Wyatt Andrews- On The Ethics of Elfland

 

“They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics.” 

G.K. Chesterton

Many look at the process of growing up as an abandonment of the ideals that you once had and replacing them with a compromise that sacrifices the world as it ought to be with the world as it is. Through this process, men often lose the wonder for life that once gripped them. In an attempt to make the world more manageable, they made the world mundane. A child sees the world and everything in it fills him with astonishment. You play peek-a-boo with an infant and they are taken aback at the idea that objects are permanent. However, Chesterton feels, that adults all too often lose this fascination towards the world. Chesterton is always amazed that the object is permanent. Through this amazement towards the world, Chesterton proposed his Fairyland Philosophy.

This philosophic view is the acceptance of the childlike without the folly of the childish. While childishness is the belief in ideals without grounding, childlike is the return to ideals in light of evidence. This brazen tenacity towards his ideals is the Fairyland philosophy

He named this Fairyland philosophy because he found it through fairytales. Chesterton claimed that it was in the nursery that he learned more about the world than anywhere else, and it was through the stories he began to understand it. In Jack and the Giant, it is learned that the giant must be slain because he is the image of arrogance, and arrogance always falls. In Beauty and the Beast, it is learned that something may need to be loved while it is still ugly so that it may become beautiful. Finally, in Sleeping Beauty it is learned that a child must be exposed to the danger of the world or he will never recognize it when it inevitably presents itself. 

This is a short clip of the clinical therapist Dr. Jordan Peterson discussing the archetypal meaning of the Sleeping Beauty Story.

This philosophy brings him to four conclusions. First, the world is in some way supernatural, even with natural explanations, it is still a miracle as it may have been different. Second, the world in its wonder, is an intentional wonder. It is wondrous in a personal way. Third, whatever purpose there was, it was beautiful despite the evil which existed. Fourth, and finally, the proper way to live in this world, is to live in temperance as a way of thanks for the good things in life.  

The wonder of the world originates in the recognition of and the delineation between mathematical laws and natural laws. The mathematical laws are necessary and eternal. There is no number that 2+2 could equal but 4 (This article connects loosely but I found this in researching the topic and felt the need to share). One cannot even fathom it creating something different. Rational necessities are very similar to mathematical ones. These are not lost in the fairy tale either, if the miller had a son named Jack, then Jack’s father could have been no one but the miller. However, it is not a rational or mathematical law that eggs hatch chickens. Chickens coming from eggs is a natural law and these are not logically necessary. A mere pattern does not elicit a logical necessity. When we make laws beyond that of logical necessity, the scientist becomes the sentimentalist. However, Chesterton sees these patterns as immensely beautiful. He proposes that perhaps the sun does not need to paint the sky with its magnificent hues of every color each and every time it rises and sets, but each and every morning, like a child who has found a game which he particularly enjoys to play, God tells the sun “Do it again!” because it is beautiful. This is where he finds the world to be supernatural as well, similar to William Paley’s watchmaker analogy, the beauty and order of the universe begs for a creator (note: This is not his reason for faith. However, this is why he sees nature as impossibly supernatural. Hume had a rebuttal to the watchmaker analogy which seems to be the general consensus. These views of the world are seemingly comparable yet not the same logically).

To Chesterton, the wonder of the world is not suffocated by the evil which remains in it. As he simply stated, “The goodness of the fairy tale was not affected by the fact that there might be more dragons than princesses; it was good to be in a fairy tale. The test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom" (Orthodoxy, Chapter 4).

In response to this world which he felt so lucky to be a part of, Chesterton creates what he refers to as the doctrine of conditional joy. Conditional joy is the idea that “Incomprehensible happiness relies on an incomprehensible conclusion” (Orthodoxy Chapter 4). If the universe had been created this way and you were lucky enough to live in it, you ought to live a life of humility and temperance. To Chesterton, the proper way to thank God for creating the wonder of sex was to live monogamous with and take care of one woman. Who was he to be given such a gift and be angered that he may not have more? 

This philosophy appears in a novel called Orthodoxy which describes his personal return to traditional Christianity on a logical basis. This Fairyland Philosophy was written to justify traditional values in an age that questioned everything. It pushes against the naturalist view of the world which paints the world as drab and without wonder. Rather he sees the wonder in everything: the sky is blue and not red, the frog jumps instead of flies, and water flows down instead of up. His point is that given this beauty we must not abandon our childlike wonder and as such we must not abandon our traditional values either. Even if you don’t understand the tradition, you should follow it recognizing the fact that your forefathers did. The men who came before you were not insane and they were not stupid. They did things rationally as you but they had different experiences. Chesterton is not claiming that we must follow exactly in their footsteps. Rather, Chesterton recognizes tradition as, “the democracy of the dead” and if we are to separate from it we must do so recognizing that we inherently disagree with the opinion of every man who created the tradition before us. If we are to do so, we must do so with very good reason. 

This philosophy stands firmly upon the shoulders of Christian theology. Without the acceptance of God, the denizen of fairyland may be left as Chesterton when he wrote, "I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom" (Orthodoxy, Chapter 4). For Christians such as myself, this philosophy is a way for us to never lose the thankfulness we ought to have for the world itself and, hopefully, never lose our childlikeness.