The Rediscovery of Meaning, and Other Essays

by Owen Barfield

Book Overview

"Owen Barfield has unusual ideas about human nature and reality.. Now this seasoned British thinker.offers a collection of ?essays? that reflects the entire range of his interests, including the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0956942334
• ISBN13: 9780956942333
• Release Date: February 2013
• Publisher: Barfield Press UK
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Brilliant

This collection of Barfield's essays represents probably the finest introduction to his thought. Barfield was one of the 20th Century's greatest minds, and these essays provide a nice overview of the complexity and depth found in his more elaborate works. The title essay, "The Rediscovery of Meaning," remains one of my favorite essays ever. Barfield, in these essays, presents the alternative view to the materialist and naturalist interpretations of our reality. Barfied makes a stunning case for the reality of meaning. He shows that the materialists mistakenly reduce things down to what they are, and ignore what they mean. Using linguistic analysis and the careful logic of a legal mind, he shows how meaning is a real property of reality, and the best kind of research is that which accounts for both. I highly recommend this text, especially to those who have never read Barfield before. This work is much more accessible than his lengthier texts.

The best introduction to Barfield's comprehensive world-view

I've read Barfield's Worlds Apart, Saving the Appearances, Unancestral Voice, and tried and given up on Poetic Diction twice. Having just read The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays, I would DEFINITELY recommend it over all the others if you are looking for an introduction to Barfield's comprehensive world-view. In these essays, he launches a full-frontal attack on the reductionary materialism of our age in its many forms, tracking his quarry in the realms of science, philosophy, language, religion, literature, history, and psychology. His logic is superb and it is wonderful to find someone really approaching the great authority of Science head on. When asked why he placed such a strong reliance on Rudolf Steiner, Owen Barfield answered: "If I am wandering in a parched desert, do I complain that water only flows from one spring?" While I have not yet not been able to convince myself of giving Steiner serious study, I could say the same of Barfield when approaching science today. I think it also important to note that Steiner and his ideas are barely mentioned in these essays, though Barfield states time and again that they have been greatly influential. I personally am especially interested in Barfield's philosophy of science, by which he presents an astounding case for the existence of spiritual realities. I will basically paraphrase what stood out to me from within these various essays (especially "Science and Quality"), adding only a minute amount from other resources here and there to make this cohesive (for example from Barfield's intoduction to The Case for Anthroposophy). Please know that this is only a fraction of what is covered within this book, and I could well write another review in an attempt to cover some of the other areas, but I find what I am about to repeat here are eminently important correctives for 21st century thought and begin to help explain why the Church (or at least what I have seen of it) has become so intellectually impotent when it comes to science. I would like to apologize in advance as well as I may have misinterpreted him here or there. In the 17th century, "natural philosophy", pretty much established by Aristotle, became or broke off into what we now call "science". The "Scientific Method" was ironically established by various devoutly Christian men, including Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, and Rene Descartes, and it was Descartes, commonly known as "the Father of Modern Philosophy", who established the foundations of this science on a philosophy of "dualism". Within this philosophical system there were two fundamental realities: 'res extensa' (extended things) and 'res cogitans' (thinking things). These 'extended things' referred to perceivable objects in the world, which were viewed as "bits of matter in motion", as mechanisms created by God the Designer. This way of seeing nature as a causal mechanism - as the whole being the sum of its parts - was precisely the perspective that expone

The best introduction to Barfield's comprehensive world-view

Having read most all of Barfield's works, I would definitely recommend The Rediscovery of Meaning and Other Essays as the best introduction to his comprehensive world-view. Barfield's logic is superb and it is refreshing to find someone with a conviction of the Spirit really approaching the great authority of Scientific Materialism head on with penetrating insight. What follows is more of an exposition of one of Barfield's primary arguments - a common thread through most all these essays - than a review... In the 17th century, "natural philosophy", pretty much established by Aristotle, became or broke off into what we now call science. The scientific method was ironically established by various devoutly Christian men, including Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, and Rene Descartes. The latter, commonly known as "the Father of Modern Philosophy", formulated the foundations of this science on a philosophy of dualism, wherein there are two fundamentally divided realities: 'res extensa' (extended things) and 'res cogitans' (thinking things). These 'extended things' referred to perceivable objects in the world, which were viewed as "bits of matter in motion", as mechanisms created by God the Designer. This way of seeing nature as a causal mechanism - as the whole being the sum of its parts - was precisely the perspective that exponentially expanded man's ability to create his own mechanisms. Over time, this physical- causal aspect of reality came to dominate man's consciousness, and an inattentiveness to the world of meaning finally grew into a conviction that it did not exist. Barfield demonstrates the simplicity of why this happened in the title essay, showing that all the attention in the world can be paid to the mechanics of a hand writing a sentence - the pressure of the pencil and its angle, the constituents of the material written on, ad infinitum - but this will never tell you the meaning of the words on the page. An entirely different approach is required for the discovery of meaning, and Barfield's is through the history of words. He asks why it is that, if in fact the world is meaningless and all that exists are physical facts, why it is that so much of language seemingly refers to immaterial concepts. Etymology reveals that "virtually all" conceptual, immaterial words once referred to physical objects as well (he gives an overwhelming number of examples in his History of English Words). The scientific impulse, which has been to divide, dissect, and define with ever greater position, by necessity took hold of language and did the same to it. Barfield uses a possible example with the word 'heart'. We can either speak of a man having a 'kind heart' or a healthy physical heart. But for the purposes of scientific precision, it would be useful to continue using 'heart' for the dispositional reference and adopt 'cardium' for the physical one. And this may well happen. In John 3:8, Jesus tells his audience that "The wind blows whereve