The Moral Imperative to Preserve

This article introduces the concept of monumental preservation, which the author defines as the preservation of all cultural phenomena, because from the smallest item to the greatest monument all things emanate from and reflect culture. The imperative to preserve monuments is the imperative to preserve our cultural heritage. Whether there is a moral responsibility to preserve cultural heritage may be considered from philosophical, political, and legal perspectives. The preservation of cultural heritage1 has been around for millennia, as illustrated by the biblical passage “take these evidences . . . and put them in an earthen vessel, that they may continue for many days” ( Jeremiah 32:14).2 Many similar references to the preservation or safe-keeping of artifacts exist in literature. One recent author has gone so far as to say that “[t]he Human Being is a repairing animal. Repair is ubiquitous, something we engage in every day and in almost every dimension of our lives. Homo sapiens is also Homo reparans” (Spelman, 2002, p. 1). But equally forceful as the impulse to preserve is the impulse to destroy. History is strewn with countless examples—-as the destruction of the Alexandrian Library in the fourth century ad or the destruction of the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992 vividly and poignantly demonstrate. Sometimes destruction occurs in the name of preservation. Perhaps the most cited example is the Elgin Marbles, the Phidian sculptures from the Parthenon. In the process of supposedly liberating the marbles from Greece, Lord Elgin’s workers broke or destroyed a number of them. They had to destroy the original edifice to “preserve” some of its parts.3 LIBRARY TRENDS, Vol. 55, No. 3, Winter 2007 (“Libraries in Times of War, Revolution, and Social Change,” edited by W. Boyd Rayward and Christine Jenkins), pp. 746–755 © 2007 The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois The Moral Imperative to Preserve