[Nilpaurion Felagund]

But the underlying sense of good and evil is still the traditional and conventional sense.

Would you want any other definition? Surely, I wouldn't, despite the fact that good is now encompasses a "wider" meaning.

Goos and evil is "conventional" in Tolkien's world to draw the stark difference between the two. What if Boromir had taken the Ring from Frodo, and used it to defend Minas Tirith? Surely, his intentions were good. But what good will "good" be, then - especially when Boromir sits atop Barad-dûr?

This is where LotR falters. Power is not always evil, it can be used for good.

Of course. LotR hasn't said that. Desire for power beyond one's bounds - that would be evil. Many have fallen from their high standing due to their desire to grasp "just a little more power."

Gollum had the ring in his posession for ages but he did not become "absolutely corrupted".

In fact, he saw Sauron's desire for the Ring, for power short of the absolute, and decided to do something about it:

[Sméagol:] Sméagol will swear never, never, to let Him have it. Never! Sméagol will save it.

(LotR IV 1)

Unfortunately, his path was wrong, and his life was the payment.

What Tolkien is working with in relation to Sauron is that supernatural quality that evil takes on when it is divorced from all other human impulses and characteristics.

I've seen cold-blooded men who no longer care for anything but fulfilling their goal. Sauron has no qualms for doing anything to achieve power. That is the scariest enemy. Nothing restrains them any longer.

And see here: Gandalf didn't exactly lose his life to the Balrog, did he?

He did die. Completely die: including the spirit-departing-Arda thing. Eru just decided he deserved to return - no, wait. He had to return.

That's what made them evil. -- that's why they are termed evil. It's not because they wanted to dominate the world.

So if they never massacred innocent people on their path to power, they would not have been termed evil? I doubt it.

Hitler didn't immediately kill the Jews(and the Gypsies, and the Untermensch Slavs, and anyone else who just happened to p*ss him off...); he just took away their humanity, made them slaves for his path to autarky for the German nation - not exactly an evil goal. Sauron didn't want the peoples of Middle-earth dead - he just wanted them. To be under his ultimate control.

<font size=1 color=339966>[ 4:34 AM February 06, 2004: Message edited by: Nilpaurion Felagund ]