•  
  •  
 

Owen Barfield

Abstract

Owen Barfield, whom C. S. Lewis described archetypally as his “Second Friend” —“the man who disagrees with you about everything . . . not so much the alter ego as the antiself ”1 —expressed his agreement with the argument of The Abolition of Man and his admiration of the book on a number of occasions. For example, describing various means by which one can become aware of the presuppositions of one’s thoughts, Barfield once wrote: One, of which the best example I know is C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, is to take some typical utterance by a contemporary writer, whether scientific or literary, to expose by analysing them the fundamental presuppositions and basic assumptions that underly it, and then (if it be the case) to show how illogical they are in their reasoning and how pernicious in their effects.2 Barfield’s essay, “The Riddle of the Sphinx,” which first appeared in Arena, a journal of the P.E.N. Centre for Writers in Exile in London, is a product of close engagement with The Abolition of Man. At the time of its publication, April 1964, Lewis’s death in November 1963 was quite recent. It is one of a number of essays and lectures Barfield wrote during thisOwen Barfield, whom C. S. Lewis described archetypally as his “Second Friend” —“the man who disagrees with you about everything . . . not so much the alter ego as the antiself ”1 —expressed his agreement with the argument of The Abolition of Man and his admiration of the book on a number of occasions. For example, describing various means by which one can become aware of the presuppositions of one’s thoughts, Barfield once wrote: One, of which the best example I know is C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, is to take some typical utterance by a contemporary writer, whether scientific or literary, to expose by analysing them the fundamental presuppositions and basic assumptions that underly it, and then (if it be the case) to show how illogical they are in their reasoning and how pernicious in their effects.2 Barfield’s essay, “The Riddle of the Sphinx,” which first appeared in Arena, a journal of the P.E.N. Centre for Writers in Exile in London, is a product of close engagement with The Abolition of Man. At the time of its publication, April 1964, Lewis’s death in November 1963 was quite recent. It is one of a number of essays and lectures Barfield wrote during this period praising Lewis’s intellectual legacy, even as he continued to argue generously about much of his friend’s thinking.

Download

Share

COinS