Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry

Barfield draws on sources from mythology, philosophy, history, literature, theology, and science to chronicle the evolution of human thought from Moses and Aristotle to Galileo and Keats.

Saving the Appearances is about the world as we see it and the world as it is; it is about God, human nature, and consciousness. The best known of numerous books by the British sage whom C.S. Lewis called the "wisest and best of my unofficial teachers," it draws on sources from mythology, philosophy, history, literature, theology, and science to chronicle the evolution of human thought from Moses and Aristotle to Galileo and Keats. Barfield urges his readers to do away with the assumption that the relationship between people and their environment is static. He dares us to end our exploitation of the natural world and to acknowledge, even revel in, our participation in the diurnal creative process.

A respected philosopher, jurist, and student of the nature of language and human consciousness, OWEN BARFIELD's many books published by Wesleyan include Saving the Appearances (1988), Poetic Diction (1984), and Worlds Apart (1971). He lived in East Sussex, England, at the time of his death in 1997 at the age of 99.

ISBN: 9780819562050
Format: Paperback
Pages: 191
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Published: August 01, 1988

"This is a book of very high distinction. It is basic, profound, original, and difficult. Time may seal it as a masterpiece...It contains an entirely original approach to Christian perplexities, and it refounds Christian hope on a new and sound base. It is a great book, and it takes one into new worlds of opportunity."—Church Times"We are well supplied with interesting writers, but Owen Barfield is not content to be merely interesting. His ambition is to set us free from the prison we have made for ourselves by our ways of knowing, our limited and false habits of thought, our 'common sense'"—Saul Bellow