Tolkien and The History of Philosophy

Tolkien and The History of Philosophy by Franco Manni Abstract: Although the topic of Tolkien and his philosophical influences has been discussed on a number of previous occasions, the completely original aim of this paper is to chart in a systematic manner his engagements with a number of different philosophers from the canon of western thought. In his works Tolkien never refers to philosophers by name, neither classical figures such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and so on, nor his contemporaries such as Freud, Bergson, Croce, Dewey, Wittgenstein, Husserl, Popper or Ryle. However, this paper, for the first time, provides various degrees of evidence and show how several individual philosophers or schools of philosophy were indeed present in Tolkien’s fictional works. Ancient and Medieval philosophers I shall begin with an examination of the influence of Plato, Augustine, Boethius and Aquinas on the work of Tolkien. Tom Shippey believes that Tolkien did not mention philosophers like Plato, Boethius and others by name – in spite of his knowledge of them – because of his anti-classicistic bias, and, moreover since he wanted to emphasise English authors and ideas, he could not find English philosophers before Chaucer's time. Personal email, 21.08.09. To begin, in regard to Plato, on 27 February 1913 Tolkien had the First Public Examination for the Honour School of Latin and Greek Literature; on Plato, his choice of two of the Gorgias, Protagoras and Phaedo. Hammond & Scull, J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide. Chronology, HarperCollins, London, 2006, p. 37. Gergely Nagy parallels Plato and Tolkien in using “myths” to tell philosophical truths; Plato uses the metaphor of light and the Sun (the Idea of Good, in the Republic 508b-509a); Tolkien employs the same idea at the beginning of the Silmarillion; in the hierarchy of the world (the Demiurge and the Valar) Plato in J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, cit, p. 513. Gregory Bassham cites a number of parallels between Plato and Tolkien: “Tolkien's repeated use of the term "demi-urgic" (e.g., Morgoth's Ring 332) to describe the creative/shaping activity of the Valar (borrowed from Plato's Timaeus) See also V. Flieger, Splintered Light, p. 55.; Numenor as based on Plato's story of Atlantis in Critias; the Ring as based on Gyges's ring in Republic, Book 2; reincarnation of the elves (likely borrowed from Plato, esp. the Phaedo) Email, 15th June 2009”. Personally, I think that the main idea of Plato's Gorgias (“it is better to suffer an injustice than to do it”) founds the main ethical theme of Tolkien's use of the One Ring: “it is better to suffer deep pains and face deadly dangers not using the One Ring, than to win the war using it”. Platonic themes are also present in Tolkien's writings not intended for publication, such as Laws and Customs among the Eldar and Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth and in his various explanatory comments on these fictional writings J.R.R. Tolkien, The Morgoth's Ring, cit.. Here he discusses traditional anthropological and theological themes of the body and the soul and God’s plan for these; death for him is always the “severance” of the two “components”, which should remain united. The Elf Finrod asks Wisewoman Andreth if he does not think that the separation of soul and body could be experienced as a liberation, as a returning home and Andreth replies that no, we do not think so because this would be to disparage the body and therefore is a thought of Darkness, for in the incarnate it is unnatural. Ibidem, p. 317. As Ralph C. Wood writes, this is a “radical non-Platonic turn.” Ralph C. Wood. The Gospel According to Tolkien. Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth, Westminster John Knox Press, 2003, p. 159. Anne Mathie (Tolkien and the Gift of Mortality in www.firstthings.com, November 2003) comments: “The body and the world of matter are not something to be escaped or transcended as such. To separate the body from the spirit, the dweller from the house, is considered to be a terrible thing.” Claudio Testi, too, writes “approximately one could say that it seems to be an Aristotelian element in a Platonic context” See Claudio Testi, Tolkien's Legendarium as meditatio mortis, in R. Arduini & C. Testi (eds), The Broken Scythe. Death and Immortality in the Works of Tolkien, Walking Tree Publishers, Zurich, 2012, pp. 39-68.. Damien Casey also claims that theologically Tolkien is aware that the heart of Christianity is the incarnation, notwithstanding the atrophy of this heritage in the Platonic tradition The Gift of Ilùvatar, in “The Australian Journal of Theology”, Feb. 2004, issue 2, online: “Here we touch upon what I believe one of the most important challenges for Christian theology; our Platonic heritage has meant that the radically incarnational insight that is at the heart of Christianity has remained underdeveloped or atrophied. The incarnation's radical affirmation of the material world, however, lies at the very heart of Tolkien's theological anthropology.” And Shippey observes: “the theology of “body and soul” took some time to develop, but it was a favourite theme for Anglo-Saxon poets and homilists, and there is one mystery there. One of the most popular sermon collections of the Middle Ages is known as the “sermones ad fratres in eremo”, there are hundreds of manuscripts of it, but it is very poor both theologically and linguistically (the Latin is not distinguished). No-one knows where it came from, and the Patrologia editors suggest it must be Belgian, because it often mentions beer! But it is older than they think (because Anglo-Saxon homilists used it) and beer does not have to be Belgian (except to a French editor, perhaps). The point is, though, that by Aquinas’s time the theology is clear: one should NOT say that the body is evil and the soul is good. But this terrible simplifying view is what sermons, and poems, creep back to. Good poets, like Andrew Marvell, are careful to keep the balance. Poor ones, or thoughtless ones, are likely to make it a fight between good and evil. I’m sure Tolkien knew the theology of this and was careful to give full value to the Incarnation, perhaps the more so because he had read works like the two Anglo-Saxon “Soul and Body” poems.” (from an email to me, 27th June 2009). I verified that among the books formerly owned by Tolkien (and now readable at the English Faculty Library in Oxford) there is an Old English Homilies (edited by R. Morris), London, N. Trübner & Co, 1868, and among those homilies there is one entitled Hic Dicendum est de Quadragesima where the author underlines the idea “the body loves what the soul hates”, pp. 11-25.. This “non-Platonic turn”, Wood acutely explains, is also an implicit - but interesting and well-founded – explanation of the motivations behind Platonic dualism: it would seem that Men, or rather their “souls”, possess the memory of “another world” from which they have become estranged and to which they seek to