by JLS
for the GC
--- D. E. Russell, in his PhD dissertation, has explored some strands in the Griceian fabric. I offer the following. I haven't done much research on this, though. I think it MAY relate to an essay by Holloway, "Philosophy of language in England". Holloway, of "Language and Intelligence" fame (Hart reviewed it for Philosophical Quarterly in 1952, first mentioning Grice's "Meaning" in print).
One learns from Wiki.
Owen Barfield was born in London on 9 November 1898, and died in Sussex 14 December 1997. He was an English Oxford-educated philosopher (alma mater: Wadham) author, poet, and critic.
Barfield was born in London.
He was educated at Highgate School and Wadham College, Oxford.
In 1920 received a 1st class degree in English language and literature.
After finishing his B. Litt., which became
"Poetic Diction"
with the crucial Griceian subtitle with Griceian echoes:
"a study in meaning"
(1928), Barfield worked as a solicitor.
Because of Barfield's career as a solicitor, he contributed to philosophy as
a non-academic -- publishing however numerous essays, books, and articles.
Barfield's primary focus was on what he called the "evolution of
consciousness," which is an idea which occurs frequently in his writings.
Barfield, rather than a pre-Griceian, is most famous today as a friend of C. S. Lewis and as the author of "Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry" -- another study -- cfr. Grice, "studies in the way of words".
Barfield met Irish author C. S. Lewis in 1919.
In 1923 Barfield married the stage-designer Maud Douie.
They adopted three children: Alexander, Lucy, and Geoffrey.
C. S. Lewis wrote his 1949 book "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" for Lucy
Barfield and dedicated "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" to her brother
Geoffrey in 1952.
Barfield died in Forest Row in Sussex, in 1997. (Obituary in "The Independent").
Barfield has been known as "the first and last Inkling".
Barfield was one of the initial members of the Inklings literary discussion group
based in Oxford -- more specifically, at the "Bird and Baby" pub across
Grice's college (St Giles) -- St. John's. (Grice preferred to socialise at the "Lamb and Flag").
Barfield had a strong influence on C. S. Lewis, and, through his 'study in meaning',
(originally Oxon thesis), "Poetic Diction" (1928), an
appreciable effect on J. R. R. Tolkien.
C. S. Lewis was a good friend of Barfield since 1919, and termed Barfield
--- "the best and wisest of my unofficial teachers".
That Barfield did not consider philosophy merely intellectually is
illustrated by a well-known interchange that took place between Lewis and
Barfield.
Lewis one day made the mistake of referring to philosophy as "a subject-matter."
"It wasn't a subject-matter to Plato," said Barfield, "It was a way" -- as in Grice's "way of words".
Lewis refers to Barfield as the "Second Friend" in "Surprised by Joy":
"But the Second Friend (aka Barfield) is the man who disagrees with you about everything."
"Barfield is not so much the alter ego as the anti-self."
"Of course Barfield shares your interests; otherwise he would not become your friend at all."
"But Barfield approaches them all at a different angle."
"Barfield has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one."
"It is as if he spoke your language but mispronounced it."
"How can he be so nearly right and yet, invariably, just not right?"
Barfield became an anthroposophist after attending a lecture by Rudolf Steiner on March 3, 1924.
Barfield studied the work and philosophy of Steiner throughout his life
and translated some of his works (to English), and had some early essays published in anthroposophical publications.
A study of Steiner's basic texts provides information on some of the ideas
that influenced Barfield's work.
But Barfield's work ought not be considered derivative of Steiner's.
Barfield expert G. Tennyson suggests the relation.
"Barfield is to Steiner as Steiner was to Goethe."
----
cfr. "Schiffer is to Grice as Grice was to Plato." (Speranza).
Barfield might be characterised as both a Christian writer, and a learned
anti-reductionist writer.
By 2007 all of his books were in print again and include
"Unancestral Voice"
"History, Guilt, and Habit"
"Romanticism Comes of Age" -- cfr. Speranza, "Griceianism Comes of Age".
"The Rediscovery of Meaning" -- cfr. Speranza, "The rediscovery of Griceian meaning".
"Speaker's Meaning"
and
"Worlds Apart."
"History in English Words" seeks to retell the history of Western civilization by exploring the change in meanings of various words -- notably 'car' (cfr. Grice, 'wheeled vehicle').
"Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry" is on the 1999 100 Best
Spiritual Books of the Century list by Philip Zaleski (He also lists "The Bible").
Barfield was also an influence on T. S. Eliot who called Barfield's book
"Worlds Apart"
---- "a journey into seas of thought very far from ordinary routes of
intellectual shipping."
