An analytical study of John Ruskin’s treatises on honesty in Architecture

Abstract

Most critics of architecture agree that Ruskin has a positive impact on architecture just as he hurts it. His treatises are sometimes superficial, extremist, individualistic, and opposing one of them to the other, which led some critics to attack him harshly and stand against him. Ruskin lived in a crowded with different intellectual and sometimes contradictory climates and saw many thought, politics, sociology, science, and industry changes. Ruskin was only the victim of ideological dualism, which caused some of his treatises’ contradiction and superficiality despite others’ depth. Ruskin’s theoretical aspect was not complete with the practical aspect because he never cared about applied arts. Ruskin represented what might be called “man of letters,” interested in many diverse topics as the diversity of human life itself. The research aims to reveal contradictions, superficiality, specifically, those implied in the chapter of “Lamp of Truth,” and try to return them to the duality of his ideology or the gap between theory and practice that he suffers from it or both. This research is not an attempt to seek excuses to Ruskin, but an attempt to understand his treatises, thus enabling the man not to be enthusiastic to all his treatises without discrimination for the reference of any of them and vice versa be entirely opposed. The internal view of Ruskin’s thoughts enables a profit gained from those that are immortal, which makes him considered among the great philosophers and thinkers of different ages and eras.