return (the Platonic soul which tends towards its original Hyperuranic homeland), but Andreth denies this, for her soul and body are each essential to the other, and thus their “severance” is a calamity caused by Melkor. Therefore the “nostalgia” that the Elves have noticed in Men is not the desire for a world different to this one, but rather an effort to return to the harmony and unity between body and spirit which were lost by Men in the rebellion at Ilùvatar, and remain lost in corrupt Arda. Plato, that is, confuses the moral and theological problem with the anthropological and metaphysical, indicating “another world” for the “soul” when he should have indicated moral conversion for Men Wood, The Gospel, cit, pp. 158-160. Although the original Jewish/Christian message is both non-Platonic, and in some respects anti-Platonic, it has for many centuries been spread widely by means of Platonic categories. Tolkien is, however, a Christian of the 20th century, a century in which theology and Christian spirituality have strongly criticized the fundamental categories of Platonism, a so-called “dualism” (a category which had already been philosophically opposed, in different ways, by both Hegelianism and 19th century Marxist and positivist materialism), and he follows the debate which for him was contemporary, observing explicitly, for example, that his friend Lewis was not philosophically a dualist, but had a “dualist” imagination Letters, cit., n. 291, p.371.. And this was because, notes Christopher Garbowski, “a general philosophical movement” had influenced Tolkien: in this the value accorded to psychosomatic phenomena had made obsolete a material conception of the separate “soul”, thus permitting a return to biblical monism Christopher Garbowski, Recovery and Transcendence for the Contemporary Mythmaker, Maria Curie – Sklodowska University Press, Lublin, 2000, p. 168.. Turning now to Augustine, John William Houghton writes there are two themes prominent in this philosopher to be found in Tolkien's work: 1) Creation (including the nature of evil) and 2) Free-will and Predestination. For 1): against Manicheanism, whose cosmology states the universe is a battleground between good and evil, Augustine states that God created a universe that is in essence good and evil is fundamentally nothing; in De Genesi ad litteram Augustine thinks that God explained the divine plan to the angels before creating the world. And the Ainulindale presents a similar process. As for 2) against Pelagians, Augustine in De gratia et libero arbitrio states that a Christian has to pray to God this way: 'give what you command and command what you will', while Pelagius argues that God commands no more than people are able to will and perform. This theme is best illustrated in Tolkien by the fact that Frodo is predestined to receive the Ring, and for this purpose he is aided by unexpected helpful events and persons. Augustine of Hippo, in J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, cit, p. 43. And also by the same author Augustine in the Cottage of the Lost Play. The Ainulindalë as Asterisk Cosmogony, in Jane Chance (editor), Tolkien the Medievalist, Routledge, New York London,2003, pp.171-182. In regards to the influence of Boethius, before the end of Trinity Term 1915 at Oxford Tolkien had to prepare a selection from Alfred's translation of the De Consolatione Philosophiae Hammond & Scull, Chronology, cit, p. 39., and Gregory Bassham writes: “The question of how much philosophy Tolkien read is probably unanswerable. However, two philosophical works he almost certainly would have had in his library are (1) Alfred's translation of Boethius's Consolatio and (2) Chaucer's translation of the same. In fact, Boethius seems to have influenced Tolkien quite heavily. His solution to the freewill/divine foreknowledge problem in Osanwe-kenta and elsewhere is identical to Boethius's: God is outside time, so strictly there is no foreknowledge. Also, Tolkien's use of the term "consolation" for one of the three benefits of fantasy-reading (escape, recovery, consolation) likely derives from Boethius. Furthermore, Tolkien's insistence that evil is a privatio is likely due primarily to Boethius’s influence (though Boethius himself borrowed the idea from Plotinus and Augustine). Some of Tolkien's ideas on "chance" and "luck" may also be indebted to Boethius's Consolatio. Tolkien certainly had Chaucer's translation of Boethius' Consolatio in his personal library. For many years Tolkien served as co-editor of the Clarendon Chaucer, but eventually had to bow out prior to publication. (See Scull and Hammond, Chronology, p. 121f.) He wanted to produce a new text of Chaucer but was obliged by the Press to use Skeat's Chaucer's Poetical Works. That edition includes the whole of Chaucer's translation. As for Alfred's translation: as one of the world's leading Anglo-Saxon scholars, Tolkien surely would have had every surviving Anglo-Saxon text in his personal library.” Personal email, June 15th 2009. Tom Shippey has also written extensively on the “Boethian point of view” in Tolkien's work about the problem of Evil Cf. Tom Shippey, Tolkien, Author of the Century, HarperCollins Publishers, London, 2000, pp. 128-142. and of Providence In R. Arduini & C. Testi eds., Tolkien e la filosofia, Marietti, Genova-Milano, 2011, pp. 54-66. In my own reading of the De Consolatione, I suggest that: 1) the main idea of Providentia (Liber III), and more particularly Chance doesn't exist (Liber V), and LotR is full of not-casual coincidences; 2) since Evil is privatio entis, evil characters persisting in their sins become nothing (“But in this case they cease not merely to be powerful, but simply to be: for those who leave aside the common end of all things that are, at the same time also leave off being”, Liber IV), such as Sauron at the end of LotR ; 3) Plato's idea (Gorgias) that “only wise men can do what they desire and that wicked men can perform what pleases them but not achieve what they desire.” (liber IV), explains in the LotR the different goals, deeds, fulfilments and failures of Gandalf and Saruman ; 4) Plato's idea (Gorgias) that “The wicked, therefore, at the time when they are punished, have some good added to them, that is, the penalty itself, which by reason of its justice is good; and in the same way, when they go without punishment, they have something further in them, the very impunity of their evil,a which you have admitted is evil because of its injustice. Therefore the wicked granted unjust impunity are much less happy than those punished with just retribution.” (Liber IV), can be recognized in several parts of Silmarillion on Melkor and Sauron, and of LotR on Boromir, Saruman and Gollum; 5) the idea that God's “praescientia” does not determine future facts: “the outcome of things foreknown is necessary, even if that foreknowledge were not to seem to confer on future things the necessity of occurring.” (Liber V), can be seen in The Silmarillion regarding Iluvatar's foreknowledge. I shall conclude this section with the influence of Thomas