Constructing ethics and the ethics of construction: John Ruskin and the humanity of the builder

Cross Currents, Fall, 2002 by John Matteson

In the grandeur of this cathedral, the act of seeing transforms from a necessity to a luxury. There is no aspect of the structure that fails to surprise and astonish the eye. I am attracted to the word "surprise" because it seems to me that much of the beauty of St. John the Divine lies in its unpredictability and its almost chaotic inclusiveness. In one space one finds a Poets' Corner; another wall is dedicated to correspondence from prisoners. Stained glass windows not only portray the Passion and the Resurrection but also commemorate the sinking of the Titanic and celebrate the glories of ice hockey. The cathedral is both an architectural marvel and a shrine to human experience, in both its lowliest and its most exalted. Indeed, it seems that the greatness of this cathedral is that it is a vast metaphor for humanity: diverse but striving toward harmony, grand but imperfect, and always a work in progress.

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It is appropriate that our conference on ethics in architecture takes place in this building, which is in itself a lesson in human nature and morality. But as we look around us at this Gothic splendor, we may also see in it questions that we must try to answer. Just what are the moral obligations of the architect? To whom are they owed? Can and should the ethical lessons of a Gothic cathedral be adapted to other, seemingly dissimilar building projects? Are the ethics of architecture finally reconcilable with the demands of a free-market economy? Because I happen to be an English professor instead of an architect, I find it most natural to answer these questions by appealing to literature.

Among the writers in the literary canon who thought seriously about architecture, probably the one most likely to help us answer these questions is John Ruskin, an art critic of the Victorian era. Ruskin's aesthetic sense continually pressed him to consider how the experiences of art and architecture impress themselves upon individuals and their cultures. When we think about the nexus between ethics and architecture, I suspect that many of us think first, as a matter of reflex, of the obligations owed by the architect to the persons who will use the building. In other words, we tend to think principally in terms of the relationship between producer and consumer, and we assume this to be the most significant relationship in any activity related to commerce. Our ethics unconsciously orient themselves around the relationship between supply and demand.

Ruskin is valuable to us because he did not share these assumptions. He rejected the idea that buying and selling lay at the heart of the ethics of architecture. He focused not on production for the purpose of consumption, but on the moral effect of the production upon the producer. He required above all that the process of building should, in all ways possible, enlist the emotion, the imagination, and the intellect of the laborer. Ruskin chose this approach because his principal frames of reference were not the economics or even the physical realities of building, but rather the sensibilities of religion and visual aesthetics. Although he wrote two significant books on architecture, The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice, John Ruskin was not an architect, nor, as he himself admitted, did he think like one. In his autobiography, he conceded, "I never could have built or carved anything, because I was without power of design." (1) Really, it is hard to imagine another writer who wrote so much and so eloquently about architecture who had so limited an appreciation for the medium per se. In his preface to the second edition of The Seven Lamps of Architecture, Ruskin declared his belief that the only two fine arts possible to the human race were sculpture and painting. By contrast, what we call architecture was "only the association of these in noble masses, or the placing them in fit places." He went so far as to proclaim that "the architect who [is] not a sculptor or a painter, [is] nothing better than a frame-maker on a large scale." (2) To his discredit, Ruskin lacked the ability, essential to a good builder, to observe the beauty and value that can exist in structure itself. What he did possess, and possess abundantly, was the ability to see from the standpoints of an artist and a religious ethicist. I have just said "artist" and "ethicist" as if they describe two distinct ways of seeing. As I shall explain, however, art and ethics were inseparable for Ruskin, for artistic expression appeared t o him to be an essential path to human salvation.

Ruskin was born into a deeply religious family. He remembered in later years how, from the age of seven, his mother imposed upon him the daily task of reading the Bible aloud. They would begin with the first verse of Genesis and, over a period of months, slog through to the last line of Revelations. As soon as they were done, they started again at the beginning. This Sisyphean labor did not cease until Ruskin was fourteen. With her mechanical, unrelenting, prison warden's approach to the Scripture, Ruskin's mother impressed upon her son the primary, vital importance of seeking deliverance from evil. But at the same time, she inadvertently estranged him from the orthodox practice of religion. Ruskin did not love his parents, and, he wrote, "Still less did I love God; not that I had any quarrel with Him, or fear of Him; but simply found what people told me was His service, disagreeable; and what people told me was His book, not entertaining." (3) As a young adult, Ruskin tried to come back to religion. He was s urprised, however, to discover that his independent investigations of the Bible had produced in him "nothing but darkness and doubt." What remained of his traditional beliefs diminished as the bombshell of evolutionary theory exploded over Victorian culture. Ruskin lamented in 1851 that his faith was "being beaten into mere gold leaf....If only the geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses." (4)

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Constructing ethics and the ethics of construction: John Ruskin and the humanity of the builder

Cross Currents, Fall, 2002 by John Matteson

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