From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Apr 20 2003 - 01:11:20 BST
Scott and all:
For starters, Scott offered:
his "original post on Barfield, which kind of sets out some conclusions, and
says he "will try at some point to give the argumenatation that leads to
them." http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/0206/0296.html
Scott offered an essay on Barfield too:
http://www.praxagora.com/stevet/fdnc/appa.html
dmb says:
Thanks. The essay was especially helpful. I could see right away that
Barfield's ideas are consistent with the ideas of Pirsig, Wilber and others.
I took a pen and high-lighter to it and made it a mess. I'm not cruel enough
or ambitious enough to bore you with all of it, but a few examples wouldn't
hurt.
"Still today, the invisible word is spoken with a physical gesture, even if
that gesture has for the most part contracted into the small organs of
speech. One can at least imagine how the gestures of speech were once made
with the whole body. This was before man had become "detached from the rest
of nature after the solid manner of today, when the body itself was spoken
even while it was speaking." (Saving the Appearances)
dmb says:
Spoken with a physical gesture... If language is full of myth and ritual is
the enactment of a myth and language is contracted or condensed ritual, then
we can begin to see that in the mythic imagination, in third level thinking,
myth, ritual and language are not yet seperate things. We make that
distinction with the intellect, but they were one and the same in the
pre-Homeric mind. When the gestures of speech were made with the whole body!
Wow. Why do I suddenly feel like dancing? Or how about this...
"What will chiefly be remembered about the scientific revolution will be the
way in which it scoured the appearances clean of the last traces of spirit,
freeing us from original, and for final, participation .... The other name
for original participation, in all its long-hidden, in all its diluted
forms, in science, in art and in religion, is, after all -- paganism."
(Saving the Appearances)
dmb says:
Original and Final Participation. I like the distinction. As Wilber might
put it, part of the task of our modern intellect was to make distinctions
and thereby distinquish itself from the original participation mode of
consciousness. (There is the problem with going too far, from healthy
differentiation into over-heated dis-association, but let us not complicate
the story with that for the moment.) And before we can achieve this "final
participation" these things like art, science and religion will be
re-integrated into a coherent whole once again. And finally, I loved, Loved,
LOVED this....
"To put it rudely, any reasonably honest fool can be objective about
objects."
"It must be a different matter altogether, should we be called on to attend,
not alone to matter, but to spirit; when a man would have to practice
distinguishing what in himself comes solely from his private personality --
memories, for instance, and all the horseplay of the Freudian subconscious
-- from what comes also from elsewhere. Then indeed objectivity is not
something that was handed us on a plate once and for all by Descartes, but
something that would really have to be achieved, and which must require for
its achievement, not only exceptional mental concentration but other efforts
and qualities, including moral ones, as well." ("Language and Discovery," in
The Rediscovery of Meaning and Other Essays)
dmb says:
Who commanded us to, "Know thyself"? Was it Jesus or Socrates? Whatever. The
kind of "objectivity" that Barfield describes here strikes me as the kind
that would lead to wisdom, honest and fair judgements about things and I
can't imagine why anyone wouldn't love to achieve it.
Thanks again,
dmb
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