The scope of aphorisms

I have often recommended aphoristic writers. 

And I have (at least since I began regular blogging in 2010 - a year or two after I became a Christian) myself developed an aphoristic style of writing (as may be evident by comparing my earlier writing). 

So, I need no persuading of the virtues of aphorism. 

However there are limitations on the effectiveness and value of this type of writing. 

An aphorism only takes the reader so far and to an uncertain destination. 

Why? Because really to comprehend, we must see the workings of thinking. 

The ideal is not to present conclusions merely, but that the reader - through the process of reading - participates in the thought processes of the writer.

 

Therefore the best use of aphorisms comes when they are presented in some quantity, and in a sequence that represents the movement of the author's thought. 

When this is done well, a reader can get benefit from the journey - even when the destination turns-out to be a place he dislikes. 

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Note: The first aphoristic text that grabbed me was Wittgenstein's On Certainty; which is derived from notes made on a few occasions; jumping around a problem, tackling it by rushes, from different angles. I can't remember Wittgenstein's conclusions, if any; but I appreciated the way he tackled the business. 

Publishing experience with my four after-becoming-a-Christian, blog-derived books

I have published four books since I became a Christian, all available in paper copy (and some in Kindle) from University of Buckingham Press. These were published on the basis of an agreement (suggested by me) that - by foregoing any money - I would be able to retain copyright and publish free, online, e-text versions of the books.

My intention was that this would increase the availability and impact of the books - beyond what would have been possible (or plausible) for a small publisher.

2011 - Thought Prison -  the fundamental nature of political correctness
http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk
- 47,000 Pageviews

2012 - Not even trying - the corruption of real science
http://corruption-of-science.blogspot.co.uk
- 18,000 Pageviews

2014 - Addicted to Distraction - psychological consequences of the mass media
http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.co.uk
- 26,000 Pageviews

2016 - The Genius Famine - why we need geniuses, why they're dying off and why we must rescue them. (co-authored with Ed Dutton)
http://geniusfamine.blogspot.co.uk
- 5,500 Pageviews

If Pageviews were book sales then this would be pretty impressive! - but, probably they are not equivalent. It costs nothing and takes almost no time to click onto a book link; but if someone buys a paper copy of a book, they have invested more into it and are therefore more likely actually to read it.

Indeed, to read this kind of e-book pretty-much requires that the individual reader copies, pastes, edits and prints-out a copy; otherwise - if they try to read it on-screen - they are likely to be getting only a skimmed and superficial experience of the text.

In addition to the above; I have co-authored two other books - The making of a doctor: medical education in theory and practice, with RS Downie, 1992; and The Modernization Imperative, with Peter Andras, 2003. Both of these now seem, from my Christian perspective, to be essentially wrong.

The other book was Psychiatry and the Human Condition (2000) https://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/psychhuman.html - which I would still regard as a very good piece of scientific work (!); despite that its view of the 'human condition' is secular, materialist and hedonic. 

In general, I have always realised that my books are inferior to my essays, in terms of creative achievement. I naturally write at essay length (which is why I can blog daily quite spontaneously) - and therefore have to 'assemble' and 'manufacture' my books like a mosaic from small autonomous units; even though the books are only short.

This isn't uncommon, in my experience - it seems to me that the best non-fiction prose usually falls into essay length rather than book length. For example, GK Chesterton was a better essayist than book length author - and this especially applies to writers (such as myself) who adopt an aphoristic style. An extreme would be Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose work naturally falls into aphoristic sentences or paragraphs - and who found even the essay to be something requiring artificial construction.

Books of aphorisms are indeed more-or-less un-readable qua books - Pascal's Pensees, Traherne's Centuries of Meditations, Nietzsche's works after the monograph Birth of Tragedy...

Thus non-fiction prose is much like poetry - at its best (and beyond a certain minimum length), its intensity is inverse to its effective length. Long narrative poems are either discursive and - line by line - inferior to short lyrics; or else are lyrics embedded-in longer sections of less-poetic narrative -- and much the same, mutatis mutandis, applies to non-fiction prose that aspires to artistic effectiveness.

Which of my books is best from an 'artistic' perspective - in terms of quality of writing - is something I am not likely to judge well - but at the time of writing it seemed to be 'Not even trying' - the least popular of all my books. I felt N.E.T. was as good a piece of extended writing that I could manage, with only one significant structural fault (a clunky transition of subject matter).

