What We’re Reading
Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence. Russell Kirk is one of the most recognized names in “conservative” intellectual circles. A new volume of his 1993 collection of…
The Roof-Watcher
After the Agamemnon of Aeschylus Late afternoon of that unending year’s first day, I cringed at clangs, at god strikes tumbling mountaintops, Atremble for my distant lord’s…
What is True Leisure?
What do you do with your free time? What do you do with the precious minutes after work and before dinner? And what about the free moments…
For Human Flourishing
At a time when most see capitalist liberalism and socialism as the only possible ordering ideas for human societies, and the former as the de facto selection…
Napoleon Undressed: Ridley Scott’s Imagination Rules the Screen
Napoleon Bonaparte is the one dictator that the world has a love-hate relationship. More than petty kings and emperors of the past, Napoleon forcibly seized political power…
The Recovery of Wonder in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451
“Imagination should be the center of your life.” — Ray Bradbury Is philosophy a special privilege for a scholarly few—too complicated, jargon-laden, and impractical for an…
How to Live One’s Story
When I’ve talked about the need to defend one’s story, I’ve had in mind my experience that ill-wishers can show astonishing astuteness in picking out key elements…
Just Before Dawn
Here in my darkest hour, I lie grasped among the roots of damp and mossy oaks while overlooking black alfalfa fields, above which coming fogs will linger…
A Philosopher Explains Moral Realism
An invited speaker asked me to explain moral realism to him. He said he had never really understood it. This is my attempt. Thomas Sowell wrote…
Just This Once, Everybody Lives: Racine’s Iphigénie and Storytelling as Salvation
I grew up on Greek mythology in the way that some people grow up on Grimm’s fairy tales. To this day, I am sometimes surprised when I…
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VOEGELINVIEW is free to read but not free to host and produce. We depend on the generosity of our readers to help restore the heart and mind…
Is There a Future for the West?
In Conscience and Power: The Contest for Civilization in the West, Richard Bishirjian offers an account of “the toxicity of modern social existence” in the United States…
Who Owns the Timeline? Covenant in Buber, Voegelin, and Ourselves
*Note: This was originally a paper presented at the 2023 APSA When we talk of living in history, what are we saying? Eric Voegelin credits the…
The Indelible Presence of the Divine: Eric Voegelin on the Meaning of Symbols
One of the big takeaways of Voegelin’s philosophy is the insight that our symbolizations of divinity emerge not as the affirmation of a fact, but as the…
The Power and Presence of Silence
I recently watched a wonderful South Korean film titled The Way Home, a 2002 movie with English subtitles. It tells the story of a spoiled boy from…