Owen Barfield (November 9, 1898–December 14, 1997) was a British philosopher, author, poet, and critic. After finishing a B. Litt. that became the book Poetic Diction, he worked as a solicitor. He was strongly influenced by anthroposophy. He was born in London, and died in Forest Row in Sussex. November 9 is the 313th day of the year (314th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 52 days remaining. ... 1898 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... December 14 is the 348th day of the year (349th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1997 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Reef. ... A philosopher is a person devoted to studying and producing results in philosophy. ... The word author has several meanings: The author of a book, story, article or the like, is the person who has written it (or is writing it). ... A critic (derived from the ancient Greek word krites meaning a judge) is a person who offers a value judgement or an interpretation. ... In the United Kingdom and countries having a similar legal system the legal profession is divided into two kinds of lawyers: the solicitors who contact and advise clients, and barristers who argue cases in court. ... (A more detailed description of concrete activities emerging from Anthroposophy can be found under the Wikipedia heading Rudolf Steiner.) Also called spiritual science by its founder, Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy (based on Greek words meaning man-wisdom) is a philosophy (or, as some opponents claim, a religion) that was born within... London is the capital city of the United Kingdom and of England. ... Sussex as a traditional county. ...

Most of his works are still in print and include Unancestral Voice; History, Guilt, and Habit; Romanticism Comes of Age; Rediscovery of 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. Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry is on the 1999 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Century list by Philip Zaleski.

Barfield might be characterised as both a major "New Age" thinker, and a learned anti-reductionist writer. He was known for his concision. For example, his short book Saving the Appearances explores some three thousand years of history and, by taking modern physics and philosophy seriously, explores our understanding of the relation of minds to nature and to evolution. He finds that the evolution of life and of nature is inseparable from an evolution of consciousness. The idea of matter as completely devoid of anything akin to mind, emerges as a mistaken idea, one in conflict with both physics and philosophy. Similar conclusions have been reached by others, but rarely in such a fashion, 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. New Age describes a broad movement characterized by alternative approaches to traditional Western culture. ... Holism (from holon, a Greek word meaning entity) is the idea that the properties of a system cannot be determined or explained by the sum of its components alone. ... Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) was the leading existentialist Christian. ...

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". Worlds Apart again shows Barfield's peculiar capacity to compress comprehensiveness into the smallest textual space, and without cost to clarity. The book, about two hundred pages in length, 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. Over a period of three days, the characters get down to first principles. Barfield not only had acquired sufficient expertise in all of these fields to be able to speak plausibly for each character in the debate; he also did so with style and made of the argument a dramatic entertainment with spiritual and demonic undertones leading to paradigm-busting revelations, at least for some of the characters. T.S. Eliot (by E.O. Hoppe, 1919) Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888–January 4, 1965), was a major Modernist Anglo-American poet, dramatist, and literary critic. ... Waldorf Schools were developed for Emil Molt of the Waldorf Astoria Tobacco Company in 1919 by Rudolf Steiner. ...

More recent discussions of Barfield's work appear 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, and Morris Berman's The Reenchantment of the World.

Another way of characterizing Barfield, is to say that he brings to philosophy something like the magical power to be found in the fiction of C. S. Lewis. Lewis was a close friend of Barfield, and called Barfield "the best and wisest of my unofficial teachers". Clive Staples Lewis (November 29, 1898–November 22, 1963), commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis, was an author and scholar. ...

Barfield did not do philosophy as a merely intellectual pursuit. Rather it was a way to liberation, and that was part of the reason for Barfield's efforts to combine maximum compression with maximum comprehensiveness. That Barfield did not do 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 "that subject". Barfield seems to have been subtly indignant in replying that "to Plato philosophy was not a 'subject'. It was a Way." Lewis apparently took Barfield's strongly felt point to heart.

Saul Bellow: We are well supplied with interesting writers, but Owen Barfield is not content to be merely interesting. His ambition is to set us free … from the prison we have made for ourselves by our ways of knowing, our limited and false habits of thought, our ‘common sense'.

Barfield has been known as "The first and last Inkling". He was in effect a founding member of the Inklings group. He had a strong influence on C. S. Lewis, and an appreciable effect through Poetic Diction on J. R. R. Tolkien. The Inklings was a literary discussion group associated with the University of Oxford. ... Clive Staples Lewis (November 29, 1898–November 22, 1963), commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis, was an author and scholar. ... J. R. R. Tolkien in 1916. ...

Another, essential, angle from which to consider Barfield's work is as he himself claimed, which was as an apologist for anthroposophy. Barfield began a lifelong study of the work and thought of Rudolf Steiner, beginning in the 1920's, and many of his earlier essays were published in anthroposophical publications. Even a brief study of some of Steiner's basic texts through a deeply illuminating light on Barfield's work. (A more detailed description of concrete activities emerging from Anthroposophy can be found under the Wikipedia heading Rudolf Steiner.) Also called spiritual science by its founder, Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy (based on Greek words meaning man-wisdom) is a philosophy (or, as some opponents claim, a religion) that was born within... Rudolf Steiner Rudolf Steiner (February 27, 1861–March 30, 1925) was an Austrian philosopher, literary scholar, architect, playwright, educator, and social thinker, who is best known as the founder of Anthroposophy and its practical applications, including Waldorf School, Biodynamic agriculture, the Camphill Movement, and the Christian Community. ...

External Links

• http://www.owenbarfield.com/
• http://eyelight.webservepro.com/ — an introduction to the thought of Owen Barfield