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Originally Posted by davem
Of all the possible approaches to LotR I think the 'philosophical' approach is likely to achieve least - a linguistic or mythological analysis will shine much more light on Tolkien's creation - in my opinion
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As someone who makes his living with philosophy I must say I agree with
davem here. Even if I think that philosophy or philosophical attitude towards the things in the world one encounters is most refreshing and gratifying, it's not any magic box from where all the right or fruitful questions / answers will stem from automatically.
On the first plane at least linguistics, cultural anthropology, folklorism, history, psychology... you name it, will give us much more interesting viewpoints into Tolkien's work as such. How do we relate to these things and why, what can be argued to exist under all these different approaches, or what unexplicated assumptions do we base our interpretations of Tolkien on? Etc... These are then bending towards philosophical inqueries and I think they're not totally worthless, but making a course of this in Uni would require that we first have the stuff (different interpretations of Tolkien) to ruminate about...