In Defense of the Classics

Why study the classics? An abundance of books has appeared in recent years to answer this question. Many writers and teachers, especially those who are concerned with the decline of the humanities, have put forward a defense of the classic texts of Western civilization. The prevailing progressivism, scientism, and economism are usually the positions against which these writers and teachers direct their pens. At the same time, these writers and teachers have written in response to an increasingly loud group of critics — those who associate the classics with what Bernard Knox called “Dead White European Males.” According to this view, the classics are relics of the past, the remnants of a rejected world of racism, sexism, and injustice. With critics on various fronts, it is no wonder that so many are eager to provide an intelligent defense of the humane tradition. Separated from its literary heritage, the rising generation needs an answer to the question of why the classics still matter.

A New Defender of the Classics

Paul Krause gives an answer of his own in his recent book Finding Arcadia: Wisdom, Truth, and Love in the Classics (2023). As a young and prolific cultural critic, Krause has been promoting the humanities as well as the classics in various essays published in online magazines and journals. In addition to essays and reviews, Krause is the author of another book that educates readers about the humane tradition, The Odyssey of Love: A Christian Guide to the Great Books (2021). After graduating from Yale, Krause traveled to England to study with the eminent philosopher of aesthetics and intellectual conservatism, Sir Roger Scruton, whom Krause considers one of his greatest influences. The influence of Scruton, indeed, is evident throughout much of Krause’s public writing. For several years, Krause has been providing an intelligent defense of the humane tradition and the classics, seeking to conserve and promote them in the spirit of his old teacher. Krause’s latest book, written in clear and accessible prose, is exactly the kind that we need. Finding Arcadia is written for a general public who did not receive a strong education in the humanities yet who, outside of their formal education, now hope to discover anew the literary treasures of Western civilization.

Following a brief introduction, Krause has put together more than 150 pages of previously published essays. These short pieces are organized into fifteen chapters, including titles such as “On Homer,” “Why The Oresteia Still Matters,” “Plato’s Symposium: The Drama and Trial of Love,” “Virgil’s War and Peace,” and “The Odyssey of Saint Augustine.” Taken as a whole, Krause’s new book is a thoughtful and wide-reaching gateway to the ancient authors. Within this work, Krause discusses the significance of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Plutarch, Plato, Virgil, Catullus, Ovid, and Saint Augustine. Since each chapter stands on its own as an independent essay, readers may approach Krause’s book in one of two ways. Readers may find it helpful to read the book from cover to cover, or they may prefer to use the table of contents to delve into particular authors of interest.

Krause, it should be noted, is more than a mere essayist and political writer. Instead, he writes with the soul of a poet — someone who understands that the heart and imagination are more fundamental to human life than private rationality. The humane tradition, he understands, is not merely a source of rational and scientific knowledge. Instead, the humane tradition is more profoundly a source of poetic and emotional knowledge. Culture is a repository of the kind of knowledge that concerns what to do and how to feel. Such knowledge is not transmitted through theoretical argument but rather through examples, images, narratives, and symbols. Following his late teacher, Roger Scruton, Krause recognizes that the heart and imagination must be at the center of our human anthropology.

It is for this reason that art, culture, and humane literature have a higher emphasis in Krause’s writing than politics and economics. Like his former teacher, Krause certainly does address political topics, but he does not do so with a concern for policy solutions to immediate problems. The politics of Paul Krause, to the extent that they are present throughout his newest book, grow from his aesthetic and cultural sensibilities. It would seem fair to call Krause a conservative, but only if one clarifies that his conservatism, like that of Roger Scruton, is dispositional and at times even pre-political—it is focused on art, culture, and the human spirit rather than practical politics, though there remain political implications to his writing that one would generally consider conservative in nature.

Love and the Classics

Love is the highest object of human life, and it is also the highest object of the civil-social order. This often-ignored truth permeates Finding Arcadia, and Krause shows that it likewise permeates the literature of the ancient world. For instance, Homer’s Iliad is not merely a story about the rage of Achilles. Above all, Homer’s first great epic is a story about the transformation of rage into love. As Homer’s story begins, Achilles is filled with a self-centered lust, which he “veils with the language of love.” As the story continues, Achilles grows as a character, eventually learning the true meaning of love and the power that it has to transform us for the better. As Achilles eventually learns, love “requires people. Love moves beyond the self to others.” The climax comes when Priam enters Achilles’ tent to ask for the return of his son Hector’s body. This tender moment between Priam and Achilles is the moment of redemption for Achilles. Love, indeed, “includes relations. Love involves others. Love is the bond that brings even enemies together in healing. Love transcends all boundaries. Achilles and Priam weep together in each other’s arms because it is the love of a father, and the memories of a father’s love, which breaks the ironed heart of Achilles to be a vessel of love and intimacy again.” The Iliad does not end with the conclusion of the Trojan War in part because it is a poem just as much about love as it is about war. As Krause puts it, Homer’s Iliad “is a grand love poem on a cosmic scale.”

The Odyssey, too, is interpreted by Krause as a grand love poem. Homer’s second great epic is the story about the twists and turns of Odysseus, a man driven onward by love for his family and home. Homer does not use this epic story to sing the praises of martial virtue. Instead, “our poet sings of the heroism of the binding reality of love; a love that sees Telemachus search for his father, Penelope remains true to her wedding vows despite all pressures thrust onto her by the suitors, and Odysseus forsake the offer of immortal transcendence and eternal pleasure for mortal decay and fleeting peace.” For Homer, it is just as heroic — and perhaps even more heroic — to embrace “the realities of mortal love than masculine gory-glory or eternal sexual pleasure with the gods.” Homer’s story begins in the middle of the Trojan War, a conflict which began with an act of marital infidelity. His story ends, however, with the return of Odysseus to Ithaca, which is a “heroic conclusion in marital fidelity.” The lust of Paris and Helen led to war, but the love of Odysseus and his family led to peace. The foundation of civilization is love, especially the love between husband and wife and the filial bond that unites a family.