Aquinas, the most important of medieval philosophers. A clear example may be found in Note 8 of the self-commentary Tolkien made on Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth (The Debate of Finrod and Andreth); the note discusses “desire” and distinguishes three kinds: “natural” desire which is shared by all members of a species, “personal” desire (“the feeling of the lack of something, the force of which primarily concerns oneself, and which may have little or no reference to the general fitness of things”) and “illusionary” desire, which obstructs the understanding that things are not as they should be and leads to the delusion that they are as one would wish them to be J.R.R. Tolkien, The Morgoth's Ring, HarperCollins Publishers, London, 1994, p. 343.. This distinction is the same made by Thomas Aquinas in an article Summa Theologiae, pars prima secundae partis, quaestio 34, art. 2.Aquinas distinguishes three kinds of “pleasure” (“pleasure” is the feeling which follows a fulfilled desire of a “good thing”[bonum]!) based on three kinds of “bonum”: a) “bonum per se”, id est “per suam naturam”; b) “bonum conveniens secundum dispositionem” (not universally, always) but in relation with some “not natural” circumstances, for example for an ill man some plants are medicines for him which are poisonous for healthy men; c) “apparens bonum”, when a man is wrong in his thought and thinks good what is evil instead. I believe there is an evident parallelism between Tolkien's “natural desire” and Aquinas's “bonum per se” , between Tolkien's “personal desire” and Aquinas's “bonum secundum dispositionem”, between Tolkien's “illusionary desire” and Aquinas's “apparens (false) bonum”. in Summa Theologiae, a work which Carpenter says was present on Lewis’s bookshelf during the Inklings’ evening meetings See Chapter 3 in Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1978. and which Claudio Testi tells me that he knows Tolkien to have possessed Claudio Testi has purchased Tolkien’s copy on the collectors’ market and received a positive expertise by Carl Hostetter.. Another undeclared Thomistic point: the difference between the two kinds of “Hope”, “Admir” and “Estel”. In the Athrabeth Andreth reflects about the nature of Hope: “'What is hope?' she said. 'An expectation of good, which though uncertain has some foundation in what is known? Then we have none.' 'That is one thing that Men call "hope",' said Finrod. 'Amdir we call it, "looking up". But there is another which is founded deeper. Estel we call it, that is "trust". It is not defeated by the ways of the world, for it does not come from experience, but from our nature and first being....” The Morgoth's Ring, cit, p. 320. In the Summa Theologiae Aquinas distinguishes ”spes” as a pre-moral “passio” (feeling) - which belongs even to drunk people and brute animals and whose content is “bonum futurum arduum possibile adipisci” Summa Theologiae, pars prima secundae partis, quaestio 40, artt. 1,3,6. - from “spes” as a theological virtue, of which he writes: “Hope does not trust chiefly in grace already received, but on God's omnipotence and mercy, whereby even he that has not grace, can obtain it, so as to come to eternal life. Now whoever has faith is certain of God's omnipotence and mercy.” Summa Theologiae, pars secunda secundae partis, quaestio 18, art, 4, ad secundum et ad tertium. On Aquinas as a source for Tolkien Bredley J. Birzer, Aquinas, in Michael Drout (editor), J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Scholarship and Critical Assessment, Routledge, New York and London, 2007, p. 21. Bradley J. Birzer Aquinas, in Michael Drout (editor), J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Scholarship and Critical Assessment, Routledge, New York and London, 2007, p. 21. thinks that the most significant Thomistic influence in Tolkien's work is the character of Aragorn: he represents the ideal of the Thomistic king as described in De regimine principum, where Aquinas argued that the only truly good king is one that acts as Christ, sacrificing himself for the good of the community (for Christ the Church, for the Christian king the res publica). But I disagree with Birzer because the sacrifice undergone by a Christian person for the sake of the others is not reserved to the baptismal “munus” (gift) of kingship. In fact, the same sacrifice is requested to the munus of priesthood (Frodo) and the munus of prophecy (Gandalf). Franco Manni, ‘La religione in Tolkien’, in Franco Manni (ed.), Introduzione a Tolkien, (Milano: Simonelli, 2002). Concerning further Thomistic themes we should remember that through the philosophical tradition – even in the Christian one, as in Aquinas Summa Theologiae, pars prima , quaestio 10, articulus 1. - so-called “eternity” is quite different from “endless time”: Time concerns Change, while instead Eternity concerns Immutability, “tota simul existens”, and therefore, if immortality is meant as “eternal life”, it is not a life lasting for an endless time. Rightly, Renée Vink observes: “Just like true immortality has often been confused with serial longevity, there is a related concept that has often been confused with never-ending time. I am referring to eternity. Though Tolkien does not use the word, I would venture to say that 'eternity' is the state of existence where what he calls true immortality has its proper place. Death may not be the enemy, but Time surely is.” Immortality and the Death of Love: Tolkien and Simone de Beauvoir, in Tolkien 2005. The Ring Goes Ever On. Proceedings, The Tolkien Society, Coventry, 2008, p. 127. Modern philosophers Another influence on Tolkien can be detected in the aesthetics of Coleridge: Edgar Frederick Carritt, Collingwood's tutor of Philosophy at University College, in his Theory of Beauty New York, The MacMillan Company 1914, p. 98 reports some lines by Joseph Addison (editor of “The Spectator”): “Imagination: this faculty is pleased with Greatness, Novelty and Beauty". In the last case it is a "secret satisfaction," perhaps subjective in the case of colour, in "anything that hath such a variety or regularity as may seem the effect of Design in what we call Works of Chance." And Chris Seeman reports the thought of scholars (Garen Knight, Randel Helms, Frank Bergmann, Henry Parks) who think that Tolkien took the ideas of “secondary belief” and of “fantasy/imagination” from Coleridge, who in turn took them from Neoplatonists like Cudworth, Plotinus and Proclus Tolkien's Revision of the Romantic Tradition, in P. Reynolds and G. Goodnight (editors), Proceedings of the JRR Tolkien Centenary Conference, The Tolkien Society & The Mythopoeic Press, Milton Keynes and Altadena, 1995, p. 74.. In his Letters, (ii, 450, Jan. 1804), Coleridge writes: “Imagination is a dim analogue of creation." Another interesting path for investigation concerning Tolkien's philosophical sources is Arthur Schopenhauer's thoughts on Art and Music The World as Will and Idea, 1819, III, § 52 (I take all those quotations from Carritt's Theory of Beauty): 1) “Music gives us the Universalia ante