Sources and References

• Tolkien, J.R.R. The Silmarillion. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. 2nd ed. London: HarperCollins, 2021.
• Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. 50th Anniversary ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
• Tolkien, J.R.R. “On Fairy-Stories.” In Tree and Leaf. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1964.
• Tolkien, J.R.R. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.
• Tolkien, J.R.R. Morgoth’s Ring (The History of Middle-earth, Vol. 10). Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins, 1993.
• Kreeft, Peter. The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind The Lord of the Rings. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005.
• McIntosh, Jonathan S. The Flame Imperishable: Tolkien, St. Thomas, and the Metaphysics of Faërie. Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2017.
• Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.
• Shippey, Tom. J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
• Flieger, Verlyn. Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World. Rev. ed. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2002.
• Snyder, Christopher A. Hobbit Virtues: Rediscovering J.R.R. Tolkien’s Ethics from The Lord of the Rings. New York: Pegasus Books, 2020.
• Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Trans. V.E. Watts. London: Penguin, 1999.
• Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Various editions.
• Augustine of Hippo. Confessions and City of God. Various editions.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries: “Theodicies,” “The Problem of Evil,” “Kinds and Origins of Evil.”

Chapter 1: Tolkien as Philosopher: Method and Myth

1.1 Can a Storyteller Be a Philosopher?

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973) never held a chair in philosophy, never published a philosophical treatise, and would have been the first to deny the title of philosopher. He was a philologist – a scholar of languages, specifically Old and Middle English, Old Norse, Gothic, and Finnish – and a professor at the University of Oxford for most of his professional life. Yet his fictional works, above all The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, constitute one of the most sustained and internally coherent explorations of fundamental philosophical questions produced in the twentieth century. The course PHIL 207J takes this claim seriously: that Tolkien’s fiction contains an implicit but rigorous philosophical vision that rewards careful investigation.

1.1.1 Philosophy Through Mythopoeia

Tolkien’s method is mythopoeia (神话创造) – the deliberate creation of myth. In his poem Mythopoeia, addressed to C.S. Lewis, Tolkien argued that the human capacity to create myths is not a flight from reality but a mode of knowing it. The myth-maker is a “sub-creator” who, by building a coherent secondary world, reveals truths about the primary world that discursive argument alone cannot capture.

This approach has deep philosophical roots. Plato himself employed myth – the Allegory of the Cave, the Allegory of the Charioteer, the Myth of Er – when he judged that certain truths about the soul, the Good, or the afterlife exceeded the reach of dialectic. Tolkien’s procedure is analogous: he constructs an entire cosmos – Eä, the world that is – whose internal logic embodies answers to questions about God, evil, freedom, death, and the good life.

1.1.2 The Thomistic-Catholic Framework

A crucial fact about Tolkien is that he was a devout Roman Catholic throughout his life. He described The Lord of the Rings as “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work” (Letters, no. 142). His philosophical formation was shaped by the intellectual tradition of Thomism (托马斯主义) – the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) – which itself synthesized Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology.

Jonathan McIntosh, in The Flame Imperishable, has argued persuasively that Thomistic metaphysics is the philosophical backbone of Tolkien’s entire legendarium. Key Thomistic principles operative in Tolkien’s fiction include:

• Being as fundamentally good: Everything that exists, insofar as it exists, is good (ens et bonum convertuntur).
• Evil as privation: Evil is not a substance but the absence of a good that ought to be present.
• Creation ex nihilo: God alone possesses the power to bring things into being from nothing.
• Analogy of being: Creatures participate in divine being by analogy, not by identity.
• Natural law: Moral order is grounded in the rational structure of created nature.

1.1.3 The Philosophical Questions of Middle-earth

Peter Kreeft, in The Philosophy of Tolkien, identifies over fifty philosophical questions addressed in The Lord of the Rings alone, organized under the traditional branches of philosophy:

• Metaphysics (形而上学): What is the nature of reality? Is there more to the world than meets the eye?
• Theology (神学): Does God exist? What is the nature of the divine?
• Cosmogony (宇宙起源论): How did the world begin?
• Ethics (伦理学): What is the good life? What are the virtues?
• Philosophy of history (历史哲学): Does history have a direction? Is it progress or decline?
• Philosophy of death (死亡哲学): What is the meaning of death?
• Political philosophy (政治哲学): What constitutes legitimate authority?

Each of these receives sustained treatment across Tolkien’s fiction. This course traces them systematically.

Chapter 2: On Fairy-Stories: Sub-creation, Recovery, Consolation

2.1 Context and Significance of the Essay

Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories” was originally delivered as the Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St Andrews on 8 March 1939. It was revised and published in 1947 in the collection Essays Presented to Charles Williams, and later reprinted in Tree and Leaf (1964). The essay is Tolkien’s most explicit statement of his philosophy of art, imagination, and narrative. It is essential reading for understanding the theoretical foundations of his fiction.

2.2 What Is a Fairy-Story?

Tolkien begins by rejecting several common misconceptions. Fairy-stories are not primarily about fairies (diminutive winged creatures are a modern sentimentalization). They are stories about Faërie (仙境) – the Perilous Realm – a world that contains “many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.”

Fairy-stories are not about the machinery of dreams, nor are they children’s literature by nature. They deal with fundamental human desires and truths, and their proper audience includes adults.

