'The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy'

[Lord of Angmar]

JRR Tolkien and Plato believed what you are saying Finwe; that immoral actions have, in essence, a bad aftertaste. The reason we define things as 'moral' and 'immoral' is for this very reason; if immoral things felt good and proper, then they would not be considered immoral by the populace. Since, however, immoral acts (arguably, at least in the majority of cases) lead to degradation of the spirit and a feeling of uncleanliness and unhappiness, they are not pursued as a way of life by those seeking happiness (which is most of us).

Look at Turin; the more blood he shed, the more psychotic he became, until at last he became suicidal. He did not start out as an immoral man per se, but when one looks at the individual acts of immorality he committed in their context, one can clearly see the steady degradation of his reasoning process when faced with decisions of morality vs. immorality.

The Ringwraiths are another example; they did not start out as fixtures of immorality, but because they became subservient to Sauron and became evildoers, they were (as I believe Aragorn put it) torchured and tormented souls.
Their torchure was a result of their obedience to a cruel and immoral leader.

To simplify things, mankind condensed "what felt right" into a code of laws or morals, that we continue to follow today

That is exactly what I think: we consider things immoral because they lead to unhappiness, a feeling of taintedness, a feeling of being at odds with one's inner-self, and, in extreme cases suicidal/homicidal tendencies. These, of course, are subjective terms and ideas, but it is generally agreed on by members of the human race what it feels to be 'happy' and what it feels to be 'sad.'

The idea of happiness and immorality being able to coincide within one person is one that is never really addressed by Tolkien. All of his evil characters tend to degrade into hatred of everything and inherent unhappiness.

Note that I'm not saying that there must be no relation whatsoever between happiness and morality.

Morality and happiness are relative terms. One can be perfectly happy who has never learned the Western ideology of 'morality', and who lives in what we would consider to be a barbaric and immoral manner. In this sense, there could be people who are "immoral but perfectly happy and at peace," but they would only be immoral by subjective standards, and would not be immoral by their own reasoning.

[ October 23, 2003: Message edited by: Lord of Angmar ]