[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Raynor

I would say their goodness comes also from their relative lack of power. Otherwise, one of the strongest "morals" of LotR - and Tolkien's work in general, is that power corrupts.

It is not power itself that corrupts, or else every king that ever lived would have gotten worse over time until he was unbearable. It is the will to dominate other wills that corrupts; to have one's own way regardless of the effect upon others.

Originally Posted by me

Evil doesn't change, but the way we deal with it does, and that could be devastating if we have lost something in our analysis that is too costly

This was an unfortunate expression of my thought. What I should have said was, "Evil remains what it is regardless of what we decide based on our analysis, and if our analysis fails to take into account the entirety of what Evil is, we pay a costly price." But I was in a rush when I wrote what I did in the first place, and it shows.

Originally Posted by Raynor

You refused a priori my approach, without pointing to any actual flaw when I requested it.

Actually, the paragraph following my "no" was an attempt at an explanation of my reasons for the "no". The reason I didn't point to any actual flaw is because I believe that the schools of thought on evil are valid, though limited, expressions of the part of Evil that they emphasize.

Originally Posted by davem

we're back to the Boethian/Manichaean dichotomy here

Both schools of thought point to something true about Evil. When "logicked" out, they exclude each other. The exclusion is the problem. I personally lean toward the Boethian school and against the Manichaean, but there's something about the Manichaean point that just doesn't die --- because there's reality there. Tolkien captures the unity in LotR