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Hot news Honestly, I kind of like The Rings of Power. It’s slow, and the evident fact that there must have been an episode of ethnic cleansing in the Shire at some point between the era of TROP and that of The Hobbit is sad to contemplate. But whether the mind-wiped stranger will turn out to be Gandalf, Sauron, or someone new has caught my interest, and oooooh the fabrics. Trust the elves to develop the Jacquard loom early and then not bother with the rest of their industrial revolution.
Oh, and Liz Truss will be the next prime minister.
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I’m finding it hard to get past the daft hairdos 😀
It’s really not “Tolkien” though, which isn’t necessarily a deal killer, but not convinced I’m going to stick with it.
For some folks, I gather it’s a purity issue, as in faithfulness to Tolkien’s vision. I am unlikely to binge watch it, but I thought it was fine. And, yes, I find the Woke stuff a bore.
I can’t remember, if it was Siskel or Ebert who said something like, ” If you don’t become invested in what happens to the main characters, it fails.” Based on the first two episodes, that would be a “no” from me. So far, I haven’t find any of the main characters compelling. Something is missing.
For my part, I resent when ideologues buy IP and repurpose it – or even just “purpose it.”.
Iowahawk’s line – “1. Identify a respected institution. 2. kill it. 3. gut it. 4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.” – fits what they’ve done to Star Wars, Tolkien, most Marvel original storylines . . .
Don’t just throw money around and then claim ownership like it’s authorship. Write your own.
We haven’t looked at RoP yet. We’ve been watching The Sandman, which is actually fairly close to Neil Gaiman’s storyline, though they’ve made a lot of the characters black—why is it that when the media go for ethnic pluralism, they go straight to black and ignore East Asian, South Asian, Pacific Islands, Inuit, Siberian, and aboriginal Australian? Having denizens of the Dreaming look aboriginal would be so thematically appropriate!
But it’s not been compelling so far, because they seem to have kept expenses down by not hiring much of anybody who can act. The woman playing Johanna Constantine was quite good, managing to come across as a Constantine very convincingly. But the others all seem to lack feeling. And both Matthew and the Corinthian sound nothing like the way I heard them in my head; every time the Corinthian speaks I think of Foghorn Leghorn . . .
But I anticipate being less happy than that with RoP, which is one reason we haven’t looked at it yet. I want to see Tolkienian themes, or themes that take off from them, even if they invent a lot of the plot.
bobby b: “Don’t just throw money around and then claim ownership like it’s authorship. Write your own.”
Creativity in Hollywood is financially risky. It is far less risky to buy a known entity like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or whatever and throw the studios’ stamp on it and claim what you are doing is in line with the author’s actual vision by cherry picking passages than it is to start from scratch.
No one would be excited to see yet another swords and bad English accents and CGI wizards if it was just Unknown Amazon.com Project #1, and it would be very easy for the suits to say, “no,” when presented with a billion dollar budget. But slap Tolkien’s name on it, fine a passage about the Harfoots being browner and you can have Lenny Henry as a hobbit and virtue signal all at once.
Overall, I like this treatment of the RoP attempt:
https://arkhavencomics.com/2022/09/05/first-impressions-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power/
If feel in this timeline we might see Mordor start as a proto-Liberia/Wakanda, and Saurons quest for the ring as an attempt to recover the stolen cultural heritage of his people.
Tolkien is hard to translate to the screen. The movies had some novelty value and pleased a massive fan base. For non Tolkien fans there were many solid action pieces. The Hobbit was fun in places; basically just a romp. But that isn’t enough to keep up interest in a TV series. The reason Game of Thrones was so popular was solid characters, intrigue, very good actors, sex and ultra-violence. None of these are found in Tolkien, and they chose not to cast good actors (I’m told).
If it was me, I would have used the world but made up a story, with major Tolkien characters like Galadriel on the side lines. I’m sure they could have kept that going for a while at a fraction of the cost of the show.
I’m not going to watch it right now. Maybe it will get better as it progresses.
