Presenter Information
Jesse D. Goodman is a philosophy M.A student at Duquesne University, who works primarily upon Aesthetics, Critical Theory, and the Philosophy of Religion.
Abstract
The Victorian philosopher John Ruskin is primarily remembered for his political writing, as a forerunner of what we would today call Christian Socialist politics. In aesthetic circles, he is also often considered something of a punchline: a stuffy conservative who represents the worst vagaries of his day, an enemy of abstraction. Ruskin thus has a double-being in cultural memory: both an admired social reformer and a laughingstock art critic.
These views of Ruskin can be potentially reconciled by showing how his critics have misunderstood his aesthetic philosophy. Ruskin is often described as an aesthetic realist, the view on which art must represent the world—i.e a painted tree must closely resemble its real-life counterpart. But Ruskin is not an aesthetic realist. He is a moral realist, who argues good art will be of service to its society by representing a rightly ordered ethical view of reality. In this way, art for Ruskin serves a reformist purpose just like his environmental and labor advocacy. Art is the wing of this social project manifested by the imagination, and requires rightly-ordered artists to perform it properly.
Ruskin argues inspiration comes from a transcendent moral outside of the artist, which is then refracted through the artist’s own ethical temperament to create a work of varying moral quality. I conclude by arguing that because Ruskin’s moral realism is not an aesthetic realism, it leaves open new possibilities of understanding the relationship of social class to artistic production.
School
McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts
Advisor
Dr. Michael Harrington
Submission Type
Paper
Publication Date
March 2024
Included in
A Metaphysics of the Moral Imagination: John Ruskin's Realism, Revisited
The Victorian philosopher John Ruskin is primarily remembered for his political writing, as a forerunner of what we would today call Christian Socialist politics. In aesthetic circles, he is also often considered something of a punchline: a stuffy conservative who represents the worst vagaries of his day, an enemy of abstraction. Ruskin thus has a double-being in cultural memory: both an admired social reformer and a laughingstock art critic.
These views of Ruskin can be potentially reconciled by showing how his critics have misunderstood his aesthetic philosophy. Ruskin is often described as an aesthetic realist, the view on which art must represent the world—i.e a painted tree must closely resemble its real-life counterpart. But Ruskin is not an aesthetic realist. He is a moral realist, who argues good art will be of service to its society by representing a rightly ordered ethical view of reality. In this way, art for Ruskin serves a reformist purpose just like his environmental and labor advocacy. Art is the wing of this social project manifested by the imagination, and requires rightly-ordered artists to perform it properly.
Ruskin argues inspiration comes from a transcendent moral outside of the artist, which is then refracted through the artist’s own ethical temperament to create a work of varying moral quality. I conclude by arguing that because Ruskin’s moral realism is not an aesthetic realism, it leaves open new possibilities of understanding the relationship of social class to artistic production.