Owen Barfield

Owen Barfield was a British philosopher, critic, and historian of ideas associated with the Inklings, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien. He is known for work on the development of meaning, language, and consciousness, and for arguing that human cognition has undergone deep historical transformation reflected in literature, myth, and religion. Barfield's thinking influenced debates in philosophy of mind, literary criticism, religion, and anthropology, and he engaged with figures such as Rudolf Steiner, T. S. Eliot, G. K. Chesterton, and Eric Voegelin.

Early life and education

Born in London in 1898, he grew up amid the social and intellectual climate shaped by Edwardian era politics, the Second Boer War, and the lead-up to World War I. He attended Dulwich College and then Oxford University, where he read Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford, encountering tutors associated with A. L. Rowse-era scholarship and the civil institutions of British Empire administration. At Oxford he formed friendships with future luminaries of English literature and philosophy, mingling within circles that overlapped with T. S. Eliot's literary modernism and the Anglican networks of G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis. His wartime experiences and Oxford education shaped interests that later connected to Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy and continental traditions linked to Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottfried Herder.

Career and affiliations

Barfield worked as a lawyer's clerk and later in publishing and as a teacher before devoting himself to writing and public lectures; his professional life intersected with institutions such as Oxford Union debates and the literary salons around Magdalen College, Oxford. He became a central member of the Inklings, meeting at The Eagle and Child with figures like C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, while also corresponding with thinkers associated with Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophical Society and networks influenced by Henri Bergson and Wilhelm Dilthey. Barfield gave lectures at venues connected to University of Oxford and participated in conferences alongside scholars from University of Cambridge, King's College London, and international forums featuring proponents of phenomenology and existentialism such as followers of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. He was involved with small presses and journals that also published work by T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and critics allied to F. R. Leavis.

Philosophical and literary contributions

Barfield developed a theory about the "evolution of consciousness" linking developments in language to shifts observable in texts from Homer and Hesiod through Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, John Milton, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge to modernists like James Joyce. He argued that words carry an original "participatory" meaning rediscovered in myth and recovered imagination by writers such as J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. His critique engaged with philosophical traditions represented by Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel, and Bertrand Russell, while dialoguing with poets and critics including T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. Barfield's perspective influenced religious thinkers in the line of Paul Tillich and Karl Barth and intersected with anthropologists such as James Frazer and Claude Lévi-Strauss. He proposed that modern scientific materialism, exemplified by debates involving Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger, stood in contrast to participatory approaches to meaning advocated by Rudolf Steiner and J. R. R. Tolkien.

Major works

Barfield's principal books include "Poetic Diction" (1928), which discussed the continuity from William Blake to T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and "History in English Words" (1926) examining semantic shifts traced through lexicographers associated with Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster. His most influential later book, "Saving the Appearances" (1957), dialogued with themes from Immanuel Kant and contemporary philosophers like Gilbert Ryle and Gilbert Murray, and engaged readers of C. S. Lewis and Arthur C. Benson. He also wrote "What Coleridge Thought" (1959) treating Samuel Taylor Coleridge's place in Romanticism alongside critics like F. R. Leavis and M. H. Abrams, and "Speaker's Meaning" (1968) which addressed philosophy of language debates involving Ludwig Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin. Across essays and lectures he debated issues raised by Thomas Aquinas, Augustine of Hippo, and the medieval scholastics while conversing with modern historians of ideas such as Isaiah Berlin.

Influence and legacy

Barfield influenced a wide range of figures in literature, theology, and philosophy, including C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Northrop Frye, Marjorie Hope Nicolson, and historians like E. H. Carr; his ideas continue to be discussed by scholars at University of Oxford, University of Toronto, and Harvard University. His thought impacted discussions in religional studies alongside theologians such as Paul Tillich and authors involved with Anglican and Catholic literary revival movements. Barfield's notion of participatory consciousness has been taken up in contemporary debates by scholars of phenomenology, ecocriticism, and mythology including followers of Joseph Campbell and critics in the tradition of Northrop Frye and Gerald Burnaby. His work inspired later interdisciplinary projects bridging linguistics and psychology, involving thinkers influenced by Noam Chomsky, Daniel Dennett, and Jerome Bruner, and continues to appear in curricula and conferences connected to University of Cambridge and international humanities associations. Barfield's legacy is preserved by small presses, study groups, and archives that maintain correspondence with figures like C. S. Lewis and T. S. Eliot and by critical literature engaging with the intellectual currents of the 20th century.

Category:British philosophers Category:20th-century writers