Narrative philosophy or a philosophy of narrative?

My friend Ian is a brilliant writer and story-teller. I asked him once how he did it. He said that he has to wait on characters who find their way to him from a dark wood in his mind. The characters are often shy, unsure of how to respond to the disembodied voice who will become their narrator. Eventually, these timid fictives step forward and begin to tell their story. For Ian, this is the place from which stories come, and these stories can be used to communicate any message, to stir up any emotion, and to prove any point. If you want to do theology or philosophy, says Ian, tell a story.

At times, I find myself nodding along, hearing the shuffle of hidden characters in the dark woods of my mind. I can see the beauty in the ambiguity of stories and parable — their fluidity and malleability to address the complex issues of human existence. I resonate with a desire to give my theoretical ponderings flesh and bones; to see and hear and touch what I say that I think that I might believe.

And at other times, I find such stories wanting, communicating the complex ethos of the wide range of experience, but unable to express the things that I simply need to say. I guess at times narrative seems evasive and elusive, creating opportunities for beautiful, glorious, disastrous re-interpretation (which is going to happen regardless of the genre). It seems to me that a straight-forward discourse — an “essay,” as one friend called it — is less likely to be misread. It is oftentimes simpler, more clear, and more precisely what I want or need to say. In these ways, it seems like a valid and sometimes necessary way of expressing philo-theological or theosophical ideas.

But I wonder if my need for such clear and concise discourse is the remnant of a post-Enlightenment rhetorical logocentrism. Maybe I’m afraid of the open-ended absence of a purely narrative approach to philosophy or theology and would prefer the “nearness” of a clearly presented and well-argued case. The question I’m left with is this: Is it bad to sometimes prefer discourse, and therefore, to uphold and perpetuate a logocentric belief that discourse will be more understood (or less misunderstood)?

This whole conversation reminded me of the debates amongst the Inklings of Oxford in the 1930s and 40s. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien asked very similar questions. Lewis was very proud of his first Narnia novel, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Tolkien, however, thought that the religious allusions were too blatant. Instead, Tolkien suggested, any religious implications ought to be buried deep within the story, so as not to detract from the story itself. Aslan was too obviously the Christ-figure and as such distracted the reader from the stories of Narnia.[1] More than that, Tolkien was appalled at Lewis’s theological ventures, believing firmly that such discourse was better left for the professional theologians, not the writers and scholars of fiction and literature.[2] And so their two great works, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings, reflect their differences. Lewis chose a combination of allegorical narrative and straightforward discourse; Tolkien chose to hide his wisdom deeply in his stories of hobbits and wizards.

In my own life, I would say that Lewis’s approach has affected me more personally. In other words, I prefer The Chronicles of Narnia to Tolkien’s work. Tolkien’s insistence on hiding his message makes his stories epic — though at times overly descriptive and long-winded. Lewis’s fiction is witty, to-the-point, and, for me, nearly existential to read. As a theologian, Lewis’s work is sometimes lacking. He was, after all (and as Tolkien rightly pointed out), primarily a writer of fiction and a lover of literature. But despite that, Lewis made points in his theological works that he could not make so easily in Narnia. His simultaneous use of narrative and discourse offered Lewis a variety of paths to conversation, both with his friends and with his readers then and now.

A few weeks ago, I read an interview from Slavoj Žižek. In the interview, Žižek gives his take on the current political struggle over healthcare. Standing up for theoretical discourse, Žižek says:

My friend told me [that Norm] Chomsky said something very sad. He said that today we don’t need theory. All we need to do is tell people, empirically, what is going on. Here, I violently disagree: facts are facts, and they are precious, but they can work in this way or that. Facts alone are not enough. You have to change the ideological background.[3]

Of course, Žižek is describing politics, particularly as it relates to healthcare, but his point remains: Telling the story isn’t always enough. There are times that one must use theory to change ideology. If we can’t engage the theory, then our stories will be open-ended ammunition for whoever wants to use it (which, I agree, is the beautiful thing about using narrative). But occasionally, ideologies must be challenged, and to do that, theory must be engaged in discourse.

I like narrative philosophy. I like when philosophy is done through fleshed-out, evocative, subtle, and open-ended stories. But I also like the use of discourse and essays. They both have a place and a time. So, I prefer a “philosophy of narrative,” one that sees the world in both stories and theories; a communicative methodology that embraces the narratives of real people in communities striving to embody the ideals of their theosophical dialogue; a worldview in which people are recognized as simultaneously transcendent and immanent, summed up by thought and stories. After all, Christians are a people endlessly dialoguing about the incarnational event that can’t be captured in words.

::The Question::
What do you think? Tolkien or Lewis? Chomsky or Žižek? Purely narrative philosophy or a philosophy of narrative? Both? Neither?

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[1]About.com, “C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien: Friendship and Disagreements over Christian Theology,” http://atheism.about.com/od/cslewisnarnia/a/jrrtolkein.htm [accessed on November 14, 2009]. I know, I know. I shouldn’t use such questionable sources.
[2]Ibid.; Literary Traveler,  ”J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: A Literary Friendship and Rivalry Made in Oxford,” http://www.literarytraveler.com/literary_articles/tolkien_lewis_oxford.aspx [accessed on November 14, 2009]. Tolkien seemed upset with Lewis’s preference for Anglicanism over his own Catholicism, probably in large part because Tolkien was crucial in Lewis’s conversion to Christianity.
[3]Jonathan Derbyshire, “I am a Leninist. Lenin wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. If you can get power, grab it,” The New Statesman http://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2009/11/381-382-interview-obama-theory [accessed on November 14, 2009].