Phl 361K

Fall ’03

Questions: Minas Tirith (Nov. 6, 11, 13)

Return of the King, Book V

1. Compare Denethor’s pride with that of Feanor and Theoden. Is Denethor a sub-creator gone wrong, or someone frustrated by the lack of a capacity for sub-creation?

2. Contrast the “stewarship” of Denethor and Gandalf (p. 33). How important is the theme of stewardship to the ROTK?

3. Why does Tolkien include the works of the “Pukel-men”? What does this contribute to his story?

4. Why would the Ring have destroyed Denethor, “burned his mind away”? (p. 105)

5. Gandalf (speaking of Gollum): “ A traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. It can be so, sometimes.” What is the significance of this observation? How is the truth of the observation demonstrated in Tolkien’s world?

6. Why does Tolkien so often use the locution “as if”? For example: “A cock crowed. And as if in answer there came from far away another notes. Horns.” (p. 126, ch. 5) Why is the coincidence of dawn, the cock and the horns important?

7. The Nazgul captain: “No living man may hinder me.” How is this ironic in multiple ways? Why is the Nazgul captain so confident of the truth of this prophecy? (p. 141, ch. 6)

8. Why is Gandalf’s use of “heathen kings” so problematic? (p. 157) Compare to the similar occurrence of “heathen” in Beowulf. Is this a slip on Tolkien’s part, or is there a good reason for this exception to Tolkien’s rule of making the religious content entirely implicit in the story?

9. What role do despair play in the fall of both Saruman and Denethor? Is there a significant difference between the two cases? Why doesn’t Denethor seek an alliance with Sauron?

10. Compare Denethor’s use of the palantir and his attitude toward the One Ring. Did the palantir have the same power as the Ring, given Sauron’s domination of both? Why was Aragorn able to use the palantir without harm?

11. Does the humor of Merry and Pippin connect them, not only with the Shire, but with the modern world? Why are Shire-folk robbed of “the right words”. Is this an endorsement of modernity, as Shippey thinks, or another critique of it? (p. 178, ch. 8)

12. What does Merry mean by “depths” and “heights”? (p. 179) In what sense is the soil of the Shire “deep”? Is it true that the Shire-folk can’t live long on the heights? Is this still true of Merry and Pippin?

13. Is Gimli right in guessing that the works of Men will “come to naught in the end but might-have-beens”? Why does he think so? (182)

14. Does Gandalf’s plan, to “walk open-eyed into that trap”, morally flawed, involving, as it does, the intentional deception of Sauron? Does the end justify the means? If so, why doesn’t the same principle apply to the use of the Ring? What does Imrahil mean by calling this “the greatest jest”? (pp. 192-4, ch. 9)

15. Why has the Mouth of Sauron forgotten his own name? (202)

16. Compare Pippin’s role in the war of the Ring with Merry’s. Is Pippin right in thinking he has made no significant contribution?

17. What is the significance of Pippin’s death scene? Does the laughter and gaiety of his “thought” indicate anything about the hope of an afterlife? (p. 208, ch. 10)

The Return of the King, Appendix A, "Aragorn and Arwen"

1. Is Elrond's demand that Aragorn regain his throne before marrying Arwen comparable to Thingol's demand that Beren bring him a Silmaril? Why or why not? (425)

3. Why do both Gilraen and Arwen face death with such bitterness and hopelessness? (426-7) In contrast, why does Aragorn hold out hope? What basis, if any, does he have for it?

4. Is Aragorn's death a suicide?

5. What does this mean: "and there is her green grave, until the world is changed"? (428)

The Silmarillion, Akallabeth

1. Why does Sauron call Melkor the "Giver of Freedom"? (p. 272)

2. Why is Amandil's embassy to the Valar unsuccessful? Why was the treason of Numenor so hard to absolve? (p. 276)

3. In what ways was Sauron diminished by the downfall of Numenor? Why? (p. 280)

4. What is the meaning of the contrast between lost "straight road", and the fact that "all roads are now bent" after the changing of the world? (281) Why, according to the loremasters, does a "bridge" through air and space endure? How can the loremasters know this, if all the mariners who have found it died without returning? (282)

Lewis, That Hideous Strength, pp. 139-270.