It is a fictional dialogue between a physicist, a biologist, a psychiatrist, a lawyer-philologist, a linguistic analyst, a theologian, a retired
Waldorf School teacher, and a young man employed at a rocket research station.
His name is "Tom".
During a period of three days, these various characters (Speranza set it to music and turned into an opera -- tenor, baritone, etc. --) discuss first principles.
In her book "Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World",
Verlyn Flieger analyzes the influence of Barfield's "Poetic Diction: a study in
meaning" (1928) on the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien.
More recent discussions of Barfield's work are published in Stephen
Talbott's "The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst",
Neil Evernden's "The Social Creation of Nature", Daniel Smitherman's "Philosophy
and the Evolution of Consciousness", Morris Berman's "The Reenchantment of
the World", and Gary Lachman's "A Secret History of Consciousness."
During 1996, Lachman conducted perhaps the last interview with Barfield,
versions of which appeared in Gnosis magazine and the magazine Lapis.
In a foreword to "Poetic Diction: a study in meaning" (1928), Howard
Nemerov, US Poet Laureate, stated:
"Among the poets and teachers
of my acquaintance who know Barfield's
"Poetic diction: a study in meaning" (1928),
it has been valued not only as a secret
book, but nearly as a sacred one."
Saul Bellow, the Nobel-Prize winning novelist, wrote:
"We are well supplied with
interesting writers, but Owen Barfield,
of Speaker Meaning fame, is not
content to be merely interesting."
"Barfield's ambition is to set us free.
Free from what? From the prison we have made
for ourselves by our ways of knowing, our
limited and false habits of thought, our
‘common sense'."
James Hillman, a noted culture critic and psychologist, called Barfield
---- "one of the most neglected important thinkers of the 20th century."
"Owen Barfield: Man and Meaning" (1994), co-produced and written by G. B.
Tennyson and David Lavery, directed and edited by Ben Levin, is a
documentary portrait of Barfield.
"Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry"
"Saving the Appearances" explores some three thousand years of history—
particularly the history of human consciousness.
Barfield argues that the evolution of nature is inseparable from the evolution of consciousness.
What we call "matter" interacts with "mind" and wouldn't exist without it.
In the Barfield's lexicon, there is an
"unrepresented"
underlying base of reality that is "extra-mental".
This is comparable to Kant's notion of the "noumenal world".
--- cfr. Grice's theory of 'representation' (three tenets) in "Studies in the way of words" -- For Grice primal representation is natural and iconic.
Similar conclusions have been made by others, and the book has influenced,
for example, the physicist Stephen Edelglass (who wrote "The Marriage of
Sense and Thought"), and the Christian existentialist philosopher Gabriel
Marcel, who wanted the book to be translated into French -- until he realised that only a very ignorant Frenchman would be unable to read Barfield in the vernacular (English).
Barfield points out that the "real" world of physics and particles is
completely different from the world we see and live in of things with
properties.
("Marcel should be translated to English.")
In our critical thinking as physicists or philosophers, we imagine
ourselves set over against an objective world consisting of particles, in which we
do not participate at all.
In contrast, the phenomenal, or familiar, world is said to be riddled with our subjectivity.
In our daily, uncritical thinking, on the other hand, we take for granted the solid, objective reality of the familiar world, assume an objective, lawful manifestation of its qualities such as colour, sound, and solidity, and even write natural scientific treatises about the history of its phenomena—all while ignoring the human consciousness that (by our own, critical account) determines these phenomena
from the inside in a continually changing way.
Clear?
The particle world of physics is independent of human thought, and only
indirectly accessible to humans.
The world we see and perceive directly is dependent on and alterable by human thought.
This is not to say there aren't or are limits.
Both are 'real' or 'unreal' depending on the meaning of "real".
This change over time in human thought is exactly Barfield's point.
*************************
"Poetic Diction:
a study in meaning"
(1928, originally Oxon dissertation).
Barfield's dissertation, "Poetic Diction: a study in meaning" (1928) opens
with a few examples of "felt changes" arising in reading poetry.
It goes on to discuss how these "felt changes" relate to general principles of poetic composition and intepretation.
Barfield's greater agenda is "a study of meaning" -- like Grice's, later.
Using poetic examples, Barfield attempts to demonstrate how the "imagination" (Grice's intuition and intention) works with words and metaphors to create what Barfield calls "utterer's meaning".
Barfield shows how the "imagination" of the poet (or 'utterer') creates new meaning (via what Grice will have as 'implicature'), and how this same process has been active, throughout human experience, to create and continuously expand language -- metonymy, metaphor, and metaphtonymy.
