The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy

by Gregory Bassham

  All You Need Is Love

  One lesson of Tolkien’s saga is clear: For ordinary people like you or me, happiness is achievable only in a social context and its key is love. And love expresses itself in loyalty and sharing, not in possession. Departing from the rule that love prescribes for us leads to misery.

  For humans as well as for hobbits, happiness requires fellowship with others, and it is in love for others that we can maintain our course toward it and achieve it. It is by forgetting ourselves that we earn the good life and it is by giving that we receive. This is the old truth illustrated by the lives of Sam and Gollum.3

  _____________________

  1 Nichomachean Ethics, translated by W. D. Ross, in Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941), p. 937, 1095a17–20.

  2 Nicomachean Ethics, p. 1081, 1166a1–2

  3 I am indebted to Leticia Gracia for an important suggestion concerning the key to happiness in Gollum and Sam.

  6

  “Farewell to Lórien”: The Bounded Joy of Existentialists and Elves

  ERIC BRONSON

  It could be that country crooner Kenny Rogers got it right. When it really comes down to enjoying this life, “you got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.” It seems like sound advice (it rhymes, after all), but let’s not give the old Gambler too much credit. On that train bound for nowhere, the Gambler left something important out. Exactly how should we play the game, and where can we find the strength to walk away?

  Poker players aren’t the only ones who have to decide when to call and when to cash in. Over a century ago, existentialist philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that lasting happiness requires a delicate balance of holding on to one’s past, while knowing when to strike out on one’s own. Above all, “knowing when to walk away and knowing when to run” (Grammy award winning Don Schlitz wrote the words) demands spontaneous creativity amidst a changing world of longing and hope. According to many European philosophers, the man or woman of strength must learn to develop and trust that inner voice. Sticking through the bad times and cutting the cords altogether both take great courage, and in such decisions we affirm our identity.

  Less than forty years after Nietzsche’s death, J.R.R. Tolkien began writing The Lord of the Rings. In 1939, as Europe braced for the worst, Tolkien completed the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring, emphasizing how terrible riders in black could terrorize even the peaceful oasis of Frodo’s beloved Shire. The Ringwraiths of Middle-earth added a touch of evil not present in Tolkien’s previous novel, The Hobbit. In The Fellowship, the Black Riders are messengers of a greater evil brewing in Mordor. When asked about the first eleven chapters, ending with Frodo being stabbed by a Morgul-knife, Tolkien privately confessed, “The darkness of the present days has had some effect on it” (L, p. 41).

  However, within the parallel perils of Europe in the twentieth century and Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age, Tolkien elegantly writes of safe havens where even in the darkest times, songs of love are sung under starlit skies. Nestled in the perfumed mountains of Rivendell and the ancients forests of Lórien, many of the elves of old know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em. It’s a gamble that brings lasting joy to them and everyone they touch. Let’s examine Tolkien’s elves a little closer. In their fictional world, we too may find an ace that we can keep.

  Rivendell and Lórien

  It is not unexpected that Frodo should be healed (though never cured) and reunited with Gandalf and Bilbo at the House of Elrond in Rivendell. Readers of The Hobbit already are familiar with the charms of The Last Homely House, the westernmost outpost of the elves. “That house was, as Bilbo had long ago reported, ‘a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all.’ Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear, and sadness” (FR, p. 252). In Rivendell the Nine Riders of the enemy are turned back, Isildur’s sword is re-forged and given to Aragorn, and the Fellowship of men, dwarves, hobbits and elves is formed. Despite, or because of such hard work, there is joyous singing, day and night.

  The elves of Rivendell are famous for their singing. Even old Bilbo is tempted to compose a few verses while living there (though he admits he might be somewhat out of line). A good song is addicting, as anyone who has belted a few notes in the shower knows all too well. When the younger Bilbo set out on his adventure to slay an evil dragon and steal the gold, the bickering dwarves that made up most of the company met elves headed for Rivendell. Their singing captivated everyone, including the reader. As Tolkien writes, “Elvish singing is not a thing to miss, in June under the stars, not if you care for such things” (H, p. 50). And who wouldn’t?

