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four Conclusion Antiques and Civilization It has often been asked: Where are the goods of the civilizations that came before us, and where are the abundant riches known to have existed among them? . . . It is civilization that through human labor causes such goods to appear and can increase them or diminish them . . . passed on by inheritance or transferred through trade or war so that they moved from one to another, and from one dynasty to another, in accordance with the purposes they were to serve and the particular civilization that required them. —Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah (V, 4) Art is the highest metaphysical task of this life. . . . [It is] a seduction, an overflow of blooming physically into the world of images. . . . The aesthetic state possesses a superabundance of means of communication together with an extreme receptivity for stimuli and signs. It constitutes the highest point of communication and transmission between living creatures. —Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and The Will to Power T his is not a work of cultural or philosophical anthropology but an analysis and history of the idea of the antique; nevertheless, in the preceding chapters we have continually referred to cultural matters and to the evolution of civilization as a place where the idea of the antique and the aesthetic response to the antique “matters.” We have seen that a civilization’s conception of itself—of itself in its present as compared with its past and of itself in comparison with other civilizations—plays an important role in establishing the idea of the antique and in grounding the aesthetic response to the antique. In concluding this book, we cannot fail to consider the reverse question: whether and to what extent the emergence of the idea of the antique and the aesthetic response to the antique has affected not merely individuals but how a civilization sees itself and sees others, and thus even affects how civilizations become what they are. That is why we ended the previous chapter with a question: Given that we now know what an antique is and what to consider in granting (or refusing ) some object this status, and given that many people are not only aesthetically affected by antiques but seem to be almost consumed by the pursuit of them, what benefit flows from these facts, and what does this all mean to humanity and civilization in general? In answering this extremely far-ranging question, I am aware, as I said in my preface, that I offer more in the way of speculation here than in the preceding chapters, where I presented much empirical evidence and proposed philosophical arguments (sometimes extended at some length into the notes). Therefore, should the reader find this chapter less compelling than the earlier ones, I can submit only that it is briefer than they. Much has been said of late about the cultivation of cosmopolitan, universalist , and humanist values, about whether and how they may serve to bridge gaps between cultures, about whether and how they may encourage or discourage the appreciation of cultural diversity, about whether and how they expand civilization.1 Does the aesthetic response to the antique , which entails at least the admiration and preservation of the works of the past as the physically embodied residue of the totality of human cultural achievements and as the patrimony of humankind, provide the ground for establishing roots and continuity in a modern, rootless world that teems with discontinuities? Can it serve as an antidote to cultural chauvinism (which is, at its worst, the prelude to genocide)? Is there something special about the aesthetic appreciation of the antique that would allow us to recognize, understand, sympathize, tolerate, respect, appreciate, value, and attempt to preserve (perhaps in that sequence) one another—in both our commonality and our diversity? I think the answer to these questions is affirmative. As I said in the preface, the antique becomes a tangible locus of preservation for the processes of civilization, enabling us to see the antique as a function of civilization (civilization “antiques” itself) and to see civilization as a function of the antique (the antique “civilizes”). Here I suggest why I think this is the case by reflecting and expanding on the history of the human sensibility to antiques as it relates to “humanism.” At the conclusion of chapter 1, as we considered the response to the antique in terms of evoking and preserving an image of the past, I mentioned in a note the...

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