Sandman – I enjoyed this series. The storyline is very close to the comic book (I re-read it to make sure). The main characters are well cast, Morpheus and the Corinthian in particular. Rose Walker is also decent. Morpheus comes across as a bit too human towards the end though – he’s more otherworldly in the books. There was an unnecessary amount of gayness however (much more than in the books). Watching this you’d think half the world’s population was gay. Maybe it’s a subliminal push to get us all to take ‘our’ monkeypox jab. The diversity casting didn’t bother me too much, although some of the acting of the supporting cast (Lucienne in particular) wasn’t great, which unfortunately makes one suspect that they weren’t hired for their acting skills. Anyway, Gaiman consulted on the show so ‘his house,his rules’ I guess.
” If you don’t become invested in what happens to the main characters, it fails.”
Another formulation is The Eight Deadly Words: “I don’t care what happens to these people.” (Dorothy Heydt, in a usenet post, back when usenet was still a live thing.)
I do not entirely agree with this. I think greatly of The Godfather (novel), but i do not feel invested in the main characters. They are very interesting, admirable in some respects, but i do not feel invested. Not to a large extent, at least.
Much the same could be said for Game of Thrones. I have sympathy for Tyrion and Arya, and for other characters to a lesser extent, but for me it’s not about them. If/when they die, i am saddened, but life goes on.
PS: I actually came here to read informed opinions about Truss, but i guess that nobody is interested in providing one.
For Snorri.
My uninformed opinion about Remainer and former Lib Dem Truss is that her political CV is mediocre at best. She achieved the highest office due to being marginally less of a grifter and underachiever than Mordaunt and less of an outright disaster than Sunak. The only candidates with pretence to Conservatism, Badenoch and Braverman in that order, were quickly eliminated from consideration by our woeful parliamentarians. Her honeymoon period will be brief to the point of virtual non-existence. She will achieve little, the civil service/green establishment juggernaut will effortlessly subdue any half-way decent instincts she may have. She talks the talk. Big deal.
Comparison with Amazon’s lamentable Rings of Power is not difficult. We were promised Tolkien but only the most gullible believed it. Within days it became clear we were getting Tolkien in name only and there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.
Imagine an entire demographic of kids – 13-year-old boys, mostly – who found a wonderful, encompassing, intricate, consistent, moral fantasy escape world contained within four books and a bunch of accompanying works, who became enamored of that world, who read them and read them, who wore out copies and bought new, who memorized names and themes and ages and for whom that creator became almost a god of sorts. There’s probably no demographic that needed such a world as much as that one did.
Imagine that demographic continuing that immersion and that love for decades – for a half-century – and, even though it occupied a smaller and smaller portion of their lives as time went by, they never really left it. They never didn’t have copies of those books somewhere.
And then imagine that non-believers with money decided to buy the rights and prostitute it all, discarding canon and ignoring canon and ridiculing canon – because they could. Imagine them as people for whom it had no meaning. The biggest reason they would steal it would be to deny it to those for whom it had meaning, because some of that meaning made them feel “unsafe.” Imagine that their money gave them the legal right to change all of that meaning to make themselves feel empowered.
I’d sooner find that the new editions of LOTR contained McDonalds and Pepsi product placements than to be lectured that orcs were the misunderstood good guys, that the creator’s visions were hateful, that all of that canon must be repurposed to showcase a philosophy of envy and hate and revenge.
They just couldn’t leave it alone. They have to take everything and wipe out what fails to serve them and steal it and change it into their own image. Because they could.
We hates them. We hates them forever.
It’s a desperate mess Bobby using Tolkien’s names but little else. Ignore the wokery and you will see the writers and producers resorting to mimicking tropes from recent and not exactly classic films.
Galadriel and not-Sauron drifting in the middle of nowhere on a shabby raft channels Waterworld and is about as entertaining. The question of why the Dark Lord would save his mortal enemy from drowning doesn’t seem to have registered.
Plucky white single mum Bronwyn’s forbidden (unlike 75% of modern day tv commercials) romance with middle earths only black elf owes a lot to Terminator although Arondir makes the robotic Arnie appear charismatic by comparison. I have little doubt her surly offspring will prove to be important. Killing orcs just comes naturally to both mother and son.
The dirt-covered and intensely annoying not-hobbits already grate with their pantomime Irish accents. Lenny Henry as Papa Smurf gurns to little effect other than providing exposition for an audience with the attention span of a TikTok video. Female Frodo and Sam will undoubtedly do something important but I really don’t care.
