Redefining Good & Evil

[Boromir88]

I think this is where Eddings' philosophical take on things collapses, because one can sacrifice oneself for the community - lessen oneself to make others greater, die for the cause, & still commit be wrong - if we use 'wrong' in the sense of causing harm & denying/taking away freedom.~davem

And the opposite can be true too, if you think about "tough love." We can be selfish and demanding of our family, friends, and loved ones, because of the fact that we do love them. We do want them to grow, succeed, find love, and try to prevent them from making "wrong" decisions.

Which is fine if such a higher power actually exists - because if it doesn't then like the heroes of Pullman's & Eddings' worlds (& Sir David !), we actually are responsible for the fate of the world - evil, the Magisterium, 'terrorists' could actually win.

You've explained the strengths and weaknesses to Eddings' and Tolkien's world far better than I could. But I will just add too, that despite Tolkien wanting to give his characters as much free will as possible, which is something we can see, as he wrote about wanting to use the Eagles "sparingly" since they were "dangerous machines." I think with LOTR, he was trying to remove the Eru factor as much as possible, but the point still since Eru is unrivalled, and he is good, good will win in the end ,so it really does take away Frodo's (or anyone else's) ability to decide the fate of the world.