2.3 Fantasy and Sub-creation

The heart of Tolkien’s theory lies in his account of Fantasy (幻想) and Sub-creation (亚创造). Fantasy is not mere fancy or idle imagination. It is the art of creating a Secondary World (第二世界) that possesses inner consistency of reality: the internal laws of the imagined world are coherent and binding. The reader who enters the Secondary World experiences what Tolkien calls Secondary Belief (第二信念) – not the willing suspension of disbelief (a phrase Tolkien rejected as inadequate) but genuine belief in the secondary world as real within its own terms.

This concept carries profound theological weight. If God is the Creator, then human beings, made in God’s image (imago Dei), share in the creative impulse. To create a secondary world is not to rival God but to exercise a capacity that God himself bestowed. Sub-creation is thus an act of worship and an expression of human dignity.

2.4 Recovery, Escape, and Consolation

Tolkien identifies three essential functions of fairy-stories, all philosophically rich:

2.4.1 Recovery

Recovery (恢复/重新认知) is the regaining of a clear view of reality. Through the defamiliarization effected by fantasy, we see familiar things – trees, stone, bread, mortality – as if for the first time, freed from the “drab blur of triteness or familiarity.” Recovery is a cleansing of perception, an intellectual and spiritual renewal.

2.4.2 Escape

Escape (逃避) is Tolkien’s most polemical concept. He distinguishes sharply between the Escape of the Prisoner and the Flight of the Deserter. The critics who condemn fantasy as “escapist” confuse the two. The prisoner who dreams of freedom, who imagines things other than his cell walls, is not a deserter. Rather, the refusal to accept the world as it currently presents itself – ugly, industrialized, mechanized – is a sign of spiritual health. Tolkien asks: “Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home?”

The things from which fairy-stories help us escape include the ugliness of the modern world, the tyranny of the machine, and above all death – “the oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death.”

2.4.3 Consolation and Eucatastrophe

Consolation (慰藉) is the emotional and spiritual satisfaction that comes from the happy ending – but not any happy ending. Tolkien coins the term eucatastrophe (善终/美好的突转):

In the essay’s epilogue, Tolkien makes a breathtaking theological move. He argues that the Gospels contain a fairy-story – indeed, the fairy-story that embraces all fairy-stories. The Incarnation is the eucatastrophe of human history; the Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the Incarnation. All lesser eucatastrophes in all lesser stories are echoes of this great eucatastrophe. “There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true.”

2.5 Philosophical Implications

The essay “On Fairy-Stories” is fundamentally a work of philosophical aesthetics (哲学美学) with metaphysical and theological commitments:

1. Realism about transcendence: The joy of eucatastrophe points beyond itself to a reality that exceeds the secondary world. Fantasy, when successful, is a window onto truth.
2. Sacramental imagination: The material world is charged with significance. Sub-creation reveals this significance, as a sacrament makes the invisible visible through the visible.
3. Anti-reductionism: Tolkien rejects the modernist assumption that what is “real” is only what is empirically measurable. The fairy-story accesses dimensions of reality that scientific naturalism cannot.

Chapter 3: Tolkien’s Cosmogony: The Ainulindalë and Creation

3.1 The Structure of the Ainulindalë

The Ainulindalë (“The Music of the Ainur”) is the opening chapter of The Silmarillion and constitutes Tolkien’s cosmogony – his account of how the world came into being. It is one of the most philosophically dense passages in all of Tolkien’s writing.

The narrative unfolds in four stages:

1. Pre-creation: Eru Ilúvatar, the One God, exists alone. He creates the Ainur (angelic beings) from his thought and proposes to them themes of music.
2. The Great Music: The Ainur sing together before Ilúvatar. The music is a collaborative vision of the world-to-be. Melkor (later Morgoth), the mightiest of the Ainur, introduces discord, seeking to weave themes of his own devising.
3. The Vision: Ilúvatar shows the Ainur a vision of the world their music has imagined – Arda, the realm of Earth within the larger cosmos of Eä.
4. The Act of Creation: Ilúvatar says “Eä!” (“Let it be!”) and the world comes into actual existence. Many of the Ainur enter the world to shape it from within; these become the Valar and the Maiar.

3.2 Creation Ex Nihilo

The Ainulindalë is structured around the Thomistic-Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo (从无中创造) – creation from nothing. Only Ilúvatar possesses the Flame Imperishable (不灭之火), the power to bring things into being from nothing and to grant them independent existence.

McIntosh argues in The Flame Imperishable that this doctrine is directly Thomistic. For Aquinas, God is ipsum esse subsistens – subsistent being itself – and all creatures receive their being from God by participation. No creature can create in the absolute sense; it can only shape or arrange what already exists. Tolkien’s Ainur do not create Arda; they imagine it in music, and Ilúvatar alone gives it actual being.

3.3 The Music as Exemplar Causality

The relationship between the Great Music and the created world reflects the Thomistic doctrine of exemplar causality (范型因果). In Aquinas’s metaphysics, God creates according to ideas (exemplars) in the divine mind. Similarly, the Music of the Ainur serves as the exemplar or blueprint for Arda. The world is the realization of the Music.

This double creation – first the Music (the idea), then the world (the realization) – also reflects Augustinian thought. Augustine distinguished between the rationes seminales (seminal reasons) implanted in creation at the beginning and their unfolding in time. The Music contains all of Arda’s history in potency; its temporal unfolding is the history of Arda.

