Heritage Care: From the Tower of Babel to the Ivory Tower | David Lowenthal

Heritage Care: From the Tower of Babel to the Ivory Tower | David Lowenthal

Globalization is an enduring utopian ideal. But it is in immemorial conflict with heritage and identity. Hence ecumenical hopes are perennially dashed. We long to return to the God-given Edenic unity of the earliest days, when “the whole earth was of one language, and of one tongue.” What shattered this unity after the Flood was, in essence, a hunger for heritage, the desire to forge an identity that would immortalize the memory of human accomplishments. The Tower of Babel elevated human pride to heaven itself, “to make a name for ourselves, otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth,” incoherent and forgotten (Genesis 11.1, 4).

The full article is available at Project Muse.

Image: Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Tower of Babel. Brueghel’s famous depiction of the Tower of Babel during construction, 1563. Oil painting. (Corbis)