One of the many wonderful things about the popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien is that there is no lack of books exploring Middle-earth from a variety of perspectives. This post reviews philosopher Peter Kreeft’s outstanding book, The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind The Lord of the Rings. The quotations are intended to whet the appetite of the reader and to provide a taste of what is contained in the whole of the book.

According to the back cover of the book,

Peter Kreeft, a professor of philosophy at Boston College, is one of the most widely read Christian authors of our time. His more than 30 best-selling books include Catholic Christianity; Heaven, the Heart’s Deepest Longing; and Socrates Meets Marx.”

The Philosophy of Tolkien is organized around fifty philosophical questions grouped into thirteen categories, including Metaphysics, Philosophical Theology, Angelology, Cosmology, Epistemology, Political Philosophy, and Ethics. The following quotes are from Kreeft’s fascinating Introduction.

“This book is not about Tolkien’s world,” Kreeft explains. “It is about Tolkien’s worldview, Tolkien’s philosophy.” That philosophy, however, is not as readily apparent as it might have been if Tolkien had chosen a different style to write his classic. Kreeft says,

If The Lord of the Rings were an allegory, the philosophy would be on the surface, like rocks. Instead, it is more like the molten core of the earth: central but hidden.”

One of the joys of Kreeft’s book is that it not only accomplishes its goal - to reveal Tolkien’s worldview - but provides insight and commentary regarding the culture and times in which we now live. He refers to numerous polls done in England to determine what the English people believed to be the greatest book of the last century; to the horror of the critics, The Lord of the Rings topped the lists no matter how many times the surveys were done or how they were worded to produce a different result. Kreeft observes:

The polls revealed one important thing about The Lord of the Rings: that it is a classic, that is, a book loved by humanity, by human nature, wherever it is found. And they revealed one important thing about the critics: that humanity isn’t found in that arrogant oligarchy of utterly out-of-touch elitists. And they revealed one important thing about our culture, the same thing revealed by many polls that ask questions about values and about philosophy: that our culture is not egalitarian at all, in fact, that it is perhaps the least egalitarian culture in the history of the world. For in what other culture has the worldview and life view of the teachers differed so radically from that of the students?

“Every human soul craves ‘the good, the true, and the beautiful’ absolutely and without limit. And it is precisely about these three most fundamental values that the gap is widest.”

Like many who write about Tolkien, Kreeft feels almost a sense of duty to defend the “Author of the Century” against the attacks of the professional critics. He continues,

Our artists deliberately prefer ugliness to beauty, our moralists fear goodness more than evil, and our philosophers embrace various forms of post-modernism that reduce truth to ideology or power . . .

“Those who love Tolkien are almost always good people, honest people. Some are Hobbit-like and some are Elvish, but none are Orcish. Not all Tolkien haters are Orcs, but all Orcs are Tolkien haters.”

It is the philosophy of The Lord of the Rings, Kreeft argues, that (among other factors) makes the work great. There are five aspects to any story, Kreeft says, and Tolkien succeeds at all five levels: plot, characters, setting, style, and theme. Kreeft re-works these five dimensions into work, workers, world, words, and wisdom.

‘Philosophy’ means ‘the love of wisdom.’ So a story’s philosophy is one of its five basic dimensions. Which ‘dimensions’ sold The Lord of the Rings? All five.”

Such is the influence of The Lord of the Rings that its power goes beyond transforming the individual to impacting Western society. Kreeft explains:

The Lord of the Rings heals our culture as well as our souls. It gives us the most rare and precious thing in modern literature: the heroic. It is a call to heroism; it is a horn like the horn of Rohan, which Merry received from Theoden and used to rouse the Hobbits of the Shire from their sheepish niceness and passivity to throw off their tyrants, first in their souls and then in their society.”

Demonstrating the connection between philosophy and literature, Kreeft says that “philosophy and literature belong together. They can work like the two lenses of a pair of binoculars.” He explains the importance of the two being considered together:

Philosophy argues abstractly. Literature argues too - it persuades, it changes the reader - but concretely. Philosophy says truth, literature shows truth.

“The Bible is primarily literature, not philosophy; concrete, not abstract; narrative, not explanation. Its wisdom literature, or philosophical books, are commentary on its historical books, in both Testaments.

“Human thought is both concrete (particular) and abstract (universal) at the same time . . . Because human thought is binocular, abstract philosophy and concrete literature naturally reinforce each other’s vision.”

Returning to the subject of allegory, Kreeft maintains that philosophy is illustrated in allegory by the one-to-one relationship of the concrete to the abstract. Tolkien’s writing, however, is not allegorical and rather embodies the worldview supporting it.

All literature incarnates some philosophy. Thus all literature teaches. In allegory, the philosophy is taught by the conscious and calculating part of the mind, while in great literature it is done by the unconscious and contemplative part of the mind, which is deeper and wiser and has more power to persuade and move the reader. Allegory engages only the mind, while great literature engages the whole person; for allegory comes from only the mind, while great literature comes from the whole person . . .

“One way literature tests philosophy is by putting different philosophies into the laboratory of life, incarnating them in different characters and then seeing what happens . . . Literature also tests philosophy in a more fundamental way. It can be expressed by this rule: a philosophy that cannot be translated into a good story cannot be a good philosophy.”

Further differentiating allegory from non-allegory, Kreeft identifies another important distinction between the two:

In an allegory, the philosophical frame becomes the story. The plot and the characters are there only for that reason: they are used as means to illustrate the philosophy. That is why we do not love the characters or care about them much as individuals . . . In non-allegorical stories, the philosophy serves the story, as a frame serves a picture; in allegory it is vice versa.”

In concluding his introductory remarks, Kreeft provides an insightful test for determining whether writing is allegorical or incarnational:

I know The Lord of the Rings is not an allegory because I don’t find myself saying, of anything in it, ‘That reminds me of this or that,’ but I constantly find myself saying, of this or that, ‘That reminds me of something in The Lord of the Rings.’ In fact, almost everthing reminds me of something in The Lord of the Rings.”



Namárië.