Barfield called this earlier consciousness 'participatory'. He argued that we moderns are passing through a phase of alienation - one that objectifies the world and so brings the great goods of science too. But it is not sustainable, because we distantly recall our participation. What we seek, he thought, is 'final participation', a form of consciousness that by deploying the analytical mind in conjunction with a more expansive imagination might move us to a phase where we can know ourselves as subjects and objects. Such a sense is not here yet, on the whole, but various individuals capture glimpses of it, and it draws us to itself.
Barfield's Saving the Appearances is a book everyone should read. Among other things, it would spare them a lot of nonsense about Galileo.
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