Please let us remember that we are talking about Tolkien's Middle Earth. As a
Milieu, it functions according to the laws and rules Tolkien built into it. They must necessarily be different from our world in so far as there are no Ents, Trees that can walk and move about and destroy orcs, Elves, Dwarves, Ring, etc., etc. That being the case, we must be careful not to overlay our own moral predispositions and philosophy on top of Tolkien's work,
if we are to understand Middle Earth according to Tolkien's intentions (since I'm "trespassing" on canonicity grounds, I included the italicized phrase).
davem:
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Doesn't it require a rational soul capable of making moral choices to be truly 'Good' or 'evil'?
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Ah. You are presuming that making moral choices is a necessary aspect of being either good or evil. I don't think it holds in Middle Earth. Murdering a hobbit, something Old Man Willow was quite intent upon doing, is just as evil as wanton destruction of trees.
Lalwendė:
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If we say that [a non sentient creature] can indeed be evil, then this suggests that evil and goodness can be inherent and that we can do nothing about them, therefore there is no chance for redemption etc.
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Actually, the bolded phrase does not necessarily follow from your premise, whereas the italicized one does. But again, remember, this is within the context of the Middle Earth milieu, and such things as a God/Man dying for the redemption of humans is not part of the milieu; instead, "meant to be-ness" occurs throughout the story such that what was meant for evil turns to good in the eucatastrophic way that Tolkien was so able to give witness to. Therein lies redemption in LotR/Middle Earth.
Also, I must disagree with you that in Tolkien nature existed for its own sake, as
The Silmarillion indicates that all things exist for Eru's sake..... at least, if we are going to let Tolkien's creation be Tolkien's.