Consciousness obscures the totality from which it arises. Philosophy is tasked with recovering that obscured totality. For Barfield, this recovery takes the form of “final participation”: a freely willed, self-conscious re-attunement to a spiritually alive cosmos that preserves rather than dissolves individual freedom.
We need a renewed metaphysical imagination. This does not mean denying science. It means refusing to handicap science with a mutilated picture of perception. It means recognizing that imagination is not an optional aesthetic supplement to real knowledge, but a cognitive power that allows us to come into conscious relation with the more-than-human... See more