  In the Christian story of creation, the New Testament tells us that in the beginning, there was the Word. In Tolkien’s spin, we are told that in the beginning, there was the Song. Before writing even The Hobbit, Tolkien laid out the origins of Middle-earth and how the happy elves found a home there. Though The Silmarillion was first published in 1977, four years after Tolkien’s death, it contains the history behind Middle-earth that Tolkien had been working on for much of his adult life. As it begins, the creator of the world, Ilúvatar, made the Ainur, or Holy Ones, and gave to them the power of song. The voices of the Ainur, like innumerable choirs and musical instruments,

  began to fashion the theme of Ilúvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights, and the places of the dwelling of Ilúvatar were filled to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void. (S, p. 15)

  Both elves and men (Quendi and Atani) were created as important players of the world’s symphony. But though the race of men will do great things, Ilúvatar proclaims it is the elves who “shall be the fairest of all earthly creatures, and they shall have and shall conceive and bring forth more beauty than all my Children; and they shall have the greater bliss in this world” (S, p. 41). In the early days, there was a great friendship between men and the elves along with the occasional mixed marriage between races. Elrond, master of Rivendell, is born with mixed blood, courageous in battle with a gift for song; he has the strength of men with little of their weakness. It was he who pleaded with Isildur to cast the Ring back into Mount Doom, and later appoints Frodo to finish the job that men and elves could not.

  Tolkien’s Middle-earth, however, is filled with many dangers, and after the newly-formed Fellowship leaves the comforts of Rivendell, the participants are beset by snowstorms high atop Caradhras, and orcs within the Mines of Moria. Before they escape the Mines, the members of the Fellowship suffer their greatest loss, as their guardian wizard and mentor Gandalf falls into darkness at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm. But just when all seems lost for the weary band of travelers, they reach Lórien, a magical forest where elves live and sing in the treetops. Like Rivendell, Lórien is a place for spirits to rise. Even Frodo has difficulty grieving for Gandalf while he rests amidst such beauty. “The others cast themselves down upon the fragrant grass, but Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder . . . No blemish of sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lórien there was no stain” (FR, p. 393).

  As Elrond is master of Rivendell, Lórien is ruled by Lord Celeborn and Lady Galadriel. “Very tall they were, and the Lady no less tall than the Lord; and they were grave and beautiful” (FR, p. 398). But Tolkien also informs us that even though Celeborn and Galadriel are the same height, it is clearly the Lady who wields the greater power within the elvish kingdom in the trees. It is Galadriel who wears one of the elvish Rings of Power, and it is she who has seen the evil eye of Sauron long before Frodo first peers into her mirror.

  In the New Line Cinema movies, Galadriel is played by Cate Blanchett as a beautiful spirit who walks lightly and speaks as though from another world. Tolkien, th
ough, describes Galadriel as a worldly elf, older and more powerful than Elrond, a woman wiser and sadder than all the others. In Galadriel, we see that there is more to the elves than love songs and happy nights. Unlike Elrond, Galadriel was born in an age when elves were happy and innocent, dwelling in the land of the gods. But The Silmarillion tells of trouble brewing between the gods, and it is Galadriel’s half-uncle, Fëanor, who takes it upon himself to right the wrongs and fight the growing evil. These Noldor elves rebel against the gods and leave their garden of paradise to take up arms against the forces of darkness. A young Galadriel stands beside Fëanor as he commands his elvish troops: “‘Fair shall the end be’, he cried, ‘though long and hard shall be the road! Say farewell to bondage! But say farewell also to ease!’” (S, p. 83) Though Galadriel does not take the terrible oath of her rebellious kinsmen, she is condemned along with the others as traitors to the gods who protected them. Upon parting, the gods curse their once beloved elves: “The Dispossessed shall they be forever” (S, p. 88).

