Last year, after reading Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians by Alison Milbank (Bloomsbury, 2009; I read the Spanish translation titled La teología de Chesterton y Tolkien, Granada: Editorial Nuevo Inicio, 2022), I fell into the rabbit hole of devouring every Lord of the Rings content I can find: books, movies, video analyses in YouTube, commentaries, etc.–I even installed a LOTR inspired walk tracker app on my phone–. Before it, I’ve always feared approaching Tolkien’s work not out of derision but because of the feeling of unworthiness that maybe I will not be able to fathom such large work.
Anyways, a year on after starting my journey through Middle Earth and its lore, I recently stumbled upon an interesting book by a Spanish philosophy teacher, Ernesto Martín Reche, entitled Las fronteras de lo humano. La antropología de C.S. Lewis y J.R.R. Tolkien (Madrid: Ápeiron Ediciones, 2024). Sadly it is currently unavailable in English but the rough translation of the title will be: The Frontiers of the Human. The Anthropology of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. It is a small work of some 107 pages so it is easy to read and I find it so interesting that I would like to share it with you in this blog post and reflect upon it.
Monsters and the non-human: the frontiers of humanity
The thesis of Reche in his book is simple: we need the non-human to define the human. A sort of negative anthropology, if you would. These non-human beings mark the frontiers of what makes man man and each generation creates these beings thus also marking the frontiers of what is human. Reche simply calls them “monstruos” or monsters in English although the term includes that which we may normally consider an “ally” of humanity like elves and dwarves alongside its enemies like orcs and goblins.
These monsters represent that which man either desires (e.g., the immortality of the elven race) or fears (e.g., the brutality of the orcs) thus making them frontiers of that which is human either above it or under it and marking what clearly is beyond man. In between these exist non-human creatures that are very closely related to humans such as the savage man of the Middle Ages or Frankenstein’s monster of the industrial era but what separates them from man is that the former lives “outside of the polis”–outside civilization–while the latter reeks of artificiality and man’s desire to control life itself.
In all myths and narrative, these non-human creatures stand as a counterpoint to the hero (usually human) and as such can be read as that which delimits the definition of humanity.
The importance of myths and legends
Both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien has written extensively about the importance of fantasy. For the modern reader already learned in the scientistic prejudices of our age, fantasy seems to be for children and there is a desire to “demythologize” everything as if myth is something dirty. This was certainly true during the 19th and 20th centuries and even now: historians were busy “fact-checking” older historians, liberal theologians went crazy to “demythologize” Christ, philosophers began doubting that which is beyond language, etc. But Lewis and Tolkien would argue otherwise: they see in this scientistic view of the world an impoverishment of the Truth rather than its discovery.
Myths and legends are important to the human spirit because it transcends time and culture and even its literary form. C.S. Lewis argues that a myth is something that one can appreciate regardless of how it was told, regardless of the form (i.e. prose or poetry), because what matters is that it contains something timeless. Reche sums it up beautifully: “To talk about the meaning of the universe through a narrative that need not have occurred but still gives answers to the questions that populates the world” (p.23) that is the power of myths and legends.
Fantasy creates images from the real world. Giambattista Vico affirms that fantasy is a trustworthy faculty because whilst we use it we picture to ourselves the images of things. In this regard, Vico puts fantasy in the same level as intellect or memory and so fantasy like these two have a representative function creating representations from the real world. And if so, then fantastic creatures like ogres and dragons are, in a way, representations of our own reality. As such, contrary to popular belief, to create fantasy and to retell the story of man’s reality through myth is not “anti-scientific” and “anti-reason”. Tolkien would even argue that the sharper and clearer reason is the better fantasies it can create. Fantasy, after all, is just another way of discovering and studying the world, a way to understand it and give meaning to the universe that surrounds us. Narrative, as Gadamer would have it, is infinite and open, whose creative value shows forth its interpretative function (Ricouer).
This is not to say that what matters more is to identify myself with a character of the myth. In fact, Lewis will argue that it matters the least or that it’s better not to identify myself with a character because by doing so I run the risk of losing the point that myth speaks of thing impossible or supernatural precisely because it is about transcendence and in front of the transcendental, the reader is asked to show reverence. In this reverential attitude,what matters is to read between the lines, to see in the story and its characters a serious thing that goes beyond me and my generation, that which concerns all of humanity.
A very good example of this is Tolkien’s lore. The good Oxford professor will cringe when someone says that his lore is an “allegory”. However, Tolkien is very clear that the whole literary universe he created in the LOTR, the Silmarillion, and the whole history of Middle Earth from Eru Ilúvatar to the dawn of the age of men as the One Ring was destroyed on Mount Doom on March 25th and the later migration of the elves to their true home is filled with christian elements, it is catholic theology in its core.
Magic and science
Magic is a good example of these transcendent things in Tolkien’s lore. What appears to men as elves’ magic is for the elves just a natural thing, as natural as breathing. It is their way of life, a communion with nature, with creation (after all, the elves revere the one true creator God, Eru Ilúvatar). On the other hand, “magic” as it is practiced by Sauron, the Dark Lord, himself a Valar (an angel, if you would like a christian terminology) is a corruption of nature, a thirst for control over life. The most sinister product of this perversion is the creation of the orcs by Melkor, Sauron’s old master and the original Dark One, and the later “improvement” of Saruman the White. Melkor “created” the orcs by kidnapping elves, torturing them for millennia until the goodness in them exhausted and thus perverting Eru’s creation (Melkor, though he was a Valar can never create, only Eru Ilúvatar can create). Saruman the White, originally sent to Middle Earth together with the other istaris like Gandalf the Grey (or in the language of men: the Order of the Five Wizards) to help men against the forces of Sauron, in his pursuit of knowledge of the One Ring and power in general, “improved” upon Melkor’s orcs by making the “Uruk-hai”, an abomination of the fusing of orcs with men so that the product will have the brutality of the orcs and the intelligence of man and his resistance to sunlight.
Magic therefore is techné, it is technology, science in human terms. It is in itself neither good nor bad. It is just an extension of one’s arm as it is just like breathing for the elves. Ready-at-hand as Heidegger would have it. However, one can look at it from afar, contemplate its being (being-at-hand) and decide what to do with it. The forces of darkness of course used the very same techné to fulfill the desire to control and thus perverted creation.
This brings us to modern technological advancements: cloning, stem cell therapy, etc. What is the limit of progress? Where do we draw the line between technological advancement to improve human life (like the pacemaker, for example) and the thirst to progress for the sake of progress like cloning and the dream for some to “transcend” humanity by replacing it in the future by androids and artificial intelligence (what some say the next evolution of man)?
How do we understand ourselves
Each generation creates its own “monsters”. The ancients had dragons and vampires. The Medieval man had the “savage man”. The industrial era had Frankenstein’s monster. And up until recently we had androids and clones which may have already “evolved” to AI. These non-humans mark the territory of what makes man man: the ancients are aware of man finitude and limits; the medieval age considers human someone who is inside the polis, inside a culture and lives with others; the industrial age warned of man’s attempt to control life itself and maybe the modern age follows this as it warns of man’s desire to control man himself and his limits.
However, the message that these non-human cannot be deciphered by any generation if there is no myth, no legend, no narration. It is by telling a story that man becomes aware of his place and the existence of these limiting creatures. It is by being aware of these stories that man begins to think: from narration, the logos, to its contemplation (philosophy).
We used to have good stories whether written or in movies. Harry Potter, for example, explores the same themes and the danger of having someone obsessed with racial purity in power poses to the world. Films like Her or Deus ex Machina made us rethink our desire to “go beyond” the human. However, as neoliberal capitalism has taken hold of culture, what we have now is a bunch of rehashed stories, IP’s that are milked to the last iota just to generate profit, and, worse of all, stories that are no longer stories but a vehicle to prosper a certain political propaganda, a certain “culture” for the “progress” of society.
We need more stories, more myth to speak of things transcendental, to let man see what he is not so that he can see what he truly is.