But, for non-fiction prose, the subject matter and views are extremely important to enjoyability: we must be interested by the subject matter, and have some kind of sympathy with the author's views to be able to appreciate it; probably because it is a polemical form, intended to persuade - and the reader must have some basic and broad-brush willingness-to-be-persuaded, if such a book is to be a positive experience.  

Novalis and Final Participation

Novalis sculpted by the aptly-named Fritz Schaper - perhaps the most beautiful of great thinkers?

I have been aware of the 'German Romantic' Novalis (1772-1801 - he died of TB at age 28) for a long time, but also knew I was not ready to tackle him.

And indeed I misjudged the nature and scope of his achievement; since I assumed Novalis was solely a lyrical poet and romantic novelist - yet I know from experience that this kind of achievement is not translatable.

(I have tried and failed to appreciate lyrical poetry and poetic prose in translation so many times that I have ceased trying.)

Yesterday I felt ready - and discovered that Novalis was a philosopher, scientist and professional mining engineer who wrote on these - and all other - subjects for a projected Encyclopedia (lost for c. 150 years and only translated into English 11 years ago).

I then encountered some of his aphoristic/ 'fragment'-ary philosophical writings; and have seen enough to recognise that Novalis was someone who was embarked in the same cultural project as ST Coleridge; and that - like Coleridge - he was himself writing from a state of consciousness that had attained Final Participation (no wonder Barfield was so powerfully drawn to Novalis!).

After just a day, it already looks like Novalis will be joining my very small and select pantheon of those who (like Goethe, Blake, Coleridge, Steiner, Barfield, Arkle) significantly understood the single most-important issue of human developmental-evolution as it presents to Western consciousness.

My fellow feeling with aphoristic note-makers

I have gradually realised that some of the authors with whom I share the greatest 'fellow feeling' are the aphoristic note-makers. For example: Pascal's Pensees, Novalis's Pollen and Philip K Dick's Exegesis. I have ordered a selection from Coleridge's Notebooks, so we'll see if that can be added to the list...

The main thing about these 'unfinished' works, is that they are the writer actively thinking and talking with himself, as honestly as he is able - and the kind of person who produces this kind of writing is someone who thinks and broods purposively for much of the time.


That is what I recognise and am drawn-to; because I am of this type and have met extremely few people who are like me in this regard.

This activity (ie. spending hours per day brooding and thinking) is the basis of what I would regard as the real and proper activity of Philosophy; and why I called myself 'a philosopher' in my scrappy-memoirs (which are not themselves, however, an example of this notebookish form).


I can remember when I first looked-at Pascal, in a secondhand bookshop in Cheltenham some decade ago. I opened the Penguin paperback, read a few lines; and simply felt: Yes.

I feel the same every time I look at it. In a sense, everything else (content, conclusions etc) is secondary to this affirmative affinity.  


This note-taking thinker is a definite, albeit rare, Type; as much as the scientist, poet or fiction writer - and will be the covert driver of those activities: for instance of the poetry of Novalis, the Fiction of PKD, or my science (which was mostly theoretical).


(I may recognise the type, but don't always feel a personal affinity: Nietzsche and Wittgenstein are instances of this. They are my type, but mostly on a different wavelength.)


And it is why I have found blogging (of the type I do) so congenial; because it is only one step removed from my primary work: those reams of handwritten notes I have generated through writing every day for the past (what?) forty-plus years - yet almost never looked-at a second time. 

In one sense these notebooks are the meditative-laboratory for my published and disseminated writing; in another sense the public work is secondary to the notebooks; which are The Real Thing (despite that nobody ever will see them, nor would they be of any interest).

The clearest example of this 'real thing' can be seen with PKD's Exegesis compared with the novels he published in the final eight years of his life when he was making notes for it. For one who can appreciate the Exegesis (and is reading from a shared primarily-Christian perspective with PKD, which essentially None of his critics and editors are); it can easily be felt that the notes are primary and the novels (such as Valis - which is a fictionalised version of the notes) are derivative and lesser.


I am not saying that journal-type notes are superior works-of-art to poems, novels, essays; because they certainly aren't. Not even close! They will always be a (tiny) minority taste.

And indeed where they are not - as with Pascal - they are usually adopted pretentiously and grossly misunderstood by people whose nature is extraverted and whose content is externally-derived.


Art is a public activity, by intent; and journaling notes are not - or, ought not to be. The purpose is different. In a nutshell; what I value in these works is evidence of another person whose thinking is endogenous. In finished art is is difficult to impossible to tell whether the writer is generating or channelling the material - and it is almost always the latter.

