Barfield's Debt to Steiner, and Our Own

In his book Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry, Owen Barfield said that one of the reasons he wrote and published the book was to introduce his readers to Rudolf Steiner's work. In fact, Barfield said many times that his goal in most of his lecturing and published work was to introduce Steiner's thinking to those of his own readers that weren't familiar with Steiner.

Since first reading Saving the Appearances back in 1988, I've read and studied Owen Barfield's work, and, for a short while corresponded with him, shortly before his death in 1997. I've read much of his entire published corpus, with perhaps a dozen personal letters from him added to the bibliography. I entered graduate school to pursue a master's degree in Philosophy, and wrote my thesis on Saving the Appearances. I reviewed new printings of Barfield's books. I was invited to be included in the founding meeting of the Owen Barfield Society. I was thinking through deep implications of Barfield's presentation in Saving the Appearances. I searched other authors' works for references to Barfield. I pursued many other authors' works on the basis of Barfield's own references and recommendation, including Stephen Talbott, Julian Jaynes, and Morris Berman.

But also, almost as soon as I had learned of and started on my intense and focused reading of Barfield's work, I began reading Rudolf Steiner's books and lectures. I started off with some of the Gospel lecture cycles, and of course Philosophy of Freedom. Over the course of the next few years, I had read a dozen books and lecture cycles by Steiner, and was referencing him in conversation and essays. So Barfield would be pleased to know that his very humble mission has been realized for me: I am fully a student of Rudolf Steiner, and regard him as my teacher.

Which makes Owen Barfield and I fellow students.

Barfield's work is rich, intricate, and keenly argued, and a subtly significant introduction to Steiner, if we judge by the extent to which I myself have studied and practiced Steiner's spiritual science. But that's the truth: Barfield's work is, after all, an introduction to Rudolf Steiner's work, not itself the subject of further study.

What I've found is that Steiner's work opens up realms far deeper than did Barfield's work, and that makes sense: first, that is how Barfield admitted it would go; second, Barfield was pointing to Steiner, whereas Steiner pointed to the whole of the spiritual realms.

Third, the 'quick start' feel of Barfield's work, compared to Steiner's, suggests strongly that Barfield's work won't sustain much development, and need not nor was it intended to. At least not Saving the Appearances. The only work of Barfield's that I am familiar with, that sustains steady meditation and personal development, is Unancestral Voice. That isn't coincidental, probably: in that novel, Barfield depicts a real-life working out of, and meditation on, and experience in, the spiritual world of which Steiner taught.

This shouldn't be surprising to me, but I think my loyalty to Owen Barfield has encouraged me to overlook the fact that going back and re-reading Saving the Appearances, and attempting to draw out new implications and work out new depictions of the arguments of that book, haven't been and won't be sustainable. The point of that book was to point to Steiner's work, to spiritual science, which is what needs to be meditated on and developed, not the theses and conclusions and insights of Saving the Appearances.