The whole thing should have been called the new adventures of Galadriel, a wise beloved elven queen who has been re-written with the attitude of a surly teenager and the fighting skills of Rey Skywalker. She will soon stumble across Tar Miriel, a racially changed book character of little importance. It may be that the two of them will emulate Xena and Gabrielle with some good natured banter and mildly sapphic/sororic interactions but frankly neither possess the requisite cleavage.
The at first sight ridiculous dwarves are currently my favourite characters as at least the actors don’t appear to take this nonsense seriously, other than when giving interviews. The production values of the Khazad-Dum scenes are sumptuous as it much of the cinematography generally. It’s just a shame about the plot, dialogue and acting.
I am s bit surprised at the absence of LGBT although many of the elves look a bit light on their sandals. However they make up for that with their gloriously white patriarchal (and inevitably incorrect) attitudes towards brave female warrior. It’s a mild surprise they don’t all have handlebar moustaches and speak with 19th century British accents.
Actual white men are either stupid, ineffective or in the case of Bronwyn’s village akin to extras from Deliverance with the same enlightened attitudes. However I can’t blame this one on the writers as they look too young to have seen it.
I can’t get angry about this. It’s all so silly.
I would watch it to see a Tolkien like experience. This isn’t that.
They should set up their own world instead of corrupting Tolkiens.
Snorri Godhi,
As the ordering of topics in my post implied, I find it difficult to get excited about British politics at the moment. The policies advocated by Truss, Sunak and Starmer are all rather similar. Arguably it would be better if they were enacted under the Labour brand so that the inevitable failure of measures like energy price caps does not get blamed on “the market”.
I was glad that Sunak did unexpectedly well in the Conservative leadership election. It will temper Truss’s pride, and it puts paid to the constant claims that the Conservatives are racists, which were already looking threadbare given the popularity of Badenoch and Braverman among party members but were resurrected nonetheless when Truss pulled ahead.
See this tweet from Sunder Katawala, who regularly writes for the Guardian and is a former secretary-general of the Fabian Society:
The show starts with Galadriel being bullied as a child – which means the “show runners” (from the terrible “Bad Robot” company which has been responsible for such terrible harm to many “franchises” in recent years) either do not know, or do not care, what Tolkien’s view of the Undying Lands under the light of the Two Trees was like – before Morgoth was released from prison and started to spread dissention among the Noldor.
Then we have Finrod appearing and coming out with some Cod “philosophy” – not the real Aristotelian (Thomist) philosophy that Tolkien’s characters sometimes express.
The show goes on and on, with Girl Power themes (a Haradrim women is also the victim of males not taking her seriously) and black elves, dwarves and halflings (although a black Queen of Numenor has yet to appear – hopefully that was just a rumour, as it would make as much sense as Paul Marks being given the role of Martin Luther King in a film), dialogue that is badly written, and plot that makes no sense – at one point Galadriel even decides to swim the ocean (not swim in the ocean – swim across the ocean).
I know artistic tastes are different, but I cannot understand how anyone can like this show.
And, yes, the man on the raft is really supposed to be Sauron – “Bad Robot” company types (or ex Bad Robot types) believe in “Mystery Box” writing – but they are no good at it, their mysteries are never mysteries.
The stuff in the box (a literal “Mystery Box”) with the Dwarves is Mithril. The man on the raft is supposed to be Sauron (hence him cutting the other people off, to die). The man from the “comet” is Olorin (Gandalf) – who should not be in Middle Earth in the 2nd Age. And-so-on.
None of it is a mystery – and none of it is any good.
It is such a horrible, missed opportunity.
Finrod is a fascinating character – the first of the Noldor to encounter human beings, and who (centuries later) dies after breaking his chains and killing a Warewolf with his bare hands – to save the life of a man (Beren) who becomes the ancestor of the Kings of the men of the West (an ethnic group – the coming together of three tribes of Western people). In this Finrod is reduced to a nonentity spouting Cod “philosophy” (not real philosophy).
Galadriel is a Queen – that is why the lady came to Middle Earth, to become the Queen of a land of her own (the lady was not obsessed with three special gems as Feanor and his seven sons were – although it was Morgoth’s murder of his father that really motivated Feanor).
Galadriel denies the “Lord of Gifts” (Sauron in disguise) admittance to her land – because she senses something is false about him.
Galadriel is like a young Queen Elizabeth the First (but vastly greater in power and wisdom) – not a combat womble waving a sword about.
