A Philosophical Happy Hour on Owen Barfield’s “Philology and the Incarnation”, wherein we will think about meaning and metaphor in language.
For this week’s Philosophical Happy Hour, we will again take up a specific short text to read and discuss: this time, Owen Barfield’s short article, “Philology and the Incarnation”, available in this attached PDF. Barfield (1898–1997) was a close friend of the more-famous C.S. Lewis, a member of the Inklings, and a provocative thinker in his own right.
In this article, Barfield claims that a shift in human consciousness can be discerned through the histories of words, in which one finds a seeming increase, throughout the millennia, of terms used to signify “immaterial” realities, i.e., dimensions of the “inner world” of the subjective mind. Thus, though all words seemingly originate in reference to the external world, some come to be used primarily for our inner awareness. As the title suggests, the principal moment to affect this change is the Incarnation of Christ.
But this raises for us a number of questions about the nature and functioning of language and its development. How do words really develop their meaning? To what objects do they attach, and how? Reading this short article serves therefore, not only as a good focus for a discussion about language, but also as a good propaedeutic for several of our upcoming Winter courses (Latin I, Grammar I, and Language and Philosophy). .
Focal Questions
- Do our terms really refer, at times, to an “inner world”? Or is there something else going on?
- Did this shift really begin at or after the Incarnation?
- Is this direction of shift—from the outer to the inner—the only one discernible in history? Can we see it go the other way, at times?
- What is the relationship between linguistic development and consciousness?
Please read the short article by Barfield and join our conversation this Wednesday (10 December 2025, from 5:45-7:15+ pm ET) as we think about language, its development, and the constitution of its significance.
philosophical happy hour
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Come join us for drinks (adult or otherwise) and a meaningful conversation. Open to the public! Held every Wednesday from 5:45–7:15pm ET.
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