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Originally Posted by davem
At the same time orcs are inhabitants of Faerie, they are not human & so we can't attribute human moral values to them.
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But the difficulty, as far as I am concerned, is not so much in trying to understand Orcish "morality", but rather why they are condemned to a life of evil (portrayed as wrong by Tolkien in his writings) through no fault or choice of their own and indiscriminately slain without remorse by those on the side of good. That raises questions about the morality of the world which Tolkien created and the nature of the struggle between "good" and "evil" which is at the centre of it. And, while that world may have been Faerie in origin, it was also a Christian one, consciously so in the revision.
Therein, surely, lies the reasoning which led Tolkien to attempt to "explain" their natures and, given his faith, I can understand why he tried to do so.