The Sickness: Antiquarian Temptations

When children and the future are displaced by the past.

Temptations—they are many. This is a short reflection on one of them which might be difficult to discern because of its proximity to so many otherwise noble pursuits. The closer a temptation is to something genuinely good, the more insidious its effects and stronger its deceptions.

Many of us read and study intensely and for good reason. The past is home to seemingly inexhaustible treasures: the richest stories, works of art and literature, sublime music, profound philosophy. We take pleasure in this immersion in the best history has to offer for its own sake, because of how exquisite the works are simply to encounter, but also because they instruct and enlighten. For some of us, the urge to look backward increases as our culture doubles down on its commitment to producing only what Philip Rieff called “deathworks.”¹

In my family, we were recently reading J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Two Towers when I came across a passage in which a human character named Faramir describes the sickness and decay that overtook the great human kingdom of Gondor:

Yet even so it was Gondor that brough about its own decay, falling by degrees into dotage, and thinking that the Enemy was asleep, who was only banished not destroyed.

Death was ever present, because …[they] hungered after endless life unchanging. Kings made tombs more splendid than houses of the living, and counted old names in the rolls of their descent dearer than the names of sons. Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry; in secret chambers withered men compounded strong elixirs, or in high cold towers asked questions of the stars. And the last king…had no heir.

It was Faramir’s particular comment about old names being dearer than the names of sons that brought me up short. While looking backward, studying the great tradition, is pleasurable and instructive, if it distracts us for one moment from our own children, the antiquarian temptation has sprung its trap. I do not suggest that there is anything wrong with study and love of the past. But what is wrong is when the past usurps the natural and sacred place of our children in our affections and attentions. This only hastens the necrosis of civilization by those who purport to love it.

I’ve appreciated recent essays reflecting on parenting and passing on the torch of nobility especially in the case of a civilization that seems to be accruing entropy quickly—plummeting toward some kind of heat death. To those discussions I add this encouragement. Love for the great things of the past can represent self-absorption and sterility or it can become fruitful through transmission. The vocations of parenting and teaching bring forward to the living the great works of the past. This is an urgent imperative. Our children's names ought to command more pride and loyalty than any philosopher’s.

One last thing. Sometimes study serves as a prophylaxis on achievement. We are satisfied simply to read about greatness, to admire it from an armchair. But if Faramir describes the death of a civilization as withered men in towers asking questions of the stars, we should emerge from the tower and use our knowledge of the stars to navigate.

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1. Philip Rieff. My Life among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority. University of Virginia Press, 2006.