John Lukacs is a conservative historian who shares the opinion with some other fine minds that we are at the end of an era, a very important era(and not for the reason that it is our own.) They consider Greek, Roman, and now the last five hundred years to be the three great eras of civilization and progress. They do not wish to wave goodby to this one, but do not see how not too. However.
Lukacs believes that although Western Civilization is simply a reinvention of the Classical civilizations, there is one major difference, and that is a desire, and perhaps obsession, to understand history. That did not exist at all in previous eras, and may, for all it’s manifest peculiarities, save us yet.
So thinks Lukacs.