Re-envisaging Ruskin’s Types: Beautiful Order as Divine Revelation

Abstract

The 19th-century art critic John Ruskin offers an intriguing approach to nature as ‘divine art’: he sees in natural beauty ‘types’ or artistic images of the Godhead. Ruskin’s epistemology requires some refinement, but he offers a potentially fruitful approach to the divine revealed in the natural world. I reformulate Ruskin’s typology with reference to the epistemology of Michael Polanyi: through this approach, one may enter into Ruskin’s Christian ‘vision’ of nature with its unique symbolic ‘practice.’ From this standpoint, I develop Ruskin’s types relating to natural order. My claim, in line with Ruskin’s, is that within human experience of a beautiful world is a revelation of divine order.