rem” (cf. in The Silmarillion the Music of the Ainur before the shaping of Arda); 2) "If ceasing to consider the when, why and whither of things we concentrate ourselves on the what ; not allowing abstract thought with its concepts to possess our consciousness, but sinking ourselves wholly in perception of the object; then we escape our individuality and will, and continue to exist only as the pure mirror of the object, with which we become identified; so that what is known is no longer the particular thing, but the idea, and the knower is no longer an individual but the pure knowing subject." (cf. Tolkien's idea of art as “escapism” in On the Fairy Stories); 3) but Art is just a “short hour of recreation” (cf. Tolkien's idea of art as being able to “restore”); 4) "Imagination is useful in enlarging and improving the sphere of perception, but may be used for the selfish pleasure of castle-building." (cf. Tolkien's distinctions of different meanings of “imagination”). Tolkien may also have been influenced by the philosophers of the 19th century through the philologists he studied and admired: two years ago at Modena I provided a great deal of documentation on eminent philologists of the 19th century who were inspired by philosophers, and who in turn who greatly influenced Tolkien (think of Grundtvig, Grimm, Ker). If they were indeed so inspired, then Tolkien similarly – since he was not a sola avis amid philological tradition - could have been influenced thus, explicitly or otherwise. The philologist Ulrich von Wilamowitz writes that without the philosophers Vico and Herder, research on the origins of language and the comparative analysis of parallel phenomena in humankind were not possible. The Danish philologist Grundtvig claimed to have been influenced by Bruno, Schelling and Ficthe. The philologist Johan C. Adelung was influenced by Leibniz; the philologist Franz Bopp by Friedrich Schlegel and Karl Windischmann; the philologist Jacob Grimm by Niebhur and Savigny; the philologist Karl Lachmann by Schleiermacher; the philologist August Schleicher by Herbert Spencer; the philologist Adolphe Pictet by Victor Cousin; the philologist W. P. Ker by Aristotle; the philologist Werner Jager by Nietzsche and Dilthey. For my documentation of this topic see my debate with Tom Shippey at pages 31-37 in R. Arduini & C. Testi eds., Tolkien e la filosofia , Marietti, Genova-Milano, 2011 . Tolkien may therefore have been subject to indirect influence by these thinkers. Now we shall turn to the influence of Collingwood on Tolkien. Although he never stated it explicitly, Tolkien probably knew him See Alex Lewis, The Ogre in the Dungeon, “Mallorn” issue 47, Spring 2009, p. 15, where the author suggests that the 1939 Andrew Lang Lecture (Tolkien's On Fairy Tales) was provided to Tolkien by Collingwood himself. And also Dimitra Fimi: “Tolkien certainly knew R. G. Collingwood. In p. 264, note 1 of Collingwood's and Myres's Roman Britain [full citation: Collingwood, R. G. and Myres, J. N. L. (1936), Roman Britain and the English Settlements (Oxford: Clarendon Press)] the authors acknowledge Tolkien's help with the philology of the name Sulis, the Celto-Roman goddess of the hot springs at Bath. It also seems that Collingwood was the reason why Tolkien was consulted on the name "Nodens" found in inscriptions at the excavation of Lydney Park (Tolkien's piece has now been reprinted in “Tolkien Studies”, Volume 4, 2007, pp. 177-183).”, (from an email of Dimitra Fimi to me, 5th April 2009). And also Douglas Anderson, referring to his unpublished lecture of 2004: “Much of the work that I did do was on the similarity of interests between W.G. Collingwood, his son Robin, and JRRT, as well as what I could piece together of R.G. Collingwood's and JRR Tolkien's friendship. I barely touched on Collingwood's view of history, and there's a lot that could be said there.” (From an email of Anderson to me, 8th April 2009). And Claudio Testi read a Tolkien's manuscript (A 14/2, folios 28 and 29, at the Bodleian Library) where he, after quoting Bede about the name 'Britain', observe that Collingwood is writing an introduction to the history of Roman Britain, but, being mainly a philosopher, he does not refer neither to literature (unless philosophical) and to language. (From an email to me, 7th august 2009). I think that the recent biography of Collingwood (Fred Inglis, History Man. The life of R. G. Collingwood, Princeton University Press, 2009, pp. 105, 201, 223), notwithstanding three quotations of Tolkien's name, is pretty vague on the relations between the two authors. ; they were in the same places at similar times (both Fellows at Pembroke College), and Collingwood was well known in academia and outside for his writings on the philosophy of history and his specific historical research regarding Roman Britain. Collingwood’s most important work is The Idea of History (1946); its central idea is that of “re-enactment”: historical thought (not only on the part of professional historians, but everyone) consists of re-living the thoughts of people from the past The Idea of History, Oxford University Press, 1946 (pp. 215-216, 287, 300). This idea of re-living inspired the two “time travel” novels which Tolkien left unfinished: The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers. History of Middle-earth, vols. 5 and 9. Verlyn Flieger has discovered that in these Tolkien was directly inspired by a 1927 book, An Experiment with Time, by the non-academic philosopher J. W. Dunne Verlyn Flieger, Tolkien’s Experiment with Time in P. Reynolds and G. Goodnight (editors), Proceedings of the JRR Tolkien Centenary Conference, The Tolkien Society & The Mythopoeic Press, Milton Keynes and Altadena, 1995, pp. 39 – 44.. The idea of “immortality” which it contains – which Tolkien abandoned in his novels – features people who, in dreamlike or excited mental states, cause the reincarnation of persons or repetition of events from the past, however remote. The possible influence of Collingwood on Tolkien – if it should ever be proved – would have been different to that of Dunne, because Collingwood makes reference not to excited or dreamlike states, but to fully conscious and rational – critical – thought: Aragorn and Arwen “re-live” the stories of Beren and Luthien inasmuch as they remember them and think about them, but they also judge them, and thus add to them in an original and creative way. I note that in his book Philosophy of Enchantment Whose subtitle is Studies in Folktale, Cultural Criticism, and Anthropology, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2005. (one section of which is entitled On the Fairy Tales), written in the same years when Tolkien was preparing his lecture On the Fairy Stories, Collingwood deals with topics such as: 1) the geographic and historical diffusion of fairy tales, 2) their relation to “archetypes”; 3) their function concerning adults rather than children. These are all themes which Tolkien also focused on in his lecture. In regard to Tolkien and 20th century ideas of “interpersonal salvation” and “philosophy