In the year 2000, Open Court Publishing launch a series titled, "Popular Culture and Philosophy" with the book Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book About Everything and Nothing. Open Court has gone on to publish scores of books in this series. As someone interested in both philosophy and Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, I was pleased to receive as a Christmas gift Volume 5 in the series, The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy. Books in the series are anthologies by authors, largely philosophers, who seek to tease out the philosophical themes that appear in whatever pop culture subject is the subject of the book. TLotR and Philosophy is the only work in the series that I've read. This is perhaps a reflection of my distance from so much of pop culture -- nothing to be proud of, just a fact. Whether I'll read other works in the series is an open question, but I'm glad to have read this one.
As with most anthologies, the articles are uneven. Perhaps my biggest complaint is that too many of the authors spend an inordinate amount of time describing major events in TLotR, as if someone reading this work would not be quite familiar with the fact that, say, Gandalf battled a balrog in Moria or Boromir was slain defending Merry and Pippin. But setting this aside, many of the articles do a good job of exposing philosophical ideas in TLotR. There are five parts to the work, titled, I. The Ring, II. The Quest for Happiness, III. Good and Evil in Middle-Earth, IV. Time and Mortality, and V. Ends and Endings. Each part contains three articles, except for the last which contains four.
Stand out articles include Eric Katz's article "The Rings of Tolkien and Plato: Lessons in Power, Choice, and Morality." The comparison between Tolkien's One Ring and Plato's Ring of Gyges is an obvious topic for philosophical discussion. In Plato's Republic, Glaucon argues that anyone with a ring that made them invisible would eventually use it for immoral ends, even an otherwise moral person. Socrates responds that the moral person would prefer a life of peace and integrity to whatever would be gained by illicit uses of the ring. Tolkien's characters better reflect this latter theory, though they present a more complicated response to the One Ring than Plato imagines for the Ring of Gyges. Katz examines the reactions of numerous characters to the One Ring and shows how they respond according to their established character. Each does experience a least a moment of temptation (except Tom Bombadil), but they each resist, except for Gollum and Frodo. Gollum because he is murderous to start with, and Frodo because he simply can't overcome the force of the ring he has carried so long. This suggests that the adage "absolute power corrupts absolutely" is not Tolkein's view.
In Scott A. Davison's article, "Tolkien and the Nature of Evil," persuasively argues that evil is not an independent force in opposition as thought by Manichaeans, but merely the absence of good. In that sense, TLotR isn't really a story of "good versus evil," it is a story of an effort to keep corruption at bay. Though Davison doesn't make much of this observation, Tolkien makes shadows a stand in for evil. This is true not just in TLotR, but in The Silmarillion, Tolkien's realm of the god-like Valar, is originally illuminated (as is all of the world) by two trees. How this might be isn't explained, but one can't imagine that these would be specific spatial sources of light. Instead, their presence would bring light to all the world from every angle, leaving no place for shadows. It is only when the two trees are destroyed by Ungliant and Melkor that the Sun and Moon are created, illuminating the world, but still casting shadows. Evil has entered the world and shadows come into being.
Aeon J. Skoble's article, "Virtue and Vice in The Lord of the Rings" is rather unique in the anthology. The other articles in the anthology largely start with features that appear in the novel and go on to observe their philosophical import. Skoble turns this on its head. His article reads more like an introductory essay on ethics, particularly virtue ethics, with illustrations of his points taken from TLotR. That is, he centers the philosophical ideas as opposed to elements of the novel. If all of the articles were like this, the anthology would make an interesting text for an introductory Philosophy course (of course with the pre-requisite that students read TLotR. As it is, the anthology might be better described as literary criticism appropriate to an English literature class.
The final article, by John J. Davenport, entitled "Happy Endings and Religious Hope: The Lord of the Rings as an Epic Fairy Tale," is a real stand out. Davenport makes use of Tolkien's essay "On Fairy-stories" and other works by Tolkien to support Tolkien's claim that TLotR is "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work." This has always been something that has escaped me. Certainly, some elements of the novel can be seen as religious and specifically Catholic, but to say it is "fundamentally" so, seemed a stretch.
Davenport claims that the essentially religious message of the work is that "evil cannot stand forever, that its misappropriation of divine power and right destroys itself in the end. But this does not come about without our participation, our willingness to sacrifice, and our faith (beyond all rational hope) that our mortal efforts will be met with the ultimate response, and day will finally come again." The "ultimate response" that Davenport refers to is what Tolkien calls a "eucatastrophe" -- a sudden "turning" at the end of fairy-stories that provides an "unexpected deliverance...experienced not as an achievement..., but rather a divine gift." The resurrection of Christ is seen as the great eucatastrophe of the Christian faith, and the sudden unexpected appearance of Gollum at the Cracks of Doom is the great eucatastrophe of Middle-Earth. This makes Tolkien's claim that his work is "fundamentally religious" somewhat more plausible. Of course, one might also argue that despite how seemingly hopeless things are, the future is always essentially uncertain. There's nothing necessarily religious about that.
Other articles in the anthology certainly deserve reviews here, but as they are each short, I'll instead recommend picking up a library copy and sampling them at your leisure. As you should expect, some will be weaker than others, but anyone interested in Tolkien and philosophy will find them entertaining.
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