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Lewis and Barfield on Imagination: Part II, Volume 17 Number 3 Article 3 Spring 3-15-1991 Lewis and Barfield on Imagination: arP t II Stephen Thorson Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Thorson, Stephen (1991) "Lewis and Barfield on Imagination: Part II," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 17 : No. 3 , Article 3. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol17/iss3/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Contrasts Lewis’s and Barfield’s views on imagination, and its relationship to truth and knowledge. Additional Keywords Anthroposophy and imagination; Barfield, Owen—Epistemology—Imagination; Imagination—Relation ot knowledge; Imagination—Relation to truth; Imagination, Theory of; Lewis, C.S.—Epistemology—Imagination This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol17/iss3/3 Page 16 Issue 65 - SpRing 1991 CDyTHLORC Forc 11 6y Stephen ThoRson The "Great W ar" Letters: Imagination and Truth Therefore, Lewis asserted, 1) even if we are sure that we know in poetic imagination, we can't be sure of what All of the "Great War" letters have not survived. Most we know, and 2) poetic imagination is not in the class of of those that have survived were written by Lewis and things to which True-False can be applied. Lewis hastened preserved by Barfield.15 to add, however, that he did not deny value to poetic In what must be one of the first surviving letters Lewis imagination merely because it does not have the kind of began in his typical manner by distinguishing two uses for Truth he had been talking about. Morality and Beauty do the term "truth." On the one hand, he said, it can be an not have Truth in that sense, either. He quoted Sidney to object or fact; on the other, it can be the "mental complex" the effect that poets do not lie, because they never assert. related to that fact. "I say a complex because when we Barfield's answer has fortunately been preserved. know, we always know that, etc. (an accusative with the Indeed, it is in this letter that he most clearly showed the infinitive)..." Notice that from the very beginning Lewis difference between his thought and Lewis'. First of all, has limited truth to propositional statements that we can Barfield refused to accept Lewis' limited definition of the "know." To be even more specific, he usually spoke of term "Truth." 'Truth to you... is something you look at... truth in terms of a true-false statement (whether a certain while reality is something you are but never see," he said. statement is true or false). We cannot say that emotions or Barfield did not define Truth as an "accurate copy or bodies are true or false, because the concept does not apply reflection" of reality, but as reality itself "taking the form to the things themselves. We can only say whether a of human consciousness." Secondly, he used an argument certain statement about them is true or false. we might call metaphysical since it was based on his view The question at hand was whether or not the truth- of the soul's evolution from Spirit. In it he drew a diagram falsehood concept could be applied to Imagination. Of to explain how "Inspiration, or 'supersensible" course, Lewis said, it does not apply to "ordinary experience, light of sense going out,' etc., is a sort of imagination," the mere "image-makingfaculty." Ordinary withdrawal from A into that-which-is-in-process-of- images merely invented by conscious effort cannot beTrue becoming A, wherein I find that I am also in (i.e. become in any sense of the term. But what about poetic one with) that-which-is-in-process-of-becoming B." There imagination (i.e. Imagination as experienced by both is a similar argument in Barfield's Replicit to Lewis' Summa Lewis and Barfield, and as described in the Surmna)? Lewis in which he attacked Lewis' use of the enjoyment/ pointed out that both he and Barfield had experienced the contemplation distinction. There he pointed out that images appearing after poetic imagination "ebbs." And Imagination could be called "con-enjoyment", since it those images cannot be different from ordinary images; involves moving back toward Spirit from pure soulhood. like them, they are not in that class of things about which In both the letter and the later Replicit the inference is plain. we can use the word Truth. Lewis did suggest, however, Inspiration or "con-enjoyment" must mean seeing Truth that Truth might pertain to some imageless state of from Spirit's perspective. Imagination "wherein the light of sense goes out." Third, Barfield considered the logical process itself to Furthermore, and more importantly for Lewis' view of be inadequate to deal with reality. Since terms change their knowledge, any "sediment" of explicit assertion left with the meaning when passing through time or between people, sediment of images could not be true-or-false either. Even if a term is an "arbitrary cross-section of the process taldng the assertion is true, it could not be the same truth as seen in place in time." Terms must be "artificially taken out of poetic imagination; otherwise, how does poetic imagination time" to be used, while reality continues to change, he said. differ from normal judgement? He likened "the crossing of Therefore, since most sentences are both true and untrue, the frontier" between the inspired and uninspired states to logical statements cannot truly be a vehicle of anything the blurring that takes place "when you change the focus of worthy of the name of knowledge or truth. In other words, your telescope." Summing up his argument so far, Lewis Barfield thought a limiting of Truth to the logical sphere said, "Granting the truth of poetical imagination, we can alone (as Lewis did) was not only inadequate, but ques­ never argue from it to the truth of any judgement which tioned whether the terms knowledge or truth could be springs up in the mind as it returns to normal consciousness." applied to the logical sphere at all. Restating the argument CPyTHLORC Issue 65 - SpRing 1991 Page 17 from his thesis, Barfield noted that terms "perpetually tend Barfield, however, wished to maintain that Imagination to lose their meaning and become tautologous," but could produces Truth, and ultimately could lead to both meaning recover their meaning "at the fount of inspiration, flowing and true statements; that Anthroposophical training could through imagination." In fact, as we saw earlier, Barfield lead to true propositional statements about the reality seen claimed that inspiration and imagination are required in moments of poetic imagination or inspiration. intermediate steps between reality and terms, or between reality and metaphor. We have seen how Lewis' high view of Imagination as Spiritual Awareness in Part II of the Summa was firmly based Barfield agreed with Lewis that one can't argue from on his view of Being in Part I. We began our examination of the truth of poetical imagination to the truth of any the "Great War" letters because they clarified the serious judgment that remains in the mind when it has returned clash which appears at the end of the Summa between Lewis' to normal consciousness. However, Barfield believed that concept of Imagination and his concept of epistemology. We Anthroposophical training could overcome this problem, now can see the broad movement of Lewis' thought as the allowing the poet to retain fully the judgment he had in "Great War" progressed. The debate began over Barfield's normal consciousness throughout an experience of poetic epistemology ("how we know"), which had been based on imagination. He again pointed Lewis toward Steiner's Steiner's Anthroposophy. Lewis continued to argue against "systematic imagination" which could train the mind to this view, strengthened by Alexander's enjoyment/con- observe its own activity. The underlying spiritual reality templation distinction, while at the same time coming to accept is not truth actual, Barfield said, but only truth potential, both Barfield's view of metaphysics (man's Being as a soul needing the Imagination to act upon it first. emerging from Spirit of which it is a part) and Barfield's high Barfield had insisted in his thesis that the poet creates Coleridgean view of Imagination! or re-creates primary meaning through the use of Let us look at the main arguments of the Summa. In metaphor. "The progress is from Meaning [notice the brief summary, Lewis proposed: capital] through inspiration to imagination, and from imagination through metaphor, to meaning" (PD, 141). 1. The soul emerges from Spirit, of which it is a part. Lewis seized Barfield's emphasis on meaning and The world of Nature also emerges from Spirit, and developed a distinction that he was never later to deny.
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