1. How does Filostrato illustrate the Conditioners and the "abolition of man"? (p. 178)

2. How does Lewis use Mark to potray the deficiencies of a "merely Modern" education? Is he right in thinking that being a "glib examinee in subjects that require no exact knowledge" left Studdock unprepared to cope with evil? (185)

3. How does the pursuit of Merlin by NICE reflect Lewis's views about the kinship beween magic and modern science? What deficiencies in twentieth century science does Lewis see as leading to a threat of a rebirth of magic? (202-3)

4. What accounts for the appearance s of Wither throughout the NICE complex? Is Wither human? Is Mark simply hallucinating? (213)

5. What is the "Great Tongue"? Is it Quenya? How does Lewis's use of it influenced by Barfield's "ancient semantic unities? (228-9)

6. Compare Wither's speech to his assistant Stone with the speeches of Saruman, Smaug or the Mouth of Sauron. How are the structures and words of English distorted by Wither? (252-3)

7. Is Ransom's analysis of the bear's mode of consciousness plausible? Why does Lewis include the animals in Ransom's household? (260-1)

8. Is Lewis's discussion of the fascination of ugliness consistent with a Boethian conception of evil, or a Thomistic account of the will? Can sheer evil attract the will? (268-9)

Thomas Aquinas, Treatise on Happiness (From the Summa Theologica)

The Structure of the Summa

The Summa Theologica is divided into four Parts, comprising a total of 512 “questions”. Each question is further subdivided into a considerable number of “articles”. Each article, in turn, follows a fixed pattern:

1. The article begins with a question, almost always a Yes-or-No question.

2. An answer is then given to the question that Aquinas finds inadequate. This section is always preceded by the words “It seems…” It is vitally important that one realize that Aquinas is not endorsing this initial answer. He will invariably either reject it altogether, or find it only partially true. This can be confusing, because Aquinas always tries very hard to be fair to every opinion. He does his best to state the case for the opposing view as clearly and persuasively as he can.

3. Several arguments for the erroneous answer are given, each numbered sequentially. As I just mentioned, these arguments can sound quite persuasive, but Aquinas will later explain what is wrong with them.

4. Aquinas gives a better answer to the question, preceded by the words “To the contrary…” He will generally accept this second answer, although in some cases he will take the position that both answers are partly right and partly wrong.

5. Aquinas finally resolves the tension with a section that begins “I respond that…” Here he gives what he takes to be the correct answer and the essential reason why this answer is correct. Pay very careful attention to this section – this is where Aquinas lays out the foundation of his thought.

6. The plausible but ultimately wrong arguments given in section 3 are refuted, one by one.

1. How does Aquinas demonstrate that each human being acts for some ultimate end? For exactly one ultimate end? How does he prove that all human beings act for the same ultimate end (namely, for happiness)? How does he explain the fact that humans seem to be pursuing many, disparate ends? (pp. 10-13)

2. What is Aquinas’s definition of a ‘voluntary action’? In what sense is voluntary action depend on something interior to the doer? In what sense (or senses) does it proceed from something exterior? (pp. 70-73) How does Aquinas define the ‘will’? Does the will ever act contrary to its own nature?

3. In what sense is it true that the will can only aim at the good? Why is it not required that the object of the will be in truth good, but only that it be apprehended as good? (p. 88)

4. Aquinas says that we will the ends, and not the means, but we choose the means, and not the ends. What does this mean? Why can’t we will the means, or choose our ends?

5. The will “moves” itself, in choosing means for its ends, but the will is “moved” both by its object, and by God as the “first mover”. (pp. 95-96) Bearing in mind that the word ‘move’ here means to cause something to change in any way, can we make sense of Aquinas’s various assertions here? What is Aquinas’s definition of ‘violent motion’? Why is it impossible for the will to be subject to such violent motion?