3.4 Melkor’s Discord and the Origin of Evil

Melkor’s introduction of discord into the Great Music is Tolkien’s account of the origin of evil (恶的起源). Several philosophical points emerge:

1. Evil as derivative: Melkor does not create a rival music from nothing. He can only distort and corrupt themes that Ilúvatar has already proposed. This is the privation theory in narrative form.
2. Evil as pride: Melkor’s motive is the desire “to bring into Being things of his own.” He seeks to be a creator rather than a sub-creator. His sin is the Thomistic superbia – pride, the disordered desire to be like God.
3. Evil incorporated into providence: Ilúvatar responds to Melkor’s discord not by silencing it but by weaving it into a greater harmony. “And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.” This is a narrative expression of the felix culpa (幸运的堕落) tradition: evil, permitted by God, becomes the occasion for a greater good.

3.5 The Children of Ilúvatar

A crucial detail: the Ainur’s Music does not account for the existence of Elves and Men. These – the Children of Ilúvatar (伊露维塔的子女) – are conceived by Ilúvatar alone and introduced into the Music as a theme that the Ainur did not foresee. This establishes that rational creatures (those with souls, fëar) owe their existence directly to God, not to any intermediary. The Ainur can shape the world, but they cannot create life.

This doctrine has implications for free will (Chapter 5) and for the nature of evil (Chapter 6): beings endowed with souls by Ilúvatar possess genuine freedom and cannot be reduced to mere instruments of fate.

Chapter 4: Theology in Middle-earth: Eru Ilúvatar and the Existence of God

4.1 The Hidden God

One of the most striking features of The Lord of the Rings is the near-total absence of explicit religion. There are no temples, no priests, no liturgy, no prayers (with rare exceptions, such as the invocation of Elbereth). Yet the world is saturated with a theological vision. Tolkien achieves what might be called a natural theology (自然神学) embedded in narrative: the existence and nature of God are implied by the structure of the world rather than proclaimed by institutional religion.

In The Silmarillion, God is named: Eru (“The One”) and Ilúvatar (“Father of All”). But even in The Silmarillion, Eru acts rarely and at the greatest moments – creating the Ainur, creating the world, creating Elves and Men, intervening at the Downfall of Númenor, and (it is implied) at the destruction of the Ring. His governance is mediated through the Valar and through providence rather than through direct action.

4.2 The Difference Between “Eru” and “Ilúvatar”

The course devotes a full unit to the distinction between Tolkien’s two names for God: Eru and Ilúvatar. This distinction is philosophically significant.

• Eru (Quenya: “The One”) emphasizes God’s unity and transcendence (超越性). Eru is the one God, unique, without rival or equal. This name corresponds to the philosophical concept of divine simplicity (神圣单纯性) in Thomistic theology: God is not composed of parts; God is absolutely one.

• Ilúvatar (Quenya: “Father of All” or “All-Father”) emphasizes God’s creative relationship to the world. He is not a remote, indifferent principle but a personal creator who wills the existence of his creatures and cares for them. This name corresponds to what Aquinas calls God as first cause (第一因) and provident governor of creation.

4.3 Arguments for God’s Existence in Tolkien’s Mythology

While Tolkien does not formulate syllogistic proofs for God’s existence, the structure of Middle-earth implicitly supports several classical arguments:

4.3.1 The Cosmological Argument

The Ainulindalë presents a chain of dependence: the world depends on the Music, the Music depends on the Ainur, and the Ainur depend on Ilúvatar. Everything that exists receives its being from a prior cause, ultimately from Ilúvatar as the uncaused cause. This mirrors Aquinas’s First Way (第一路径) – the argument from motion – and his Third Way – the argument from contingency.

4.3.2 The Argument from Design

Middle-earth is a world of staggering beauty and order. The Music of the Ainur establishes the pattern of the world, and even Melkor’s discord is woven into a greater design. The world displays teleology (目的论) – purposive order – which points to an intelligent designer.

4.3.3 The Moral Argument

Tolkien’s world is one of objective moral order. Good and evil are real, not mere conventions. Characters are praised or blamed according to their conformity with or departure from a moral law they did not invent. This objective moral order implies a moral lawgiver – Ilúvatar, who established the norms of right conduct in the very structure of the world.

4.3.4 The Argument from Desire

Kreeft highlights this as particularly important in Tolkien. The longing (Sehnsucht, or what Tolkien might call the “nameless desire”) that pervades Middle-earth – the Elves’ longing for the West, the hobbits’ longing for home, the general longing for beauty and goodness – points beyond the world to a fulfillment that the world cannot provide. As C.S. Lewis (Tolkien’s close friend) formulated it: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

4.4 Divine Attributes

The portrayal of Eru Ilúvatar in The Silmarillion reflects traditional Thomistic divine attributes:

• Omnipotence (全能): Eru alone possesses the Flame Imperishable and can create ex nihilo. No power in Arda can ultimately resist his will.
• Omniscience (全知): Eru knows the outcome of the Music, including Melkor’s discord, before it unfolds.
• Goodness (至善): Eru’s creative act is an act of self-diffusive goodness (bonum est diffusivum sui).
• Freedom (自由): Eru’s creation is not necessitated but free. He creates because he wills to, not because he must.

Chapter 5: Free Will in Arda: Fate, Doom, and Choice

5.1 The Problem of Free Will

The question of free will (自由意志) is one of the most philosophically complex in Tolkien’s legendarium. On the one hand, the world is shaped by the Music of the Ainur, which functions as a kind of cosmic script. On the other hand, characters make genuine choices – choices for which they are held morally responsible. How can these two features coexist?

5.2 Fate, Doom, and Wyrd

Tolkien’s use of the words “fate” and “doom” is deliberately archaic and philosophically precise. Doom (命运/判决) in Old English (dōm) means “judgment” or “decree,” not merely “terrible destiny.” The Doom of Mandos is a judicial pronouncement, not a blind force.

