Anonymous
7/15/2025, 9:28:26 AM No.24551288
It seems evident, if you read his letters and notes, that late in his life Tolkien intended the Silmarillion to be a remarkably postmodern exploration of non-Cartesian non-dualist conceptions of self. The notion of "sub-creation" was a metaphysical means through which to explore notions of free will and the problem of evil via a broadly Thomist lens.
Essentially, Eru Illuvatar is our God from our universe acting upon Tolkien's sub-created universe with Tolkien himself as his instrument. Tolkien mediates his reflections upon the nature of our God onto his construction of Illuvatar, and highlights the flawed nature of this construction through a metaphor of sub-creation which implicitly aligns HIMSELF with Illuvatar.
The summation would have been as much an exploration of the nature of art as a mere story-- but he died before he was able to complete his philosophical peregrinations on questions like the relationship of the elves to original sin, and so instead we got the version of the Silmarillion handed down to us by his son and Guy Gavriel Kay, a distinctly less metaphysical work.
Where the Lord of the Rings served as a formalist exploration of the ability of audiences to become invested in sub-creation and secondary worlds, the version of the Silmarillion dimly discernible through its piles of notes and drafts was the application of this mode of fiction to a "fundamentally Catholic" philosophical tradition.
In essence Tolkien was operating less in the manner of the medieval balladeer or Virgilian myth-maker, and more in line with James Joyce. Like Ulysses, his work was a metafictional exploration of Thomism as it collided with the concerns of the modern world, and a rejoinder to the naked brutality of dualist epistemics.
Essentially, Eru Illuvatar is our God from our universe acting upon Tolkien's sub-created universe with Tolkien himself as his instrument. Tolkien mediates his reflections upon the nature of our God onto his construction of Illuvatar, and highlights the flawed nature of this construction through a metaphor of sub-creation which implicitly aligns HIMSELF with Illuvatar.
The summation would have been as much an exploration of the nature of art as a mere story-- but he died before he was able to complete his philosophical peregrinations on questions like the relationship of the elves to original sin, and so instead we got the version of the Silmarillion handed down to us by his son and Guy Gavriel Kay, a distinctly less metaphysical work.
Where the Lord of the Rings served as a formalist exploration of the ability of audiences to become invested in sub-creation and secondary worlds, the version of the Silmarillion dimly discernible through its piles of notes and drafts was the application of this mode of fiction to a "fundamentally Catholic" philosophical tradition.
In essence Tolkien was operating less in the manner of the medieval balladeer or Virgilian myth-maker, and more in line with James Joyce. Like Ulysses, his work was a metafictional exploration of Thomism as it collided with the concerns of the modern world, and a rejoinder to the naked brutality of dualist epistemics.