History, Guilt and Habit

by Owen Barfield

We are well supplied with interesting writers, but Owen Barfield is not content to be merely interesting. His ambition is to set us free. from the prison we have made for ourselves by our ways of knowing, our limited and false habits of thought, our 'common sense.' -Saul Bellow Few books [besides History, Guilt and Habit] . would provide a better basis for a serious discussion of modern mentality, or a better closing for a course in great books or the history of ideas. Readable at all levels. -Choice There is scarcely a single term that comprehends the range of Owen Barfield's interests and learning, though 'philosopher' would probably do as well as any, but all of his interests have been grounded in is study of history, which is to say something more than that he is a student of history. He is rather a knower of history and a thinker about it. -from the "Foreword" by G. B. Tennyson Owen Barfield, who died in 1997 shortly after entering his hundredth year, was one of the seminal minds of the twentieth century, of whom C. S. Lewis wrote "he towers above us all." His books have won respect from many writers other than Lewis, among them T. S. Eliot, J. R. R. Tolkein, and Saul Bellows, and John Lukacs. He was born in North London in 1898 and received his B.A. with first-class honors from Wadham College, Oxford, in 1921. He also earned B.C.L., M.A., and B.Litt. degrees from Oxford and was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He served as a solicitor for twenty-eight years until his retirement from legal practice in 1959. Barfield was a visiting professor at Brandeis and Drew Universities, Hamilton College, the University of Missouri at Columbia, UCLA, SUNY-Stony Brook, and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. His books include seven others published by The Barfield Press: Romanticism Comes of Age, Worlds Apart: A Dialogue of the 1960s, Unancestral Voice, Speaker's Meaning, What Coleridge Thought, The Rediscovery of Meaning, and History, Guilt and Habit.

Genres: Philosophy, Essays

128 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Arthur Owen Barfield was a British philosopher, author, poet, and critic.

Barfield was born in London. He was educated at Highgate School and Wadham College, Oxford and in 1920 received a first class degree in English language and literature. After finishing his B. Litt., which became his third book Poetic Diction, he was a dedicated poet and author for over ten years. After 1934 his profession was as a solicitor in London, from which he retired in 1959 aged 60. Thereafter he had many guest appointments as Visiting Professor in North America. Barfield published numerous essays, books, and articles. His primary focus was on what he called the "evolution of consciousness," which is an idea which occurs frequently in his writings. He is best known as a founding father of Anthroposophy in the English speaking world.

Barfield has been known as "the first and last Inkling". He had a profound influence on C. S. Lewis, and through his books The Silver Trumpet and Poetic Diction (dedicated to C.S. Lewis), an appreciable effect on J. R. R. Tolkien. Lewis was a good friend of Barfield since 1919, and termed Barfield "the best and wisest of my unofficial teachers". That Barfield did not consider philosophy merely intellectually is illustrated by a well-known interchange that took place between Lewis and Barfield. Lewis one day made the mistake of referring to philosophy as "a subject." "It wasn't a subject to Plato," said Barfield, "It was a way." Lewis refers to Barfield as the "Second Friend" in Surprised by Joy:

But the Second Friend is 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?

Barfield and C. S. Lewis met in 1919 and were close friends for 44 years. Barfield was instrumental in converting Lewis to theism during the early period of their friendship which they affectionately called 'The Great War'. Maud also guided Lewis. As well as being friend and teacher to Lewis, Barfield was his legal adviser and trustee. Lewis dedicated his 1936 book Allegory of Love to Barfield. Lewis wrote his 1949 book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for Lucy Barfield and he dedicated The Voyage of the Dawn Treader to Geoffrey in 1952.

Reviews

[Tylor Lovins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work is composed of three brief lectures. The positions taken are very general, and they are given philosophical depth and rigor in Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry. Perhaps this is a good introduction for that work, but I have read them the other way around, and believe this to be rather a good summary of it. I do not know if the other should be read first, I just noticed while reading that some of the assumptions made in this work were too broad and far reaching for me to have understood them without reading Saving the Appearances first. At any rate, it is extremely accessible, on the history of consciousness, the notion of idolatry, and what these two have to do with where we are at in this moment in history.

[Dan Toft · Rating 4 out of 5]

This, along with his book "Poetic Diction," is the easiest introduction to the thinking of Owen Barfield. He's not terribly difficult to read, but sometimes you can lose track of his train of thought, mostly due to the utter weight of the subject matter involved. This book solves that problem by breaking down the major points of his philosophy into three, carefully-structured lectures.

[Elizabeth Jennings · Rating 4 out of 5]

These three late lectures by Barfield build upon his earlier seminal works, particularly Saving the Appearances. It would be good to have a grounding in his basic philosophy first on the evolution of consciousness, but he writes simply here, and his writing in the guilt essay on racial issues, though written in the 1970s, applies just as well today.

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really tried with this book. I tried because Barfield was an inkling and because I was drawn to the title. Every time I tried to read this, I started to get drowsy and I found myself re-reading the paragraph I just read - so I re-read the same paragraph countless times and still didn't understand/ like it/ get it. I think I got to page 8. I really did try and want to read this but after 5 days in a row of trying- I wisely quit.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I disagree with him on almost every particular, but the chain of thoughts that get him there is fascinating

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Owen Barfield is always interesting.

"We are brought back once more to the cardinal reflection that consciousness is not just the inside of us; it is the inside of the world. And you do not change that inside of a living organism without at the same time changing the outside" (p.56).