But if you are going to have people waving swords about – do it properly. The Noldor (especially after centuries of warfare) should not be incompetent – they should not be bashed about by one troll.
What is needed with Galadriel is someone who a good person will bow to – not out of fear, but out of reverence. A superior being who one will serve, out of love, to the death.
This Karan “I demand to speak to the manager” type, will not do.
Slow, ponderous, pretentious (why is every conversation littered with ‘the wind that blows out the fire also fans the flames’ cod philosophy? Indeed, why do all dwarves have Scottish accents? What the hell were the mixture of accents the non-hobbit hobbits were speaking?) but above all the show was lacking weight. I mean, to emphasise ‘The Rings of Power’ lightweight nature the dwarf and the unmanly elf both pick up hammers without any weight in them. Like they were plastic toys. The armour is utterly naff, too and looks plastic, but admittedly probably would defend against toy hammers and rubber swords.
I also increasingly have a big issue with the thing about swords on people’s backs in these shows. Oh it looks cool, but to draw them you would need arms longer than the sword’s blade. More, why do the elves have triple-handed swords? With cross guards that slope towards the user, deflecting any blow into the person using the weapon?
But my big laughing point is the black dwarf lady. When did a race of people who live underground need a lot of melanin to protect from a sun they rarely see?
I also had a laugh moment when Guyladriel as some call her leapt dozens of yards off a sword blade to slay an ice troll that the weakling male elf warriors couldn’t deal with. I know we have to have strong wahminnx but that was like the nonsense we get in recent films where even ordinary people can leap down from fifty feet buildings without shattering their knees on landing.
In short, it was drivel. Not Tolkein, not anything much. But if Amazon want to make a series set in a fantasy world populated by the races they choose (and they can even throw in some Chinese and Japanese) then they should have done that. Find some writers who can write dialogue so decent actors can deliver it. Also, is it possible to have a scene in these things without music?
Finally, boats don’t float because they see darkness below and light above. Nor can people swim hundreds of miles in open sea while holding a knife. Dear Lord, spare us this tripe…
When I first read “The Hobbit”, I thought that the hobbits were inspired by the Leprachauns. So Irish inputs are acceptable. Otherwise, no. As for why no-one cares, well, we know the Characters survive into the Third age, so we don’t worry about them.
Booby B’s comment at 5:20 AM brought a very hazy memory to mind. In 2000, in a survey of the English public, wasn’t LOTR recognized as the most important book of the century, much to the spit dribbling outrage of our betters, the critics.
The Victorians bowdlerized British fairy tales (by which I mean folklore about non-human creatures that occurs around the whole of the archipelago, not just England). That’s mostly when fairy folk, a wide variety of some quite seriously unpleasant creatures, became diminutive humans, ordinary in most ways. Tolkien completed the process for Elves, in which they were transformed from fey and dangerous unnatural and wicked creatures into wise and kindly superhumans. He also finished off the transformation of the dwarves from knockers, supernatural diminutive creatures that lived in the deepest mines and caves who could be kind or evil depending on the mood. Until Tolkien these creatures were called “dwarfs” in English (in general, as a class), and kept their dual natures. Tolkien, to be fair, also retained the dual nature mostly but split the worse elements off into evil goblins which hitherto had been more of a subclass of Elves (he later acknowledged their folkloric connexions to his own Elves). Of course Tolkien drew mainly on Germanic folkloric sources and some of these distinctions and changes had precedents – the Elves of Iceland are wise as well as dangerous, the dwarfs of the ring-cycle set the template for Tolkien’s Dwarves, but in general he is greatly influenced by the British folklore.
The Hobbits, an original creation, are quintessentially English in their ideation with the strengths and weaknesses of the English. Like the English, they value history but not overmuch. They value tradition (something that was certainly true of the English until relatively recently). They’re essentially conservatives, disdaining change for the sake of change. They have no real connexion with the leprechaun, the latter is essentially an Irish cognate of brownies (house-familiars) and boggarts-bogles (malevolent or ambiguous spirits), the equivalents in English folklore being hobs/hobgoblins and goblins-elves, representing again two classes of familiars and their uncanny relations the ambiguous or malevolent woodland spirits. You could make an argument that Hobbits, being rationalised hobs/brownies who have adopted the mannish culture but perfected it into a peaceful and productive form, are distant cousins to the leprechaun through their hob-side, but the hole-dwelling is more directly connected to the hob, goblin or brownie. Sméagol-Gollum represents the malevolent version, the boggart-bogle, the dangerous and murderous throttler in the woods.
