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

Cross Currents, Fall, 2002 by John Matteson

Round the whole square in front of the church there is an almost continuous line of cafes, where the idle Venetians of the middle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its centre the Austrian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music jarring with the organ notes,--the march drowning the miserere, and the sullen crowd thickening round them,--a crowd, which, if it had its will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and unregarded children,--every heavy glance of their young eyes full of desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with cursing,--gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour, clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the church porch. And the images of Christ and His Angels look down upon it continually. (14)

The architecture was sublime; the human activity around it was an obscene mockery. What good was the building if it could not transform the debauched children who cast lots on its very steps? After The Stones of Venice, it was no longer enough for Ruskin to criticize art. It was hierarchies of human beings, not structures of wood and stone, that begged most loudly for his attention.

However, I would argue that we would err frightfully if we were to accept Ruskin's fatalistic assumption that architecture can only follow where the rest of society leads it. While it may rarely lie within the power of a single architect to reform the public taste, let alone public morals, it would be sad indeed to suppose that, upon entering a profession, one at once must discard higher obligations in the names of perfection, efficiency, and the bottom line. Ruskin's contributions to the philosophy of architecture were by no means practical, but it is curiously in their very impracticality that they retain value. His greatest gift to us is that he still challenges us to look outside of the marketplace when making architectural choices. In Ruskin, ethics and aesthetics may be said truly to merge. As the final criterion of architecture, Ruskin proposed happiness--the happiness of the worker certainly, but also the power of physical, manmade mass to speak pleasurably to the soul. If we cannot build always with this happiness as our principal guide, it is still worthwhile to open Ruskin on occasion, if only to remember what this kind of happiness is.

Notes

(1.) John Ruskin, Praeterita, (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1949). 108.

(2.) John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (London: Routledge, n.d.), xvi-xvii.

(3.) Ruskin, Praeterita, 35.

(4.) John Ruskin, quoted in John D. Rosenberg, The Darkening Glass: A Portrait of John Ruskin's Genius (New York: Columbia UP, 1980), 30.

(5.) John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice (Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1897), II, 162.

(6.) Ibid., 160.

(7.) Ibid., 160.

(8.) Ibid., 172.

(9.) Ibid., 165-66.

(10.) John Ruskin, "Pre-Raphaelitism," The Complete Works of John Ruskin (New York: Bryan, Taylor & Co., 1894), XV, 237.