Political Philology: J. R. R. Tolkien Against the Leftists 

“Beware! All leftists are anti-philology!” So stated the great philologist himself, J. R. R. Tolkien, in a letter written to his son Michael in 1956. This letter, numbered 194a and published for the first time in the 2023 Revised and Expanded Edition of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, is among Tolkien’s most political writings. It consists of only four paragraphs, making it one of the most succinct descriptions of Tolkien’s views on a variety of political issues, many of which still afflict our society. 

Tolkien’s political and philosophical writings deserve far greater attention. I am certainly not one to encourage less reading of The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, but the professor’s insights go far deeper than just Middle-earth. Armed not with Sting or Orcrist, but with pen and pipe, Tolkien presents a richer view of the nature of language that can combat the social ills that plague us today. 

In this letter, he describes what he terms the “rot and stink … left by liberalism devoid of religion,” seen in the “casualness and irreverence of priests (and laity)” and in “[d]ons yelling ‘fascist,’ at high table, at colleagues who in mild voices venture to disagree with them.” Tolkien then notes “the rising tide of ‘orquerie,’” seen in the “socialist legislation … robbing [him] of probably ¾ of the fruits of [his] labors.” 

Most notably, Tolkien addresses an issue in modern education: the loss of poetry, with teachers now prioritizing the “tired sophisticated adult form the Essay.” No longer are children taught about meter and verse, but simply how to convince others of their views. On why teachers no longer discuss these things, he writes, “I suppose, because they don’t know ’em, and that is ‘philology’ and wicked,” which leads to the grave warning given at the beginning of this article.  

What has philology to do with politics? Quite a lot, as Tolkien associated philology with a view of language as both an art and a science; as the foundation of a people; and as a gift from God that displays man as the image and likeness of the Creator. Modernity strips language of this richness, with language seen as merely a tool, mirroring Tolkien’s thoughts on the increasingly utilitarian and bureaucratic state that he saw emerge throughout his life. We ought to use Tolkien as a model, examining the role of language in our lives and what effect competing views of language might have on culture and the idea of the human person. 

Art, Science, and the Constitution of a People 

Tolkien summarizes his aesthetic-scientific approach to the study of language in a 1955 letter to W. H. Auden, stating: 

I discovered in [Gothic] not only modern historical philology, which appealed to the historical and scientific side, but for the first time the study of a language out of mere love: I mean for the acute aesthetic pleasure derived from a language for its own sake, not only free from being useful but free even from being the “vehicle of a literature.” 

Language is more than just the meaning conveyed by its words; the sounds and the grammar themselves are objects of research and material for art. 

This aesthetic-scientific view of language forms part of the basis for Tolkien’s outrage that children are no longer well educated in poetry. It is senseless to consider only the content of the language apart from its form, a theme seen in his 1959 “Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford” (this and all essays quoted below are from J. R. R. Tolkien: The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays). In this address, he decried the organization of Oxford’s School of English Language and Literature, which pitted language and literature against each other as separate courses of study within the program.  

Tolkien viewed the union of the two as the purpose of such a program, while others were willing to sacrifice the language and simply study the literature. However, Tolkien believed that “[l]iterature is, maybe, the highest operation or function of Language, but is none the less Language.” One must intimately know the language in order to know the literature. 

He provides the example of Chaucer. To understand the Father of English Literature, one must have detailed knowledge of the structure of the English language. It is only the study of the history of the language that can prove Chaucer’s use of meter as truly masterful; and it is only this study that can demonstrate him as an inheritor of a yet-older tradition of English art. For us to understand the art that is passed down to him, we must know the structure of his language and how that relates to its poetic forms. If children are taught only the Essay rather than poetry and philology, then they are robbed of the artistic tradition of their forebears. 

Tolkien also described language as critical to the existence of a people. This is seen in his 1955 essay “English and Welsh,” in which he quotes the nineteenth-century Icelandic priest and author Sjéra Tómas Sæmundsson in stating that “[l]anguages are the chief distinguishing marks of peoples. No people in fact comes into being until it speaks a language of its own; let the languages perish and the people perish too, or become different peoples.” If a people is deprived of its linguistic heritage, then it would cease to be entirely. Language is constitutive and conservative; by language, a people exists and continues existing as a part of the line of its ancestors.  

Politically, a common language is necessary for a people’s existence, passing down the culture that is unique to it. But, as Tolkien notes, language is more than just a “vehicle of a literature,” as well as more than just an object of research and art; language is a gift from God. 

Sub-creation and the Image of God 

In Tolkien’s deeply Catholic theology, language is the key element of sub-creation, the artist’s ability to form a Secondary World into which the mind can enter. As Tolkien claims in his 1947 essay “On Fairy-stories,” through the “enchanter’s power” of language, “new form is made; Faërie begins; Man becomes a sub-creator.” This use of language is “a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.” 

God has bestowed on man a remarkable gift: the ability, through words, to abstract universals from the world around him. Tolkien provides the example of perceiving green grass and recognizing that the greenness can be separated from the grass. The “enchanter’s power” then lies in using those universals in an act of sub-creation, being able to consider these words apart from the physical world and to create Fantasy. Through this gift, we imagine what does not physically exist, calling into our minds and the minds of others “ideal creations” that have “the inner consistency of reality.” 

Tolkien holds such a high view of the sub-creative power of language that he states, “The maddest castle that ever came out of a giant’s bag in a wild Gaelic story is not only much less ugly than a robot-factory, it is also (to use a very modern phrase) ‘in a very real sense’ a great deal more real.” The sub-creation of the human word reflects God and His Creation in such a way that Fantasy, insofar as it leads one to God, can be more real than the physical objects around us. The robot factory, being an artifice that exists to produce more artificial constructs, separates man from his sub-creative ability; there is no art in the robot factory, but only brute utilitarianism. In the imaginative realm of Fantasy, the art and the artist signify God. As Tolkien states, “[the Christian] may now … fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation.”  

Therefore, language is more than just a tool; it is a way in which man resembles God and participates in truth and reality. Language is the object of scientific inquiry, a beautiful form of art, and, in a deeply theological sense, a gift that relates man to God and to his fellow man, both his contemporaries and his ancestors. 

Tolkien Contra the Utilitarians 

Tolkien held this rich view of language as the proper view, describing in a 1963 letter to his son Michael the distinction between “the genuine linguists (the students and lovers of Language)”—here one could insert the term “philologists,” with “lovers of Language” being a direct translation of the Greek φιλόλογος—“from the utilitarians.” A utilitarian, purely communicative view of language is false; the historical, artistic, and theological view must also be considered for one to truly study language. As Tolkien states in his 1931 essay “A Secret Vice”: 

The communication factor has been very powerful in directing the development of language; but the more individual and personal factor—pleasure in articulate sound, and in the symbolic use of it, independent of communication though constantly in fact entangled with it—must not be forgotten for a moment. 

The genuine linguist, the philologist, the lover of language, sees beyond just the utility of this gift given to man; language is much more than just communication.

How does all of this relate to Tolkien’s political philosophy? In a letter to Christopher Tolkien in 1943, Tolkien provides direct insights into his views, describing himself as either an anarchist or an “unconstitutional” monarchist. These seemingly opposed views are united in their shared opposition to what he terms “Theyocracy,” the modern state’s tendency towards increasing leftist utilitarian bureaucracy, in which “[n]obody can ever have what ‘they fancy,’ however simple—only what experts think they ought to.” 

The modern state, much like Tolkien’s view of the modern study of language, is utilitarian, with a view of the government and the people in terms of their most basic utility. The government is not tasked with promoting the common good, but just with solving problems, and the list of problems that it is expected to solve grows exponentially. These problems need a growing list of expert bureaucrats, who remain faceless and nameless, their sole purpose being the increase of efficiency. So too utilitarian language; why should we moderns care about what language might mean for art, for a people, and for God? It is a tool, used by faceless and nameless speakers to convey ideas that ultimately mean nothing.  

Such is the “rot and stink … left by liberalism devoid of religion,” returning us to Tolkien’s critiques of socialist legislation, irreverence in the Catholic Church, and overuse of the word “fascist.” Why are all leftists anti-philology? Because philology, properly understood, conserves a tradition-minded view of language. If one believes that language is the means by which a people is constituted, the way an artistic tradition is handed down from one’s ancestors, and a sign of man’s relation to God, then language cannot be the blunt object that Tolkien’s prototypical leftist supposes it to be.  

Above All Shadows 

Amid these grave issues stemming from an incorrect view of language, Tolkien still presents some hope in Letter 194a. He reassures his son that “you never quite know what is going on even under the head of an apparent orc on a motor bike.” He refers to a letter from a factory worker, a symbol of the utilitarian world that Tolkien so deplored. To his surprise, this man thanked him for writing The Lord of the Rings, noting that “it was the ‘elvish’ parts that most interested him.” 

Even in our Theyocratic age, there are some who yet long for the poetic. How can such a longing be promoted? If I may be permitted to so step beyond my bounds and attempt to speak for what Tolkien’s advice might be, I believe his recommendation would be this: teach, read, and write poetry, for that is the first step toward viewing language as not merely a tool for communication, but a science, an art, a heritage, and a way in which man resembles God. 

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