Owen Barfield
Owen Barfield (1898–1997) was a British philosopher, poet, and literary critic whose work on language, imagination, and the evolution of consciousness provides one of the most comprehensive accounts of how humanity’s relationship to reality has transformed over time. As a founding member of the Inklings alongside C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Barfield was both an insider to mid-century literary intellectual life and an independent thinker whose philosophical project extended far beyond that circle. His central achievement was to show that consciousness itself evolves — that the modern experience of alienation from nature and meaning is not a primordial condition but a historically developed stage, and that recovery of participatory engagement with the world is possible through the disciplined cultivation of the imagination.
Barfield’s work draws directly on the Romantic tradition, especially Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s philosophy of the imagination, while extending it into a full account of the evolution of human consciousness from pre-modern to modern and potentially post-modern forms. His concept of final participation — the conscious, chosen re-enchantment of reality through imaginative work — offers a framework that anticipates contemporary accounts of the meaning crisis and participatory knowing by more than half a century.
Original Participation
Barfield’s genealogy begins with original participation, the archaic mode of consciousness that characterized pre-modern humanity and non-Western cultures still living in close continuity with ancient forms of life. In original participation, humans did not experience themselves as isolated subjects observing an objective world of dead matter. Instead, they experienced the world as animate, ensouled, and genuinely speaking. Words were not arbitrary labels attached to things but living powers that participated in the reality they named. The boundary between self and world was porous, permeable to influences and presences that later cultures would dismiss as superstition or metaphor.
This mode of consciousness was not “primitive” in the sense of inferior or less developed. It was a different mode of engagement with reality — one that experienced the world as genuinely alive and genuinely responsive. For Barfield, the dissolution of original participation was not simply a loss; it was a necessary stage in the development of human consciousness.
The Evolution of Consciousness
The transition from original participation to modern consciousness — what Barfield calls the evolution of consciousness — was driven by the development of abstract, rational thought. This process gave rise to genuine achievements: individual agency, critical thinking, scientific method, and the modern concept of personal autonomy. But it also produced a corresponding loss: the experience of the world as dead, mechanical, and indifferent.
Barfield calls the modern mode onlooker consciousness — the experience of observing reality from the outside rather than participating in it from within. In this mode, nature is not animate presence but dead mechanism; words are not living powers but conventional signs; the self is not porous and permeable but bounded and isolated. The modern subject stands alone before a world that does not speak back. This, for Barfield, is the root of what Vervaeke calls the meaning crisis: the loss of the cognitive and participatory machinery that reliably produced meaning, transformation, and genuine self-transcendence.
Final Participation
Barfield’s crucial insight is that the solution to the meaning crisis is not a return to original participation. That mode is genuinely inaccessible to modern consciousness — attempting to recover it would mean the loss of the very achievements of modernity (individuality, critical thought, scientific understanding). The solution, Barfield argues, lies in final participation — a third term that preserves what is valuable in both original participation and onlooker consciousness.
Final participation is:
- Conscious and chosen — not the unconscious immersion of the archaic mind but the deliberate re-enchantment of reality through imagination and will
- Individual yet participatory — it retains the gains of modern consciousness (individuality, critical thought) while recovering the losses (engagement, meaning, participation)
- The work of the secondary imagination — final participation is achieved through the disciplined cultivation of the imaginative faculty that Coleridge described
- Ongoing and developmental — it is not a final state but a lifelong practice of deepening one’s capacity for participatory knowing
For Barfield, the path to final participation runs through the recovery of the depth of language. His work on etymology shows that abstract concepts like “spirit,” “understand,” and “perceive” were originally concrete, bodily, participatory experiences. To recover the depth of language is to recover a participatory mode of knowing. This is not merely an intellectual exercise; it is a practical discipline that changes how one experiences the world.
Language and Meaning
Barfield’s early work on poetic diction demonstrated that language is not a static system of arbitrary signs but a living record of the evolution of consciousness. Ancient languages were more concrete, more directly tied to bodily experience and participatory engagement. Over time, language became more abstract, more capable of generalization and scientific usage, but also more detached from lived reality. Poetry, for Barfield, preserves the capacity for language to participate in reality rather than merely represent it. As he wrote, poetry can provide “a backward glimpse of a time when nature spoke through the poet, rather than vice versa.”
This account of language has implications for all of human life. If words are not merely conventional signs but participatory acts, then to use language more consciously — to recover its depth and its capacity to participate in reality — is to recover a form of original participation without losing the achievements of modern consciousness. Language becomes the medium through which final participation is achieved.