For example, skilled journalists, critics, popular non-fiction writers take-in material, subject it to standardized-processing, then spew it out. The result may be superficially and temporarily impressive - but is deeply and over the long-term, debilitating. Such writing (for instance much 'travel writing' is a kind of trick - parasitic upon the genuine thought of others.

(The same applies to what passes for science nowadays; most of the most-influential of which is written by agencies who employ glibly-articulate quasi-journalistic hacks and PR merchants to do the job.)


To get back to PKD's Exegesis - this brings out another aspect of this kind of work; which is that it is not done to impress others, nor to satisfy the needs of socialization. Dick was, apparently, a bit of a chameleon in his social interactions; with a tendency to say and behave in ways to gratify the company. This meant there was a considerable gulf between the spontaneous incoherence of his notebooks; and the adjusted and filtered versions of these which appeared in everyday conversation.

Indeed, most of us are like this; we adjust what we say to the person we are speaking with. Sociality is primary. Yet when real, hard, honest thinking is being done' the unfiltered original may have an interest and validity - perhaps greater than the (more-or-less) bowdlerised versions of the ideas that we show to other people.

So a journal written to be shown to other people - like those of Thoreau and Emerson - may well make excellent literature - as these do. But such 'public journals' lack the special quality of genuine, personal notes; when the writer's audience is himself.   

Matthew's Gospel

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I have been re-reading the Gospel of Matthew - and, for the first time, felt for myself a sense of its overall structure and methods.

My impression is of a text mainly composed of multiple memories about Christ and of what Christ said and did - probably taken verbatim and little altered. The effect is of multiple 'voices' and the author invisible.

The transitions between sources are not smoothed, the context and interpretation are seldom clarified. My inference is that the author regarded his sources as sacred, and was too modest or scrupulous to add or subtract - but satisfied himself with simply arranging the material in the best chronology he could.

The result is an aphoristic style: powerful, detached - and at times I could not understand the aphorisms, and they seemed to clash - always in situations where the context of the sayings and doings was non-obvious. 

Of the synoptic Gospels, the impression was that this was the one in the rawest and least-edited state; with advantages from that of less distortion, and also with a greater-than-usual proneness to error if using the 'proof text' method of reading the Bible a verse at a time.

What comes across with great clarity is the importance of Jesus's strong claim to literal Kingship (i.e. earthly leadership) of the Jews via his adopted father Joseph

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/jesus-was-literally-king-of-jews-by.html

There is throughout an overwhelming sense of Jesus's immense and formidable personal authority - his claim on the throne by descent and fulfilment of prophecies, his greatness as a scholar and debater - superior to all other Rabbis, and the extraordinary events of his death and resurrection with multiple prophecies being fulfilled and multiple signs that some great thing had just happened (including resurrections of other people).

And, as so often, I felt again the importance of John the Baptist - whose spiritual authority seems to have been so great; and therefore whose endorsement of Jesus as the Christ seems to have been yet another vital strand in the interlocking of evidence that here was the Messiah.

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On being a Christian Fox

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"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing" - Achilochus (680-645 BC).

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A hedgehog is a systematic thinker with one big idea to which all smaller ideas are related - most great intellectuals have been of this kind - and almost all Christian theologians.

I am of the other kind, a fox - who knows many things, but does not subordinate them to one big thing.

The distinction between hedgehog and fox was clarified and popularized by Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), in a essay of that title:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox

But, whatever the advantages of being a hedgehog, I am not one; not intellectually, and not in my life.

Even after becoming a Christian I remain a fox, and have gravitated towards the most fox-like theology I can find. 

Hence the aphoristic style of this blog - a sequence of detachable points, in a sequence of detachable mini-essays.

Combining them into one-big-thing is difficult, and a task for which I personally am unsuited.

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It is, indeed, the secret conviction of a fox that important things cannot always be combined, not without significant (maybe deadly) loss and distortion - and so we leave them either detached; or else placed contiguously: stitched edge-to-edge.

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PC book now in production

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It is pleasant to be able to "announce" that the political correctness book is now in production, under the title of Thought Prison.

It will be a very slim volume - but, of course, one full of concentrated wisdom...

I don't suppose Thought Prison will ever get anywhere near the shelves of your friendly local bookstore, but those few who want to possess a copy will find it at the usual internet marketing sites, and Kindle.

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Generic thanks are made in the acknowledgment section to the commenters here who helped develop the ideas and phrasings.