  And so Frodo first meets Galadriel in Lórien, a kingdom named after a more beautiful place where the Noldor once lived among the gods. This concept of lost beauty and dispossession is a major theme in The Lord of the Rings. At the end of the Third Age, much that is good of the old world will fall away and nobody is more sure of this inevitability than Galadriel, herself a wanderer in a foreign land, the keeper of all that is beautiful in a world of danger and ugliness. In Rivendell, Elrond is also aware of the coming end, but Tolkien notes how the elves of Lórien suffer more acutely. Frodo observes this change as he walks through the forest. It seems to him as if he has stepped back into the Elder Days:

  In Rivendell there was memory of ancient things; in Lórien the ancient things still lived on in the waking world. Evil had been seen and heard there, sorrow had been known; the Elves feared and distrusted the world outside: wolves were howling on the wood’s borders: but on the land of Lórien no shadow lay. (FR, p. 392)

  Galadriel presides over Lórien with songs of joy, and that is why the Fellowship takes such comfort in its beauty. But it is a happiness born of sorrow and dispossession, and that is why Tolkien can be placed in a wider tradition of European philosophers who still affirm life, while bearing witness to the passing shadows.

  The Sometimes Merry Existentialists

  Far away from Middle-earth, in a place disappointingly devoid of elves who whistle while they work, Tolkien’s intellectual contemporaries were preparing for their own dark times. Like Elrond and Galadriel, European philosophers at the turn of the twentieth century also contemplated the end of a golden age. European power, which influenced, if it did not control, the far reaches of the globe, was suddenly hanging in the balance. Grandiose words, such as “renaissance” and “enlightenment,” that had characterized Europe in its glory were swiftly becoming a distant memory. By the end of World War I, it didn’t take a wizard to see that times were changing. In the charred soil of two world wars a school of philosophy called existentialism began to grow and flourish. Without the aid of Galadriel’s mirror, existentialist philosophers foresaw the coming of dangerous times, but insisted that one could still sing in the mountains, sleep in the forests, and create real beauty in a chaotic world.

  Rightly or wrongly, existentialists are typecast as a rather dour bunch of philosophers who preach only pain and suffering. A glance at some of the more famous book titles supports this stereotype. We have The Concept of Dread and The Sickness unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard, Nausea and Troubled Sleep by Jean-Paul Sartre, and The Plague by Albert Camus, all depicting the human condition in less than joyful terms. But there are also other strains of existentialism that aren’t infected by the sour-puss bug. Philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Jaspers, and Hannah Arendt agree that life carries with it a certain despair, but alongside the suffering stands a spontaneous affirmation of life as it is, though danger lurks behind every tree.

  By the late nineteenth century, many European philosophers were predicting the end of the European empire. In Germany, Nietzsche privately worried about the coming cruelty. In his notebook, he writes, “For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently. . . .”1 Beside this catastrophe stood the average person, ill equipped to combat it. As Nietzsche again writes, “What is inherited is not the sickness but sickliness: the lack of strength to resist the danger of infections, etc., the broken resistance; morally speaking, resignation and meekness in face of the enemy.”2

  Even in such dark times, however, Nietzsche promises hope. The artist who is strong, who has power, can proclaim joy at just the time when none is evident. Such artists, he argues, “should see nothing as it is, but fuller, simpler, stronger: to that end, their lives must contain a kind of youth and spring, a kind of habitual intoxication.”3 An artist looks at the pain of this world and does more than reproduce our world. She adds to it, enriches it, enlivens it, or in the words of English historian Kenneth Clark, “perfects it.” For Nietzsche, the artist can only exist in times of crises. It is the darkness that he lights. First, one must be a nihilist, finding hypocrisy and futility in life’s most sacred projects. All must end in nothingness, after everything is said and done. The true person of power understands this terrible truth and is not crushed; on the contrary, he is empowered. As Nietzsche’s Zarathustra affirms, “I carry the blessings of my Yes into all abysses . . . and blessed is he who blesses thus.”4