of history”, in The Lord of the Rings the plot of the story and the characters’ interpersonal relationships continually communicate and demonstrate to us how individual destinies are closely and necessarily interwoven in life as in death; the relationship between Frodo and Sam (and Gollum!) is a good example of this Vincent Ferré, La Mort dans Le Seigneur des Anneaux, « seconde partie » in Tolkien: sur les rivages de la terre du milieu, Christian Bourgois Éditeur, Paris, 2001, pp. 197-199: alliances and groups are necessities of life, couples survive and those alone die because individuals are overcome by hubris, “la solitude conduit avec certitude à la mort”. Anna Mathie (The Gift of Mortality, cit.) observes: « This fertility, this willingness to pass life on to a new generation rather than grasping for 'endless life unchanging' is the Hobbits’ great strength, as it should likewise be mankind’s proper strength. It makes them at once humbler than immortals, since they place less confidence in their own individual abilities, and more hopeful, since their own individual defeats are not the end of everything.”. This idea of the interpersonal quality of salvation, typical of twentieth-century Christian theology – it is not a coincidence that in the letter quoted above Weisman mentioned the “Communion of Saints” – strongly emphasized throughout the 20th century the biblical and patristic message of “collective eschatology” For a synthesis of this development – which in Catholic teaching culminated with Chapter VII (The Eschatological Nature of the Pilgrim Church) of the Lumen Gentium Constitution of the Vatican Council II on “God’s People” – see the excellent book on historical and systematic theology by Father Ruiz de la Peña, La otra dimensiòn. Escatologìa cristiana, EAPSA, Madrid, 1981, chapters 5- 8 and 11.. Shippey notes that the entire story of Middle-earth is bound by a condition of inter-personality: it is like a Limbo in which the un-baptised dead await the Day of Judgement (for Tolkien the events he narrated were set in pre-Christian times) when they will be reunited with their baptised and saved descendants. But during the course of the 20th century, outside of the visible churches (perhaps earlier than inside them), the widespread sensitivity of the century for “interpersonality” was manifested in many fields: in political movements, pedagogy, clinical psychology, historiographical research and philosophy. Tolkien wrote that every event had at least two aspects: one regarding the history of the individual, the other the history of the world. Letters, cit., n. 181, p. 233. For an analysis at length of this topic, see my Eulogy of Finitude, in Arduini & Testi eds. The Broken Scythe, cit, pp 23-32. Tolkien was concerned, at least in his fiction, with the “history of the world.” In the aftermath of the powerful historical philosophies of the 19th century (Hegelian, Marxist, Positivist), Tolkien found himself living in a period – the first half of the 20th century – in which 19th century lessons were repeated and over-abundantly varied: several classical and highly influential philosophies of history Of which it is unlikely, given their diffusion in many different areas, that Tolkien knew nothing, as Michael Drout has also said: “The relationship between Tolkien and philosophers has not been explored as much as it should be (the focus has been almost entirely on Theologians), so your research is important. Unfortunately, I cannot help very much. There have been rumours over the years that a catalogue of Tolkien's personal library would be published, but that has not yet happened. I don't know of any direct evidence, but I would be shocked if he didn't know something about Spengler and Toynbee, but proving it is another story.” (From an email to me dated 22nd March 2009). such as those of Oswald Spengler Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of West), 1918. and Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, 1934. together with others, intellectualist and extravagant such as that of Edmund Husserl Die Philosophie in der Krisis der europäischen Menschheit (Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man), 1935. or terrible and obscure such as that of Alfred Rosenberg Der Mythus des 20° Jahrhunderts (The Myth of the Twentieth Century), 1934. See an interesting comparison between Rosenberg's philosophy of history and Tolkien's in Christine Chism, Myth and History in World War II, in Jane Chance (editor), Tolkien the Medievalist, Routledge, New York – London, 2003, pp. 72-75.. All were somewhat pessimistic, perhaps not surprisingly given what was happening and was about to happen in Europe and the rest of the world. After the Second World War this surfeit of philosophies of history contracted and disappeared. The appalling drama proved to be a decisive factor in the selection from and development of the 19th century inheritance, which (like many others) was no longer considered and events took a different turn. Tolkien’s “philosophy of history” is not pessimistic as were those in fashion at the time Even less pessimistic than that one of Christopher Dawson. Tolkien quotes several times Dawson in his writing On Fairy Tales, and the relation between the two authors is underlined by Bradley J. Birzer (J R R Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle Earth, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2002) and by Gregory Bassham (Email, 15th June 2009). referred to above: in the Age of Men Tolkien does express melancholy for the disappearance of Elvish Beauty, but not moral or other kinds of decadence! When he speaks of the fading of Elvish Beauty (or the Ents) and the coming of the Age of Men, Tolkien – unlike Spengler, Rosenberg or Husserl – does not give us a message of “decadence”, but instead one of “finiteness”: his refusal to add to the already numerous “twilights of the West” then in vogue is made explicit, for example, in the dialogue between Gimli and Legolas at Minas Tirith. The omission of “philosophy” (almost) in Tolkien’s published writings Tolkien never uses the word “philosophy” in his fiction, and amongst other published works only thrice in the lecture On Fairy Stories and thrice in the lecture on Beowulf. Thereafter this lexical ostracism – consciously wished for, I think – continues amongst Tolkien scholars: in the two massive, erudite and up-to-date Tolkien encyclopedias by Drout and by Scull & Hammond there is no place - in the midst of hundreds of others - for the entry Philosophy. Michael Drout (editor), J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Scholarship and Critical Assessment, Routledge, New York and London, 2007. Wayne Hammond & Christina Scull, J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide. Reader's Guide, HarperCollins, London, 2006. With regard to writings not intended for publication, this word appears a few times in his Letters, usually as a synonym for “religion” Letters, cit., n. 26, n. 49, n. 153, n. 156, n. 183. or with the meaning of generalized “theory,” Ibidem, n. 15, n. 49, n. 52. but also