The Glory of Bilbo Baggins

Glory is the theme of the next essay in The Hobbit and Philosophy by Charles Taliaferro and Craig Lindahl-Urben, glory in battle for example.  Bilbo’s fellow dwarves arguably sought the glory of recovering their lost treasure from the dragon Smaug.  Obtaining glory in battle apparently was a big thing in the ancient world if not at other times.  Plato and other ancient philosophers sought to challenge the notion of glory with an alternative: the love of beauty, wisdom, truth and the improvement of the soul (or mind for those like me who do not believe in souls).

 It is to be noted that the ancients do not speak with one voice.  Here Plato is disagreeing with a tradition of Sparta and Athens.  Thus if you say that the ancients should be acknowledged as wise, the question is which ancient people are you talking about.  For example, whereas some ancients believed in gods (including Plato and Aristotle) others (e.g. Epicurus) would say things like that freedom from belief in gods frees you from the worry and anxiety of having to appease such gods. 

 

It seems that seeking glory for its own sake is not a good thing, but if one overcomes odds with virtues like courage in a fight for a just cause, then glory, so to speak, has its place.  

The Cosmopolitan Hobbit

The theme of the next essay by Dennis Knepp in The Hobbit and Philosophy is cosmopolitanism.  To be cosmopolitan is to be a citizen of the cosmos as opposed to identifying only with one’s local tribe.  Bilbo learns to get along with diverse peoples, such as dwarves and elves, without needing to change their ways.  There are examples of ‘cultural contamination’ in the hobbit.  Bilbo is presented with an elvish coat of armour and sword.  It is the natural order of things that cultures absorb elements from other cultures and these things become integrated into the borrowing culture.  For example, tea in England originally came from East Asia.  Two cosmopolitan principles are fallibilism and pluralism.  Fallibilism is recognising that you may be wrong without knowing it and being ready to learn from others.  There is the issue of being ready to listen to the other point of view or side and taking the effort to understand that view, as opposed to being focused entirely on getting one’s own point across.  Pluralism is accepting that in many areas of life there is more than one right answer or more than one way to skin a cat.   The principles do not require complete agreement but just tolerance, acceptance and perhaps appreciation.  Completely counter to the spirit of cosmopolitanism is imposing your ways on other people through the threat of violence, something that even God seems to do for he imposes one way of life (Christian or Islamic) on the threat of eternal torture in hell.  One suspects that God is a convenient figure to make imposition of one’s own ways more socially acceptable: “It is not me but God who commands this!” 

Living around different traditions helps make one more accepting and tolerant of them.  Conversation across traditions is okay but the object is not to persuade others but to bring people together according to the the philosopher Kwame Appiah author of Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers.  He expands conversation to include any form of interaction with another culture.  There is no need to get people to agree with you or to try to persuade people of your own values.  Question is does this apply to the value of cosmopolitanism?  Should we refrain from imposing this value on tribalists?  Should we not speak up about dodgy practices in other cultures such as child marriages and FGM?  Problem is bringing these subjects up is liable to cause divisions rather than bringing people together but sometimes maybe all that is required is a minimum standard of civility.  The thing to do would be to avoid extremism whether it be attacking atheists with cleavers as in Bangladesh or threatening visitors of mosques/temples with guns as in America.  It is not clear to me though that peaceful expression of one’s views should be discouraged.  

Big Hairy Feet

The next essay by Eric Bronson in The Hobbit and Philosophy extols the virtues of walking, something which Bilbo and his fellow dwarves had to do a lot in their journey to the treasure guarded by Smaug the dragon.  Walking of course is one way to get more exercise, although jogging or running burns more energy (but has a higher risk of injury).  Tolkien was apparently a slow walker, stopping to look at flowers and trees, while his friend C.S. Lewis (the author of The Chronicles of Narnia) was a speedier walker.  I’m of the speedy type and prefer to be at home indoors reading a book.   But the general message seems to be we need to slow down and enjoy nature.  Well, you can look at the trees and you can look at the flowers and so on, which is nice, but there is a lot that is going on with trees, flowers etc. to be appreciated which you don’t see by just looking.  However, you can get some idea of what is going on by reading a book.  You can take a walk in the woods and try and soak up the peace and tranquillity of the woods, look at the bark on the trees, the leaves and so on and if you’re lucky you might catch sight of a squirrel.  But what about understanding the ecology of the environment and seeing how all the different natural systems interact with each other?  To some this may be boring science.  For me, meditating on trees, leaves and bark can only do so much; I like to keep the mind active by learning.  Some apparently advocate meditating on the process of walking while you walk, being mindfully aware of the knee bending and so forth but I would easily get bored with this.  Of course walking being a physical activity is good for the body including the brain.  But I am not sure it necessarily matters so much if you do not pay attention to your immediate surroundings. 

Apparently according to Anthony Giddens in the modern age we are presented with a problem.  We place our trust in organisational systems such as GPS, credit cards, Facebook which involves relying on impersonal including hidden principles for our social existence.  Something apparently is always lost with each new technological advance.  Once your GPS tom-tom gives the wrong directions you realise this device was not really your friend. 

To my mind we are always reliant on impersonal principles to get things done no matter what.  A bicycle might seem a straightforward means of travel as well as walking.  In both cases they rely on electromagnetic interatomic forces (impersonal principles) not immediately obvious which we have to trust to work as they should.  A technological advance merely exchanges one set of impersonal forces to trust with another.  What’s the big deal?  I wouldn’t see a device such as a tom-tom as a friend; I might sometimes want to throw such a device out the window if it goes wrong. This is just normal frustration which can also happen with less advanced solutions to addressing problems in life.  

Anyway Tolkien’s solution to such a (pseudo?) problem is to take a walk.  Presumably the above is some kind of anxiety which I don’t happen to experience and thus don’t understand.