The final text is better, in my view, than the original blog entries - and there is a semblance of organization and structure - but there isn't really anything new or different for regular readers.

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Certain commenters will be dismayed to learn that I have expunged all specific examples from the text (I think) - and explained in a sentence why this is necessary, and a consequence of PC itself.

Any commenter who disagrees with this policy should reflect on why they are commenting under a pseudonym.

There are no references at all.

To be example-free and without references will limit the audience, but may perhaps also limit distractions and misunderstandings? - time will tell.

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To be abstract, unreferenced and and example-free also raises the books intended-status from pop-sociology to pop-philosophy - which I find preferable.

It aligns it with such aphoristic (and very short) philosophical classics as Pascal's Pensees, Nietzsche's Ecce Homo, Wittgenstein's Tractatus...

Thought Prison is very much in their mould

(...stifled snigger...).

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At any rate, specific, appropriate, real world examples of political correctness would constitute a signed suicide note; so they were never going to happen.

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So, what next?

Watch this space...

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Thought Prison: the fundamental nature of Political Correctness by Bruce G Charlton, 2011

Those of my readers who have never yet read it, may be interested to take a look at the first mini-book (about 24,000 words) I published after I became a Christian (2008-9), and simultaneously recognised the evil falsity of the 'Matrix' world of modern Western public discourse. It is now available free online.

http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk

I was trying, in this book, to get down to the very roots of Leftism; both in history and in the individual - and the book was written from a perspective rooted in Eastern Orthodoxy as I had it (mostly) from Father Seraphim Rose (especially the book Nihilism which he wrote as Eugene Rose before he became a monk); also from JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis.

If you think you might like to tackle Thought Prison, it is worth bearing in mind that although it is short, the style of the book is aphoristic, dense and polemical; and it would probably be wise for a serious reader to copy, paste, edit and print-out the thing; rather than merely skimming it online.

Aphorism or what?

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I have experimented for a week with a blog of aphorisms (listed below) but find that this is not the right medium for my ideas/ notions - it seems I would rather write a mini-essay (or indeed a micro-essay) than a free-standing aphorism.

Nonetheless, I suspect that aphoristic knowledge - not argument, not evidence, not opinion - is probably what we most need now: only it will have to be someone else who provides it!

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The Good News

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A simple Christian message.

If you seek God, you shall find. You will make the right choice (and before it is too late).

If you have not yet found, do not despair: keep seeking. You will not be disappointed: you will get the real and eternal essence of that which you seek.

(Only pray also that you seek that which is Good for you.)

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Thursday, 24 November 2011

The triumph of the Left

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That the best-behaved people are on the wrong side; and most of the kindest people are in service to evil.

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Wednesday, 23 November 2011

We resemble Eloi...

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but we are not innocent; what we truly are is Cowslip's Warren.

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The Eloi are from The Time Machine by HG Wells' - Cowslip's Warren is from Watership Down by Richard Adams.

I regard Watership Down as a multifaceted, multi-level work of poetic and narrative genius.

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Nihilism is not believing nothing

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(although it may self-describe as such); To be a nihilist is to seek destruction of The Good.

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Do not seek humility directly -

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...Instead seek Love of God: humility is a by-product.

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Advice for middle aged reactionaries

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Don't read: re-read.

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(You have already read what you need to know.)

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Tuesday, 22 November 2011

Common sense, tradition, revelation versus hurt feelings

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On the one hand we have common sense (spontaneous human instinct), two thousand years of uncontradicted tradition, and divine revelation (as revelation has been understood for two thousand years and by the Holiest people ever known)...

And on the other hand we have hurt feelings; or, at least, the expression (or at least imagined attribution) of humiliation of some individual person or group of persons at being excluded.

No contest! Very Obviously hurt feelings carry the day.

To say otherwise would be unkind.

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The mass media are the primary therapy of modernity

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...because the mass media provide the two main answers to alienation: distraction and desensitization.

The mass media first distracts with deliberate inversions of the Good: ugliness, depravity and lies, which keeps our minds off the overwhelming fact that modernity depicts life as meaningless, purposeless and isolated;

then the mass media desensitizes us to the hideous, the immoral and the dishonest.

The ratchet turns another notch.

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Monday, 21 November 2011

Man is a creature incomplete

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Man is a creature incomplete, maimed; but which can become complete if he acknowledges his incompleteness; and further acknowledges that he can become complete only by Grace of God deriving from the healing completeness of Christ.