at times in a more strict sense, such as when he writes that the word “Ent” has slightly philosophical overtones, or that he does not believe that there can be philosophers able to deny the possibility of reincarnation, Ibidem, n. 153, p. 189 (implicitly showing, it seems to me, that he knew some of them!). or when he explains the significance of the Ring of Power or speaks of the moral corruption present in Eddison’s novels. ibidem, n. 157, n. 211, n. 199. Sometimes though, philosophy as rational knowledge is explicitly distinguished from religion, e.g. when he says that the Hobbits might have misunderstood Aragorn’s miraculous healings because of their lack of philosophical and scientific knowledge, or when he makes it clear that although religion had a minor role among the Faithful of Númenor the same could not be said regarding philosophy and metaphysics, or when he observes that in The Lord of the Rings (LotR) evil and falsity are represented mythically whereas good and truth are represented in a fashion more “historical and philosophical” than “religious” ibidem, n.155, n. 84, n. 156: in the latter, it is interesting to note that “religion” is equivalent to “myth” (“story”, in Greek) and to tangible “representativeness”, as he also says more than once in his work On Fairy-stories (but without ever giving explanations).. The “home” of philosophy is, according to him, “in ancient Greece” ibidem, n. 84. (and not in Germany, which he considered the “home” of philology Cf. Tom Shippey, Goths and Huns in Roots and Branches. Selected Papers in Tolkien, Walking Tree Publisher, Zollikofen (Switzerland), 2007, pp.114-136.), for the reason that “southern” mythology rests on deeper foundations than that from the north, and so must lead “either to philosophy or anarchy.” Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics, in The Monsters and the Critics and other Essays, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1983 In the aborted The Notion Club Papers the word appears twice: once in reference to the character Rupert Dolbear (who is also interested in psychoanalysis and often falls asleep during discussions) and once in reference to the character Michael Ramer (a philologist alter-ego of Tolkien), who says that he is not a philosopher, but rather an “experimenter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, Sauron Defeated, cit., pp. 159, 178. Several Tolkien scholars agree that it is not possible to find traces of Tolkien's philosophical readings. Patrick Curry’s opinion is similar (though not identical) to mine: “I have never heard from anyone that Tolkien ever read any philosophy, I'm afraid; and that is my subjective impression too. If you are looking for a direct connection, I think you will be disappointed. (Of course, his work has deeply philosophical implications, but that's another matter!)” Personal email, 21st March 2009.. John Garth states: “I've seen none of these philosophers' names in Tolkien's writings, published or unpublished; I've never seen a philosophical title among lists of his books; and I can't think of any of his papers at the Bodleian which have a philosophical bent. The closest, I suppose, is On Fairy-stories”. Personal email, 26th March 2009. Dimitra Fimi states also: “I am afraid I do not know enough to help you. I have looked at Tolkien's books in the Bodleian and in the English Faculty at Oxford, but I cannot remember any philosophy books within them (although I was looking for different things so I might have overlooked them)” Personal email, 5th April 2009.. I verified this myself, when in August of 2018 I went to consult manuscripts and books in both those libraries. These occurrences (or, better, non-occurrences) of the names of philosophers Wholly deliberate, I think: for example, in the preparatory versions of the lecture On the Fairy Stories Tolkien writes the name of Carl Gustav Jung, while in the definitive one he only quotes the word 'archetype' but omits the name of the psychiatrist (see Tolkien on Fairy Stories, edited by Verlyn Flieger & Douglas A. Anderson, Harper Collins Publishers, London, 2008, pp. 129, 170, 307.) or the word “philosophy” bring to mind Carpenter’s reconstruction of a typical Inklings’ session Set in Magdalene College in the evening at a date between autumn 1940 and December 1941; see Chapter 3 in Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings, George Allen & Unwin Publishers, London, 1978: when they are together, the friends talk of many things: the war under way, LotR, the philosophy of history, literary criticism, Shakespeare, religion, ethics and so on. But when they refer to thinkers by name, they do so polemically, disparaging “contemporary thought” They are against Karl Marx and the theologian Karl Barth., ibidem.. They also make me think of Tom Shippey – an intellectual often identified with his hero Tolkien – who says he knows nothing of philosophy, but also demonstrates a certain (latent) polemical attitude towards it, calling philologists “tough minded” and philosophers “tender minded.” Several personal communications with Shippey. Perhaps both Tolkien and Shippey were thinking of, on the one hand, the abstruse and often essentially empty philosophy of 19th century German idealism and 20th century French and German existentialism and, on the other, the differently abstruse and differently but equally empty “Oxbridge Analytical Philosophy” which was already strong before the Second World War and afterwards dominant in the English-speaking academic world. See Shippey’s (I think rightly) critical comment concerning the father of Anglo-American analytical philosophy G. E. Moore in his Tolkien, Author of the Century, cit, p. 158, and also this personal experience: “I intervened in an interview among philosophers at Oxford once, querying a point about language - the thesis was about the distinction in Augustine between 'God' and 'a god', and I said 'but Augustine wrote in Latin, where there is no such distinction. How can you tell?' - and this caused a most violent inter-college and inter-disciplinary dispute. WH Auden, Tolkien's friend, wrote a sarcastic verse about Oxford philosophers”, (from an email to me, 14th July 2009). In Tolkien we find respect (though not declared love) for ancient and medieval philosophy, together with scepticism or at least lack of interest regarding modern and contemporary philosophy. This lack of interest may also be due to (as hinted at previously) extrinsic circumstances such as social context and interpersonal relations. Shippey comments: “philosophy - why does Tolkien not mention it? I suppose I can only say that unlike Lewis he never took the philosophy part of the Oxford Classics course, so maybe he felt that he was professionally ill-equipped - Oxford is always full of philosophers. Maybe he felt that that was Lewis's business. Or he could just have decided to keep his thoughts to himself.” ibidem. Ross Smith Inside Language. Linguistic and Aesthetic Theory in Tolkien, Walking Tree Publishers, 2007, pp. 140-141. also writes that even if there are no mentions by