Fate in Tolkien’s world has a specific metaphysical structure:

1. The Music of the Ainur establishes the general pattern of the world’s history. In this sense, the world has a fate – a predetermined shape.
2. But the Music is incomplete: It does not determine every particular. Mandos, the Vala who “knows all things that shall be,” knows them only “save those that lie still in the freedom of Ilúvatar.” The free choices of Ilúvatar’s children are not contained in the Music.
3. Men are especially free: Men’s gift is precisely that they “should have a virtue to shape their life, amid the powers and chances of the world, beyond the Music of the Ainur, which is as fate to all things else.”

5.3 The Boethian Solution

Tolkien’s resolution of the tension between fate and free will closely follows the solution proposed by Boethius (波爱修斯) in The Consolation of Philosophy (c. 524 CE). Boethius distinguished between:

• Providence (天意): God’s eternal, comprehensive plan for the world, as seen from the perspective of eternity.
• Fate (命运): The temporal unfolding of providence in the created world, as experienced by creatures within time.
• Free will (自由意志): The genuine capacity of rational creatures to choose, which is not negated by providence because God sees all times simultaneously (from eternity) rather than predetermining each moment sequentially.

In Middle-earth, this plays out through a subtle interplay of “luck” and choice. Gandalf tells Frodo that Bilbo “was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker,” yet Bilbo’s finding of it involved genuine choices (sparing Gollum’s life). Providence operates through natural events and free choices, appearing as coincidence or luck to those within the story.

5.4 The Concept of Wyrd

Tolkien, as an Anglo-Saxonist, was deeply immersed in the Old English concept of wyrd (命运). Tom Shippey identifies the Anglo-Saxon maxim operative in Tolkien: “Wyrd oft nereð unfǣgne eorl, þonne his ellen dēah” – “Fate often spares the man who is not doomed, as long as his courage holds.” This formula holds together fate and free will: fate provides the framework, but individual courage (a free moral choice) determines whether one survives within that framework.

5.5 Case Studies in Fate and Freedom

5.5.1 Frodo and the Ring

Frodo’s volunteering to carry the Ring to Mordor is a paradigmatic act of free will. He is not compelled; he chooses. Yet his choice is also providentially guided – Gandalf sees in it the working of a higher purpose. At Mount Doom, Frodo fails to destroy the Ring voluntarily, yet the Ring is destroyed through Gollum’s intervention – itself the consequence of earlier free choices (Bilbo’s and Frodo’s mercy toward Gollum). Providence and freedom interweave.

5.5.2 Túrin Turambar

Túrin, the tragic hero of The Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin, represents the hardest case. He is cursed by Morgoth: “The shadow of my purpose lies upon Arda, and all that is in it bends slowly and surely to my will.” Yet Tolkien insists that Túrin’s choices – his pride, his anger, his refusal to heed counsel – are genuinely his own. The curse provides the circumstances; Túrin’s character determines his responses. His tragedy is not pure determinism but the interplay of malevolent fate and flawed freedom.

5.5.3 Galadriel’s Refusal

When Frodo offers the Ring to Galadriel, she faces a genuine choice – and chooses to refuse. “I pass the test,” she says. “I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.” This is a free act of renunciation that no fate compelled. Her choice demonstrates that even the most powerful beings retain genuine moral agency.

5.6 Free Will and the Soul

In Tolkien’s metaphysics, free will is grounded in the possession of a soul (fëa, 灵魂). The Ainur, Elves, and Men all possess fëar given directly by Ilúvatar, and this is the basis of their freedom. Creatures without souls (animals, plants) are governed entirely by the Music. The Ents and Eagles, who possess a kind of consciousness, raise interesting borderline questions that Tolkien never fully resolved.

The case of the Dwarves is instructive. Aulë the Smith created the Dwarves, but he could not give them independent life or free will – only Ilúvatar could do that. When Ilúvatar chose to adopt the Dwarves and grant them fëar, they became genuinely free. This reinforces the Thomistic principle: free will is a divine gift, not a natural property of matter.

Chapter 6: The Nature of Evil: Morgoth, Sauron, and Privation Theory

6.1 Two Philosophical Traditions on Evil

Tom Shippey, in The Road to Middle-earth and J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, identifies a productive tension in Tolkien’s treatment of evil between two philosophical traditions:

6.1.1 The Boethian-Augustinian Tradition (Privation Theory)

The privation theory of evil (恶的匮乏论), or privatio boni, holds that evil is not a substance or positive reality but the absence or corruption of good. Evil is parasitic on good – it cannot exist independently.

Textual support for this view in Tolkien is strong. Elrond declares: “Nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so” (The Fellowship of the Ring). Tolkien himself wrote in his letters: “In my story Sauron represents as near an approach to the wholly evil will as is possible. He had gone the way of all tyrants: beginning well, at least on the level that while desiring to order all things according to his own wisdom he still at first considered the (economic) well-being of other inhabitants of the Earth” (Letters, no. 131).

6.1.2 The Manichaean Tendency

Yet Tolkien also presents evil as a terrifyingly real force. The Ringwraiths, the Balrog, the palpable darkness of Mordor – these suggest a power that is more than mere absence. Shippey argues that Tolkien, as a veteran of the Somme, could not accept a purely academic theory of evil as mere privation. His experience of the trenches convinced him that evil is an active, aggressive force.

