Toward Final Participation Christina Burdick Course: Theory of Knowledge Professor: Daniel Kolak, Philosophy Student: Christina Burdick Essay: Toward Final Participation
Assignment: Students were asked to choose a philosopher and, after explaining what a theory of knowledge is and why we need one, situate that Philosopher’s theory of knowledge within the Philosopher’s overall system
as well as within the history of epistemology and the broader knowledge-seeking enterprise.
Noble Prize-winning novelist Saul Bellow wrote, “We are well supplied with interesting writers, but Owen Barfield is not content to be merely interesting. His ambition is to set us free. Free from what? From the prison we have made for ourselves by our ways of knowing, our limited and false habits of thought, our ‘common sense’.”1 One could argue why Owen Barfield would warrant such high praise and be given substantial significance. Although Barfield had a great impact on theology, philosophy and literature and published numerous essays, articles, and books about the world as we see it and the world as it is, about God, human nature, and the evolution of consciousness, his work remains veiled in anonymity. However, closer consideration of his work is warranted when the human condition is of great concern. In his book The Rediscovery of Meaning, Barfield opens by asking:
the one which fills thoughtful people with the greatest foreboding is the growing general sense of meaninglessness. It is this which underlies most of the other threats. How is it that the more able man becomes to manipulate the world to his advantage, the less he can perceive any meaning in it? (13) This is a matter we have widely contemplated yet have been unable to resolve while imprisoned by our ways of knowing and our “common sense”. By common sense, Barfield meant becoming blind to one half of reality while retaining the other. As Thomas Kuhn puts it in The Structures of Scientific Revolution, “We see the world in terms of our theories.” Thinking occurs before any activity, concept, or language. It is important to study the inner dynamic of our cognitive abilities. It is not only necessary to understand how one comes to know anything but also
Amid all the menacing signs that surround us in the middle of the twentieth century, perhaps
Saul Bellow quoted on the cover of Barfield’s Saving the Appearances.
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