What makes a Hobbit a Hobbit? I’d argue it’s the Englishness (and I say that as someone who isn’t English, yet still happily identifies with most of the Hobbit characteristics). The best and worst aspects of Hobbit culture is derived from Englishness: generosity, conservatism, cultural insulation, quiet unassuming productivity (nation of greengrocers), timidity, courage when it counts, tendency to get carried away, preference for simple literature and music; I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide which aspects are the best and worst aspects. A species of Hobbit with a dominantly Welsh culture might come out rather different, vindictive and grudge-bearing but much more fond of clever poetry and song (it’s no accident that Tolkien’s Elves are identified with as Welsh, and not just linguistically, though I think the Mirkwood Elves probably are closest to the Welsh psyche).
Hobbits that aren’t English are like Japanese Djinn, or Icelandic Bigfoot; one can imagine such things but what’s the point? Hobbits were a metaphor for a certain type of gentle, simple and rather insular Englishmen who nevertheless proved their mettle in the desperate moment. It celebrated decency, and the ability of decency to overcome barbarity. Co-opting another cultures things has become contentious in recent years, cultural appropriation, yet as usual when it is done to the English (or their colonial descendents) no-one takes the objection seriously.
Exasperated:
You’re right about the survey.
See Tom Shippey’s book ‘J R R Tolkien: Author of the Century’ for further details
It makes me more confident about the success of my new Flashman novel based on the plot of Wilkie Collins’s The Woman In White (in deep homage to both George MacDonald Fraser and Collins, of course) in which Flashman is the young drawing teacher who is shagging both Anne Catherick and Marian Holcombe from the start while trying to get hold of Laura Fairlie’s fortune. At least it would be more respectful and authentic than The Rings of Prime.
A lot of good comments – especially by John and bobby b.
“The Rings of Prime” Graham – yes, that is a good name (I am going to steal the term).
Liz Truss – well the couple named one of their daughters “Liberty”, that is good. “Liberty O’Leary” it does have a ring to it.
One can hand-weave in brocade pretty much anything a jacquard loom can make – it’s just a lot slower and thus more expensive.
Elves have a lot of free time.
If you’re a fantasy maven, I can see LOTR as the century’s most important book of fiction. But I’d vote for Catch-22, even if it doesn’t have as many printings.
Sadly, I’d have to go with 1984 as the most important book of the 20th century, if only because it’s a roadmap of the world today.
Although – might be a stretch – there’s a similar roadmap in a story of leave-us-alone nationalistic types working to destroy the ultimate concentration of world-government power (which always turns evil) in its own fires.
At least it’s a more optimistic tale. 😉
For what it’s worth, I’m good with chucking politicians into active volcanos…
A few years back, the Libertarian Futurist Society gave its Hall of Fame award to The Lord of the Rings. We got some bemused comments from science fiction fans who were hung up at our giving a libertarian award to a novel where somebody became king. Seemingly they didn’t think that a novel about an object that granted power over others, and that was a peril both to the world of those over whom that power would be exercised, and to the user, who would become addicted to power and corrupted by it—and where the wisest characters didn’t even want to go near the source of that power—had any relevance to libertarian concerns. . . .
Quite so William 😀
As I once wrote…
I remember reading and re-reading Perry’s essay on The Lord of the Rings. The problem with it is that not many of the readers of LotR will read it; and without reading it (or some other essay to the same effect, if any) readers of LotR are unlikely to get the message. I know that i didn’t.
I myself am mostly low-middle-brow in literature.
My favorite xx century novel is The Godfather.
My favorite xx century fiction writer is Rex Stout.
Obviously, NY City was a very good setting for the sort of xx century literature that i enjoy.
Not to mention action movies, and silver-age Marvel Comics.
— Moving on to less interesting issues, and in reply to Natalie’s kind answer:
OTOH it must also be said that the swing against the Tories, if Truss does not deliver, is likely to reduce the number of Tory MPs who would vote other than Kemi when Truss resigns.
Funny thing with liberty-facing blogs: they tend to have lots of old LOTR fanboys hanging around. Lots of very informed and impressive writings here about it just in the last days, from people who (I’m guessing) are of an age with me. Perhaps Amazon’s work will ultimately do well because the true aficionados are too old to be their target market and the young ones will never realize the cooptation that has occurred.
