> Morality is deontological. Good actions are good, period. Furthermore, they don't backfire. When Gandalf lets Grima go, or when people take pity on Gollum, that's not naive idealism, that's the objectively right thing to do. Such actions just don't backfire on people in this world.
I don’t think that’s accurate. Gollum surviving is the cause of a great number of very bad things, including Sauron discovering the location of the Ring. At the end of course it all comes together: if the location wasn’t discovered, the quest to permanently destroy the ring wouldn’t have started, and it’s by Gollum’s hands that it is destroyed. But the moral there isn’t “good actions don’t backfire”, but more like this: good action can backfire, sometimes in terrible ways, but good people must endure the consequences without doubt and without remorse, keeping faith that things will all be set right at the ultimate end.
In the real world, of course, the ultimate end does not arrive before our deaths.
I don’t think that’s accurate. Gollum surviving is the cause of a great number of very bad things, including Sauron discovering the location of the Ring. At the end of course it all comes together: if the location wasn’t discovered, the quest to permanently destroy the ring wouldn’t have started, and it’s by Gollum’s hands that it is destroyed. But the moral there isn’t “good actions don’t backfire”, but more like this: good action can backfire, sometimes in terrible ways, but good people must endure the consequences without doubt and without remorse, keeping faith that things will all be set right at the ultimate end. In the real world, of course, the ultimate end does not arrive before our deaths.