By G. CONNOR SALTER

What Barfield Thought: An Introduction to the Work of Owen Barfield. By Landon Loftin and Max Leyf. Cascade Books, May 2, 2023. Paperback, 126 pages.

The name Owen Barfield is familiar to many fans of the Inklings—the circle of British writers who met each other through C.S. Lewis and shared their writings in Oxford meetings from the 1930s through the 1940s, some of them forging lifelong friendships where they shared their work far past World War II. A wide variety of Inklings scholarship (for example, see The Company They Keep and Bandersnatch by Diana Pavlac Glyer or The Fellowship by Philip and Carol Zaleski) details how Barfield was one of the four crucial Inklings, alongside Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. Since Barfield met Lewis when they were both Oxford students and Barfield’s writings on language and spirituality played a part in Lewis becoming a theist, Barfield arguably originated the guiding philosophy behind the Inklings’ work. Verlyn Flieger goes so far as to say in her study Splintered Light that “the languages of Middle-earth in their development are so striking an illustration of Barfield’s thesis that one might almost think Tolkien had Poetic Diction [Barfield’s first book] open before him as he worked.”

While Barfield has been studied regularly throughout the last 50 years, his work has not yet spawned the huge fandoms and scholarly communities that mine Lewis and Tolkien’s books. One reason may be that many readers first discover Lewis and Tolkien as fantasy storytellers and come to love their mythopoeic approach to writing fantasy. Readers who fall in love with Barfield’s work tend to come to him as a philosopher first. It is not that Barfield was less interested in myth. He was the first Inkling to publish a fantasy novel (The Silver Trumpet, much loved by Tolkien’s children) and wrote fiction throughout his life. As the Flieger quote and other scholarly comments show, the approach Lewis and Tolkien took to writing mythopoeic literature owes much to Barfield’s ideas. But Barfield primarily explored his ideas about myth in a larger project, his lifelong interest in the philosophy of language. In a lifetime that lasted nearly 100 years (1898–1997), Barfield published dozens of philosophical works, from a study of Samuel Taylor Coleridge to English translations of Rudolf Steiner’s works to groundbreaking books like English History in Words detailing what language changes teach us about human perception.

Barfield’s philosophical work has gained more followers with time, perhaps especially as digital technology challenges people to recognize how the way they process language alters how they think (about language, about meaning). Still, his work can be challenging to summarize. When I interviewed scholar Landon Loftin in 2023, he explained the challenge is that Barfield writes well, but “Barfield spends much of his time challenging our most basic assumptions and interrupting our most deeply-ingrained habits of thought.” A feature that makes Barfield important, but not simple to study.

Loftin and fellow Barfield scholar Max Leyf address the obstacles in this short overview of Barfield’s ideas. The title alludes to Barfield’s study What Coleridge Thought, which summarizes Coleridge’s key ideas (often showing how seemingly disparate ideas subtly connect into a larger vision). The six chapters of What Barfield Thought cover:

  • Barfield’s life, including his influence on the Inklings, his work in Rudolf Steiner studies, and his varied career as a writer, lawyer, and visiting professor.
  • Barfield’s theory of language and its effect on weltanschauung (German, roughly “worldview,” or consciousness), including how language changes affect the way humans interact with the observable world in more radical ways than people assume.
  • Barfield’s theory of poetic diction, or what makes certain words inherently poetic, prompting crucial questions about the nature of meaning.
  • Barfield’s views on “the evolution of consciousness,” bringing his views of language and perception together to consider how languages moving from a unified ancient format (or “ancient semantic unity”) to the fragmented current form has critical consequences for how humans perceive the world
  • Barfield’s theory of “final participation,” the method to recognize that thinking about creation is not separate from being a part of creation, and how seeking a holistic way of thinking connects the thinker to Christ, who offers an incarnational vision of what it means to be divine yet human and to participate in renewed creation.
  • Applications of Barfield’s ideas for scientism (the belief that only scientifically provable ideas are valid) and related concerns about technology and meaning.

Since Barfield’s ideas challenge commonly held assumptions, it would be unfair to call What Barfield Thought an easy read. The authors often have to rely on technical philosophical terms to get their points across. Many times their points challenge widely accepted ideas by famous thinkers, such as John Locke’s empiricist approach to language. The chapters cover the evolution of consciousness and final participation may particularly require several readings to absorb the authors’ points.

However, the nature of Barfield’s work may make complicated language and dense descriptions unavoidable. Where Lewis aimed to summarize widely accepted religious ideas into an accessible vision for his audience, Barfield aimed to explain underdiscussed philosophical ideas into a new vision for his audience. It would be interesting to imagine someone using Lewis’ writing style to describe Barfieldian ideas, but perhaps impossible. Given how many Barfield works build on work by the Austrian thinker Rudolf Steiner, a Mere Barfieldiana would probably require a scholar literate in both German and English. Granting that it may be impossible to write a Mere Christianity-style book about Barfield, this book goes a long way to making his ideas more accessible. Some readers may want to read What Barfield Thought alongside a copy of History in English Words, but they can appreciate the key points without outside reference material.

Equally important is how well the authors frame Barfield as a subject worth studying as a standalone figure. They discuss how the Inklings were influenced by Barfield, but equally emphasize the other areas of his life (his involvement in the Anthroposophical Society devoted to Steiner’s ideas, his visiting professorships in America). They explain Barfield’s involvement in anthroposophy and clear away some of the weeds about its founder (Steiner’s unofficial early involvement in the Theosophical Society, his movement away from theosophy because he refused to believe a new divine teacher had arrived in the twentieth century).

There could perhaps be more material explaining what it means that Steiner was an “esoteric thinker,” especially since American readers who come to Barfield via Inklings studies are often evangelical Christians unfamiliar with the difference between esotericism (a broad term covering many spiritual ideas) and witchcraft (a particular subset of esotericism that Steiner did not engage in). Some years ago, I listened to several Inklings scholars mention early Steiner translations (circa 1914) that described Steiner’s philosophy as an “occult science,” where more recent translations describe anthroposophy as a “spiritual science” (a study of how the spiritual world functions). What Barfield Thought may not answer every question readers have about Steiner. It does offer enough information to show the Steiner influence while affirming that Barfield can be studied without constantly referring back to Steiner’s writings.

Any thinker who lived as long as Barfield did and had such wide-ranging acquaintances, from J.R.R. Tolkien to Howard Nemerov, while writing everything from dystopian science fiction (Night Operation) to essays on creativity (Romanticism Comes of Age) will be difficult to summarize. Loftin and Leyf do justice to his prolific life, making the complicated seem accessible and the abstract seem enticing.

A engaging primer on Barfield as a philosopher, showing his relevancy to fans of the Inklings, or of epistemology, or anyone concerned with what meaning is.