"Ainulindalë: Tolkien, St. Thomas and the Metaphysics of the Music" Jonathan McIntosh

[Bêthberry]

Jonathan McIntosh’s article is, to me, one of the most fascinating articles in Music in Middle-earth because it challenges the common critical idea that Tolkien’s creation is a story of “the long defeat”. Very intriguing indeed!

McIntosh begins by examining several prominent critical studies which have argued that the Music displays a falling away from the ideal or perfection. Among such studies are those of critics many Downers will be familiar with: Brad Birzer, Howard Cox, Bradford Lee Eden, David Grubbs, and Verlyn Flieger, to name but a few.

These studies, McIntosh argues, are limited by their focus solely on the initial music and their dependence upon Neoplatonic thought. In their place he examines the initial Music, the Vision, and then the ultimate physical creation of the world Eä, the World that is, using the metaphysical ideas of St. Thomas of Aquinas and, ultimately, Tolkien’s own ideas on dream and vision from OFS. I am really intrigued by McIntosh’s arguments, but I’m not familiar enough with Aquinas’ thought to comment on how well he uses it and would welcome comments from Downers who I think might be, such as Formendacil, Legate and Mark—and anyone else of course.

The comparison of the initial Music, the Vision and the ultimate creation shows some intriguing differences amongst them, particularly in how “Otherness” becomes so significant in the Vision and how, as McIntosh argues from Aquineas, “the act of existence . . . constitutes the highest actuality or reality of a thing” (p. 57).

This essay could well turn some of our Downs’ threads upside down.

PS. Bad punc intentional! Because of the length of the title, I had to omit some commas in order to fit the full title and author's name into the thread title.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

I have read the text already a while ago and now I will just remark quickly in general... I think the author has a good point there. I think he is sort of extreme in that it sometimes sounds like "all these people are totally wrong, I am now going to set this right", but that's a way to present your theory if you want to make a point clear enough - and he has a point. I think one still has to take the Marring of Arda seriously, but saying "ah, that's just neoplatonic" is a huge oversimplification. And the main difference, as I think is also said in the text, is that the creation and all sub-creations actually have their own value, unlike the neoplatonic-like notion that in fact they are all worthless, or in some way "worse" than the ideal state. The dichotomy of "mere Vision" and "fulfilment of Creation" in Ainulindalë makes it clear enough, and I think that's a very good point the author makes.

So in general, yes, if there are people who have not been aware of this, I am sure this is an important thing to read. From my point of view it was clear from the mythologies of Arda - and taking into account On Fairy-Stories and all the Christian influences in Tolkien's works - that the ongoing creation in M-E is positive and "progressive" in its fulfilment - from the Vision (which is not real yet and has "blank spaces") to reality (which contains a lot more than the Vision and is fulfilling its promises), as stated in the text. I think the problem is just if somebody reads Silmarillion, thinks of neoplatonism, and then sort of remains imprisoned in that idea and sees everything through that prism, and it does not occur to them to step out of there. For this, this article is pretty important.

[Faramir Jones]

Like Bêthberry, I found this article 'fascinating', in terms of its attack on the 'orthodoxy' of tending to read 'his [Tolkien's] creation-drama and the Music of the Ainur in particular in terms of the emanationist logic of Neoplatonic philosophy', therefore 'later stages of the creation-process and world-history are seen as metaphysically inferior to, and thus a "tragic" falling away from, the supposedly more authentic and pure reality represented by the primeval Music'. (p. 53)

Against this, the author posits the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas, claiming that Tolkien was more likely to be influenced by this, concluding:

The pattern of the Ainulindalë, in conclusion, is a movement from Music to Vision to Reality, from intelligible essence or abstract form, to a story, to an existing, mind-independent reality, a motion that is metaphisically speaking not a tragedy, but a eucatastrophe, not a Fall but a Fulfillment. Through his creation-myth Tolkien thus portrays the Thomistic insight into the real existence or being of things as a surpassing and gratuitous gift, anticipated in but never necessitated by their forms or essences alone, helped for in the promising and received with joy in the giving, a gift freely gived by a good, all-powerful, personal God who himself must transend all conceptuality because he is Being itself. (p. 70)

While I am familiar with the concept of the eucatastrophe due to reading On Fairy Stories, I certainly don't know enough about Aquinas's thought to reach a proper judgement on whether the author made a fair use of it to arrive at his conclusion.

What I will say is that the conclusion, particularly the talk about God transcending all conceptuality because 'he is Being itself', put me in mind of a passage from Dante's The Divine Comedy. In the part Paradise, the poet is journeying through the circling spheres towards God, and comes to Jupiter, where he encounters the souls of just monarchs, who form an eagle which speaks to him. Among the things it says is that God's will, because it is just, cannot depart from Justice; so man cannot ask if God's judgements are just, but only if a judgement conforms with God's will. If it does, it is just.

O minds of earth! O clods! it ne'er could be
That Primal Will, good in Itself, should quit
Its very Self, of Good the A per se.
Right's right so far as that with That doth fit;

Paradise, Canto XIX, lines 85-88.