Tolkien and Philosophy ed. by Roberto Arduini, Claudio A. Testi (review)

In the 32nd volume of the Cormarë Series, Walking Tree Publishers offers a series of academically focused papers exploring the relationship between Tolkien’s creative thought, his work, and his philosophy. The five papers in this brief but cogent volume originated, in part, as presentations given at the Congress on Tolkien and Philosophy, held in Modena, Italy, in May 2010, and organized jointly by the Instituto Filosofico di Studi Tomistici and the Associazione Romana di Studi Tolkieniani.

The editors, Roberto Arduini and Claudio A. Testi, set the overall tone of the volume in their introduction (9–20), by citing various bibliographies of scholarship on Tolkien to demonstrate that, while there has certainly been engagement and exploration around key philosophical themes in Tolkien’s work (e.g., power, evil, death and deathlessness, etc.), there has been considerably less scholarship offered on Tolkien’s own philosophical thinking and the specific influence of philosophic schools and philosophers on his creative thought. Arduini and Testi support this assertion with a helpful chart of 62 examples of Tolkienian research up to 2012. This starts with a 1956 article called “Escathology” (sic) by the elusive “H.M.Y.,” published in The Student Movement ¹ and ending with the 2012 Jackson-film-inspired publication The Hobbit and Philosophy, edited by Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson.

The first paper, “Tolkien between Philosophy and Philology” (which takes up a third of this volume by itself), captures an interesting discussion and debate between the Italian Tolkien scholar Franco Manni and Tom Shippey (21–71). The reproduction of this exchange captures the cut and thrust of Manni’s Socratic questioning of Shippey regarding Tolkien and philosophy. The responses given to each of Manni’s questions reflect Shippey’s own considerable specialist knowledge of Tolkien, comparative philology, and the history of philosophic thought. Both the macro debate and micro details that come from the dialogue, including follow-up information in the important footnotes, offer much for the student and scholar to explore. Shippey demonstrates that Tolkien’s lack of overt mention of philosophy and philosophers derives from his training as a philologist and especially as a comparative philologist. Shippey makes the key point that while philosophy tends to focus on the bigger issues and themes of life, the universe, and everything, philological investigation tends to examine details and specifics. He proves this point with a tour de force demonstration of the highly detailed philological process that connects the Italian word cinque with the English word five (24). Shippey sums up the difference in thought and approach between philosophers and philologists masterfully with the core statement of this debate: “Philosophers are the generalizers, the ones with the telescope. Philologists are the scrutinizers, the ones with the microscope” (23–24). He also makes an important second point that many of the key themes that philosophy explores were personal for Tolkien. In many instances, Tolkien chose to explore his own thoughts on these themes through his own subcreative work, rather than through the authority of what particular philosophers said on these matters.

In response to Manni’s question on specific philosophers who influenced Tolkien, Shippey suggest three examples. The first two are Plato and Boethius, and Shippey offers a good review of several key themes that each of them explored and that are reflected in the metaphysics of Tolkien’s legendarium. I found the third philosopher whom Shippey suggests to be the most interesting: Tolkien’s fellow Oxford professor Robin Collingwood, a contemporary of Tolkien’s who also wrote on history and fairy tales. Shippey makes the point that Collingwood and Tolkien were at Pembroke College together and would certainly have discussed their work in the Pembroke Common Room. However, despite this close professional connection, there has not been much substantial academic scholarship offered on this relationship or Collingwood’s influence on Tolkien. (As always, Shippey offers the welcome and helpful suggestions of more research to be done by...