Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry

I do not recognize this excellent book that I have just finished reading from the wide range of reviews included here.This was a difficult book for me to read (for several reasons - see later), not least because I found this book to be a theological treatise and as a scientist, not one that I would normally pick up in a bookstore. But a very good friend of mine died recently. He had been a United Church minister, who had publicly expressed doubts about his Christian beliefs. We met for lunch about four months ago and he brought this book along as one he was re-reading (he was then about 85 years old and dying of cancer). He had read this book 50 years ago when he was studying for his theological degree. He was impressed with it then but admitted he had not fully understood it at that time. He wanted me to read it but in his gentle manner did not push it upon me. I soon ordered it from Amazon (but being busy, did not read it at that time). My friend died on Christmas morning (very appropriate for such a Christian gentleman) so I decided to read it so that I could give an informed eulogy at my friend's memorial.I found the insights in this book quite astonishing. I never suspected that my friend was such an erudite scholar that he would attempt to read this type of book; it gave me a deeper, profound respect for his thinking and approach to life. The author, Owen Barfield was a brilliant English scholar with a first class degree from Oxford and he influenced his friend, the Anglican author C. S. Lewis. His references to the evolution of language reflected his ability with classical Greek and Latin as well as ancient Hebrew. He is well-read in theology and summarizes this knowledge in the present book. When I read a good book, I underline passages that are worth recalling on a second 'quick-read'. This book is covered with acres of yellow highlights. It also contains several sidebars where I found myself arguing with the author. In other words, this is a book that rewards the persistent reader. I say persistent because it is very dense, the ideas are presented continuously and cross-referenced several times. Barfield invents some of his own terminology, like 'participation', 'alpha-thinking' etc as he is aware of the baggage that natural language carries with it when conventional words are re-used to convey broader meanings.This is as much a book about linguistics and psychology as any other subject. However, I would characterize it as a new offering in an ancient tradition known as "Christian Apologetics" that goes back through Descartes, Aquinas, Augustine and the Neo-Platonists. Barfield's extensive knowledge of western philosophy includes modern science. Rather than reject science, in order to defend traditional Christianity, Barfield welcomes its contributions since 1600 while forcing the reader to see the impact that this scientific approach has had on the modern mind (hence the many review comments about the evolution of consciousness). Barfield turns science on itself by introducing (near the end) an informed discussion of quantum mechanics and its failure to comply with traditional thinking (or classical mechanics). Indeed, as a physicist (perhaps why my friend wanted me to read it), modern quantum descriptions of the electron are reduced only to mathematical symbols, resulting in numerous (and quite contradictory) interpretations. This is OK with Barfield, as his focus is on the theological mystery of the WORD of God and how our shallow use of language, divorced from human 'participation', leads us moderns to construct our own contemporary idols, which like the ones the ancient Hebrews raged against, neither see nor speak to us but are made in our own images. Barfield wants us to think harder about the power of language as a consensual representation of reality and the implications of Christian "incarnation".Although Owen Barfield and C. S. Lewis are solid Anglicans, the style of argumentation and evidence brought forth here would seem to lead down a slippery slope to a form of traditional catholic theology; this would have shocked my Presbyterian minister friend. I regret I was too late to have this discussion with him. This is why I am motivated to write this review.I rate this book 5 stars because this form of deep thinking is far too rare today and many people will be rewarded by wrestling with these ideas as an antidote to modern selfishness and trivialities. As Einstein said: "stretch your mind with big ideas".

