ICOMOS at 60. Surveying our Philosophical Foundations, and How They Might Be Fixed

ICOMOS was called into being by the Venice Charter which, as well as being held in great affection, also forms our ideological foundation. As a community, we are happy to engage with the theory of conservation, including debating our ever-growing collection of doctrinal documents, but we pay surprisingly little regard to questions of philosophy. This is a major concern, because it is at this level of philosophy that we i) understand our own commitments and purpose, ii) engage with others beyond our own discipline, and iii) are able to respond to external challenges.
This paper argues that, as well as being unexamined, the philosophical foundations of the Venice Charter (and thus of ICOMOS) are weak. The Charter is built on a foundation of a taken-for-granted positivism and, for lack of consideration of more appropriate alternatives, this remains ICOMOS’s strongest philosophical commitment. This commitment is evident in the way we continue to dress our processes in the language of the ‘scientific’ and typically limit our energies to discussion of case studies and technical approaches to conservation. Meanwhile, we see little engagement with philosophies of significance, tradition, and change through time, to name but three issues essential to the care of cultural heritage.
As a result, ICOMOS faces legitimate challenges from outside its domain; examples include the Faro Convention, and censure from the rapidly developing discipline of Critical Heritage Studies, which accuses us of ‘the fetishising of expert knowledge’. We struggle to respond well to these challenges because we lack the philosophical tools to do so. This paper will offer a diagnosis of this problem, suggesting some areas of urgent philosophical investigation, and concluding that TheoPhilos – the home of Philosophy as well as Theory of Conservation– is the natural forum for this important and urgent work, as we contemplate the next 60 years of ICOMOS.