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Originally Posted by Helen
There is a big difference between "Nothing is evil in the beginning" and "nothing is evil."
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This brings us to the essence of the question. If I say 'Nothing is evil' am I saying the same thing as if I said 'Evil is nothing'?
Itt seems to me that (within Middle earth at least) evil does not have a seperate existence in its own right. Evil is the ultimate perversion of Good, perhaps the ultimate absence of Good but it isn't some 'thing' which exists in its own right. I'm struggling to get my point across, but its to do with the difference between 'darkness' & 'unlight'.
Evil is a convenient label - perhaps we should invent a term like 'ungood', implying the 'absence' of good - so, Gollum is 'ungood', so is Sauron, Saruman & the Witchking. Boromir & Eowyn make 'ungood' choices.
So, I would hold that no-one
is 'evil' - they start out good & move away from it as a result of their choices, but they [i]don't/i] become something else - 'Evil', they simply move away from the Good, which is the only truly 'real' thing. They move towards an unreal state, an emptiness, a 'void'.