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Jesus Christ was the completion of Man maimed by loss of his primordial supernatural and specific continuous-awareness of God: Christ was the restoration of this primordial awareness in a new completion: which is called Son of God, and is made available to those who recognize the need and its source, and choose to accept the gift and its consequences.

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Natural Man is the relation with the real nature of things - this is natural Good. But natural Good does not, cannot, restore the lost supernatural and specific awareness of God because it relies on human resources which are radically incomplete.

So Natural Man relying on his own resources is alienated.

Natural Man can only be healed via the recognition that supernatural and specific awareness of God can come only from God.

(This acknowledgement is termed humility. Humility can only come from trust, which can only come from Love - from conviction that God Loves each of us specifically and personally. This is why the Love of God is primary for Christians - the primary commandment without which the others are inoperative. When God is acknowledged but not Loved, there is submission but not humility. And only an incarnate God can be Loved by a human - hence the necessity for Christ.)

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Note: the above ideas are derived from Charles Williams, especially The Descent of the Dove and the commentary on this in Alice Mary Hadfield's An Introduction to Charles Williams.

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Sunday, 20 November 2011

Nihilism defined

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Nihilism is denial of the reality of the real.

Which is to say, nihilism is denial of the reality of The Good.

(The Good - Truth, Beauty, Virtue in Unity - is one conception of primary reality) 

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The denial is necessarily in-practice, as well as theoretical.

Thus nihilism is destruction of The Good.

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Yet the Good cannot be destroyed - only distorted: all things are necessarily motivated by seeking Good - but innately only one or more aspect of Good.

In practice, therefore, operationally instantiated: nihilism is the purposive destruction of The Good in Unity in pursuit of a partial Good.

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(For instance, modern nihilism is characteristically the destruction of Truth, Beauty and all virtues but one: kindness. In sum, modern nihilism is constructive of a world of ugliness and lies and vice in the name of a single Good, namely kindness - the desire to alleviate suffering, misery, pain: at any price and with any consequence. Most past nihilisms have been less complete than modern; partial but with a larger number of Goods.)

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Saturday, 19 November 2011

You may ask one question

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You will receive one answer.

That answer must, of necessity, be brief.

(Hence incomplete, hence distorted, hence enigmatic at best - probably ambiguous - at worst misleading.)

Tough - that's all you can have.

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If you don't understand the answer then that is your problem

- go work on yourself until you do understand.

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Friday, 18 November 2011

Who would want to be a Zen master?

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I think I understand what Zen is trying to achieve, I know of the method/s by which it might plausibly be attained, and I believe that at least some people have successfully reached this objective.

But what I do not understand is this: why would anyone want it?

Suppose Zen enlightenment was available at a shop and for a reasonable price - but was, of course, non-returnable: who would buy?

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The pure quest for 'enlightenment' seems nothing more than a very long and uncertain path to analgesia - and there are swifter and surer paths to the alleviation of pain such as intoxication, sleep or suicide (unless further factors are introduced, like the immortality of the soul, and then we have gone beyond Zen).

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Thursday, 17 November 2011

Modern man and metaphysics

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Modern man is the most metaphysical creature in history; so much so that he denies the existence of metaphysics. 


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Metaphysics is the frame around the world: man is born with a natural frame, and has been offered a different and better frame but at a price. 


However, modern man prefers a different and worse frame on 'easy terms' (the price is higher, but the payment is due later). 


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Modern metaphysics does not pretend to be more real than common-sense metaphysics; it does not pretend to be as desirable as Christian metaphysics.


Neither real nor desirable... why are there so many takers? 


Because the poison is administered in small, sub-lethal doses, and is sugar-coated.


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Participation in the reality of The Good

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The Positive Way is participation in the reality of The Good.

This works indirectly, via the imagination.

The participation must be real; that which is participated-in must be reality.

To use the imagination to engage with reality...

not a paradox, just very difficult to sustain.

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Wednesday, 16 November 2011

Can The Left make poverty history?

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Too late, already happened (7 billion people and rising).

Prosperity is the problem, not poverty.

Make prosperity history, then?

Be patient, we're nearly there...

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The complacency of 'doubt'

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Surely complacency is a great sin of intellectuals? That characteristically smug self-satisfaction which comes from denial of the duty of worship. Ingratitude.

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Tom Bombadil and the hierarchy of things

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No detail is too small for the notice of Tom Bombadil, yet he observes the whole world unfold and die.

