The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy: One Book to Rule Them All / Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson, eds. -- Chicago: Open Court, 2003

 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.  

  

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man / Mary L. Trump -- New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020

I've not been particularly enticed to read any of the books coming out about Donald Trump and his administration.  I guess I get enough of him reading the daily news, but Mary Trump's memoir showed up in the Little Free Library outside my condominium complex.  It looked like a quick and easy read and my brain was in a down-cycle, so I took it home.   

Mary Trump is, of course, Donald Trump's niece.  She was part of a the close knit family born of Donald's father, Fred Trump.  She also received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Adelphi University.  The combination puts her in a unique position to comment on Donald Trump's thinking and behavior.  There was a time when psychologists and other media pundits were "diagnosing" Donald as exhibiting a narcissistic personality.  Caution required us to recognize that a proper diagnosis would require more than observing Donald's public behavior.  It would require a more in depth examination by a qualified professional including personal interviews.  Mary gives us the closest thing we'll ever get to that.  Not only has she known Uncle Donald from countless private, family gatherings, she grew up knowing his father, mother, his siblings, children, nieces, nephews, personal friends, and employees.  For the book, she conducted numerous, sometimes taped interviews with these people.  Her professional conclusion is not surprising:  Donald is not just narcissistic, he's a sociopath. 

But the main thrust of the book is not Donald.  It's the Trump family.  The two figures that loom largest in her narrative are Fred Trump and his eldest son "Freddy."  Freddy was Mary's father.  He was what some might call "the black sheep" of the family, much maligned by his father and often ostracized by his siblings.  He struggled with alcoholism and eventually died of a heart attack at the age of 42.  Much of Mary's book reads as an effort to restore her father's reputation.  

As the eldest male among the Trump siblings, Freddy was expected to carry on the family business, but he had little interest in this.  He preferred a more relaxed and social lifestyle: boating and fishing with friends.  He eventually earned a pilot's license.  For a short time, he was a commercial pilot for Trans World Airlines.  Still, his reputation in the family was so low that even his mother disparaged him, saying to Mary, "Do you know what your father was worth when he died?  A whole lot of nothing."  

The comment "a whole lot of nothing" gives a pretty good clue to the family values extant in the Trump family: a person's worth can be measured by their wealth and what they are willing to do to acquire it.  According to Mary, these values stemmed from her grandfather's single-minded pursuit of money.  Mary describes Fred too, as a sociopath, distant and uncaring, concerned mostly that he have a male heir to whom he could bequeath a fortune and who would then expand it. The family's patriarchal values are exemplified in the family's tradition of naming the eldest son "Frederick" (or "Friedrich," if you trace the sires back far enough).  In Donald, Jr.'s case, "Donald" lives on.  The Trump family seems to think of itself as a royal dynasty.

When Freddy failed to live up to his father's expectations, Donald became the new heir apparent to the family business.  Donald was an unruly child that had to be sent to the New York Military Academy to try to learn a little discipline.  Unfortunately for the world, the discipline he learned was how to manage his amorality in a way that would allow him operate effectively in the world.  Most of all, Donald cultivated the "killer" personality that his father so highly valued.  On Mary's assessment, Donald is a chip off the old block if there ever was one.  He has been, however, not nearly as adept in business as his father was.  Instead, Mary claims that Donald merely cultivated an image of success which was his only real talent.  His actual fortune was a product of his inheritance and the assistance that his father gave him along the way.  Fred even participated in the creation and maintenance of Donald's image.   

As Fred aged, Donald became something of a tyrant among his siblings.  In his father's declining years, he even attempted to have his father's will changed to give him basically the whole fortune.  Luckily for the siblings, the attempt was made during one of Fred's more lucid times, so it failed.  The siblings were especially lucky as they were concerned mostly about remaining in the good graces of their father to avoid being disinherited.  Mary herself was disinherited for simply being the child of a deceased son.  Fred had no concern for his grandchildren.  Had Donald succeeded in gaining control of the estate, the siblings' bondage to the will of a sociopath would have continued for the rest of their lives.  

Mary's book only lightly touches on the unscrupulous (even illegal) business activities of Fred, but as a grandchild, Mary was more or less unaware of them until she was contacted by reporters for the New York Times.  They were working on a massive investigation of the Trump business and hoped Mary would provide them with some documents and insight.  It is somewhat surprising that Mary does not make more use of what their investigation discovered.  The article they finally wrote (NYT, Oct. 2, 2018) provides clear and unassailable evidence of the chief motives and methods of Fred and Donald.  They conform to Mary's assessments.

Very little in Too Much and Never Enough is surprising in what it says about Donald's personality.  All that Mary writes is entirely consistent with his public behavior.  Even his supporters are likely to recognize the character traits she describes, but instead view them as virtues or as lamentable quirks.  Still, it's worthwhile to see an account from someone with a deep, personal connection to Donald and with professional credentials confirm what the lay public at large can see.

One final note, the documentary evidence and public behavior of Donald's three eldest children seems to indicate that the kind of relations within Fred's family have been reproduced in Donald's family.  Both are rich family units with children subject to an authoritarian, sociopathic father.  What seems to hold them together is mainly the family's wealth.  It makes me want to re-watch the 2003 documentary film Born Rich which interviews several children of phenomenally wealthy parents.  Ivanka Trump is one of those children.