6.2 Morgoth: The Anatomy of Evil

Morgoth (魔苟斯), originally Melkor (“He Who Arises in Might”), is Tolkien’s Satan-figure: the most powerful of the Ainur, who falls through pride and becomes the source of evil in Arda. His career illustrates the privation theory with remarkable precision.

6.2.1 The Sin of Pride

Morgoth’s fundamental sin is pride (superbia, 骄傲) – the desire to be a creator rather than a sub-creator. He seeks the Flame Imperishable, the power of creation that belongs to Ilúvatar alone. Unable to find it (because it is “with Ilúvatar”), he turns to domination and destruction as substitutes for creation. This is the Thomistic analysis of pride: the disordered desire to exceed one’s proper place in the hierarchy of being.

6.2.2 Morgoth’s Ring and Dissipation

In Morgoth’s Ring (HoME Vol. 10), Tolkien develops a remarkable metaphysical idea. Morgoth pours his own being, his creative power, into the matter of Arda in order to control it. Just as Sauron later pours his power into the One Ring, Morgoth pours his power into the very substance of the world. The result is that Morgoth becomes progressively weaker – diminished, scattered, less than he was.

This is the privation theory in action: evil does not create power but spends it. Morgoth begins as the mightiest of the Ainur and ends as a craven, diminished being who cannot even face his enemies without fear. Evil makes one, in Boethius’s phrase, “less real.”

6.2.3 The Inability to Create

Tolkien explicitly states that Morgoth cannot create anything genuinely new. He can only mock, distort, and corrupt what Ilúvatar has made. The Orcs are (probably) corrupted Elves; the trolls are mockeries of Ents; the dragons are perversions of natural beasts. “The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own” (The Return of the King).

6.3 Sauron: The Will to Domination

Sauron (索伦), originally Mairon (“The Admirable”), is a Maia – a lesser angelic being – who was seduced by Morgoth and became his chief lieutenant. If Morgoth represents satanic rebellion, Sauron represents a subtler form of evil: the technocratic will to order and control.

Tolkien wrote that Sauron “was not indeed wholly evil, not unless all ‘reformers’ who want to hurry up with ‘reconstruction’ and ‘reorganization’ are wholly evil, even before pride and the lust to exert their will eat them up” (Letters, no. 131). Sauron’s evil begins as a desire for efficiency and order – but an order imposed by his will rather than discovered in the nature of things.

6.3.1 The One Ring as Instrument of Domination

The One Ring (至尊魔戒) is Sauron’s attempt to dominate all other wills. It is the ultimate expression of the libido dominandi (支配欲) – Augustine’s term for the lust for domination that characterizes the earthly city. The Ring works by amplifying the wearer’s desire for power and by subjugating all other Ring-bearers to its master.

The Ring cannot be used for good, even by good people, because its very nature is domination. Gandalf refuses it; Galadriel refuses it; Aragorn refuses it. This is not because they lack the power to wield it but because they understand that the desire to dominate – even for ostensibly good ends – is itself evil. Power corrupts not accidentally but essentially when its nature is the subjugation of other free wills.

6.4 Aquinas’s Categories of Evil

Aquinas distinguishes two types of evil that illuminate Tolkien’s world:

• Evil of fault (malum culpae, 罪恶): The evil that arises from the misuse of free will – sin. Morgoth’s rebellion, Sauron’s domination, Saruman’s betrayal, Denethor’s despair – all are evils of fault.
• Evil of penalty (malum poenae, 罚恶): The suffering that results from evil of fault, including natural evils that afflict the world as consequences of the original corruption. The marring of Arda by Morgoth introduces natural evils – death, decay, disease – into a world that was meant to be good.

6.5 The Self-Destruction of Evil

Kreeft emphasizes that in Tolkien’s world, evil is self-defeating. Morgoth’s dissipation, Sauron’s overthrow through his own creature (Gollum), Saruman’s petty end – all illustrate the principle that evil, being parasitic on good, ultimately consumes itself. As Tolkien wrote, evil is “preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in.” This is not naive optimism but a metaphysical claim rooted in the privation theory: what has no being of its own cannot ultimately prevail against what does.

Chapter 7: History as Long Defeat: Providence and Decline

7.1 The Long Defeat

Tolkien once wrote in a letter: “I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ’long defeat’ – though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory” (Letters, no. 195). This remarkable statement captures a distinctive philosophy of history that pervades his fiction.

7.2 Decline in Middle-earth

The trajectory of Middle-earth’s history is unmistakably one of decline:

• The Years of the Trees: The world is illuminated by the Two Trees of Valinor, sources of sacred, living light. Morgoth destroys them.
• The First Age: The Silmarils, wrought by Fëanor to capture the Trees’ light, become objects of catastrophic war. Beleriand, an entire continent, is destroyed.
• The Second Age: Númenor, the greatest civilization of Men, rises and falls through the temptation of Sauron. The world is made round, and the Undying Lands are removed from the circles of the world.
• The Third Age: Power wanes. The Elves diminish. The line of Kings in Gondor fails. Sauron is defeated, but the victory is bittersweet: the Elves depart, magic fades, and the world enters the age of Men.

Galadriel articulates this vision: “Through the ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.”

7.3 The Augustinian-Boethian Framework

This vision of history corresponds to the Augustinian understanding of the saeculum – the present age between the Fall and the Last Judgment – as a time of mixture, struggle, and gradual entropy. Augustine’s City of God distinguishes between the City of God (上帝之城) and the City of Man (人间之城): in history, the two are intermingled, and the City of Man tends toward dissolution.

