Blog #3: Two Questions: Saving the Appearances - Vickie GG


Blog Post #3 - Vickie Garton-Gundling

Figuration vs. Alpha-thinking vs. Beta-thinking 
I don't fully understand the distinctions between the "three different things we can do with" representations (Barfield, Saving the Appearances, 23). How are alpha-thinking and beta-thinking different? Alpha-thinking is said to be "a thinking about" (24), and beta-thinking is described as "reflection," (25) something that seems close to "analysis" in our modern language. But are you not also still thinking about a thing when you are analyzing it? Is it that beta-thinking moves onward to "their relation to our own minds," and thus restores some of the unity or the relational aspect of the figuration stage? Also, what actually IS figuration? Barfield first calls it "all that" and "something" (24), and later I think he means to compare figuration to "original participation" or "immediate experience" (40-41) - like...figuration being a "thinking with" or more like "being with"? Even if so, what does that really mean? In many of the philosophers and myth-makers we've read, the answer when you ask what stuff like this means is essentially that, when you think about it consciously, you cannot actually access it (same with myth). For Barfield, "alpha-thinking...seeks to destroy the participation." So then, through what alternate means can we understand these concepts, especially in a class in a modern school, where thinking and talking about stuff is the main mode of understanding? 

Relation to myth
I'm wondering what this reading has to do with myth? Dr. Redick noted that he wanted us to think about the connections between Lewis, Tolkien, and Barfield (as friends) when reading this. So, is one takeaway that they have among them a collective representation of a specific kind of myth? Or is the goal here to think about how we experience myth (as readers) in terms of figuration, alpha-thinking, and beta-thinking, with the goal maybe being that the more we "do" figuration with myth vs. the other options, the more we will understand myth's truth? If the latter, how do we do that? I would relatedly like to know how Plato proposes that we reach pure intelligence, achieve "unobscured participation in the divine Mind, or Word" (47). Like...that sounds awesome, but I've been unable to figure out from anything so far how any of this sort of stuff is achieved. (Again, I know I'm trying to understand it logically, which seems to be the problem, but then it also feels like all these philosophers are arguing in a circle forever...) 






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