For Barfield this is not just literary criticism.
It is, more broadly, evidence for the evolution of human consciousness ('mind' out of 'meaning' and vice versa).
This, for many readers, is his real accomplishment.
Barfield's is a unique presentation of "not merely a theory of poetic diction, but a theory of poetry, and not merely a theory of poetry, but a theory of knowledge".
Barfield's theory of meaning was developed directly from a close study of
the evolution of words and meaning, starting with the relation between the
primitive mind's myth making capacity, and the formation of words.
Barfield uses numerous examples to demonstrate that words originally had a
unified "concrete and undivided" meaning, which we now distinguish as
several distinct concepts.
For example, the single Greek word "pneuma" (which can be variously
translated as "breath", "spirit", or "wind") reflects, Barfield argues, the
primordial unity of these concepts of air, spirit, wind, and breath, all
included in one "holophrase".
This Barfield considers not the application of analogy to natural
phenomena, but the discernment of its pre-existence.
This is the perspective Barfield believes is original in the evolution of
consciousness, which was "fighting for its life", as he phrases it, in the
philosophy of Plato, and which, in a regenerate and more sophisticated form,
benefiting from the development of rational thought, needs to be recovered
if consciousness is to continue to evolve.
**********
For a full bibliography including
all essays, see
Hipolito,
"Bibliography of the published Writings of Owen Barfield".
They include:
The Silver Trumpet: a novel. (1925)
History in English Words (1926)
****************************************
Poetic Diction:
A Study In Meaning
(1928)
*****************************************
Romanticism Comes of Age (1944)
Greek Thought in English Words (1950)
Essay in: G. Rostrevor Hamilton, ed. (1950), Essays and Studies 1950, 3,
London: John Murray, pp. 69–81
This Ever Diverse Pair (1950)
Saving the Appearances:
a Study in Idolatry (1957)
Evolution – Der Weg des Bewusstseins: Zur Geschichte des Europaischen Denkens. (1957) in German,
Markus Wulfing (trans.)
Salvare le apparenze: Uno studio sull’idolatrie
(2010) in Italian, Giovanni Maddalena, Stephania Scardicchio (editors)
Worlds Apart:
A Dialogue of the 1960s (1963)
Unancestral Voice (1965)
*****************************
Speaker's Meaning (1967)
*****************************
What Coleridge Thought (1971)
**********************************
The Rediscovery of Meaning
**********************************
and Other Essays (1977)
History, Guilt, and Habit (1979)
Review of Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of
Bicameral Mind (1979) essay in: Teachers College Record, 80, 1979-02, pp.
602–604
Language, Evolution of Consciousness, and
**************************************
the Recovery of Human Meaning (1981)
**************************************
Essay reprinted in "Toward the Recovery of Wholeness: Knowledge, Education,
and Human Values", ISBN 978-0807727584, p 55-61.
The Evolution Complex (1982) essay in Towards 2.2, 6, Spring 1982, pp. 14–
16
Introducing Rudolf Steiner (1983)
Essay in Towards 2.4, 42, Fall-Winter
1983
Orpheus verse drama. (1983)
Listening to Steiner (1984)
Review in Parabola 9.4, 1985, pp. 94–100
Reflections on C.S. Lewis, S.T. Coleridge and R. Steiner:
An Interview with Barfield (1985)
in: Towards 2.6, Spring-Summer 1985, pp. 6–13
Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis (1989) G. B. Tennyson (ed.)
The Child and the Giant (1988)
Short story in: Child and Man: Education as
an Art, 22, July 1988, pp. 5–7
Das Kind und der Riese — Eine orphische Erzählung (1990) in German,
Susanne Lin (trans.)
A Barfield Reader:
Selections from the Writings of Owen Barfield (1990)
G. B. Tennyson (ed.)
A Barfield Sampler: Poetry and Fiction by Owen Barfield (1993)
edited by Jeanne Clayton Hunter and Thomas Kranidas
References: Lavery,
"How Barfield Thought", p. 5 -- The Independent,
"Obituary: Owen Barfield" -- Hooper, "C.S. Lewis Companion and Guide", p. 622 --
Flieger, "Splintered Light". -- C.S. Lewis, "Surprised by Joy", p. 225. --
C.S. Lewis, "Surprised by Joy", pp. 199-200. -- Blaxland-De Lange, p.27. --
Grant, pp. 113-125
Tennyson, "Owen Barfield: Man and Meaning".