Boethius adds the concept of Fortune’s Wheel (命运之轮): the goods of this world – power, beauty, knowledge – are inherently unstable. Those who place their hope in them will inevitably be disappointed. True happiness (beatitudo) lies beyond the world, in God.

7.4 Providence Within Decline

Yet the Long Defeat is not the whole story. Within the overall decline, providence (天意) operates – subtly, indirectly, but effectively. The destruction of the Ring is a providential act that no one planned or foresaw in its actual form. Bilbo’s finding of the Ring, Frodo’s mercy to Gollum, the “accident” at Mount Doom – all are moments where providence acts through free choices and apparent coincidences.

Gandalf is the primary agent of providence in The Lord of the Rings. As a Maia sent by the Valar, he does not impose solutions but counsels, encourages, and guides. His role is catalytic, not coercive – he respects the free will of those he helps. This is a model of how divine providence operates in Tolkien’s world: not by overriding freedom but by working through it.

7.5 Eucatastrophe and Eschatological Hope

The Long Defeat is bearable because of eucatastrophe – the sudden turn that reveals that defeat is not final. The destruction of the Ring, the fall of Barad-dûr, the crowning of Aragorn – these are eucatastrophes within the story that echo the ultimate eucatastrophe of the Gospel.

Tolkien’s eschatology (末世论) is implied rather than stated: the Ainulindalë hints at a “Second Music of the Ainur” at the end of the world, in which all the themes of the first Music, including Melkor’s discord, will be taken up and harmonized. This corresponds to the Christian hope in the apokatastasis (万物复兴) – the restoration of all things – while maintaining that the present age is one of struggle and loss.

7.6 Beauty in Transience

A distinctive feature of Tolkien’s vision is that decline and loss are not purely negative. The passing of the Elves, the fading of Lothlórien, the end of the Third Age – these are sources of profound beauty precisely because they are transient. Tolkien’s aesthetic is profoundly influenced by the Old English concept of elegiac beauty (挽歌之美) – the beauty of things that are passing away. The Lord of the Rings is, at its heart, an elegy for a world that is departing, and it is this elegiac quality that gives the work its distinctive emotional power.

Chapter 8: The Good Life in Middle-earth: Virtue, Fellowship, and the Shire

8.1 Tolkien and Virtue Ethics

Tolkien’s ethical vision is best understood through the lens of virtue ethics (德性伦理学), the moral tradition that focuses not on rules or consequences but on the formation of good character. This tradition originates with Aristotle (亚里士多德) and was developed by Aquinas into a comprehensive Christian moral philosophy.

Christopher Snyder, in Hobbit Virtues, identifies a rich tapestry of virtues in Tolkien’s characters that draw on classical, Christian, medieval, and even broader philosophical traditions.

8.2 The Cardinal Virtues in Middle-earth

The four cardinal virtues (四枢德), identified by Plato and systematized by Aquinas, are all prominently displayed:

8.2.1 Prudence (Practical Wisdom)

Prudence (prudentia, 明智) – the virtue of right judgment in particular circumstances – is exemplified by Gandalf, who consistently perceives the right course of action and counsels others toward it. It is also displayed by Aragorn’s patient restraint and by Sam’s earthy common sense.

8.2.2 Justice

Justice (iustitia, 正义) – giving to each what is due – is embodied in Aragorn’s kingship. The Return of the King is, among other things, the restoration of just governance. Faramir, who treats his enemies with fairness even in war, also exemplifies this virtue.

8.2.3 Fortitude (Courage)

Fortitude (fortitudo, 勇气) – the virtue of enduring hardship and facing danger for the sake of the good – is perhaps the most celebrated virtue in Tolkien. The hobbits, especially Frodo and Sam, display a courage that is all the more remarkable because they are small, weak, and frightened. Tolkien, drawing on the Anglo-Saxon heroic tradition, presents courage not as fearlessness but as perseverance in the face of fear and apparent hopelessness. This is what he called “Northern courage” – the willingness to fight even when defeat seems certain.

8.2.4 Temperance

Temperance (temperantia, 节制) – moderation in the use of goods – is the distinctive virtue of the hobbits. Their simple pleasures – food, drink, pipe-weed, gardening, storytelling – are enjoyed without excess. The Shire is a community of temperate people whose desires are modest and whose satisfactions are genuine.

8.3 The Theological Virtues

Beyond the cardinal virtues, Tolkien’s characters display the three theological virtues (三超德) identified by Christian tradition:

• Faith (fides, 信德): Trust in Ilúvatar’s providence, even when the outcome is uncertain. Gandalf’s confidence that “there are other forces at work in this world besides the will of evil” is an expression of faith.
• Hope (spes, 望德): The willingness to act for the good even when success seems impossible. Aragorn’s name among the Dúnedain is Estel (“Hope”), and his entire career embodies this virtue.
• Charity/Love (caritas, 爱德): Self-giving love, the greatest of the virtues. Sam’s devotion to Frodo, Frodo’s willingness to bear the Ring for the sake of others, Aragorn’s lifelong service to his people – all exemplify caritas.

8.4 Humility: The Hobbit Virtue

The virtue most distinctively associated with hobbits is humility (humilitas, 谦逊). Tolkien’s most radical ethical claim is that the fate of the world depends not on the great and the powerful but on the small and the humble. The hobbits succeed where Elves, Men, and Wizards would fail, precisely because they do not desire power.

8.5 Fellowship and Friendship

Tolkien’s ethics is deeply communal. The good life is not lived in isolation but in fellowship (团契/友谊). The Fellowship of the Ring is not merely a tactical alliance but a model of the good community – diverse in composition (Elves, Dwarves, Men, hobbits, a Wizard), united in purpose, and bound by mutual loyalty and love.

