to do with "destruction" or "nothing" nor is it inherently evil. it is born of cynicism, of pessimism and you are incorrect in your use of nihilism on this topic. none of the characters you described were in anyway nihilists. they are living lives with meaning and purpose, they are performing acts with meaning and purpose to them. they commit to their own purpose and meaning in this action, this isn't nihilism. the only way you can label them as nihilists is if your were to discuss their rejection of moral, and religious principles. something you never discussed. you treated their "destructive tendencies" and "evil itself" of these characters as if these were qualities that describe nihilism and they aren't. they merely describe traits of these beings. they aren't nihilists, there is meaning in what they do. Frodo is closer to nihilism than any character you mention. besides his spiritual and physical wounds, he also sailed to Valinor because he no longer so meaning in the life he had in the Shire. his existence had become an empty existence of pain. that is nihilism. you cannot suggest that because the latin root is nihil which in english is "nothing" that the latin root word is the entire definition. in this case the root word only answers the question of. "what has meaning or purpose" a nihilist would answer "nothing" hence you get "nihilism." it doesn't mean a person who wants "nothing" to exist. it isn't a description of a destructive being.
@TolkienLorePodcast
@TolkienLorePodcast 3 жыл бұрын
You don’t think the tendency to destroy everything involves devaluing everything and thus treating everything as if it has no meaning or purpose? The connection seems rather obvious to me. Also, if nihilism isn’t evil from a Christian POV (Tolkien was Catholic, remember), I don’t know what would be. It’s literally the rejection of the most basic realities.
@Jeremyhughes86
@Jeremyhughes86 3 жыл бұрын
@@TolkienLorePodcast no, destructive tendencies come after nihilism, not before. "nothing has meaning, so only destroying it could have meaning." is why a nihilist becomes destructive, they do not become a nihilist because they destroy. the "ism" suffix makes it clear it is a belief system. a system of belief of purposelessness, and meaninglessness... a nihilist is one who follows this belief. so destruction while the only act that can have meaning to a nihilists is not a prerequisite of nihilism. so a nihilist, while not inherently evil still sees no purpose in life, it doesn't mean he will destroy all. I imagine Tolkien and I likely would have the same views on nihilism, both being christian men, and both having been military. which would be the reason that the only real nihilism seen in the stories were from the heroes, not the villains. he understood what burdens do to a man, and so you watch the heroes become nihilist, but never drift to darkness, nor give up on their task. because while they grow to believe in certain things... "know" is more powerful than "believe" and they know what must be done, and they know why... even if they are growing to "believe" one thing they "know" another to be fact, and so the nihilistic hero acts.
@Jeremyhughes86
@Jeremyhughes86 3 жыл бұрын
@@TolkienLorePodcast talking the level of nihilism you discuss, is the Joker. Tolkien put nothing in his works that matches that. Joker destroys cause only he gets the punchline, and the punchline is "no matter what, this doesn't matter, that doesn't matters nothing matters." couple that with falling into the vat, and having his skin and hair permanently changed and his face twisted into an endless grin... after finding out his wife and unborn child were killed in an apartment fire. (didn't actually happen if the ending of Three Jokers is canon) this broke him, and since no one got the punchline, the psychotic madman put his skills as a chemical engineer, and his quirks as a failed comic to use to tell the joke that no one got, over and over.
@Perditions
@Perditions 5 ай бұрын
This is confusing to me. It would have been very helpful in understanding what was being said if the OP could have defined nihilism for us. Its not clear to me, but it seems, in his mind, nihilism means self destruction. If so, it makes sense why i cant follow along with what hes saying. My tldr of people who are nihilistic would be, people who dont have a god and realize meaning anf value also dont exist. Orks, brutes, barbarians, and the chaotic evil... i think of them as being very motivated by personal entichment, greed, might, standard hedonism, tribalism, fear of punishment from their overloards; that kind of thing. None of this is nihilistic in my understanding. Am I off? I really do want to a response if someone can correct me but i also dont want to invite poeple who are just going to tell me what they feel nihilism means to them personally.
@TolkienLorePodcast
@TolkienLorePodcast 5 ай бұрын
Broadly speaking (there are several different flavors), nihilism is the belief that nothing matters, nothing has inherent value, etc. that’s more or less the implied assumption behind Morgoth’s desire to level everything-the universe only holds value in his eyes to the extent he made it or it belongs to him.
@hydradominatus3641
@hydradominatus3641 3 жыл бұрын
I don't think you understand what Nihilism means. Morgoth. Definetly. Sauron, Sauruman? No.
@margaritamarin7526
@margaritamarin7526 3 жыл бұрын
The wizard's name is "Saruman". ;) In defense of Tolkien Lore, Tolkien himself used the word, at least to describe Morgoth (I forget if he used it to describe Sauron). But I wonder whether even Morgoth was a true nihilist, since for him the propagation of evil (and opposing Eru) may have been his version of morality. But I am not aware of a word for inverse morality, because it is so unusual for someone to consciously dedicate oneself to evil and oppose good. Tolkien's point was that evil "approaches the Void" or pure absence, because evil is the result of devaluing life and underming most aspects of existence in favor of a few, so I think Tolkien used the word 'nihilism' to describe this phenomenon, but this is perhaps stretching the term to try and get across an idea that is very difficult to convey. I agree that for Sauron power and order had meaning. Saruman definitely deserves further analysis, as his character is complex. My guess is that he represents evil as a result of "progress", which may not be explicitly totalitarian but disproportionately benefits those controlling the system and takes from the weak.
@gagnorhawkk
@gagnorhawkk 3 жыл бұрын
Reject nihilism
@Steven_Edwards
@Steven_Edwards 3 жыл бұрын
Then I would have to give up Rick and Morty or BoJack. Some of the best stuff is founded in Nihilism.
@BosmanHa
@BosmanHa 3 жыл бұрын
I would if I knew how.
@di3486
@di3486 3 жыл бұрын
That is Nietzsche’s main message
@sacredheart9053
@sacredheart9053 3 жыл бұрын
They weren't Nihilists they were Democrats.
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