  Great art works work in the background of our historical worlds, in other words, by partially embodying and so selectively reinforcing an historical community’s implicit sense of what is and what matters. In this way, great artworks both (1) “first give to things their look,” that is, they help establish an historical community’s implicit sense of what things are, and they give (2) “to humanity their outlook on themselves,” that is, they also help shape an historical community’s implicit sense of what truly matters in life (and so also what does not), which kinds of lives are most worth living, which actions are “noble” (or “base”), what in the community’s traditions most deserves to be preserved, and so on.