21 Facts About Owen Barfield

Arthur Owen Barfield was an English philosopher, author, poet, critic, and member of the Inklings.

Owen Barfield had three elder siblings: Diana, Barbara, and Harry.

Owen Barfield was educated at Highgate School and Wadham College, Oxford and in 1920 received a first class degree in English language and literature.

Owen Barfield's primary focus was on what he called the "evolution of consciousness," which is an idea which occurs frequently in his writings.

Owen Barfield is best known as the author of Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry and as a founding father of Anthroposophy in the English speaking world.

Lewis wrote his 1949 book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first Narnia chronicle, for his friend's daughter Lucy Owen Barfield and dedicated it to her.

Owen Barfield dedicated The Voyage of the Dawn Treader to Barfield's adopted son Geoffrey in 1952.

Owen Barfield dedicated his first scholarly book, The Allegory of Love to his 'wisest and best of my unofficial teachers,' stating in its preface that he asked no more than to disseminate Barfield's literary theory and practice.

Owen Barfield became an anthroposophist after attending a lecture by Rudolf Steiner in 1924.

Owen Barfield studied the work and philosophy of Rudolf Steiner throughout his life, translated some of his works, and had some of his own early essays published in anthroposophical publications.

Owen Barfield's writing was not derivative, it was profoundly original, but he did not see himself as having moved beyond Steiner, as, in his opinion, Steiner had moved beyond Goethe.

Owen Barfield considered Steiner a much greater man in possession of a greater mind than Goethe, and of course he considered himself very small compared to both of them.

Owen Barfield might be characterised as both a Christian writer and a learned anti-reductionist writer.

Owen Barfield's books have been republished by Barfield UK, with new editions including Unancestral Voice; History, Guilt, and Habit; Romanticism Comes of Age; The Rediscovery of Meaning; Speaker's Meaning; and Worlds Apart.

The film Owen Barfield: Man and Meaning, co-produced and written by G B Tennyson and David Lavery, directed and edited by Ben Levin, is a documentary portrait of Barfield.

Owen Barfield has been held in high esteem by many contemporary poets, including Robert Kelly, Charles Stein, George Quasha, Tom Cheetham, and others.

For Owen Barfield this is not just literary criticism: it is evidence bearing on the evolution of human consciousness.

Owen Barfield uses numerous examples to demonstrate that words originally had a unified "concrete and undivided" meaning, which we now distinguish as several distinct concepts.

Owen Barfield argues that the evolution of nature is inseparable from the evolution of consciousness.

In Owen Barfield's lexicon, there is an "unrepresented" underlying base of reality that is extra-mental.

However, unlike Kant, Owen Barfield entertained the idea that the "unrepresented" could be directly experienced, under some conditions.