The Fellowship - doomed to fail

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

he believed that good would succeed in the end

I don't agree so much with this.

I think Gandalf believed that Sauron could triumph, but even in those dire circumstances he believed there was a correct way to go about doing things that ultimately involved putting the situation in the hands of Eru regardless of outcome.

Originally Posted by Leaf

As I see it, the person who destroys the ring willingly, at the cracks of Mt. Doom, would have to be a person who rejects the very possibility of any kind of influence to the world around him, a person without any interest in his own fate and in the fate of others. The problem is that this 'being' would be, essentialy, an 'un-person'.

This too is paradoxical as the un-person would still have to have an impulse to destroy the Ring, which (even if the un-person viewed the Ring as a worthless bauble) would still "influence" the un-person's surroundings, even if only to the extent that the un-person was no longer holding the Ring.