In a similar way civilisation is approximated by its opposite. Which occurs in a passage which I quoted in a debate a few years ago, from the Spanish Baroque writer Baltasar Graciana:

“Man is born barbarian, and she is saved from being a monster through the acquisition of culture. Culture is thus what creates man, and the greater her culture, the greater the individual she is.”

For Graciana, there appear to be two sides of man. On the one hand, we are creatures of flesh and blood, which, in our worst and most primitive moments do not differ significantly from animals. On the other hand, we have spiritual aspirations, the desire for goodness, truth and beauty, recognising the importance of dignity, humility, justice and love. For people in the 1600s Spain it was perhaps not a difficult choice to take a stand for the hallmarks of civilised man. At such close quarters there was barbaric behaviour, so that no room was left for the romanticism and idealisation of primitivism and the noble savages. It was, in short, far from modern man’s unhappiness in the culture.

That so many cultural journalists reacted with anger at my use of the Garcián quote was probably enough for us in today’s Sweden to feel a limited threat from the barbarism that was reality during the 1600s. When you take the side of civilised behaviour over uncivilised behaviour, it is interpreted today in terms of cultural chauvinism. Which is misleading. At least insofar as the savagery Garcián invoked can be understood as an aspect of himself.

Yet one cannot ignore the fact that the idea of civilisation is linked to man’s dual nature. Cultivation of the individual means that some universal qualities of a spiritual nature are fomented. Qualities that are not least embodied in artistic expression, where the human spirit is demonstrated at its highest potential: ideals of concentration, material privation, and respect for life and creation. Timeless ideals, then, which mean that the artistic forms of expression that harbour these ideals, by their very nature, must remain free from economic, utilitarian or ideological benefits.

The cultured man is, therefore, is disposed to what Kant calls ”the disinterested pleasure” – towards the sort of culture that bridges cultural practices and ethnic differences, which speaks to us across time and space. Rob Riemen, who contributed one of the texts in this issue of Axess Magazine, quotes in his fine little book, The Nobility of Spirit, not only Graciana but also Goethe:

“Civilisation is a constant exercise in respect. Respect for the divine, the earth, for our fellow human beings and therefore for our own dignity.”

For civilisation to survive, the intellectual has, says Riemer, a duty to protect, nurture and, to future generations, transfer the most valuable, which in turn requires an ability – and a belief in the possibility – to distinguish between good and evil, good and bad, right and wrong, beauty and ugliness.

In the current situation, we are far from this sort of restoration of permanent value categories. On the contrary, it is considered acceptable to celebrate the banal and trivial. One of the last decade’s most talked about and most highly valued works of art in the English-speaking world is Tracey Emin’s installation of an unmade bed. A work that may seem to signal intimacy, which shows the artist as a human being like everyone else, just as insecure and imperfect as the rest of the world. But which also implies that there is reason to celebrate the artistic context of this sort of triviality and banality.

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It can, of course, be seen as a sign of respect for the simple and uncultured man, when Emin lowers the artistic guard and affirms the most mundane. But the respect is illusory. Because the signal sent out is, to a large extent, that the people who have not been able to form and realise themselves artistically or professionally in the way that Tracey Emin has, have either no capacity or need to raise themselves beyond the mundane. The unmade bed is understood to have less aesthetic value than Michelangelo’s Pietà.

The world as depicted in ‘the bed’ is not considered less desirable than the world we encounter in the great museums where we can enjoy Michelangelo’s art or in academic seminars where we can discuss his art. Which seems mendacious. Those who find themselves in the academic seminar may at any time to go home to their beds, while those who throughout their lives have remained in their beds do not enjoy the reverse option.