(Just read PdH’s old work, for the first time. It is quite good.)
I remember having lunch with a few colleagues at a university cafeteria. Since that survey came up in discussion, it must have been in 2000. (I know it could not have been later.)
One of my colleagues, son of professors of English literature, said that his parents, on learning about that survey, expressed their disdain. He simply asked them: Have you read it??
I too had not read the essay before, I’m glad that I have.
A further thought. I wonder if the writers and producers of RoP, who obviously haven’t read the books in any depth, saw all the films but decided they preferred The Hobbit trilogy to LotR.
“Trust the elves to develop the Jacquard loom early and then not bother with the rest of their industrial revolution.”
That’s nothing. They also failed to progress beyond swords, knives and the longbow. And likewise the mortals.
I think that readily available magic would be a considerable impediment to scientific discovery. Empiricism itself could not exist in a world where “it’s magic” actually was a valid explanation.
As Aristotle pointed out – what matters is not the form of government, but whether it obeys the natural law.
Monarchy, Aristocracy and a Polity where the ordinary people (farmers and craftsmen) have the vote are all akin – as the monarchy, the aristocracy and the ordinary people (in a polity where they rule) are limited by the law (the laws they do not make and cannot remove).
Tyranny (the rule of a tyrant), Oligarchy, and mob-rule “democracy” are all akin – because the government has unlimited power.
Whether the government is one person, a group of people, or all the ordinary people (in mass meeting), what matters is whether the powers of government are limited by the natural law – but the principles of traditional justice. In a monarchy, aristocracy and ordinary people ruled polity (say a Town Meeting) they are – in a tyranny, oligarchy and mob-rule “democracy” they are not.
As the Aristotelian Thomist J.R.R. Tolkien put it – good and evil are not one thing among men and another thing among elves and dwarves, it is the job of a man to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as he would in his own house.
Nor is fundamental right and wrong one thing is one “historical period” and another thing in another “historical period” – although, yes most certainly, some time periods may be more evil than other time periods, for example it may be harder to do behave correctly (say refuse to are slaves) when many people around you are behaving badly.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both understood that slavery was evil – but even when slavery was “legal” in Massachusetts John Adams owned no slaves – as he pointed out. But Thomas Jefferson did own slaves.
The difference was not in their moral understanding – but in their moral conduct.
This can also be shown when enemies were accused of crimes they did not commit – Mr Adams at once went to the aid of British soldiers who were on trial on false charges (Mr Jefferson did not such things).
And when both men visited Revolutionary France (an ally of the United States) both of them knew that innocent men and women were being murdered – neither man supported murder, but only one of the two men denounced the murders.
And the man who denounced the murders was not the cultured man with polished manners.
Snorri – if John Adams, or his cousin Samuel Adams, had met a man like the “Godfather” and he had made them an “offer they could not refuse” – once they understood his words (and that might have been difficult – indeed the character of Mr Corleone seems to have avoided men like this, at least did not make them such “offers”), their reply would have been as follows.
“God damn you to Hell, do your worst – for I defy you”.
In the end any civilisation, any culture, depends on having a lot of men like this – men who will die, and who will kill, on moral principle, regardless of their own material interests. “Better a leaky shack, or a cold grave, than a great palace acquired dishonestly”.
And such men can be very quiet, like the characters James Stewart used to play (for he knew the type well – indeed he was one), till the time of trial comes.
Somebody on tinterwebz (alas, I can’t recall the person or site) raised the idea that perhaps the RoP producers and writers deliberately avoided too much of Tolkien’s creation because they hadn’t got permission to use much of his stuff; the part-permission they had was never going to be enough. Hence the cobbled together fantasy we are being presented with. Maybe Amazon’s money mostly bought the tag of Tolkien to hook an expected ready-made audience.
It’s an intriguing thought, though while it explains some of the mangling, it doesn’t forgive what we have seen so far.
I should have said – any civilisation, any culture, that is worth having.
It is true that we all struggle with the evil within ourselves every day (“the struggle between good and evil is within each human heart”), but there is also external evil. And each person must be prepared, if need be, to die – rather than give in to it.
Even over “small” matters (the betrayals always start small) – and even if one’s death is ugly, face down in the filth in some squalid place, with no one remembering one’s name.