Relationship to the Romantic Tradition
Barfield is the twentieth-century inheritor of the Romantic tradition, especially the philosophy of imagination articulated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His reading of Coleridge in What Coleridge Thought is one of the most sophisticated accounts of Coleridge’s philosophical project, showing how Coleridge’s distinction between primary and secondary imagination is not merely a literary theory but a full epistemology and metaphysics. Barfield extends Coleridge’s insights into a genealogy of human consciousness that shows why the Romantic diagnosis was correct and how its recovery might be possible.
Barfield’s account of the evolution of consciousness is continuous with the Romantic diagnosis of the meaning crisis. The Romantics identified what Barfield would later call the dissolution of original participation; they identified “single vision” and the reduction of the world to mechanism. But Barfield goes further, offering a genealogy of how this happened and a path beyond it that does not require the irrationalism or nostalgia that sometimes characterized Romanticism.
Influence and Connections
Barfield’s influence has been quiet but profound. His friendship and philosophical collaboration with C.S. Lewis shaped Lewis’s later thought, especially the emphasis on imagination, myth, and the reality of the spiritual world. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and Space Trilogy reflect Barfield’s insistence on the reality of the imaginal and the possibility of participatory engagement with the spiritual realm.
Barfield’s work on the meaning crisis and the evolution of consciousness has been taken up by contemporary thinkers, most notably John Vervaeke, who explicitly draws on Barfield in his account of the meaning crisis and the recovery of participatory knowing. Vervaeke’s emphasis on the evolution of consciousness, the loss of relevance realization, and the possibility of recovery through transformative practice is deeply continuous with Barfield’s framework.
Barfield’s work also intersects with depth psychology, especially Jung’s account of the unconscious and active imagination. While Barfield was not a Jungian, his insistence on the reality of the imaginal and the participatory nature of consciousness is continuous with Jung’s later work on the collective unconscious and the autonomy of psychic contents. The figures encountered in active imagination, for both Barfield and Jung, are not merely projections of the individual psyche but inhabitants of a real intermediate realm.
Key Works
- Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry (1957) — Barfield’s major philosophical work, outlining the evolution of consciousness and the possibility of final participation.
- Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning (1928) — An early work on language, imagination, and the history of meaning.
- What Coleridge Thought (1971) — Barfield’s reading of Coleridge’s philosophy of imagination, one of the most sophisticated accounts of Coleridge’s philosophical project.
- History, Guilt, and Habit (1979) — A later work that extends Barfield’s account of consciousness into the realm of ethics and culture.
- The Rediscovery of Meaning and Other Essays (1973) — A collection of key essays on language, consciousness, and the meaning crisis.
Connections
Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Barfield’s primary philosophical ancestor; his account of primary and secondary imagination is the foundation of Barfield’s project.
John Vervaeke — Drew explicitly on Barfield for his account of the meaning crisis and the evolution of consciousness.
The Romantic Tradition — Barfield is the twentieth-century inheritor of the Romantic diagnosis of the meaning crisis and the Romantic defense of the imagination.
Secondary Imagination — The faculty that Barfield identifies as the means to final participation.
Participatory Knowing — Barfield’s final participation is a form of this; his account of the evolution of consciousness provides the historical framework.
The Imaginal — Barfield’s insistence on the reality of the imaginal is continuous with Corbin’s account of the mundus imaginalis.
Henry Corbin — While Barfield and Corbin worked in different traditions (British vs. French-Islamic), their accounts of the imaginal converge significantly.
Carl Jung — Barfield’s account of the imagination and consciousness intersects with Jung’s work on active imagination and the collective unconscious.
John Vervaeke — Vervaeke’s genealogy of the meaning crisis is deeply continuous with Barfield’s.
Meaning Crisis — Barfield’s account of the evolution of consciousness provides a historical framework for understanding the meaning crisis.
Alienation — Barfield’s diagnosis of modernity’s alienation from nature and participation is a precursor to contemporary accounts of alienation and resonance.
Related Practices
Final participation is not merely a philosophical position but a practical discipline. Barfield’s work suggests several practices for cultivating final participation:
- Poetic engagement — Reading and writing poetry as a practice of recovering the depth of language.
- Etymological inquiry — Exploring the historical development of abstract concepts to recover their concrete, participatory roots.
- Active imagination — While Barfield was not a Jungian, his account of the imagination is continuous with Jung’s practice of active imagination.
- Contemplative practice — Meditation, prayer, and other contemplative disciplines as methods for cultivating the capacity for participatory knowing.