He observes from a tiny and obscure corner far away from what appears to be the centre; and yet not with resentment nor with provincial pride, but with unquestioning faith that this is his place, his role.

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Reading Pascal's Pensees...

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I have the conviction that anyone who understands must become a Christian; unless he be sure that Christianity was false.

Pascal explains the human condition, and that Christianity is the answer: the only answer.

The others are not answers but denials and distractions.

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Tuesday, 15 November 2011

Humility cannot be a primary goal

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Love of Man is not, cannot be, the primary goal of life - it must be second to Love of God.

Thus Humility is not, cannot be, the primary goal of life - it must be second to Love.

(When we love, we are humble in respect to that which we love.)

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Insufficient reform is worse than none

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Insufficient reforms are worse than none in the long term since they allow things to get worse for longer.

Excessive reforms are worse than necessary in the short term, but effective in the long term (so long as the patient survives).

Ergo all effective reform is excessive.

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Book draft 'finished'

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Well, I have finished the draft of the PC Book (title undecided) - which is drawn mostly from this blog.

I'm reasonably happy with it except... it is only 24 thousand words... (cut down from about 90K).

Somehow I just can't write a real book.

On the positive side, this one is set out in separate paragraphs, in an 'aphoristic' style, so it would make a (slim) book in length (in this respect rather like Wittgenstein's Tractatus - although probably not with all the numberings, and with more jokes...)

Any way, if regular commenters would like an rtf copy, then please e-mail me.

You can comment on the book if you wish, although I should warn that I will take about as much notice of the book comments as I do of the blog comments ;-)

- but seriously folks: THANK YOU.

It wouldn't (for what it is worth...) have happened without you.

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An Introduction to Owen Barfield

I am currently working on putting together a book on Owen Barfield: this is a draft of what might be the introduction:

It seems clear from accounts of those who knew him, confirmed by surviving filmed evidence, that Owen Barfield was a genuinely modest man. Of course, he had the solid, inner confidence that is essential to a genius; but this inner confidence did not come-out in personal interactions, where he was self-effacing and conciliatory. Much the same applies to his writings - which seek common ground rather than confrontation. This was, of course, a virtue; yet there is a consequent tendency to underestimate the depth, scope and originality of Barfield's achievement.

Furthermore, Barfield's writings are extremely careful, precise and balanced to the point that it is sometimes unclear what exactly are his own views. The prose is lucid and aphoristic; stimulating - yet, perhaps from not wishing to over-state or exaggerate, from not wishing to antagonise or dominate - Barfield did not always do justice to himself. He had a tendency to over-prepare the background; to explain and deal with objections, and to surround his assertions with qualifications and distinctions; to such a degree that by the time we eventually get to read his own actual beliefs - they are easy to miss. His considered views are typically articulated without much emphasis, or repetition, or re-explaining - so concisely that they can seem ambiguous.

In introducing my interpretation of Owen Barfield, his modesty can serve as a springboard; because it is the man's modesty that has, I believe, led to a general misunderstanding of the nature of his achievement. And therefore it has led to the potential value of a book which focuses on Barfield's philosophical understanding, states that understanding somewhat baldly, and accepts that understanding as a basis for development -  rather than re-rehearsing the arguments...  

...Barfield was working at a level much deeper than philology: he was a metaphysical philosopher engaged in redescribing modern Man's basic assumptions concerning the nature of reality; and Barfield underpinned his metaphysics with a radical Christian theological reinterpretation of the nature and purpose of God's relationship with Man and creation.

I suppose that if Barfield were confronted with the above passage, he would quietly but firmly agree that he was - indeed - essentially working in metaphysics and theology; and would then modestly point-out the large extent of his debt to Rudolf Steiner; that much of Barfield's philosophy can be seen as built-upon the foundations of Steiner's early philosophical books culminating in The Philosophy of Freedom (1894).

And debt is real and vital; despite a few differences, and that Barfield's work leaves-out the great bulk of Steiner's enormous output of 'spiritual science'. Yet it also seems to be true that Steiner's work served more as a confirmation and clarification of Barfield's pre-existing intuitions than a primary source of them.

In the end, it seems necessary to acknowledge both that Barfield's ideas are built-on those of Steiner; and also that Barfield is his-own-man - and for many or most people Barfield could justify the status of serving as one of a handful of truly important philosophers of the twentieth century; one whose work is of potentially-life transforming, life-enhancing value.

Read the whole thing at the Owen Barfield Blog.