Tolkien of analytical philosophy, Tolkien was nevertheless a close friend of C.S. Lewis who opposed it and especially the work of A. J. Ayer. Tolkien as “nationalist”, philologist and friend of the philosopher C.S. Lewis After having extensively researched the topic, my opinion is that Tolkien was not significantly influenced by the philosophers of his times: neither by the Oxford Idealists ( J. A. Smith, E. F. Carritt, F. H. Bradley, H. H. Joachim, B. Bosanquet) But perhaps Tolkien had notice of Croce's Aesthetics via Collingwood and Lewis (both of whom knew it well): while criticizing Chambers, Tolkien refutes the theory of “literary genres” such as Croce did in his Aesthetics (one cannot lessen the artistic value of the poem just because it is not a “well conduct epic”; ”I do not question the virtue of heroic or tragic stories, but their exclusive claims. There are others... we do not need even debate which is in general, or as a kind, more valuable: see J.R.R. Tolkien Beowulf and the Critics, M. Drout ed., Arizona, 2002, pp. 90, 107, 109). Maybe Tolkien had notice as well of Croce and Collingwood’s idea of “re-enactment” (in 1925 Collingwood read Croce's Autobiography where he could find that “Croce filled his unslaked religious longings by a saturation in the great philosophers and an understanding that cannot be acquired by reading their books but only re-enacting their mental drama in one's own person, under the stimulus of actual life”. This, Inglis thinks, is the first sighting of Collingwood's key term: the “re-enactment”, see: Fred Inglis, History Man. The life of R. G. Collingwood, Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 121), nor by Oxbridge Realists and Logical Positivists (B. Russell, G. M. Moore, L. Wittgenstein, G. Ryle, A. J. Ayer) This second group explicitly disliked by his friend C. S. Lewis: “apud Cantabrigienses communistes rariores sunt et pestipheri philosophi quos logicales positivistos vocamus haud aeque pollent quam apud nostros [Oxonienses]”, (to don Giovanni Calabria, Dec 5th 1954); “do not imagine that the Logical Positivist menace is over. To me it seems that the apologetic position has never in my life been worse than it is now. At the Socratic the enemy often wipe the floor with us. Quousque domine?” (to Dom Bede Griffiths, 22nd April 1954).. Shippey has stated: “Tolkien may well have had an adversarial relationship with the Oxford philosophers of his time (as CS Lewis did), and he may also have not wished to engage in any kind of argument with them, since he had not had any training in philosophy (in this case, unlike Lewis). He may have consciously decided to abstain from an argument he knew he could not win.” Shippey's email to me (21st August 2009). Shippey reports Lewis's claim that Tolkien was a man who could not be influenced. Tolkien e la filosofia, cit, p. 28. But Lewis said also that Tolkien after having been criticised could rewrite everything over again, and this is an influence ( a further kind of influence! - such as when he discarded the Epilogue of the LotRs because it was condemned by others, cf. Tolkien's Letters, n. 144). Shippey has stated in regard to Collingwood that: “Tolkien was often annoyed by people who shared his interests, but did not see them in quite the same way that he did. Ibidem, p. 26.” But Shippey himself in Roots and Branches documents a great deal of direct influences on Tolkien by Wagner (even if – I agree with him! - the final and decisive moral interpretation of those ideas was absolutely different!). Why? He erases the references! Such as when he erased the name of C. G. Jung from the first draft of On the Fairy Stories lecture … a question I suggest of Tolkien’s personality! What was this personality? I shall try to give some answers. He was a “nationalist”. Shippey states that: “Tolkien’s conviction that English tradition had been slighted, marginalized, and largely lost, is no more than the truth..... as for not naming philosophers he did read and know, Boethius, Plato etc., well, maybe this is part of his anti-Classical bias. We know that Tolkien read Latin very well and Greek quite well, but he rarely mentions these either, though when you look, the connections are often quite clear. But Tolkien always felt he was a spokesman for the neglected native tradition - not that England produced any early native philosophers, other than King Alfred as an interpreter of Boethius” And W. P. Ker (Epic and Romance, 1896) wrote: “The public history of Iceland lies all in the lives of private characters; it is the life of a municipality/.../ If their histories were to have any life at all, it must be the life of the drama or the dramatic narrative, and not that of the philosophical history, or even of those medieval chronicles, which, however unphilosophical, are still obliged by the greatness of their subject to dwarf the individual actors in comparison with the greatness of Kingdoms, Church, and Empire. ”. And Tolkien himself writes: “Grundtvig's emendations [to the Beowulf poem] seemed almost like sorcery to those unable to swallow the notion that other languages than Latin and Greek and Hebrew had any shape or rules.” J.R.R. Tolkien Beowulf and the Critics (M. Drout ed.), Arizona, 2002, pp. 99 For instance, when Shippey says: “but here I will just say that King Alfred’s Boethius seems to me to be more realistic, and of course more English, than Boethius’s Boethius,” Tolkien e la filosofia, cit., p. 28 I agree with him but would add that without Boethius's Boethius Alfred's Boethius could not exist. Moreover, Tolkien was a philologist, but: a Germanistic philologist, not a Classicist. He wrote: “Greek Gods are timeless and do not know or fear death. Such beliefs may hold promise of a profounder thought, so that the Greeks could make philosophy, but the Germanic North created specially the hero.” Beowulf and the Critics, cit, p. 128 Therefore Tolkien – as a scholar of 'Germanistik' - could more easily focus (and make bibliographical references, quotations, etc.) on heroism and not on philosophy. an Inkling and Christian philologist who had to defend his point of view either in the University Departments and in literary criticism from the fashionable Literati who were both Modernist in their poetics and atheist in their philosophy. His Inkling friend Lewis wrote (criticizing the views of Croce, Carritt and Arnold) that: “culture is the storehouse of the best sub-Christian values.” To his brother, April 28th 1940, in The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, HarperCollins, New York, vol. 1 (2004), vol 2 (2004), vol. 3 (2007). Tolkien was a Christian philologist, when not only the Literati, but also most of philosophers of his times were atheist. And his mode of apologetics (different from Lewis's mode) was – perhaps! - to not surrender to the enemy by the tactic of not naming him. If not, how to explain Tolkien mentioning Dawson – in On the fairy Stories - and not Spengler and Toynbee (all of them philosophers of history, but only the first a committed Christian)? “I don't know of any direct evidence, but I