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The Two Paths
In The Two Paths, Ruskin connects his theories of art with economic and practical life. The central theme of Ruskin's theories of art was that contented individuals-working within a just society and striving to capture the essence of nature-produce fine and noble art, while corrupt and despondent individuals-working within an unjust society and relying on the tools of the machine age-produce inferior art. Ruskin's essays anticipate and complement theoretical approaches by critics such as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer. Offering a reconsideration of the rhetorical tradition from a visual perspective, this Prospects in Visual Rhetoric Critical Edition is the only edition of The Two Paths currently in print. The introductions and annotations were designed to facilitate critical discussions of Ruskin's theories of art, his role as a social reformer, his visual rhetoric, and the historical/political contexts of his work. The editor's notes define names and cultural allusions in the text, which also includes all appendices and Ruskin's own introduction and illustrations. About the Author John Ruskin (1819-1900), best known for his studies of design and its social and historical implications, is perhaps the greatest critic of culture and art in English history. About the Editor Christine Roth is assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh, where she teaches and writes about nineteenth-century British literature and the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
- GenresNonfiction
188 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1859
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About the author
John Ruskin
3,810 books493 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
John Ruskin was an English writer, philosopher, art historian, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.
Ruskin was heavily engaged by the work of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc which he taught to all his pupils including William Morris, notably Viollet-le-Duc's Dictionary, which he considered as "the only book of any value on architecture". Ruskin's writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He wrote essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, architectural structures and ornamentation. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society.
Ruskin was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.
Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J.M.W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature". From the 1850s, he championed the Pre-Raphaelites, who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. As a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.
John Ruskin was an English writer, philosopher, art historian, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.
Ruskin was heavily engaged by the work of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc which he taught to all his pupils including William Morris, notably Viollet-le-Duc's Dictionary, which he considered as "the only book of any value on architecture". Ruskin's writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He wrote essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, architectural structures and ornamentation. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society.
Ruskin was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.
Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J.M.W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature". From the 1850s, he championed the Pre-Raphaelites, who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. As a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 7, 2023
Some good essays on the wider social impact of art and design. Also some interesting thoughts around what constitutes design as an art.
June 6, 2017
There is a lot for us here: the need for beauty in ordinary life; nature as the model for our imagination; the depiction of nature vs abstraction in architecture etc. .
Beautifully written, in "full Victorian mode"and packed with insights and many loose ends to follow up.
Note: the economic situation of the poor has changed dramatically since Ruskin time, and not through the means he recommends elsewhere.
No the: i'd recommend listening to the Librivox recording online to enjoy the language, which might otherwise be tedious to read.
Beautifully written, in "full Victorian mode"and packed with insights and many loose ends to follow up.
Note: the economic situation of the poor has changed dramatically since Ruskin time, and not through the means he recommends elsewhere.
No the: i'd recommend listening to the Librivox recording online to enjoy the language, which might otherwise be tedious to read.
December 28, 2024
Ruskin wishes architects to study sculpture & natural form so as to enhance their intuitive understanding of "good" proportion. (And also treats other arts, such as metalworking.)
Industrialism vs nature are the two paths. I say, we have chosen badly.
Industrialism vs nature are the two paths. I say, we have chosen badly.
February 9, 2025
9/10
seriously just staggeringly good. Ruskin isn't a moral or philosophical writer; he's all about art, but he's so attuned to the myriad (limitless?) moral and philosophical provocations of art, that after starting on a lecture about the pleasures of architecture he always manages to find himself talking about what it means to be alive. and i think the reason those existential musings always ring so true is because their basis is in his love for art that speaks honestly. wow wow wow
seriously just staggeringly good. Ruskin isn't a moral or philosophical writer; he's all about art, but he's so attuned to the myriad (limitless?) moral and philosophical provocations of art, that after starting on a lecture about the pleasures of architecture he always manages to find himself talking about what it means to be alive. and i think the reason those existential musings always ring so true is because their basis is in his love for art that speaks honestly. wow wow wow
December 7, 2024
John Ruskin was such a polymath that attempting to categorize his work is well-nigh impossible. For purposes of this particular work—being a set of five essays initially delivered as lectures, on Art and its application to decoration and Manufacture—Ruskin speaks from the viewpoint of an art historian and art critic. But, like any art historian I’ve encountered, he blithely digresses across multiple boundaries, into political economy, ethics, sociology, philosophy, botany, chemistry … you get the picture. For Ruskin, Art was just a lens through which he contemplated the world.
