Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances August 17, 2006
Posted by zartman in Books.trackback
Awright folks, time to put some zip into this.
Here’s a book, and no mistake. Here’s a chap what knew Lewis and what wrote stories for the Tolkien children. Here’s a chap what knows how to think, he does. Here is a chap who was friendly with Lukacs also, Lukacs who says wonderful things so similar about the uselessness of the subject/object distinction and how knowledge is participatory and personal. Wonderful Lukacs, wonderful Barfield.
Here is a book about the idolatry of nominalism, showing how silly it is for science to believe that our collective representations are strictly objects, how we have forgotten that we participate in the world we inhabit, and how other times had different collective repesentations. Here’s a book to set your epistemology tingling all over.
Not a book for idle perusal.
What else is great about this book?
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I can usually grasp what books are saying, but here, I’m at a loss. I think I get it – parts of it. But it is all so different. He may be saying the same thing as lewis, but he says it in a way that is quite foreign to me. I get bits and pieces, but not the whole. I agree with what folks have said about what the book is saying, but I don’t quite get it from the book, if you catch my meaning.
Is there a deambiguous spontanaeter for sale on ebay? I could use one here.
You may need a conversation (a real conversation). Sometimes it helps to talk to others who have read it and work you way through it that way.
You mean a real-live conversation? That would be weird. I don’t think I’ve talked to anyone in person except my wife for the past year.
It might be good to talk to other people. The only thing better would be do become an anchorite and talk to nobody at all but God.
Joel,
What else is great about this book?
I think the easier question would be, what is not great about this book!
Ok. Maybe that’s not helpful for those who haven’t read it, but really, it would be hard to love this book too much.
It’s excellent in every way, though it is very hard to understand. It’s one of those books that you want to read before Plato and Aristotle, and then read again after you have read them in their entirety, and then you want to read Barfield again and again to get every nuance of his.
It is certainly a book one must read along with Weaver.
If you like Weaver, you will like Barfield.
Lilrabbi,
Don’t give up! It is true that we have the advantage of being able to discuss it, but if you outline his chapters like Adler says, that helps to understand much better [at least it did for me].