[eBook Code] The Hobbit and Philosophy (eBook Code, 1st)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Thag You Very Buch x

Introduction: Never Laugh at Live Philosophers 1
Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson

PART ONE DISCOVER YOUR INNER TOOK

1 The Adventurous Hobbit 7
Gregory Bassham

2 “The Road Goes Ever On and On”: A Hobbit’s Tao 20
Michael C. Brannigan

3 Big Hairy Feet: A Hobbit’s Guide to Enlightenment 32
Eric Bronson

4 Bilbo Baggins: The Cosmopolitan Hobbit 45
Dennis Knepp

PART TWO THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE SLIMY

5 The Glory of Bilbo Baggins 61
Charles Taliaferro and Craig Lindahl-Urben

6 Pride and Humility in The Hobbit 74
Laura Garcia

7 “My Precious”: Tolkien on the Perils of Possessiveness 90
Anna Minore and Gregory Bassham

8 Tolkien’s Just War 103
David Kyle Johnson

9 “Pretty Fair Nonsense”: Art and Beauty in The Hobbit 118
Philip Tallon

10 Hobbitus Ludens: Why Hobbits Like to Play and Why We Should, Too 129
David L. O’Hara

PART THREE RIDDLES AND RINGS

11 “The Lord of Magic and Machines”: Tolkien on Magic and Technology 147
W. Christopher Stewart

12 Inside The Hobbit: Bilbo Baggins and the Paradox of Fiction 161
Amy Kind

13 Philosophy in the Dark: The Hobbit and Hermeneutics 176
Tom Grimwood

PART FOUR BEING THERE AND BACK AGAIN

14 Some Hobbits Have All the Luck 193
Randall M. Jensen

15 The Consolation of Bilbo: Providence and Free Will in Middle-Earth 206
Grant Sterling

16 Out of the Frying Pan: Courage and Decision Making in Wilderland 218
Jamie Carlin Watson

17 There and Back Again: A Song of Innocence and Experience 235
Joe Kraus

CONTRIBUTORS: Our Most Excellent and Audacious Contributors 251

INDEX: The Moon Letters 257