With an insight like this, one would expect people to swarm to their local bookstore to pick up a copy of Homer’s great epics. Yet, as Krause points out, the classics have been under attack on a variety of fronts, so even those who have read Homer do not often know the true depth and enduring importance that he still has. Discovering the enduring qualities of human nature is no longer the widely accepted view of humane literature. As a result, many have read Homer with a “pedantic” concern about authorship. Many others have relegated him to the narrow confines of an ideology, interpreting him through the lenses of a theory.

As guardians of culture, scholars and teachers of humane literature have the duty to pass down the literary inheritance they have received, and they must do so free from the confines of ideology. Yet such a duty has been neglected in our age. This has been a great disservice to the public. Without the classics, we risk breaking apart the unity and continuity of our civilization. We risk depriving the public of an important way that human beings learn to love — by nourishing the heart and imagination on the wisdom of our time-tested stories, both historical and imaginative.

The classics were once considered the greatest texts of Western civilization. They were considered some of the greatest achievements of humanity — the stories that shape the imagination and put up a mirror to human nature. The classics taught us what it means to be human, revealing to us the mysteries of the human heart. The great works of humane letters, especially the classics, should be defended because they teach us that we long for love. “Far from irrelevance,” writes Krause, “the classics have enduring relevance precisely because they are works dealing with the human heart and soul.” The concerns of the ancient writers continue to be our concerns today. Their problems remain our problems, their sorrows remain our sorrows, and their joys remain our joys. We are, ultimately, bearers of the same human nature and the same perennial problems that have long touched the human condition.

The enduring presence of wisdom, truth, and love in the classics is discussed throughout Krause’s new book. For instance, Krause understands Aeschylus’ Oresteia as a story about justice and reconciliation. He sees Sophocles’ Antigone as a story about the priority of filial love over political power, and he sees Plutarch’s Parallel Lives as an example of moral imitation and instruction. Plato’s Symposium is described as a dialogue about love, especially eros, and its place in the world. Virgil’s Aeneid is described as a story about love, war, history, and the nature of man. In Augustine’s Confessions, Krause sees the story of a man who begins in “loneliness and lust” but then ends in “fellowship and love.” Augustine teaches that we as human beings “seek love and desire to be loved.” Throughout the great works, Krause believes that love is the central theme. This is one reason why he decided to end his book with Augustine, a Christian convert who reflects the classical heart that yearns for love. Yet unlike the pagan writers of the ancient world, Augustine found solace in Love Himself.

It is important to clarify that the kind of love which Krause articulates is not the so-called “love” of the secular humanitarian. For Krause, love is more than a vague kindness, a slogan, or a bland acceptance. Rather, Krause defends the understanding of love that permeates the classical and Christian tradition, that is, to will the good of the other. Krause exhorts us to discover a profound kind of love — the Love that, as Dante teaches, challenges us to suffer and to struggle upward. Love is not merely a feeling, but rather draws us outward to pursue the good of the other. Repeatedly, Krause depicts love as something that draws the person out of the confines of their own selfishness. It is something concrete and at times difficult, requiring a restraint on will and appetite. Krause understands love as a classical and Christian humanist, not a sentimental and secular humanitarian.

In Defense of the Classics

The classics need new defenders in our world. The culture of Western civilization has seriously deteriorated, and we need new “guardians of culture” who can teach the rising generation about the wisdom, truth, and love found in the classics. Such guardians of culture must rise to defend the “beauty, goodness, and truth contained in the mighty works of Homer, the poets and playwrights of Greece and Rome, and even the patristic fathers who seem so distant to us moderns removed many centuries from them.” Fortunately, the classics have found another defender.

The literary writer, at his best, is a guardian of culture. As such, it is the duty of those currently living to connect the present to the past — to bring the best that has been thought and said to the rising generation. Krause seeks to conserve the aesthetic and imaginative realm of human life that is under threat today by ideology. Great literature, indeed, helps us develop into true men and true women. The defense of great literature and the importance of such works in shaping the soul and the imagination is one of the great tasks of our age. It is not in politics alone that Western civilization will find renewal. It is rather in reawakening the imagination through the transformative power of the arts and humanities.

In Finding Arcadia, Krause does not write as an academic but instead as a kind of evangelist for the literary life. “Pick up and read!” he extols, recalling the words of Saint Augustine. We should read the classics not because they provide us with a high-paying career but instead because the experience of truth, beauty, and love is at the heart of a well-lived life. In addition to being the products of a particular historical context, the classics contain enduring truths that can speak to us even today. At its highest, reading is not a private hobby but instead something at the service of love, the ultimate purpose of human life. Like Augustine, our lives can be changed if we decide to read these seminal works of Western civilization. Then, we too can become, like Augustine, guardians of culture and bearers of the word.

“We forsake this great wellspring at our own peril,” warns Krause, referring to the classics. As he concludes, “So to you, dear reader, I say read on! Read on to the stars. Per aspera ad astra.” I agree.

Finding Arcadia: Wisdom, Truth, and Love in the Classics
By Paul Krause
Washington D.C. & London: Academica Press, 2023; 178pp

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