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Why the World around You Isn’t as It Appears: A Study of Owen Barfield
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”
― Albert Einstein Empirical knowledge is only one side of “reality.” Empirical knowledge is all about the “outside,” the surfaces of objects, the matter we can see and touch. It does not speak to the “insides,” the unconscious inner reality, subjectivity, feelings, and meaning that humans contribute to the world of objects we experience in our day-to-day lives. The New Enlightenment looks at the inside from that place phenomenologist Edmund Husserl termed “the great world of the interiority of consciousness.” Using the insights of Owen Barfield (1898–1997) as his starting point, Linderman investigates the nature of consciousness, the Enlightenment, scientific thinking, belief, and the power of imagination. This book is for those who appreciate the insights of alternative thinkers, but feel at the mercy of an engineer neighbor, an amateur “science buff” friend, or skeptical relatives. They confidently present clear, reasoned, scientific arguments to discredit, or, at least, bring considerable doubt to the veracity of the claims of the alternative thinkers you find compelling. For you to explain why you find some alternative writers so helpful, you need to be able to articulate succinctly the theory of knowledge that undergirds them. Likely, you struggle to do so now. You should find help in this book.
― Albert Einstein Empirical knowledge is only one side of “reality.” Empirical knowledge is all about the “outside,” the surfaces of objects, the matter we can see and touch. It does not speak to the “insides,” the unconscious inner reality, subjectivity, feelings, and meaning that humans contribute to the world of objects we experience in our day-to-day lives. The New Enlightenment looks at the inside from that place phenomenologist Edmund Husserl termed “the great world of the interiority of consciousness.” Using the insights of Owen Barfield (1898–1997) as his starting point, Linderman investigates the nature of consciousness, the Enlightenment, scientific thinking, belief, and the power of imagination. This book is for those who appreciate the insights of alternative thinkers, but feel at the mercy of an engineer neighbor, an amateur “science buff” friend, or skeptical relatives. They confidently present clear, reasoned, scientific arguments to discredit, or, at least, bring considerable doubt to the veracity of the claims of the alternative thinkers you find compelling. For you to explain why you find some alternative writers so helpful, you need to be able to articulate succinctly the theory of knowledge that undergirds them. Likely, you struggle to do so now. You should find help in this book.
194 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 28, 2017
An interesting look at Barfield in the context of a movement that draws on his work as well as others'. I found this book most useful for its commentary on the Enlightenment and its fallout in the intellectual history of the West, and in that area it represented Barfield well.
The picture it presented of an alternate way of thinking was much less compelling. The examples were more allusive than illustrative, lacking the necessary detail to really showcase a different approach. That aspect of the book was disappointing -- although to be fair, the book would probably have needed to be twice as long to fix that.
The picture it presented of an alternate way of thinking was much less compelling. The examples were more allusive than illustrative, lacking the necessary detail to really showcase a different approach. That aspect of the book was disappointing -- although to be fair, the book would probably have needed to be twice as long to fix that.
November 7, 2021
This is a good introduction to Barfield's thinking for those who are entirely new, but the other reviews are correct that much of the book is not about Barfield's thinking, but rather hurried overviews of possibilities for its application. The book is simply too ambitious in scope for a 150-page non-scholarly book. Despite that, its descriptions of Barfield's epistemology are accurate and do well as summaries; there are a few pages here and there that would be excellent as a handout for a class on the Inklings that did not have a lot of time to devote to Barfield alone.
June 16, 2020
*Only made it 3/4 through. I picked this up for the Barfield reference. Not much on Barfield....
November 6, 2013
The aim of this book is to enlist Reason in the struggle against what has become the consensus view of Rationality.
The opening chapters describe what the author calls 'The Belief' -- the dominant view of reality that has developed since the Enlightenment and the birth of scientific method. All sorts of wonderful things have improved the quality of human life since then, but there have also been costs -- social, environmental -- and it is now looking as if the materialist or dualist views upon which our dominant ideology is based are starting to produce more problems than they may be able to solve.
Enter Owen Barfield, and his key concept that human consciousness -- like the human organism -- is subject to evolution. Linderman builds on Barfield's ideas to argue that just as the notion of an individual self was an aspect of human consciousness that developed only relatively recently, so there are levels of awareness beyond the self, and it is the development of these additional faculties that are necessary to correct the damage done by The Belief. If this sounds woolly, consider the simple point that scientific method alone produces little without imagination.