-- Philip Zaleski, '100 Best Spiritual Books of the Century, Harper-Collins,
http://www.gradresources.org/worldview_articles/book.shtml -- Flieger -- Lachman, "One Man's Century",
p. 8. -- Lachman, "Owen Barfield" -- "Poetic Diction", p. 1. -- Bellow,
"History, Guilt and Habit: Editorial review". -- Lavery, "Interview with
James Hillman". --
"Encyclopaedia barfieldiana: The Unrepresented"
(entry). --
Remark of Barfield. In Sugerman, Evolution of Consciousness", p. 20.
Barfield, "Worlds Apart" as quoted here
Sources: David Lavery,
"How Barfield Thought:The Creative Life of Owen Barfield",
The Collected Works of David Lavery,
_http://davidlavery.net/Collected_Works/Essays/How_Barfield_Thought.pdf_
(http://davidlavery.net/Collected_Works/Essays/How_Barfield_Thought.pdf) ,
Hooper, Walter (19 December 1997). "Obituary: Owen Barfield". The
Independent (London).
_http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-owen-barfield-1289580.html_
(http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-owen-barfield-1289580.html) .
Walter Hooper (1998), C.S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide, HarperCollins,
ISBN 9780060638801
Verlyn Flieger (2002), Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's
World, Kent: Kent State University Press,
Barfield's influence is the main thesis of this book.
C.S. Lewis (1998), Surprised by Joy, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Simon Blaxland-De Lange (2006), Owen Barfield,
Romanticism Comes of Age: a Biography, London: Temple Lodge
Patrick Grant (1982),
"The Quality of Thinking: Owen Barfield as Literary Man and Anthroposophist",
Seven 3
Gary Lachman,
"One Man's Century: Visiting Owen Barfield"
Gnosis 40: 8
Gary Lachman, "Owen Barfield and the Evolution of Consciousness", Lapis 3
Owen Barfield (1928), Poetic Diction: A Study In Meaning
Saul Bellow, History, Guilt and Habit: Editorial Review, Amazon,
_http://www.amazon.com/History-Guilt-Habit-Owen-Barfield/dp/1597311081_
(http://www.amazon.com/History-Guilt-Habit-Owen-Barfield/dp/1597311081)
David Lavery, Interview with James Hillman,
_http://davidlavery.net/barfield/friends_of_barfield/Hillman.html_
(http://davidlavery.net/barfield/friends_of_barfield/Hillman.html)
David Lavery, Encyclopedia Barfieldiana,
_http://www.davidlavery.net/Barfield/Encyclopedia_Barfieldiana/Encyclopedia_Barfieldiana.html_
(http://www.davidlavery.net/Barfield/Encyclopedia_Barfieldiana/Encyclopedia_Barfieldiana.htm
l)
G.B. Tennyson; David Lavery (1996), Ben Levin, ed.,
Owen Barfield: Man and Meaning documentary (VHS),
Encino, California: OwenArts Productions, pp. 40 min.
Shirley Sugerman (2008),
"A Conversation with Owen Barfield",
Evolution of Consciousness: Studies in Polarity, San Rafael, Calif.: Barfield Press, pp.
3–28.
The work is a festschrift honoring Barfield at age 75.
Owen Barfield (2010),
Worlds Apart (A Dialogue of the 1960's), Middletown,
Conn: Barfield Press UK.
Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Chicago: Advent. ISBN 0-911682-20-1.
Hipolito, Jane W. (2008),
"Bibliography of the published Writings of Owen Barfield".
In Shirley Sugerman, Evolution of Consciousness: Studies in
Polarity, San Rafael, Calif.: Barfield Society, pp. 227–261, http://barfieldsociety.org/BarfieldBibliog.pdf, retrieved 2011-03-27
Lionel Adey. C.S. Lewis's 'Great War' with Owen Barfield Victoria, BC:
University of Victoria (English Literary Studies No. 14) 1978.
Humphrey Carpenter. The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles
Williams, and Their Friends. London: Unwin Paperbacks. 1981.
Diana Pavlac Glyer. The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien
as Writers in Community. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. 2007.
ISBN 978-0-87338-890-0
Roger Lancelyn Green & Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography. Fully
revised & expanded edition. HarperCollins, 2002. ISBN 0-00-628164-8
Karlson, Henry (2010). Thinking with the Inklings. ISBN 1450541305.
[edit] External links
Owen Barfield Literary Estate
- permissions, publications, academic research on Owen Barfield
Journal of Inklings Studies peer-reviewed journal on Barfield and his
literary circle, based in Oxford
The Owen Barfield Society
Owen Barfield website
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