Taken in its widest sense education is simply the process by which the new members of a community are initiated into its way of life and thought from the simplest elements of behavior up to the highest tradition of spiritual wisdom. Christian education is therefore an initiation into the Christian way of life and thought, [...]
In 1939, four years after the publication of Burnt Norton, T.S.Eliot worried that he would write no more poetry. Increasingly interested and involved in the production of his verse drama, he attempted another poem using fragments of Burnt Norton and written in the same style. […]
T.S.Eliot argued that the biographical details of the poet were irrelevant to the understanding of the poetry, and yet his own poetry is so deeply personal that it often remains obtuse until illuminated by an understanding of his personal life. Eliot’s masterpiece—The Four Quartets—are the perfect example, and Burnt Norton—the first of the four—reveals its [...]
We should learn from the political credo of the Venetians, who never forgot the history that had made them a special nation. To be a patriot is to embody our connection to the national bond through devotion to a "practice." It is good to be enthralled by dogmas of the quiet past, remembering who and [...]
IV Eric Voegelin’s affection for the Hellenic, Judaic, and Christian heritages can be easily documented. They are the crucial strands in the forming of his thought. Yet the matter goes deeper than that. Subtly, but irrefutably, in the corpus of his writing, Christianity emerges as the preeminent achievement of the Western experience. For example, Voegelin [...]
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Ian Crowe as he explores the thought of T.S. Eliot, Edmund Burke on the permanent things. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher For the present is the point at which time touches eternity. —C.S. Lewis[1] It was in 1939, in The Idea of a [...]
Eric Voegelin was born in Cologne, Germany in 1901. Receiving his doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1922, he served on the law faculty of that institution. To escape the Nazi regime, he came to the United States in 1938. Subsequently, he taught at Harvard University, Bennington College, the University of Alabama, and Louisiana State [...]
Education for individualism is education for goodness. The unfreeman cannot be good because virtue is a state of character concerned with choice. The moment we judge the smallest action in terms of right and wrong, we are stepping up to a plane where the good is felt as an imperative. The greatest school that ever [...]
With the time and manner of his death Abraham Lincoln, as leader of a Puritan people who had just won a great victory over “the forces of evil,” was placed beyond the reach of ordinary historical inquiry and assessment. Through Booth’s bullet he became the one who had “died to make men free,” who had [...]
Like many of you, I am sure, my first encounter with the term “the moral imagination” came through reading Russell Kirk. In an attempt to make better sense of what, for me, was a problematic concept, I followed Kirk back to his admitted predecessors on this matter, Irving Babbitt and Edmund Burke. I must confess [...]
In the retrospect of forty years I can see my book, The Quest for Community (first published by Oxford University Press in 1953), as one of the harbingers of what would become by the end of the 1950s a full-fledged renascence of conservatism. There had been authentic and forthright individual conservatives before the 50s; among [...]
You would not know it from the discussion on campus or in our high schools, but the best analysis of the American War for Independence was provided while it was still unfolding. The character of the Americans, the designs of the British Parliament, and the policies that brought these two into conflict were brilliantly analyzed [...]
Eric Voegelin, one of the greatest minds of our times, died on January 19, 1985. We stand in awe, admiration, and affection as we now try to obtain an overview of his achievement. Even a summary is not quite possible at this time. Volume V of Order and History[1] will be published posthumously. In addition, a [...]
Patriotism and Public Spirit: Edmund Burke and the Role of the Critic in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain, by Ian Crowe (Stanford University Press, 2012) Ian Crowe’s recent, pioneering study of political philosopher Edmund Burke is a cause for celebration. It advances scholarly knowledge of Burke and the intellectual milieu that was so important to his development as a [...]