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Originally Posted by davem
No. They were innocent befoe Melkor's discord - which is not the same thing at all. They could not have been 'good' because a) to be good is a moral choice, not a default position & b) they couldn't have known what 'good' actually was, since no alternative position existed. they didn't know they were happy because they had no experience of unhappiness. They didn't know what harmony amazement or communion was either, never having known disharmony, bordom or isolation. In short they didn't actually know much of anything till Melkor intervened & made them aware of other options.
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Well, this is actually what I think is the root of the problem people have with opinions on good. The dualistic view, like you are presenting in the above, counts with that good cannot be known without its opposite in evil. However, there is the other point of view, where good can stand for itself. And here it is, I think, mainly about what we do imagine under the term "good". The first problem is, that a thing like "THE good" (unless you agree with Plato) does not exist. This is the trouble that has risen from the Greek philosophy, which was (in difference to its priors) able to - due to Greek language - make a noun out of an adjective simply by putting an article before it. Ask a philosopher, he could probably tell you more about it. But for our purposes, let's just say for example that I can have a good meal, see a good film, have a good time. Adjectives, we know what it is if a meal is good for me. But "the" good probably no one of us can imagine.
This I wanted to make clear in order for what I want to say now to be understandable. So: there is nothing such as "the good" or "the evil" (using the articles to make it understandable that I am speaking of nouns, of some principles), and when in the following text I am using the terms "good" or "evil" as stand-alones, it means "sum of all good things" and "sum of all bad things".
So, let's move on with the example used. I can have a good meal, and now the question is, can I say I had a good meal without knowing what a bad meal is?
Davem presented here the point that I cannot. Let's now make clear if we are talking about words or real things now. If "good" for me defines merely the opposite of "evil" (rather "bad" in the case of a meal), then
davem's right. However, if I take "good" not as a word, but as a state (i.e. "good=something healthy, useful etc. for me"), then I would say it can exist without opposite. I can eat only good food for all my life, realize it tastes well (I don't have to have anything to compare with it - anything "better" or "worse" - it is just
good, it is
good for my taste buds), is healthy for me, helps my growth, provides vitamines or whatever... and I don't necessarily need to compare it. So, if you want to say that "good" is better than "evil" (or that it is "the best alternative"), you have to have evil (or at least something worse than that good thing) to compare with it. But the sole existence of good things, even their attributes of being good (not in the meaning as "better" but in the meaning as "good"=healthy and so on, as shown in the example above) does not necessarily need the existence of evil or bad things as well.
Now to the possibility of choices. There might be an opinion, and with very good reason, that when I have only the "good" things, I don't have any choice. Well, that's not the whole truth. If I return to my example with food, then I can eat healthy food all my life (it's an example, so we are not assuming any negative parts in any of the food, so let's assume we have some really "ideal food" - old Plato would've been pleased) and still I can choose whether to eat X or Y for breakfast. It's both good, but I have the choice.
So, the Ainur could have been good - for example in the sense that they were good for the world. You could choose whether here would be a nice sea or here would be a beautiful forest, and nothing of that was bad in any sense of the word. This is a model situation, mind you, but I think it shows what I had in mind.