Broader lessons than Frodo

So it is more likely that McGinley is using “moral” in a sense that is partly descriptive: He has a certain idea of what values and acts constitute morality, and he thinks that there is something special about these values that imbues them with a distinctive desirability for everyone. That would explain why he calls on us to think morally. If he’s right, moral considerations would have a great bearing on what we ought to do.

But in naming these distinguished values, he focuses exclusively on “touchstone” moral values like selflessness and self-denial (abstinence?), and in arguing for their distinctiveness, he appeals to their centrality to human nature. That is why I find it odd and rather myopic that McGinley chose “Lord of the Rings” as an exemplary tale. As a scholar of Anglo-Saxon studies whose fictional works teem with appreciation for Anglo-Saxon culture and language, J.R.R. Tolkien would surely have been familiar with this anecdote from the Life of Wilfrid: St. Wilfrid was walking down a Sussex beach with his sizeable retinue of 120 men when, suddenly, they were attacked by a band of pagans. Did this man of God turn his cheek? Of course not! Such a heroic man would not bear that shame. He and his followers resolved that “they would either find death with honor or life with victory” and slew the heathens. So, from the same stirring call to face with courage the important and consequential decisions before us, we can draw an entirely different conclusion.

There is something awe-inspiring and moving about these ancient heroic codes, and much of what is truly beautiful in Old English poetry and in the modern epics that descend from them glorifies the life of the hero. But often what is valuable about these tales and the lives they recommend has little to do with morality in any descriptive sense of the term. In fact, living the life of a hero may necessitate distinctly immoral acts. Take the Japanese legend of the 47 Ronin: A feudal lord once attacked an emissary of the emperor (a teacher of court etiquette) within the shogun’s residence for his haughty and offensive ways. For this grave misdeed, he was honor-bound to commit ritual suicide. His 47 retainers, in a beautiful and didactic expression of the samurai code of bushido, plotted for a full year to avenge him, eventually killing the emissary with the same dagger that killed their lord. But because they murdered the emissary, they too were obligated to commit suicide.

Thus, for the insolence of the etiquette teacher, honor demanded 49 souls. We might think the warriors’ unbending dedication to discipline and honor were themselves things of beauty and ultimately worth pursuing, though we might also think that an emissary’s hostility could never morally justify so many deaths. So it appears that there are many lessons one could draw from heroic stories. One of them may be this: One ought to be very careful in picking out “essential aspects” of human nature, for human nature is a nebulous and complicated thing.

McGinley seems to press us, “Wow, wouldn’t it be great, and wouldn’t we be embracing some fundamental aspects of our humanity, if we paid far greater attention to and wrestled with the moral consequences of our actions?” But the answer to that is no. Not if it means a concern with “touchstone” moral values to the exclusion of other deeply-held and fundamental human values. Much of what is great about life is valuable in spite of the moral consequences. If these other values have claims to being inspiring and essential aspects of our humanity, what gives selflessness and abstinence special claim to guiding our thinking about what to do?

Paul Boswell is a philosophy major from Clarkson Valley, Mo. He can be reached at pboswell@princeton.edu.