Directionally Creator: Owen Barfield & the Future of History

A recording of my dissertation defense

Dear Friends,

I have—at long last—defended my dissertation! I’ve included the recording of it below as well as the abstract. I’m hoping to eventually publish it as a book; if you are reading this and happen to have any suggestions regarding publishers I might reach out to, please do leave a comment and let me know. I’m excited to post here more often now that I’ve crossed the major threshold and will soon have more time. In the meantime, please enjoy this recording and let me know what you think of the ideas! It’s a severe condensation of all that I explore in the 400 page dissertation, but you’ll get a good glimpse of the basic contours.

xoxo

Abstract: This dissertation presents Owen Barfield’s theory of the evolution of consciousness as a legitimate retrieval of metanarrative that can constructively engage the epistemological, ecological, socio-political, and existential challenges of the Anthropocene. By contextualizing Barfield’s thought in a lineage streaming down from Plato, yet transformed by the Romantic conception of the creative imagination put forth by thinkers like Coleridge and Goethe, I argue that his theory of history—rather than mere ideology—is something that one might actually come to perceive through participatory knowing. In this vein, the dissertation aims to show how Barfield’s critique of secular-materialism has parity with postcolonial theorists while maintaining the salutary ethical and scientific advances brought about in modernity. Following Charles Taylor’s suggestion that liberal societies might better navigate the post-secular present and future by re-engaging the transcendently-indexed moral sources underlying our ethical intuitions, I position Barfield’s work as one such retrieval—a distinctly sacramental, world-affirming renewal of Christian agape, framed within an evolutionary perspective.