His overall theme begins with an assertion that all great art can only be derived from—and must adhere to—nature; whereas “conventional” art—that is, art derived from contrived patterns, formulae or inventions, intended to display the artist’s craft, cleverness, sophistication—is bad art. Hence, the “Two Paths” of artistic practice and principle. In the first essay, he goes even further, shocking his audience with the assertion that the latter kind of art is a precursor of degradation, cruelty and decline of the civilization that embraces it. Ruskin was never lacking in strong opinion.
Each lecture was intended for a quite different audience, hence a broad range of viewpoints; each essay offers much food for thought. For me, the most broad-ranging and engaging is the fifth essay, “The Work of Iron in Nature, Art and Policy.” By the conclusion, he has greatly stretched the boundaries of art, exploring the “three powers which enable iron to pierce, to bind and to smite.”
First, iron as realized in the plough and the needle—signifying the labor of man and woman—raises the ethical question of men who seek to “feed where they leave no furrow, and be warm where they have not woven.”
His discussion on iron as realized in the spear more conventionally examines the role and perhaps the unavoidability of war.
But where he truly impressed me, with a message that resonates profoundly in our world of today, was his examination of iron as applied to the fetter, i.e.
“the instrument of restraint or subjection necessary in a nation—either literally, for its evil-doers, or figuratively, in accepted laws, for its wise and good men. For wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chain mail—strength and defence though something also of an encumbrance. You hear every day greater numbers of foolish people speaking about liberty, as if it were an honorable thing: so far from being that, it is—on the whole and in the broadest sense—dishonorable, and an attribute of the lower creatures. No human being, however great or powerful, was ever so free as a fish. There is always something that he must, or must not do; while the fish may do whatever he likes.”
Surely a ringing condemnation of today’s rampant libertarianism and the right wing campaign to repeal every regulation that was designed to protect society and even our planet from the schemes of unfettered capitalism.
His overall theme begins with an assertion that all great art can only be derived from—and must adhere to—nature; whereas “conventional” art—that is, art derived from contrived patterns, formulae or inventions, intended to display the artist’s craft, cleverness, sophistication—is bad art. Hence, the “Two Paths” of artistic practice and principle. In the first essay, he goes even further, shocking his audience with the assertion that the latter kind of art is a precursor of degradation, cruelty and decline of the civilization that embraces it. Ruskin was never lacking in strong opinion.
Each lecture was intended for a quite different audience, hence a broad range of viewpoints; each essay offers much food for thought. For me, the most broad-ranging and engaging is the fifth essay, “The Work of Iron in Nature, Art and Policy.” By the conclusion, he has greatly stretched the boundaries of art, exploring the “three powers which enable iron to pierce, to bind and to smite.”
First, iron as realized in the plough and the needle—signifying the labor of man and woman—raises the ethical question of men who seek to “feed where they leave no furrow, and be warm where they have not woven.”
His discussion on iron as realized in the spear more conventionally examines the role and perhaps the unavoidability of war.
But where he truly impressed me, with a message that resonates profoundly in our world of today, was his examination of iron as applied to the fetter, i.e.
“the instrument of restraint or subjection necessary in a nation—either literally, for its evil-doers, or figuratively, in accepted laws, for its wise and good men. For wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chain mail—strength and defence though something also of an encumbrance. You hear every day greater numbers of foolish people speaking about liberty, as if it were an honorable thing: so far from being that, it is—on the whole and in the broadest sense—dishonorable, and an attribute of the lower creatures. No human being, however great or powerful, was ever so free as a fish. There is always something that he must, or must not do; while the fish may do whatever he likes.”
Surely a ringing condemnation of today’s rampant libertarianism and the right wing campaign to repeal every regulation that was designed to protect society and even our planet from the schemes of unfettered capitalism.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews