Virtue, EIIR and Tolkien

Two very different events this past month have led me to reflect on the continuing relevance of moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s prophetic work After Virtue (Duckworth, 1981).

MacIntyre explains how the West has moved from a culture based around the practice of virtues, to one in which moral judgments are merely expressions of personal feelings and attitudes, often used to produce similar feelings in others. Nowhere has this change been more demonstrated than in the death of her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

As the Queen’s 96-year life was reviewed on TV and in print, what became abundantly clear is that she was a woman of virtue. The virtues, as MacIntyre defines them, are those dispositions which enable us to overcome the harms, dangers, temptations and distractions we encounter, and flourish in our understanding and practice of what is truly good. The path of virtue is not just about reaching a goal but about how we live moment-by-moment in a broken world.

The ancient Greek philosophers had four chief virtues – wisdom, self-control, friendship and courage – to which the early theologians added the unique Christian virtues of faith, hope and love. The outpouring of affection for the Queen on her death was because we recognised that she embodied these virtues in her steadfast service of country and Commonwealth. She did not try to be queen of people’s hearts but rather to practice daily these virtues, come what may, for the good of those whom God had given into her charge. In her passing we have not just lost a sovereign of 70 years but also witnessed, what cultural commentator Paul Kingsnorth called, ‘the last post for Christian England’ (https://paulkingsnorth. substack.com/p/intermission-last-post-for-christian). For the Queen’s vision of the good life was one primarily informed by her faith in the resurrected and reigning Christ who incarnated the life of virtue. Elizabeth symbolised something our current age, with its pragmatic politics, reality TV shows and celebrity culture, has long stopped believing in but deep down still longs for.

Rings of Power

Which leads me to a second event this past month, the launch of Season 1 of Amazon’s long-awaited Lord of the Rings spin-off, Rings of Power. Like all Tolkien fans, I felt a certain anxiety around something which might play fast and loose with so precious a part of my imaginative heritage. Having paid $250 million for the film rights to what is essentially the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, in which Tolkien did little more than sketch out the Second Age of Middle-earth, Amazon has spent $465 million on Season 1 alone, with a further four to follow. Six episodes in, I am still trying to work out what I think of it.

It’s easy to see where the millions of dollars went. Series creators J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay have immersed us in a very effectively CGI re-created Middle-Earth. They have chosen relatively unknown but engaging actors to carry the main roles, like Morfydd Clark (Galadriel) and Robert Aramayo (Elrond), both of whom I am warming to, even if I wish Amazon had spent a little more of their budget on better scriptwriting. There are a few scenes that have made me turn away in pain (did anyone else find Galadriel’s approach to the Undying Lands a little creepy, as if she was joining a weird cult of light?), but I have also largely enjoyed seeing Tolkien’s vision for places like Khazad-dûm and the Isle of Numenor brought to life. So far it has been an enjoyable fantasy series, thankfully without the sexually explicit scenes of comparable TV series such as Game of Thrones, although the latest episode has taken a darker and more gory turn. I am certainly interested enough in the storylines to keep watching. Nonetheless, I have had an uncomfortable feeling that something is missing.

In After Virtue, MacIntyre identifies 19th-century author Jane Austen, whose heroines sought in their future husbands that most rare of virtues, constancy, as the last writer of virtue. But I think he was wrong because in The Lord of the Rings the virtue tradition was reborn. What shines through Tolkien’s tales of Middle-earth, and what unconsciously attracted me to his stories in a way that few other fantasy novels have ever done, is that they are stories of the triumph of simple ‘hobbit-like’ virtues over the malignancy of evil. In the end, it is not magical powers or super-human strengths that get the ring to Mount Doom, but Samwise and Frodo’s dogged pursuit of friendship, courage and hope. Despite including no references to religious practices, Tolkien saw The Lord of the Rings as fundamentally a Christian story.

It is my suspicion that this world of virtue is what is missing from the Amazon series. Rings of Power is set in Middle-earth, it has hobbits, elves and men, but the characters seem more like postmodern spin-offs of Tolkien’s creations, much as some of the younger royals are in relation to Queen Elizabeth’s moral world. When in Episode 1, a child Galadriel asks her older brother how she will know which light to follow, he replies: ‘Sometimes we cannot know until we have touched the darkness.’ That sounds more Star Wars ying-yang than Tolkien’s moral vision. I may be wrong, and I am going to keep watching, but my assessment so far: Rings of Power is Middle-earth, but I’m not sure it is Tolkien.