Aristotle identified three types of friendship: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure, and friendships of virtue (the highest type, based on mutual appreciation of character). The friendship of Frodo and Sam is Aristotle’s friendship of virtue in its purest form: they love each other for who they are, they grow together through adversity, and their bond sustains them through the darkest moments.

The unlikely friendship of Legolas and Gimli – an Elf and a Dwarf, members of races traditionally hostile to each other – demonstrates that fellowship can overcome deep prejudice when grounded in mutual respect and shared purpose.

8.6 The Shire as Ethical Ideal

The Shire (夏尔) is not merely a setting but a philosophical statement about the good life. Its features constitute an ethical vision:

• Agrarian simplicity: The hobbits live close to the land, growing their own food, tending their own gardens. This reflects Tolkien’s conviction that the good life is rooted in the natural world rather than in technological abstraction.
• Community over individualism: The Shire is a community of families, neighborhoods, and local traditions. Individual achievement is less valued than communal harmony.
• Limited government: The Shire has a minimal political structure (a Mayor, Shirriffs, a Thain), and governance is based on custom and consent rather than coercion. This reflects Tolkien’s self-described anarchism – not lawlessness, but the ideal of a community that needs no rulers because its members govern themselves through virtue.
• Festivity and celebration: Parties, feasts, and gift-giving are central to hobbit culture. Tolkien presents joy and celebration as essential components of the good life, not frivolous distractions from it.

Chapter 9: Mortality and Immortality: The Gift of Men

9.1 The Central Theme

Tolkien stated directly that “the real theme” of The Lord of the Rings is “Death and Immortality” (Letters, no. 186). This may surprise readers who focus on the war against Sauron, but Tolkien was insistent: the Ring is fundamentally about the desire to arrest time, to avoid loss, to escape death – and the catastrophe that results from that desire.

9.2 The Two Kindreds

Ilúvatar’s Children are divided into two kindreds with contrasting relationships to death:

9.2.1 Elves: The Immortals

The Elves (Quendi, 精灵) are immortal in the sense that they do not age or die of natural causes. Their spirits (fëar) are bound to Arda for as long as the world endures. If their bodies are destroyed, their spirits go to the Halls of Mandos and may eventually be re-embodied.

But Elvish immortality is not unqualified bliss. It carries distinctive burdens:

• Weariness of the world: As the ages pass, Elves grow weary. The world changes, decays, and becomes less beautiful, but Elves endure to witness every loss.
• Fading: Elves who remain in Middle-earth eventually “fade” – their immortal spirits consume their physical bodies, rendering them ghostly and invisible.
• Bondage to Arda: Elves cannot leave the world. Their fate is bound to its fate. When Arda ends, they end – or are transformed in ways they cannot foresee.

9.2.2 Men: The Mortals

Men (Atani, 人类) are mortal. They age, weaken, and die. Their spirits depart from Arda entirely, going “beyond the circles of the world” to a destination unknown even to the Valar. This departure from the world is called the Gift of Ilúvatar (伊露维塔的礼物).

9.3 Death as Gift: The Philosophical Argument

Tolkien’s treatment of death as a gift is one of his most original and philosophically provocative ideas. Several philosophical traditions converge:

9.3.1 The Thomistic Framework

In Thomistic theology, death entered the world through original sin (peccatum originale), but it is also, in the broader economy of salvation, the gateway to eternal life. Tolkien adapts this framework: in his mythology, death was always part of Ilúvatar’s design for Men – it was their nature from the beginning, not a punishment imposed after a fall. But Morgoth’s influence corrupted Men’s understanding of death, turning it from a gift into a source of terror.

9.3.2 The Existentialist Echo

Tolkien’s treatment of death resonates (perhaps inadvertently) with Heidegger’s concept of Being-toward-death (Sein-zum-Tode, 向死而在). For Heidegger, authentic existence requires confronting one’s mortality rather than fleeing from it. Those who accept death live authentically; those who deny or evade it live in bad faith. The early Kings of Númenor, who accepted death willingly and “gave themselves up to it,” embody this authentic stance. The later Kings, who desperately sought to prolong their lives, embody the inauthentic flight from death.

9.3.3 The Platonic Background

The Platonic tradition, particularly the Phaedo, presents death as the liberation of the soul from the body. Tolkien’s notion that Men’s spirits pass “beyond the circles of the world” echoes this idea, though Tolkien does not share Plato’s depreciation of the body: in his mythology, embodiment is good, and death is not an escape from the body’s evil but a passage to a greater mode of being.

9.4 The Corruption of the Gift: Númenor

The story of Númenor (努门诺尔) is Tolkien’s most sustained meditation on the corruption of the Gift. The Númenoreans are granted long life as a reward for their service in the war against Morgoth, but they remain mortal. As their civilization grows in power and wealth, they begin to resent their mortality. Sauron, posing as a counselor, exploits this resentment, persuading them that the Valar have withheld immortality out of jealousy and that they can seize it by force.

9.5 Aragorn’s Death: The Model of Acceptance

The appendices to The Lord of the Rings recount the death of Aragorn, which serves as the ethical ideal of how to receive the Gift. Aragorn, at the end of a long and fulfilled life, chooses to “give up” his life voluntarily, as the early Kings of Númenor did. He says to Arwen: “In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.”

