LOTR & Dune Philosophy

I read The Lord of the Rings every year for about eleven years straight. It was a kind of ritual. A quiet act of return. The rhythm eventually slowed; life changes, habits shift; but the story hasn’t loosened its hold on me. Just recently, I listened to Phil Dragash’s audiobook version,  and I have to say: it’s excellent. Immersive, reverent, well worth your time if you’ve ever loved these books or even thought you might. 

Tolkien’s world has certainly shaped me. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s done more than anything else to form my view of good and evil, but it’s been significant. During my time as a theological student at my first church, I quoted The Lord of the Rings in nearly every sermon I was allowed to give. Eventually, the incumbent gently laid down a rule: no more Tolkien from the pulpit. I thought I’d found a loophole by quoting from Tolkien’s letters instead during a sermon she happened to miss, but word got back to her anyway. 

Over time I’ve come to see that Middle-earth isn’t just a place of elves and hobbits and ancient kings. It’s a place where moral clarity still breathes. Where good and evil are not social constructs or ideological games, but real, permanent things. Not always obvious, not always comfortable, but true. 

That’s part of what drew me to an instagram post I came across recently, a side-by-side comparison of Tolkien’s moral vision with that of Frank Herbert’s Dune. The post was thoughtful, even provocative. And it stirred something in me that’s been building for a while. I’ve read most of the original Dune series, and while I admired Herbert’s complexity and ambition, something in his world always left me uneasy. This post helped me name that unease. It gave language to the contrast I’d been sensing all along. 

One detail in particular nudged me forward. The post mentioned that Tolkien had once expressed a strong dislike for Dune. I wasn’t sure if that was true or if people were just needlessly pitting two towering authors against each other. So I looked it up. And sure enough, in a letter written to John Bush on March 12, 1966, Tolkien mentioned having received a copy of Dune, and in his characteristically polite but pointed way, remarked: “In fact I dislike Dune with some intensity…” That caught my attention. Not because I feel the need to side with Tolkien on every literary opinion, but because I think I know what he meant.

Recently, I turned forty. A milestone birthday. And while I’m not one to spiral into existential dread at the tick of a clock, I have noticed a few things. I now have two grey hairs in my beard, and a single, surprisingly consistent grey hair on my head that has earned its place and returns loyally after every haircut. These are small things, but they mark time in a way birthdays rarely can. 

As part of my birthday gift, my family gave me the green light to splurge on a few old books. One of them was a single-volume edition of Hannah Arendt’s The Life of the Mind. I’d been curious about it for a while. Arendt has a reputation for thinking about things that matter with unusual clarity, and I’d read bits here and there. But this edition drew me in. And reading it, especially the introduction, opened something up in me. 

What really drew me to Arendt, though, was something I read not long before, her eulogy for Martin Heidegger. I’ve always struggled to connect with so-called continental philosophers. My background is more analytic, which tends to value precision, clarity, and logical structure over mood, metaphor, and cultural critique.¹ I’ve often found continental writing dense, elusive, and hard to pin down. But Arendt was different. Her voice carried a kind of sharpness and restraint that I trusted. I learned she had studied under Heidegger, and I thought maybe she’s the entry point I’ve been needing. A way to wade into deeper, sometimes murkier waters with someone who doesn’t lose sight of the shore. Never too old to learn new things and all that. 

Arendt reflects, in The Life of the Mind, on her experience attending Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem. What struck her wasn’t how monstrous Eichmann was, but how ordinary. How banal. How thoughtless. 

“There was no sign in him of firm ideological convictions… the only notable characteristic one could detect in his past behavior as well as in his behavior during the trial… was not stupidity but thoughtlessness.” That word hit me. Thoughtlessness. Arendt suggests it might be exactly this lack of thinking, not in the sense of low intelligence but in the deeper sense of never pausing to reflect on one’s actions, that makes evil possible. And not just extreme evil. Everyday evil. The kind that becomes embedded in systems, in language, in habits. She asks:

“Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass… be among the conditions that make men abstain from evil-doing or even actually condition them against it?” 

That’s the question I keep coming back to. Not just “what do I believe is good?” but “am I actually thinking about what good means?” Have I received my moral instincts by reflection, or just by absorption? 

And if I haven’t paused to ask that, how would I even know if I was part of something deeply wrong? 

This is why I keep coming back to Tolkien. Not because he gives easy answers, but because his stories demand that kind of deep reflection. They insist that goodness is real, but not always obvious. That you can be small and faithful and still be caught up in something immense and eternal. That doing what’s right may cost you everything, and yet still be worth it. And maybe most of all, that control is not the same as wisdom, and that power, when it tries to seize what only grace can give, will always, eventually, become a kind of evil. 

That’s where Dune begins to feel, to me at least, like the mirror opposite of Tolkien. It’s not that it lacks moral seriousness. Quite the opposite. Herbert’s world is saturated with politics, religion, philosophy, prophecy. It’s complex and often profound. But for all that, it moves according to a very different gravitational pull. 

In Dune, the question is rarely “What is right?” The question is almost always “What is necessary?” 

And that’s the pivot. 