would be shocked if he didn't know something about Spengler and Toynbee, but proving it is another story.” (M. Drout, from an email to me dated 22nd March 2009). a philologist who was also a writer of fiction. For this reason, he was not so concerned – as a philologist – with philosophical conceptualisations (unlike other more speculative philologists such as Karl Lachmann or Ferdinand De Saussure), while he was – instead – more concerned with inspirations for poetical images. He wrote: “History, Philology, Archaeology, Folk-lore were the Fairy-godmothers at the Christening: few (critics of the Beowulf poem) thought to invite Poetry.” J.R.R. Tolkien Beowulf and the Critics, cit. p. 80 And his friend Lewis wrote: “Tolkien thinks that is impossible to invent a language without inventing a mythology, and that the philologist Muller was wrong in calling mythology a disease of language, while it would be truer to say that language was a disease of mythology. I do not understand that.” Collected Letters, cit., to William Kinter, 24th Sept 1051 Finally, I present the hypothesis that C. S. Lewis did somehow influence Tolkien during the twenty years of their closer friendship. If this is true - at least in part - it would be worthy to know something about Lewis as a philosopher. It is a pity that a volume entirely concerned with this very topic is in effect so little useful: the contributors do not even try to search factual connections between Lewis and x, y z philosophers, and they just present vague analogies on the shared themes. I am referring to: David Baggett, Gary Habermas and Jerry Walls eds., C. S. Lewis as Philosopher. Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Inter Varsity Press Academic, Madison, 2008. In his letters Lewis makes references to almost all the classics of the history of philosophy (Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Schelling, Descartes, Bacon, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Schelling, Hegel, Nietzsche, Pascal, Kant, etc.). But, more specifically, he was a sort of Aristotelian: through all Lewis’s adult life he refers to Aristotle's works. He writes: “I fear that Plato thought the concrete flesh and grass bad,and have no doubt he was wrong” to Dom Bede Griffiths, Jan 17th 1940.. And he writes: not all Paganism is pantheistic because of the “almost miraculous avoidance of the Pantheistic swamp by Plato and (still more) Aristotle” to Dom Bede Griffiths, April 15th 1947. And: “I appear to be a Thomist because I am often (especially on ethics) following Aristotle where Aquinas is also following Aristotle”; “many people think I'm being Thomistic where I'm really being Aristotelian.” to Corbin Carnell, Oct 13th 1958; and to the same, Dec 10th 1958. But Lewis's philosophers were not his contemporaries. In Lewis's letters there are many references to Aquinas, but no references to L. Wittgenstein, B. Russell and A. J. Ayer, almost no references to Gilbert Ryle, nothing on the Wienerkreis, and nothing on Dewey. Writing on the occasion of J. A. Smith's death, he states that he was an honest man but not a believer, and says nothing on his philosophical thought; the same position was held by Lewis on Carritt, Bradley, Joachim, Collingwood, Bosanquet and the other Oxford and Cambridge philosophers whom he almost doesn't mention at all in his letters (we have a lot of his letters! And written to a lot of different kinds of people). Some conclusions Summing up what I have argued concerning Tolkien and the History of Philosophy: a) I am quite sure he read (at least to some extent) Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, and Aquinas; b) I present the hypothesis that he read (at least to some extent) Schlegel, Schopenhauer, Croce, Collingwood, Freud, Spengler and – however, I admit it is improbable – Vico Marek Ozievicz (From Vico to Tolkien, in S. Caldecott and T. Honegger eds., Tokien's The Lord of the Rings. Sources and Inspirations, Walking Tree Publishers, Zurich and Jena, 2008) writes that, to his knowledge, Tolkien did not read Vico because Vico's New Science was translated in English only in 1948. But the English translation (by Tolkien's fellow at the Pembroke College R. G. Collingwood) of the paramount study on Vico of those years (Croce's The Philosophy of G.B. Vico) was published in 1913. In his paper Ozievicz presents several similarities and differences between Vico and Tolkien, but he never mentions the major difference: Vico was a philosopher and discussed other philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, and Vico's philosophical work was discussed by other philosophers such as Jacobi, Herder, Cousin, Comte, Croce; while none of those things happened for Tolkien! ; c) I am sure that the ideas of Romanticist philosophers such as Schlegel, Herder, Schleiermacher, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel and the ideas of Positivist philosophers such as Comte and Spencer did influence Tolkien, however indirectly, through the great 19th century philologists who knew – sometimes well – those 19th century philosophers; d) I think that Tolkien was informed – by Lewis and other scholars of his acquaintance - of the ideas of the philosophers of his times, either the Idealists, and the Logical Positivists, and Existentialists. I think that Tolkien was not interested in them, as Lewis and the other Inklings were not! To summarise my search for philosophical influences on Tolkien and its motivations, at a Conference in Modena Shippey quoted Tolkien's metaphor of the 'soup': “He was rejecting the utility of source-study, and as he often did, overstating his case to make a point. I think source-study can be useful, and that philosophers were no doubt among Tolkien’s sources. But Tolkien was right in that it is very difficult to analyse soup into its component parts.” Tolkien e la filosofia, cit, p. 41 I do agree with Shippey in saying it is very difficult! But I wish to quote Tolkien's other famous allegory in The Monsters. Here Tolkien writes: “even the man's own descendants were heard to murmur: 'He is such an odd fellow! Imagine his using these old stones just to build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? He had no sense of proportion.' But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea.” I think here Tolkien is criticising the kind of “Philological Criticism” While in the two first drafts of the lecture we can read in Tolkien (Drout ed.), Beowulf etc, cit. (not the tower, but the 'rock garden' and the 'beautiful commonplace flowers') , I fancy that Tolkien deals more with “Literary Criticism” à la T. S. Eliot (the use of Ancient Cultural Sources has to be done with the purpose of displaying the author's refined culture, not just as means to display the commonplace beautiful flowers – i.e. the perennial Moral Values of all Men– à la Inklings). which focuses only on sources and is not interested in the creative synthesis made by the individual work of art, but Tolkien is also saying that without the old stones (with their carvings and inscriptions) man could not reach those heights!