Vico
Coleridge
Schelling
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Philosophy, Barfield observes in "Thinking and
Thought," "may be defined as the most wakeful part of a people's consciousness"
(RCA 55).
Philosophy is best understood as a directional
indicator of the evolution of consciousness,
as he explains in Saving the Appearances:
From the point of view of a history
of consciousness, their writings [those of Plato
and Aristotle, or any of the other great philosophers] are rather landmarks
to indicate the nature of that consciousness, inasmuch as they represent
the human mind in its most wakeful state. At the same time, owing to the
subtle link between thinking and figuration, and to the part played by
language in evolving and sustaining the Collective
Representations, they are by no means without causal significance.
(97)
However, the history of philosophy, Barfield cautions
in "Dream, Myth, and Philosophical Double Vision," is not entirely conclusive
or consistent. The idolatry of a given age
results in the neglect of certain thinkers or their works:
If we insist on thinking of the history
of philosophy as a train, we must conceive of a train, some of whose coaches
(perhaps even the most important ones) have got uncoupled and left behind
on the rails until a donkey engine comes along and picks them up. The coach
may be a whole philosopher, such as Vico, or Coleridge,
or Schelling, or Thomas
Reid; or it may be a particular part of a philosopher's whole thought,
such as Kant's
Critique of Teleological Judgment,
or Goethe's
Metamorphosenlehre. (RM
28)
See in particular "Thinking
and Thought" (RCA 47-66), "Philosophy and Religion" (HEW
96-117). |
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