  Of course, it is not so easy to carry our yeses into all abysses. Even fair Legolas has his quiet moments of self-doubt. Getting through the difficult times takes more than simple yeses. As Nietzsche explains, the man or woman of power needs to learn how to forget experiences that bring pain. Too long do we cling to our past. “But in the smallest and in the greatest happiness, there is always one element which makes it happiness: the power to forget . . .”5 By carefully forgetting yesterday, one learns to live spontaneously, even happily. Too bad human beings aren’t more like computers that can have the past turned on and off, deleting damaged files forever by the casual push of a button. We are born with a history and shaped with experiences. Forgetting the past wholeheartedly is forgetting who we are entirely. Nietzsche doesn’t argue for total amnesia, but for a more disciplined remembering of who we are without being slaves to our past. When history reminds us of our own greatness, it is valuable. Such a history “is relevant to the one who preserves and venerates the past, who looks back with love and loyalty to his origins, where he became what he is.”6 Remember that which made you who you are, remember that which makes you unique, and forget everything else that makes you tired, scared, and weak. As Nietzsche argues, none of us are bound to our past, though it’s a good place to look for a source of courage and pride.

  Through today’s news media, we are inundated with the present and the future, often at the expense of the past. We look to the world of machines to help us escape from the past and lose ourselves in the present. And yet this aspect of industrialization both attracts and repels us. Feel-good movies like E.T. and You’ve Got Mail show us how modern technology can bring us closer together, while science-fiction movies like The Terminator and The Matrix remind us of the growing threat that comes with new machines.

  Philosopher Karl Jaspers, a Nietzsche scholar and contemporary of Tolkien, worried that a blind obsession with machines would alienate us from our past; it would prevent us from remembering who we really are. Certainly it is counterproductive to stand in the way of progress, Jaspers admits, “but when the very dwelling-place was machine made, when the environment had become despiritualized . . . then man was, as it were, bereft of his world.”7 Jaspers argues that we are forgetting the wrong things. We are forgetting what makes us human, our critical thinking and our individuality. We are forgetting our love for life. Jaspers asks us, “Have we not long forgotten what it is for man to be himself, to think and live freely, and realize himself in
his world?”8 We should remember our spontaneity and forget the efficient, unthinking orcs who blindly destroy what is most natural, having lost all ability to critically examine their actions.

  Jaspers’s star student, Hannah Arendt, escaped Nazi Germany and certain death for the crime of being Jewish. Looking back on the Holocaust that had stripped her of all she held dear, Arendt angrily accuses leading Nazi officials like Adolf Eichmann of forgetting his rage, his compassion, and his overall humanity. He loses himself in the technologically advanced German bureaucracy and takes to following orders rather than questioning them. Where was the Nietzschean man of power to see the abyss and affirm life? As Arendt laments in a letter to Jaspers, “Everything does depend on a few. We have all seen in these years how the few constantly became fewer still.”9 But there are that few who still create joy for themselves and others, in spite or because of the serious dangers that surround them on all sides. Arendt herself reflects on these few in a book appropriately titled, Men in Dark Times. Arendt and Jaspers appear to agree with Nietzsche’s guide to happiness. There is much about the past that we would do well to forget, but there is also a history that can give us courage to face even the darkest day. Knowing what to remember and what to forget is the key to living a meaningful and happy life.

  The Return of the Sing

  Tolkien, like many existentialist philosophers before him, believes that meaningful happiness does not come from ignoring the dangers but from facing the pain and still affirming life. As we read Tolkien’s famous essay on the author of “Beowulf,” we get the distinct impression that Tolkien might be speaking of himself. He discusses the artistic impulse, “looking back into the pit, by a man learned in old tales who was struggling as it were, to get a general view of them all, perceiving their common tragedy of inevitable ruin, and yet feeling this more poetically because he was himself removed from the direct pressure of its despair.”10