Abstract

MILBANK, Allison. The Theopolitical Vision of G. K. Chesterton and J. R. R. Tolkien and its Contemporary Relevance. Rev. filos.open insight [online]. 2021, vol.12, n.24, pp.47-65.  Epub June 04, 2021. ISSN 2395-8936.

What could Chesterton and Tolkien have to offer to the contemporary political thought and practice? This essay discusses on what they share as a common project in their fiction and discursive writing, that is to find a way to acknowledge the value of the local and personal, while directing private good to the universal through the concept of the common good. This has implications for our response to environmental crisis as well as the manner in which we relate the one and the many. Here, mediating institutions such as friendship are all important, and are shown to be built on gift-exchanging and engagement. The sources of Chesterton’s thought in Anglo-Catholic and Guild socialism as well as in Hilaire Belloc’s Distributism are discussed, besides the roots of this political anthropology in a theology of creation as art and gift.

Keywords : Common good; friendship; gift-exchange; G. K. Chesterton; J. R. R. Tolkien; political anthropology.

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