Book Review: The Philosophy of Tolkien by Peter Kreeft

This book came very highly reviewed to me, though the story behind said review is so complicated that it shall not see the light of day unless an altogether overwhelming desire is expressed by my vast reading public. Since I had previously read a very well written article on Tolkien by Peter Kreeft in The Chesterton Review, some years before, I highly anticipated The Philosophy of Tolkien's release. So much did I anticipate it, in fact, that I ordered it from Amazon before I had a chance to look through it at library or bookstore. This haste was grossly misplaced.

I see little to no redeeming value in Kreeft's thankfully slim yet seeming all too long volume. Like most of Kreeft's work, he gets most of the big questions right but in a thorougly useless way. A sample section in The Philosophy of Tolkien is "Is Humility Humiliating?" He then goes on to explain how it's actually not humiliating and how Tolkien's take on the subject is in fact in line with the teaching of the Catholic Church. That Tolkien's take on morality meshes with Catholic moral teaching is no real surprise since Tolkien was an extremely devout Catholic; however, that Tolkien's Catholic sensibility shines through almost every page of The Lord of the Rings in no way proves the truth of the Catholic position--something Kreeft seems to assume. Obvious conclusions written in stale prose is not exactly a remedy for success. The only real use of Kreeft's book is to prove to a particularly obtuse person who contiues to insist, even after repeated blows to the head with Tolkien's entire corpus, that there is no Christian, specifically Catholic, message in The Lord of the Rings.

The two best books on Tolkien remain J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century and The Road to Middle-Earth, both by Tom Shippey. Since Shippey rather neglects the spiritual side of Tolkien's works, we must turn elsewhere. Until my own mammoth and conclusive volume is published, the article by Stratford Caldecott in Tolkien: A Celebration is probably your best bet.