From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Tue Jun 14 2005 - 11:06:58 BST
Scott, Bo
--- Bo replied:
--- Well, to repeat myself SOM was once taken for granted (and still
--- is by 99,99% of the Western population) Can you Matt show me
--- anyone referring to a subject/object metaphysics , I mean in the
--- sense of it having an origin and maybe a exit?
---
--- Scott:
--- Barfield's discussion of the decline of original participation and the
--- goal
--- of final participation is just that (origin and exit).
--- Bo continued:
--- There were
--- certainly plenty thinkers who lamented the enigma; why reality
--- was thus divided; why we are locked inside our mind with no
--- hope of knowing the "Ding an Sich", but not putting the bell on
--- the cat like Pirsig did.
---
--- Scott:
--- Pirsig's belling of the cat fails, due to his failure to come to grips
--- with
--- language and intellect. Barfield succeeds.
Paul: Barfield -- "When particles of rain, rays of light and our watching
eyes are appropriately disposed, we see a rainbow. In the same way, given
the existence of the particles and the presence of human beings on the
earth, there arise collective representations, or in other words the
phenomena which we call 'nature'." [Owen Barfield, p36, Saving the
Appearances]
On his use of 'particles' --
"I tried to preserve neutrality...by referring to objective reality (that is
to say, reality insofar as it is independent of our awareness of it),
whenever such reference became necessary, sometimes as 'the particles' and
sometimes as 'the unrepresented'....The use of the term 'particles' was not
intended to connote their crude material existence (which some scientists
doubt or deny)....The need was to express in language the view that our
immediate awareness of nature is a system of 'representations' of something
of which we are *not* immediately aware, but to which the representations
are correlative" [Owen Barfield, Introduction to the Wesleyan Edition,
Saving the Appearances]
Barfield's whole thesis spins on the idea of representations (phenomena -
appearance?) that are correlative to something we are not immediately aware
of (particles - reality?)? I'm no Barfield scholar, for sure, but from what
I've read (Saving the Appearances) I'm not so sure that "Barfield succeeds"
any more than Kant did.
Regards
Paul
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