I don't think imperialist interventions normally lead to good, but with the Elgin Marbles, the Brits preserved a world cultural treasure from what we now see was certain destruction. And if they had been left in Greece, to the extent that they survived, they would be available only to people who could get _there_. I mean, that is a feature of their having a definite spaciotemporal location, given that we cannot be in two places at once.
The Turks are trying to get the Pergamon Marbles (just as awesom as the Elgin Marbles) back from the Germans. Those were bought, after the Germans dug them out, did the archeological work. Should the Turks get them just because there were from settlements on what is now Turkish but was then Greek soil?
--jks
>Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 12:46:05 -0500
>
>Justin Schwartz [mailto:jkschw at hotmail.com] said:
> >
> > It's equally wrong to take and carefully preserve something,
> > making it
> > available to all, as to destroy it? I don't understand.
>
>Okay - you're right - I overstated the case, I apologise, and I agree with
>a
>lot of your comments about preservation, etc. However, it's not clear to
>me
>that the Elgin marbles are now available to all - they're available to
>anyone who is in or goes to Britain. That may or may not be more people
>than if they had been left in Greece, but it is certainly a different and
>not necessarily more deserving group of people.
>
> > Btw,
> > if the Brits
> > had not taken and kept the Elgin Marbles, they would have
> > melted from the
> > pollution, like the rest of the Parthenon. So while insensitive and
> > imperialist, it was a good thing that they did it.
>
>All for the greater good, eh? I guess that argument could be used to
>defend
>a lot of insensitive and imperialist actions.
>
>Anyway, I wasn't really meaning to say anything in particular about the
>Elgin Marbles, and I probably shouldn't have mentioned them - it had just
>struck me after reading a few of the reports about the Taliban's recent
>actions that the general tone seemed to be that they were extreme and
>unheard of. And I thought that maybe the destruction of religious and
>cultural artifacts is not that unheard of, and I was trying to think of
>vaguely similar situations. I agree the case of the Elgin marbles doesn't
>fit the bill, though at the time that they were being chopped up and carted
>off there was probably the same sort of disregard for other people going
>on,
>whoever good the intentions. By the way, I want to make clear that I am
>not
>in any way attempting to defend the Taliban or suggest that their actions
>shouldn't be condemned - nor am I trying to get into some sort of cultural
>relativism where their actions seem bad to us but aren't really, or
>anything
>along those lines. And now I'll shut up.
>
>David.
_________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com