Owen Barfield was, for C.S. Lewis, the "Second Friend" - "the man who disagrees with you about everything. He is not so much the alter ego as the antiself. Of course he shares your interests; otherwise he would not become your friend at all. But he has approached them all at a different angle. He has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one. It is as if he spoke your language but mispronounced it. How can he be so nearly right and yet, invariably, just not right?"In _Saving the Appearances_, one can see clearly how Lewis must have felt about Barfield's opinions. To call the book heterodox would be to miss the point; certainly the influence of Steiner's anthroposophy is that, but there is so much in it that (I think) Lewis could have agreed with, were it not that he would disagree with the premises that led to the conclusions in question.Barfield's book is a dense one, perhaps even more so than the theological works of his fellow-Inkling Charles Williams. But (like Williams) it is readable, though some passages take serious rumination to even begin to understand. And, like Williams, he is an orthodox Christian but takes his orthodoxy to unusual conclusions, as if he were seeing it from another angle than most of us do.It is a history and philosophy of the nature of human consciousness, among other things. "This book is a study in idolatry, and especially that last and greatest step in idolatry which we call the scientific revolution." At the end of the Middle Ages, Barfield says, we lost the last dregs of something he calls "original participation," the unity of the perceiving subject with -- not the object, which is "the unrepresented" -- but the _phenomena_, our perceptions of the unrepresented. (Thus far, he is in agreement with Korzybski's General Semantics.) Barfield suggests that what we call "reality" is in fact our _collective_ representations of, not the unrepresented (to which we have only this mediated access) but the phenomena. If you and I can agree that my shirt is blue, then that blueness is a collective representation for us.Barfield begins by asking, of the phenomenon called the rainbow -- is it really there? Certainly there are raindrops refracting light and causing it to come to our eyes in a peculiar way: but there is no "there" there, if we try to chase the rainbow to its end, we come a cropper; there is no end and in a very real sense no bow. With this as his first cracker, he proceeds to attack the nut of phenomenology."Original perception," Barfield suggests, was done away with in parallel by two movements in the West.The Graeco-Roman movement, which studied the phenomena as independent of ourselves (think of Plato's cave), ultimately gave rise to the scientific revolution, so breaking once and for all our unity with the phenomena. The philosophers of this movement sought (and seek) to "save the appearances" by explaining why the phenomena are as they are, in terms of the unrepresented.At roughly the same time as the Graeco-Roman movement, however, there was the Israelite movement, which sought to break our unity with the phenomena by declaring any unity with them, any numinous quality felt in them, idolatry, worship of images. This movement, of course, led ultimately to Christianity (and later to Islam). Starting from the idea that there was but one God, and not the gods worshipped by neighboring peoples, the priests and prophets of Judaism sought to separate the numinous from the phenomena completely, so that the phenomena "declare" the greatness of God, but God is not to be found _in_ them; indeed, he says, the Jews were not interested in the phenomena but in _morality_.It is in Christianity that Barfield sees the greatest possibility of our achieving "final participation." It is not surprising, he says, that we have not yet achieved the Kingdom proclaimed by Christ: after all, the two thousand years since He lived and died and was resurrected are piddling compared to the aeons that preceeded Him. (Barfield also suggests that we are radically misunderstanding when we think about the world before humans. There was no human consciousness in those days, so no phenomena, and so the world, which we build from phenomena, was something radically _other_.)Along the way I find Barfield saying things that I have struggled to say over the years; interpreting things, and especially things in Scripture, that have always been somewhat opaque to me ... and sometimes coming up with some wild ideas that strike me as utterly ridiculous. But there is more than sufficient wheat in _Saving the Appearances_ to justify sorting out the chaff.

My interest in Owen Barfield was first sparked by the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis but it has proved more lasting than either of those. When I first discovered 'Saving the Appearances' it blew wide open a door to a whole new different way of seeing the world. Especially the opening chapters, with the classic analogy of the rainbow and enlightnening passages on concepts such as 'collective representations', 'figuration' and 'participation', struck me out of the blue. There is such a world of experience that opens up once we recognize that our way of seeing, our sensual perception itself, is determined by cultural and linguistic factors as much as by anything else, and that our current, scientific way of seeing is only a relatively recent phenomenon, that may disappear as quickly as it appeared. Most of all, it encourages us to be fully conscious and fully responsible of the choices we make, most of all of the choice between an insistence on scientific 'fact' or even back towards original participation, and a move towards final participation.As others have commented, Barfield's writing is always thoroughly though through and at the same time immediately comprehensible. I would also like to add that though his thought leads eventually towards a renewed faith in Christianity, it is possible to appreciate most of this book without a Christian (or anthroposophist, for that matter) background.

I really enjoyed the Barfieldian approach to participation and the profound distinction he makes between the man as an individual and man as a member of mankind. He places an emphasis on the [the human person] by speculating that he is is not merely a perceiver of the world but also a part of what is to be observed. By this mark, the Barfieldian view advocates for a remembrance of what it means to be human by upholding collective identity as the pinnacle for which our humanity must be based.

Owen Barfield certainly gives one something to think about. After reading this I had to start to think about my thinking as well as what I was thinking about. The book raises many questions about what and how we see, hear and understand our environment. What is reality, what do we know? What can we know? A serious study can be quite disturbing but luckily the effect wears off and one can get back to normal superficiality.

Barfield based his work upon a thorough understanding of that most ignored and most important of twentieth century philosophers Rudolf Steiner. Ignored I hasten to add largely by the academic world. Individuals have continued to study and develop the rich seeds that lie in Steiners work. Barfield is one of them, and what a richness he thus brings forth. The conclusions of modern science and postmodernism oten pale in comparison (see Ken Wilber). Steiners early works outline with far greater precision and depth the intellectual system spinning of Wilber. The modern thinker loses himself in abstraction and self-obsession without the aid of a true philosophy, Steiner provides this. It is those who are engaged with the penetration and living of Steiner's work that are shaping the future of the human race. Grandious sounding words to those who have yet to open their eyes and ears, but nevertheless a reality for some. This book presents Steiners work to the English speaking world, and confirms the far-reaching effect he had, and will continue to have on those seeking the spirit in the modern world .

A brilliant opening, unique and invaluable observations a little muddily expressed, leading to conclusions in desperate need of an update. This is a book to read for inspiration, and then to remake for a new generation, shorn of Barfield's attempt to validate or justify some Christian principles that are now dated.

I read this book twice. The first time it was obvious that the author was saying something important, but the prose took some getting used to. The second read confirmed the author as a first class thinker, with a difficult but enlightening style. Using the history of literature and religious writing as evidence Barfield describes the co-evolution of consciousness. I am not sure whether he is right, and whether he imports some crucial assumptions without declaring them. He also, in my opinion, does not give enough space to objections, but what impresses is the ambition and erudition. Thought provoking.