[Legolas]

I'd agree with your last post. I suppose that 'absolute' means evil through and through, from start to finish (or at least, if it has no start, the first signs of its appearance in retrospect).

The idea of 'absolute evil' in Tolkien's world - and likewise, the Christian world - seems impossible because existence (and everything within) has its origin in something that is the antithesis of evil...evil comes out of defying the perfect Creator of all things. Everything within Eru's universe, despite having freewill, has some ultimate good from the beginning simply by its roots in Eru (whether through direct creation - man and elf - or subcreation - dwarf). An "absolute evil" being would have to be a self-existent being, not a created being. But then who is this self-existent being rebelling against? What good is it defying?

What is worth looking for (and in fact, I find it) is a turn towards absolute evil. That is, a decision to turn to evil permanently for evil's sake (simply to defy good).

As I stated in my first post, I have been on the subject of Paradise Lost in my British literature class. I find Milton's Satan to be much like Tolkien's Morgoth and Sauron. Melkor and Lucifer are, in their beginnings, the 'highest' of their kind under Eru/God. However, in time (or outside of time), Manwe and the Messiah are given reign over what Lucifer and Melkor expected or sought dominion over.

On Melkor's desire to be God, and Sauron's following closely (The Silmarillion):

And he feigned, even to himself at first, that he desired to go thither and order all things for the good of the Children of Ilúvatar, controlling the turmoils of the heat and the cold that had come to pass through him. But he desired rather to subdue to his will both Elves and Men, envying the gifts with which Ilúvatar promised to endow them; and he wished himself to have subject and servants, and to be called Lord, and to be a master over other wills.

For he coveted Arda and all that was in it, desiring the kingship of Manwë and dominion over the realms of his peers.

In all the deeds of Melkor the Morgoth upon Arda, in his vast works and in the deceits of his cunning, Sauron had a part, and was only less evil than his master in that for long he served another and not himself. But in after years he rose like a shadow of Morgoth and a ghost of his malice, and walked behind him on the same ruinous path down into the Void.

Thinking that they've been treated unfairly, Lucifer and Melkor seek to oust the Messiah/Manwe and ultimately God/Eru with the thought that they are worthy of holding such a position (by self-deception). They have been done no real injustice. Abdiel even points out to Satan that the angels have been done a favor by God's granting reign over them to the Messiah. C.S. Lewis wrote of Milton's Lucifer:

No one had in fact done anything to Satan; he was not hungry, nor over-tasked, nor removed from his place, nor shunned, nor hated - he only thought himself impaired. In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, he could find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige.

In the opening of Paradise Lost, Satan recounts the reason for his rebellion - "And high disdain from sense of injured merit / That with the Mightiest raised me to contend" (1.98-99). It occurs to me that this 'sense of injured merit' is also what Morgoth and Sauron would cite as their source of suffering and motivation to rebel.

Upon unsuccessful struggles against the One - the Vice Regent and his allies - Morgoth and Sauron turn to the same attack that Satan uses: to mar his Creation. Satan, finding himself in his fallen state, holds a council with his army. They conclude that "some advantageous act may be achieved / by sudden onset, either with Hell fire? / To waste His whole creation” (2.263-265). Lewis noted the cowardice involved in this resolve - it is "only to annoy the Enemy which he cannot directly attack." I can't help recalling Sauron's acts in Numenor, leading them away from their explicit worship of Eru (which lasted until Aragorn's reign).

Satan proclaims his turn to permanent evil - "But ever to do ill our sole delight, / As being the contrary to His high will / Whom we resist” (1.160-163). Why not repent and return to God? Satan could have, and under Manwe and Eru, we know that Morgoth was eligible for repentance as he "could not be enslaved, or denied his part." Satan, with his 'sense of injured merit,' tries to convince himself that he is better off: “The mind is its own place and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven” (1.254-255) and “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven” (1.263).

I wrote some loosely related thoughts on this thread.