Because “what is necessary?” quickly becomes “what will work?” Which becomes “what will secure the future?” Which becomes “what will preserve the species?” Or the bloodline. Or the empire. Or the vision. And once you’re there, once necessity is king, then morality becomes a kind of decoration. A tool. A secondary concern. Something you use to sell your decisions to others, but no longer something you submit to yourself. 

Paul Atreides doesn’t start out wanting to dominate the galaxy. He’s thrust into it, and he’s brilliant enough to see how the machinery works. He sees the myths, the religious systems,

the military potential. And instead of refusing them, he uses them. And maybe, tragically, he believes that he has to. That to reject them would be to abandon his people. His legacy. The future itself. 

Which is exactly the trap. 

Because once you believe that you are the only one who can save the world, then every compromise becomes justified. Every manipulation becomes strategic. Every act of violence becomes a regrettable necessity in service of some greater good. 

And what you lose, quietly, completely, is the ability to trust. To hope. To surrender. You become, in the most terrifying sense, alone. 

That’s what I started to feel as I read on. Not just the weight of Herbert’s imagined future, but the absence of grace. The absence of a higher order that might intervene. The absence of any space for weakness to be redemptive, or failure to be salvaged, or evil to be overcome by anything other than force. 

The world of Dune is one where goodness must be managed, engineered, imposed. Where religion is a narrative device. Where salvation is a strategy. 

And it made me feel tired. Not because it was unrealistic, but because it felt too real. Like it had absorbed the assumptions of our own culture so deeply that it no longer had the resources to critique them. Just to play them out. 

As I sat with that feeling, what Dune evoked in me, what Tolkien offered instead, I realized that this wasn’t just a difference in story or setting. It was a difference in moral philosophy. A difference in how these worlds define what goodness even is. 

In the Dune universe, morality is always provisional. Flexible. Subordinate to a larger goal. If a lie will preserve peace, you tell it. If violence will serve the long-term stability of a people, you use it. If religion will galvanize the masses, you manufacture it. The ethical question isn’t “Is this right?” but “Will this work?” That’s the logic of utilitarianism, the belief that the right thing to do is whatever produces the greatest outcome. The ends justify the means. 

And to be fair, there’s something tempting, almost compelling, about that. Especially when the stakes are high. Especially in a world where everything seems fragile and survival feels

like the only absolute. Utilitarianism promises clarity: do what works. But it also demands a kind of coldness. A readiness to sacrifice conscience for results. 

This is what Herbert’s universe seems to assume: that the world can only be saved by those with the will to shape it. That moral compromise is the price of leadership. That power, wielded wisely, is the only path forward. 

It’s not far from Nietzsche’s dream of the Übermensch, the figure who rises above conventional morality, who forges their own values, who creates meaning by imposing will. It’s a seductive vision. But one with no room for weakness. Or humility. Or grace. 

Tolkien’s world is the opposite. Not naïve, not simple, but opposite. His characters operate according to what philosophers call deontological ethics. That is, the belief that some actions are right or wrong in themselves, regardless of the outcome. Frodo doesn’t carry the Ring  because it guarantees success. He carries it because it is the right thing to do. Aragorn doesn’t seize the throne by force. He waits until the time is given. Gandalf refuses the Ring, not because he doubts its power, but because he knows that power used wrongly corrupts absolutely. 

In other words, the moral path is not determined by effectiveness, but by faithfulness. 

And here’s the thing. Tolkien’s world only makes sense if there’s something deeper, something transcendent, beneath all of it. A reality in which good and evil are not subjective, not situational, but true. A world where our task is not to control the future, but to walk faithfully through the present, trusting that we are part of a larger story we did not write. 

That may be why Tolkien’s moral vision feels so steady. It isn’t a system we invented to manage a modern crisis. It is older than us. Older than empires. It assumes that the universe itself is ordered toward goodness, and that our deepest moral intuitions about justice, mercy, courage, truth, are not sentimental echoes of a passing age, but clues to what is most real. Dune, like many modern attempts to ground morality, utilitarianism included, is brilliant but brittle. It can explain much, but it struggles to justify what we most cherish. Tolkien doesn’t explain it all. But he gives it a home. 

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A couple of months ago, the Aurora Borealis showed up in Banff in a way I’d never seen before. I’ve lived here for years, and somehow, I’d never caught it. So that night, I walked to the pedestrian bridge and looked up. 

It was awe-inspiring. The kind of beauty that doesn’t just impress you; it unsettles something, opens something. I think the others on the bridge felt it too. A jolly gentleman wandered over, clearly moved, and maybe a little tipsy. He declared how divine it was, then started sharing his churchgoing résumé. I think he may have overheard me praying to myself. It was funny and earnest and, somehow, deeply good. This strange moment of connection under a sky we couldn’t control. 

But the lights on the bridge were too bright. The glow of phone screens lit up faces that weren’t looking up. And I wasn’t immune. I pulled out my phone too, tried to capture it, but the photos didn’t come close. They were flat, grainy echoes of something living. Walking home, the street lights got brighter. And I couldn’t see the northern lights anymore. 

¹ For readers unfamiliar: Analytic philosophy emphasizes logical clarity and argumentation, often working in ethics, language, and science. Continental philosophy tends to focus more on historical context, existential questions, power, culture, and meaning. The labels are oversimplified, but they help locate general styles of thought.