Arwen, an Elf who chose mortality for love of Aragorn, cannot accept his death with the same equanimity. Having given up her immortality, she experiences death as the Men do – but without the instinctive acceptance that comes from being made mortal by nature. Her grief is a powerful illustration of the difference between the two kindreds.

9.6 The Ring as Anti-Death

The One Ring, in this light, is fundamentally an instrument for the denial of death. It extends the life of its bearer unnaturally (“stretching” life, as Bilbo says, “like butter spread over too much bread”), but it does not grant true immortality – only a ghastly prolongation that parodies Elvish immortality. The Ringwraiths, the Nine Kings of Men who received rings of power, are the ultimate illustration: they have not conquered death but have become living dead, spectral beings with no substance, enslaved to Sauron’s will. Their “immortality” is a hellish caricature of the Gift they rejected.

Chapter 10: Tolkien and Modernity

10.1 Tolkien’s Complex Relationship with Modernism

The final unit of the course asks whether Tolkien should be considered a modernist (现代主义者). The answer is neither simply yes nor simply no. Tolkien’s relationship to modernity is complex, and understanding it requires distinguishing between modernism as a literary movement and modernity as a cultural and philosophical condition.

10.2 Tolkien Against Modernism

In important respects, Tolkien was profoundly anti-modernist (反现代主义的):

10.2.1 Literary Anti-Modernism

Tolkien rejected the dominant literary aesthetics of his time. While T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Ezra Pound were developing fragmented, allusive, ironic, and self-conscious narrative techniques, Tolkien wrote in a mode that was, by the standards of the literary establishment, defiantly archaic: epic narrative, clear moral distinctions, heroic characters, and a mythic worldview. He had little patience for what he saw as the sterility and spiritual emptiness of modernist literature.

10.2.2 Philosophical Anti-Modernism

More fundamentally, Tolkien rejected the philosophical presuppositions of modernity:

• Scientific naturalism (科学自然主义): the view that reality is exhausted by what the natural sciences can describe. For Tolkien, the world is enchanted – it contains dimensions of meaning, beauty, and moral significance that cannot be captured by physics or biology.
• Progressivism (进步主义): the belief that history is a story of improvement. Tolkien’s philosophy of history (the Long Defeat) directly contradicts this.
• Individualism (个人主义): the exaltation of the autonomous self. Tolkien’s ethics is communal, rooted in fellowship, tradition, and obligation.
• Instrumentalism (工具主义): the view that nature exists to be exploited for human purposes. Tolkien’s reverence for trees, rivers, mountains, and stars reflects a sacramental vision of nature as intrinsically valuable.

10.2.3 Critique of Technology and Industrialization

Tolkien’s critique of technology (技术) and industrialization (工业化) is one of the most explicit philosophical commitments in his fiction. In his letters, he refers to the “tragedy and despair” of modern reliance on technology. In his fiction, the association of evil with machinery is systematic:

• Morgoth introduces industrial processes – mining, smelting, breeding creatures for war – into a world of natural beauty.
• Saruman transforms Isengard into a factory, tears down trees, and pollutes the river. He is explicitly described as having “a mind of metal and wheels.”
• Sauron’s Mordor is an industrial wasteland: a land of ash, slag, and poisoned air.
• The Scouring of the Shire shows industrialization destroying an agrarian community.

10.3 Tolkien as Modernist?

Yet scholars have identified ways in which Tolkien does participate in the modernist project:

10.3.1 Mythic Method

T.S. Eliot praised Joyce’s use of myth in Ulysses as the “mythical method” – using ancient mythic structures to give shape and significance to modern experience. Tolkien employs a version of this method, albeit in reverse: rather than using myth to frame modern life, he creates an original mythology that addresses modern concerns (war, technology, alienation, loss of meaning) indirectly.

10.3.2 Linguistic Innovation

Like Joyce, Tolkien was a radical linguistic experimenter – inventing entire languages (Quenya, Sindarin, Khuzdul) with their own phonology, grammar, and historical development. This is a form of modernist linguistic self-consciousness, even if its purpose (mythopoeia rather than irony) differs from mainstream modernism.

10.3.3 Response to Total War

The Lord of the Rings is, among other things, a response to the experience of total war in the twentieth century – a quintessentially modernist concern. The Dead Marshes recall the Somme; the industrialized evil of Mordor echoes the mechanized slaughter of the World Wars. Tolkien’s fiction engages with the central trauma of modernity even as it refuses modernism’s typical aesthetic responses to that trauma.

10.4 Beyond the Modern/Anti-Modern Binary

Perhaps the most accurate characterization of Tolkien’s relationship to modernity is that he is pre-modern in conviction but post-modern in effect. His Thomistic-Catholic philosophy is pre-modern, rooted in the medieval synthesis of faith and reason. But his mythopoeia – the creation of an alternative world that challenges the assumptions of the present one – has a critical, defamiliarizing function that anticipates certain postmodern strategies.

Tolkien’s achievement is to demonstrate that the philosophical resources of the pre-modern tradition – Thomistic metaphysics, Augustinian theology, Boethian philosophy of history, Aristotelian virtue ethics – are not exhausted or outdated but remain capable of addressing the deepest questions of the human condition, including questions posed with special urgency by the modern world.

These notes synthesize the philosophical content of PHIL 207J as taught at the University of Waterloo. Tolkien’s fiction, read philosophically, reveals a coherent worldview grounded in the Thomistic-Catholic tradition but expressed through the medium of myth. The course invites students to engage with perennial philosophical questions – the existence of God, the nature of evil, the meaning of death, the components of the good life – through the lens of one of the twentieth century’s most philosophically rich bodies of fiction.