The Riddle of the Sphinx

Owen Barfield is one of the major philosophers of the 20^th century, although not widely acknowledged as such. He was the lesser-known of the Oxford ‘Inklings’ with CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, who were both influenced by his work. The title essay refers to the Sphinx’s deepest riddle: what, after all, is the human being? This question is more relevant than ever when we are facing the prospect of outsourcing our humanity to technology with its trajectory and momentum towards transhumanism and post-humanism. This is to neglect, even forget our spiritual essence that defines our depths. Barfield also played an important role in bringing Rudolf Steiner to the English-speaking world. The eighteen essays in this collection cover a wide spectrum of themes and historical periods of Western history.

One of his original contributions was to discern an evolution of consciousness through careful philological investigation of changes in the meaning and use of words deriving from Greek and Latin. This shows how ‘processes of perception and thinking of ancient people were substantially different from ours.’ In particular, nature was felt to have an inside that people could directly perceive, hence the evolution of consciousness is also an evolution of phenomena or appearances on the basis of which we form theories. This word derives from the Greek theoria, meaning contemplation rather than hypothesis, and is literally a way of seeing. Barfield’s generic term for indigenous societies embedded in nature is ‘original participation.’ The scientific revolution was also a revolution in perception, whereby the human being was regarded as individually separate, and there is a loss of ‘any consciousness of the human being as the microcosm within the macrocosm.’ This was acutely felt by Goethe and Schelling, as brilliantly explained by Matt Segall in a recent lecture on mechanistic and organic science. Holistic biologists like Brian Goodwin, Mae-Wan Ho and Margaret Colquhoun led the way in recovering this sense of participation that was never lost by indigenous peoples. However, according to Barfield, this post-separation phase represents ‘final participation.’ Barfield’s influence, along with Goethe mediated by Steiner, played an important role in this recovery of a sense of organic wholeness.

The essay on Greek thought in English words explains how the invention of words is a landmark in history of consciousness. The invention of the term philosopher is attributed to Pythagoras, along with kosmos as both order and beauty. It is likely that Plato created such words as essence, idea, criterion, enthusiasm, dialectic, theology, mathematical, synthesis and analogy, while Aristotle formulated energy, ethics, physiology, fantasy and fancy, synonym, potential, actual, substance, category, problem, element, entelechy and metaphysics. Barfield makes the point that the formulation of such words indicates the gradual evolution of intellectual faculties. Interestingly, the words analogous and quality are attributed to Plato, and analytic and quantity to Aristotle as the systematiser of logic. All these words are taken for granted as instruments with which we think, and Barfield explains the key mediating and converting role of Cicero from Greek into Latin. He devotes some attention to the history of the word idea as a pattern existing in the mind of the writer, noting its generalisation into a concept by Locke (this word literally means to grasp with). The original word scientia as knowing has been narrowed to science (what Barfield calls semantic metamorphosis) as purely theoretical knowledge, knowing through the senses and reason without considering the nature of the knower.

Ernst Cassirer pointed out that the world we can perceive and know ‘came into being along with language,’ and that we must seek its origin in mythic consciousness. Barfield argues that there is concurrent development of consciousness and the objects of consciousness, and that consciousness comes from within not without; it is in fact ‘the inside of the world as a whole’ (p. 59) as Goethe and Schelling affirmed, a view integral to the Renaissance Anima Mundi. The Cartesian dichotomy defined objective as perceptible to the senses, which has led to the corollary that the imperceptible is unreal and the invisible non-existent. There is no inside to the cosmos, while consciousness becomes a by-product of matter in a world of accuracy without meaning. Only gradually are we catching up with Max Planck, who in 1931 already recognised consciousness as fundamental. Remembering, as Plotinus said, is for those who have forgotten. More serious is the disappearance of the doctrine of objective values (and the sacred) previously thought to be innate in humans and nature, which CS Lewis and more recently Iain McGilchrist have sought to reaffirm.

As already mentioned, Goethe believed that the inside of man was a part of the inside of nature – his perception was nothing if not exact and precise, and he intuited a process of development that we now call evolution as change retaining identity. He postulated the Urphaenomen as the archetype underlying the ever-changing forms of organic nature, its ‘inside’ that is also inside us and perceived by the mind not the senses. Barfield himself develops this as final participation ‘involving a reunion with nature, without loss of the self-awareness.’ (p. 99) Steiner developed this into the notion that thinking is anterior to any distinction between subject and object whereby the conceptual intuition corresponds to the percept. Gabriel Marcel insists that ‘knowledge is contingent on participation in being, for which it cannot account because it continually presupposes it’, and a similar position on personal knowledge is taken by Michael Polanyi: the mind itself is an instrument. Mystically, the deeper level is the indwelling of Christ, but the crucial task of our time is to restore inwardness to nature and ourselves, which will at the same time entail the recovery of meaning. I encourage you to read these subtle and profound essays for yourself.