View Single Post
Old 04-18-2017, 01:41 PM   #4
Peter Goldsbury
 
Peter Goldsbury's Avatar
Dojo: Hiroshima Kokusai Dojo
Location: Hiroshima, Japan
Join Date: Jul 2001
Posts: 2,308
Japan
Offline
Re: Transmission, Inheritance, Emulation 28 (Part One)

Quote:
Erick Mead wrote: View Post
I would be very interested in your view of Owen Barfield's "Saving the Appearances." It seems to relate to the "Three Worlds" focus that plays out in the understandings of what aiki is, was or was supposed to be (or become) in the eyes of its founder, its inheritor -- and those who seek whatever lies behind (or within) its forms. In Barfield's line of thought, the latter was ultimately to become a "final participation" as fully internalized by a practitioner such that he owns and in a sense IS the essence of the art - rather the art (and its institutions) "owning" him, as it were.)

Given your interest in the Wittgenstein parallel to Ueshiba's legacy and the overall problems presented in this context with language, concepts and their expression -- (native and otherwise) I also highly recommend his "Poetic Diction." Barfield is an English developer of the Goetheian, anthroposophic line of thought continued by Rudolf Steiner. To my mind, that ferment of ideas developing in the European context bears curious resonances with New Religions like Omoto-kyo in Japan.

Barfield was influential in the Inklings set -- and much disaffected with Bloomsbury, particularly with its divorce between disembodied values and their practical effects. The Goethe legacy itself through Steiner may also be a similar parallel to that you are examining in the concrete and conceptual development and transmission of aikido.
I read Barfield when I was an undergraduate. I had a literature teacher who introduced me to Charles Williams, Tolkein, C S Lewis, as well as to Barfield. More anon.

PAG

P A Goldsbury
_______________________
Kokusai Dojo,
Hiroshima,
Japan
  Reply With Quote