6. What is the basis for the contingency of the activity of the will (for the fact that it does what it does contingently, and not as a matter of accidental necessity)? Is the basis for contingency located in the will itself, or in the processes of thought and deliberation? (pp. 102-3, 126-7) Why is it important that our choices are between partial or imperfect goods? What is the “twofold power in man” that grounds freedom of the will? Explain how Boethius’s privation theory of evil is required by Aquinas’s account of the freedom of the will.

7. How, if at all, can Aquinas reconcile the fact that God moves the human will with the claim that the will freely moves itself? (pp. 106-7) Is God’s role as first mover consistent with the contingency of human choice?

8. Is the will naturally subject to reason? Can the will choose something unless one’s reason declares it to be good? Must one always choose whatever one’s reason determines to be the best available option? (see pp. 88, 103, 180-183, 185)

9. What is the ‘conscience’? Is it possible to act contrary to one’s conscience? If so, how?

10. Is it possible for a human will to be wholly good even if its choice is contrary to God’s will? If so, how is this possible? (pp. 191-2)

Richard Cross, Duns Scotus

1. What are the differences between Aquinas’s account of the freedom of the will and Scotus’s? Why is Scotus dissatisfied with Aquinas’s account? Is he right to be so?

2. What are Scotus’s arguments for his theory of free will (as “superabundant sufficiency”)? Are they persuasive?

3. Why does Scotus posit two principles of motivation, the affectio commodi and the affectio iustitiae? Why was there no such distinction in the theories of Boethius or Aquinas? Can we will to be miserable? Can we not will to be happy?

Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety

1. What does Kierkegaard mean by saying that the individual (meaning each individual, not just Adam) is “both himself and the whole (human) race”?

2. Why does Kierkegaard think that the traditional explanations of the Fall and of original sin “confuse everything”? What does he mean by saying that each individual “begins again with the race” or “begins anew”? (p. 34) Is he right in denying that his own account is a Pelagian one? (I.e., is he in effect denying the reality of original sin altogether?)

3. What does Kierkegaard mean by saying that “sin presupposes itself”? Is he right? Is it possible to make any sense of such a claim? How is this thesis related to Kierkegaard’s description of sin as a “leap”? (Think “quantum leap”.)

4. History is a matter of “quantitative determinations”, while the individual always participates in sin by a “qualitative leap”. (p. 37) What does this mean?

5. How is Kierkegaard’s approach to explaining the possibility of sin different from that of Boethius, Augustine, Aquinas or Scotus?

Reinhold Niebuhr -- Skip this reading -- the wrong passages were excerpted in the packet.

Shippey

1. Is there a coherent theory behind Gandalf’s three assertions about the Ring? Is Shippey’s theory that the users of the Ring become addicted to it correct? Is Shippey’s theory adequate to explain all the data?

2. Does absolute power corrupt absolutely? Is this the correct explanation for the dangers the Ring poses?

3. Are the Ringwraiths alive or dead? In what sense are they twisted (wreathed)?

4. Why is psychological warfare such an important part of Sauron’s strategy?

Birzer

1. Why did Tolkien dislike Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters? How is the reason for this opposition reflected in Tolkien’s own works? Is it a flaw or a virtue that we get so little insight into the inner life of Tolkien’s villains?

2. Are Tolkien’s villains illustrative of the banality of evil (inHannah Arendt’s phrase)?

3. Ursula Le Guin wrote that Tolkien’s work is Platonic in that “those who do evil are not complete characters but complements.” Is she right? Compare: Gandalf & Saruman, Aragorn & Boromir (or Faramir & Boromir), Theoden & Wormtongue, Frodo & Gollum? Are there other examples of such ego/alter ego pairs?

4. In a letter, Tolkien wrote that orcs are rational creatures who are ultimately redeemable. Is this accurately represented in Tolkien’s work? Does anything of their Elvish natures survive?

5. Trace the anti-technological theme in Tolkien’s depiction of the orcs and of the corruption of Numenor by Sauron (especially as described in “The Lost Road”). Discuss the difference between magia and goeteia. What are the essential characteristics of each? Are modern machines, industrialization and science variants of goeteia?

6. Is Birzer right in identifying the religious philosophy promoted by Sauron in Numenor as “Gnostic”?