August 15, 2021 – For those who have surveyed David Bohm’s version of dialogue and the larger theoretical context from which it emerged, a trove of concepts and definitions will be familiar: participatory thought, literal thought, thought of type ‘A’ and type ‘B,’ representations, collective representations.

What is less familiar is the extent to which Bohm imported these concepts from his long relationship with the philologist Owen Barfield, whose lifework centred around what he called \the evolution of consciousness.’ In this view, human consciousness has shifted from a dispersed, widely focused consciousness (original participation) to the pinpoint, individualized consciousness that we experience today. Barfield proposed that this atomistic, individualized consciousness has the potential to now open into a transformed participatory mode, deriving from the ‘interiority,’ or selfhood, that is a correlate of individuated consciousness.

This roundtable surveys the relationship between the two men, and the mutually informing nature of their respective bodies of work. The participants develop what they call a ‘binocular vision,’ in which the overlapping insights of Bohm and Barfield yield greater depth and understanding than either one standing alone. This then leads to a key point of reference the two men shared—the nature of imagination as outlined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The panel attempts to indicate what this kind of imagination has to offer contemporary humanity—and the prospect of moving from a theory of imagination to its practical engagement and flowering.

Length: 2 hours