Editor’s Commentary

This September marks yet another new beginning for VOEGELINVIEW. What began as an online forum and platform for occasional notes and articles on Eric Voegelin and Voegelin related news is now an internationally prominent online journal of the arts and humanities providing cultural and intellectual commentary on a variety of issues, topics, and news-related stories. While retaining the spirit and ethos of the life and thought of Eric Voegelin in commitment to the ideals of liberty and anti-totalitarianism, VOEGELINVIEW is primarily publishing essays, reviews, and creative works dealing with the human condition and experience, the humanities as a source of wisdom and cultural renewal, and embarking on a new role in becoming a publication for the transformation of education and expanding timely commentary on cultural news and politics.

As we adapt and change to a world transformed and transforming, a longstanding goal of the journal’s editorial direction is now being implemented. To play a role and have a stake in the new, digital, and globalized educational environment we find ourselves, new monthly columns will be published from students and teachers to highlight the life, thought, and work they are engaged with which will also serve the purpose of sharing their wisdom with the rest of us. VOEGELINVIEW therefore welcomes Sophie Belloncle, Sarah Chew, Prerita Govil, and Sarah Reardon as our inaugural columnists reflecting on the literary arts, teaching, and experiences as students both at the undergraduate and graduate level. Additionally, two poets-in-residence, Harold Jones and Micah Veillon, will be joining the journal’s creative arts mission in a formal capacity starting in 2024; while we have begun to publish poems every week, the inclusion of two poets-in-residence will ensure all the work that we have undertaken in the creative arts department will continue to thrive. We also published our first short story by Mark Botts as we continue to expand and grow humanistic writings in our creative arts section.

Over the past year and a half—and building off the expansion of the journal’s content from our previous editor-in-chief Lee Trepanier—the transformation of the journal into a humanities magazine of commentary, criticism, reviews, and teaching has commenced with much success. We have seen our readership grow tremendously over the past two years, doubling from the summer of 2021. Additionally, 22% of the entire journal’s publication record has been published since 2022, the vast majority of this archive original submissions. There has also been a new influx of contributors from many backgrounds from all over the world.

These new changes demand new care and concern for content – material that is readable, relatable, and salient to cultural flashpoints driving conversation in schools, institutions, other journals and publications, and the news. In becoming a hub for book reviews, essays and criticism, and now film reviews and commentary, it is unsurprising to learn that our most-read publications of the year so far have been book reviews, essays, and movie reviews. To the point: book reviews, essays, and movie reviews/film essays are always among the most read material every month. Part of our newfound responsibility is to be intelligently engaged with matters of cultural salience and newsworthy relevance while creating a new path for education and literary criticism in our digital world that desperately needs the nourishment and wisdom of the cultural arts and the Beauty, Goodness, and Truth the cultural arts contain. Over the next two months, the remaining “academic” material that has yet to be published will be published, but our focus is now dedicated to public writing, matters of education, essays in criticism, memoir, poetry—writings that embody and promote the best of humanistic learning, culture, and consideration to the broader public.

Content regarding the life and thought of Eric Voegelin will always remain a publishing priority as will announcements for the Eric Voegelin Society. However, in becoming a leading light of cultural and humanistic revival and conversation with as broad an audience as possible, our mission is to dwell in the beauty and love of culture, the wisdom that the Great Books and Great Art confer and share to us all, and to invite others to journey with us in the pilgrimage of the heart, mind, and soul. VOEGELINVIEW, over the past few years, has been slowly positioning itself to be a leader in the newly emerged online and interconnected world of arts, humanities, and education through our articles, essays, and dialogue with significant cultural topics and ideas. At the same time, we’re beginning to take on a more active role in timely political commentary—which will increase in frequency as the 2024 election comes to the fore. It is, therefore, with great hope that we will continue to strive into the new horizon as a publication of beauty, goodness, and truth for the world at large as our long-awaited identity as a public journal of art, culture, and politics blossoms.

~ Paul Krause

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