Paul Krause

United States

Editor of @voegelin_view. Yale Grad. Classics. Culture. Nature. Author, most recently, of: MUSES OF A FIRE. Chasing mountains, muses, books, and Byron.

Articles

How to Read with Christian Eyes

1 month ago | voegelinview.com | Paul Krause

Is there a specific role for the Christian critic? Critics have all but become avatars of the avant-garde, deliberately shocking and scandalous for the shock value of being scandalous. Yet many critics are embarrassed by the fact that most readers prefer works like The Lord of the Rings or classics of the nineteenth century rather than the latest novel of the zeitgeist. The critic, like the teacher (since the critic is a sort of teacher) occupies a unique place in society and education.
The End of the "Age of Reagan"

1 month ago | voegelinview.com | Paul Krause

Ronald Reagan is the most consequential American president after Franklin Roosevelt. It was during Reagan’s presidency that our modern world transformed toward the integrated, international, free trade, “neoliberal” construct that we have been living under for the past 40 years.
Shackled to the Humean Corpse

2 months ago | voegelinview.com | Paul Krause

What is liberalism? That is now the enduring question of contemporary political philosophy, though, in some respects, this goes back to debates in the 1950s that occupied thinkers like Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and Isaiah Berlin. When I was an undergraduate studying philosophy, concentrating in political philosophy, the seminal liberal figures I studied included Sir Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Baruch Spinoza.
The Muse - VoegelinView

Mar 13, 2025 | voegelinview.com | Paul Krause

Paul Krause is the Editor-in-Chief of VoegelinView. He is a teacher, writer, podcaster, and the author of Muses of a Fire: Essays on Faith, Film, and Literature (Stone Tower Press, 2024), Finding Arcadia: Wisdom, Truth, and Love in the Classics (Academica Press, 2023), and The Odyssey of Love: A Christian Guide to the Great Books (Wipf and Stock, 2021).
The Hopeful Majesty of Aurora Borealis

Mar 1, 2025 | voegelinview.com | Paul Krause

Civil War Richmond was soon to fall. Union forces were just outside the city, cannons bombarding the trenches of the Army of Northern Virginia at Petersburg. Meanwhile, the famous Arctic expedition Isaac Israel Hayes had undertaken prior to the outbreak of the Civil War was soon to be published now that the explorer-turned-surgeon had finished saving the lives of tens of thousands of Union soldiers wounded in battle.
Jonathan Swift: A "Modest" Political Theorist

Feb 14, 2025 | voegelinview.com | Paul Krause

“Much as he relished the fray, Swift would always deny that he had turned renegade. The degenerates who had taken over government, Parliament, the Crown – it was they who had left him no option but resistance. This was Swift’s line of argument; and this, as well he knew, was the reasoning of a rebel, however reluctant.” Thus concludes John Stubbs’ august biography of one of Europe’s most notorious satirical writers.
Virgil and the Christian Imagination

Feb 4, 2025 | frontporchrepublic.com | Paul Krause

“Love conquers all things; let us yield to love.” It would be perfectly reasonable to misattribute this quote to a famous early church father or a book from the Bible. Instead, it is from the great Roman poet Virgil. Anyone familiar with Dante’s Divine Comedy will remember that Virgil is a prominent character, serving as Dante’s guide through hell and purgatory.
The Future of the Humanities

Jan 20, 2025 | voegelinview.com | Paul Krause |David Whitney

Declarations on the decline and fall of the humanities have been commonplace for the past 40 years but never as loud and sorrowful as now. Concern for the decline of English majors, the general decline of the humanities more broadly, and expected declines in university enrollment is, of course, a major concern. No democratic society can endure without education, literacy, and a thinking (and virtuous) citizenry. However, the decline and fall of the humanities is overstated by the declinists.
Where the Nereids Swim and Play

Oct 9, 2024 | voegelinview.com | Paul Krause

Where the Nereids swim and play On golden sand there I lay Under the sun, moon, and stars My heart does look from afar. Where the Nereids swim and play On ship and sea I now stay In the heat of summer’s June And beneath the pale white moon. Where the Nereids swim and play I hear them sing as I lay To cast my net and my heart ’Till no more I feel apart. Where the Nereids swim and play I sing and dance in the bay. Now at last, that hour comes I sink with the setting sun.
Power, Glory, and Vanity: The Politics of Romantic Poetry

Sep 21, 2024 | voegelinview.com | Paul Krause

“And on the pedestal these words appear: / ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ / Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.” Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous poem “Ozymandias” captures, in my opinion, the essence of the power, glory, and fleeting vanity of the political sentiments of the nineteenth century Romantics.