The nature of thinking is presented as the key. Whereas The Belief encourages us to believe that thoughts are bio-chemical reactions sealed-off from the rest of the universe, developments in physics and the social sciences have made it increasingly clear that to think something is -- in a pertinent sense -- to bring that something into being. When we explore experientially the nature of thinking, we are also observing how we participate in and through nature as human beings. We are neither 'cut off' from nature, nor are we helpless puppets entirely subject to chemical reactions. 'With our thoughts we make the world,' as the Buddha supposedly said.
It's not quite as simple as I've made it sound here, of course. There are lots of great arguments in this book to give adherents to The Belief something to think about. Many like to claim that they are being rational, but perhaps we should all stop to wonder whether Reason itself isn't by definition a supernatural entity? I mean, it's a bit rich for a materialist to lean on something so damned -- erm... -- ideal, isn't it? Perhaps this is the reason why we never see sceptics or materialists taking the trouble to define Reason -- because they know they'll end up having to base any definition on something other than Reason, something that will most likely expose Reason's basis in the irrational.
Reading Linderman on Barfield, it strikes me that Barfield might be one of those figures you stumble across occasionally, who are relatively obscure and yet have been hugely influential. Barfield was a follower of Rudolf Steiner, yet his way of expressing himself seems to have been wholly more accessible than Steiner's often 'way out' writings. If Barfield was truly the first to express some of the ideas in this book, then all of us today who like to bang on about 'non-duality' and 'higher states of consciousness' may be indebted to him more than we realise. I shall definitely be seeking out some of his books to see if this is truly the case.
The opening chapters describe what the author calls 'The Belief' -- the dominant view of reality that has developed since the Enlightenment and the birth of scientific method. All sorts of wonderful things have improved the quality of human life since then, but there have also been costs -- social, environmental -- and it is now looking as if the materialist or dualist views upon which our dominant ideology is based are starting to produce more problems than they may be able to solve.
Enter Owen Barfield, and his key concept that human consciousness -- like the human organism -- is subject to evolution. Linderman builds on Barfield's ideas to argue that just as the notion of an individual self was an aspect of human consciousness that developed only relatively recently, so there are levels of awareness beyond the self, and it is the development of these additional faculties that are necessary to correct the damage done by The Belief. If this sounds woolly, consider the simple point that scientific method alone produces little without imagination.
The nature of thinking is presented as the key. Whereas The Belief encourages us to believe that thoughts are bio-chemical reactions sealed-off from the rest of the universe, developments in physics and the social sciences have made it increasingly clear that to think something is -- in a pertinent sense -- to bring that something into being. When we explore experientially the nature of thinking, we are also observing how we participate in and through nature as human beings. We are neither 'cut off' from nature, nor are we helpless puppets entirely subject to chemical reactions. 'With our thoughts we make the world,' as the Buddha supposedly said.
It's not quite as simple as I've made it sound here, of course. There are lots of great arguments in this book to give adherents to The Belief something to think about. Many like to claim that they are being rational, but perhaps we should all stop to wonder whether Reason itself isn't by definition a supernatural entity? I mean, it's a bit rich for a materialist to lean on something so damned -- erm... -- ideal, isn't it? Perhaps this is the reason why we never see sceptics or materialists taking the trouble to define Reason -- because they know they'll end up having to base any definition on something other than Reason, something that will most likely expose Reason's basis in the irrational.
Reading Linderman on Barfield, it strikes me that Barfield might be one of those figures you stumble across occasionally, who are relatively obscure and yet have been hugely influential. Barfield was a follower of Rudolf Steiner, yet his way of expressing himself seems to have been wholly more accessible than Steiner's often 'way out' writings. If Barfield was truly the first to express some of the ideas in this book, then all of us today who like to bang on about 'non-duality' and 'higher states of consciousness' may be indebted to him more than we realise. I shall definitely be seeking out some of his books to see if this is truly the case.
December 19, 2014
This is a good book for getting a handle on the direction of what Owen Barfield thought and wrote about. That is why I read it. It presents itself as being about Barfield. Interestingly, it isn't so much a book about Barfield's thought so much as an explanation of what the author called The New Enlightenment. This is more of a book about this philosophy that Barfield was converted to early in his adulthood and dedicated to throughout his life, rather than an explanation of thoughts that were his specifically.
It is a professionally written book and quite readable. Rudolf Steiner and Barfield are both mentioned throughout but it isn't really a book about Steiner's thought or what the source of Barfield's thinking was, though the reader is given to understand that the ideas were from Steiner and believed by Barfield.
It is a professionally written book and quite readable. Rudolf Steiner and Barfield are both mentioned throughout but it isn't really a book about Steiner's thought or what the source of Barfield's thinking was, though the reader is given to understand that the ideas were from Steiner and believed by Barfield.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews