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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3659957" data-attributes="member: 4937">Agreed.  The question becomes, are orcs people too?  And from the orc's perspective, are humans people too?Likewise agreed.  There are a few fantasy worlds where we can answer that question with some certainty.  Regarding JRRT's middle earth the author tells us that, orcs, humans, elves, and halflings are all the same species.  Thus, we can be sure that one eating the flesh of the other is cannibalism, despite the fact that the author also tells us that they have different spiritual qualities (ei, the main difference between elves and humans is the sort of soul they have).  Since JRRT's good guys find the practice abhorrent, we can assume that common physical relationship is at minimum enough on ME.  In CS Lewis's Narnia, there is a scene which indicates that eating the flesh of a sentient being is considered abhorent even if that flesh would otherwise be considered lawful to eat (a talking deer), and hense we can understand that the notion of cannibalism in that world would revolve around sentience which in turn (because its CS Lewis) we can understand to revolve around a spiritual quality common to all 'free peoples'.  I suspect because of thier common philosophies, but can't really prove, that the same additionally holds true for JRRT's middle earth, so that for example, it would be equally wrong for a dwarf to eat a man, or a man to eat a dwarf, as it would for a man to eat a man, despite the fact that you can't show from the text that men and dwarves are the same species.</blockquote>

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