Paul: Short comments on two of yours:
About “men who will die, and men who will kill,” earlier this year I reread C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, and I was struck by what Lewis had to say about the planetary intelligence of Venus: It was fiery, sharp, bright and ruthless, ready to kill, ready to die . . . it was Charity, not as mortals imagine it, not even as it has been humanised for them since the Incarnation of the Word, but the translunary virtue, fallen upon them direct from the Third Sphere, unmitigated.
(I think that in saying that love is ready to kill and ready to die, Lewis is pointing at something essential.)
AS for Aristotle, having read the Politics, I think that a way to grasp its distinction in our culture’s terms is to say that bad rulers, whether the one, the few, or the many, act as owners of the state, but good ones as trustees on behalf of the whole people .he pernicious idea that the majority are entitled to do anything they like needs to be rejected; the majority have only the right to act on behalf of everyone, including the minority.
Actually, that reminds me of Plato’s Politikon (Statesman) more than Aristotle’s Politics. But it also fits Aristotle, in some of his moods.
But William is also correct, because Aristotle used inconsistent ways of distinguishing monarchy, aristocracy, and ‘polity’ versus tyranny, oligarchy, and ‘democracy’; one of which is that of acting in the general interest vs acting in one’s own interest. Yet another definition is that, in a monarchy, the ruler has virtue, while in a tyranny, the ruler has no virtue; and similarly for the other 2×2 forms of government. I found Aristotle irritating at 1st (and only) reading for these inconsistencies, but then i figured that he must have meant that, in ‘typical’ monarchies etc, the different definitions all come together.
In the Laws, Plato went a step further and acknowledged that monarchies are bound to turn into tyrannies (no more respect for the rule of law), and similarly for the 2 other “good” forms of government; and therefore a mixed constitution is best, because it does not rely on the goodwill of any person or assembly. (I believe that Aristotle’s ‘polity’ was itself a mixed constitution.)
Paul Marks – September 7, 2022 at 12:03 pm:
Adams was sent to France
in 1779, and was transferred to Britain in 1785. He returned to the US in 1788.
Jefferson was sent in 1784, and returned to the US in 1789, only two months after Bastille Day.
Thus neither man was sent to “Revolutionary France”, and Jefferson witnessed only the very beginning of the Revolution; the Reign of Terror came years later. Jefferson was then Secretary of State, and therefore constrained in what he could say. In any case, he supported the French Republic against monarchical reaction, and did not want to join the anti-republican chorus: “To back away from France would be to undermine the cause of republicanism in America.”
Adams always struck me as somewhat an idealist. Jefferson may just have thought the Terror was horrible but A) there was nothing the US could do except alienate France if we said or did much about it, B) sadly innocents do suffer in revolutions and civil wars, including ours, and C) we needed France as a buffer against England and Canada.
This is the same Jefferson who felt the Constitution restrained a president but then bought Louisiana without the consent of Congress.
Just a clarification on why i felt compelled to discuss Plato and Aristotle. I shall frame this comment in terms of natural (Lockean) rights, rather than natural law.
It is reasonable to say: what matters is not whether you live in a monarchy, an oligarchy, or a democracy; what matters is whether the ruler(s) respect your Lockean rights.
But one can go a step beyond that, and say that the ideal constitution is one in which there is no ruler or rulers: a system in which people are ruled by laws, not by men; a system in which no person or assembly has absolute, unchecked power over you.
(This might also be relevant to the comparison of Adams to Jefferson: the latter insisted on natural rights in the Declaration of Independence, the former was more concerned about framing a constitution in which natural rights would be protected.)
Sigivald writes,
An awesomely good point.
Snorri wrote:
(This might also be relevant to the comparison of Adams to Jefferson: the latter insisted on natural rights in the Declaration of Independence, the former was more concerned about framing a constitution in which natural rights would be protected.)
I suspect Jefferson thought the points he spelled out in the Declaration of Independence would be sufficient, never imagining in his wildest dreams that the courts in the country would say that document is irrelevant in the discussion of this country’s laws. Contrast that with Adams who thought the least of men and their intentions and who wanted some safeguards in the new Constitution or with Madison who at first thought there was no need for a Bill of Rights because surely there would be no legislature made up of free men who would willingly give up their rights. Thankfully Madison came around to Adams’ point of view.