John Ruskin – ‘A Biting Retort’

I recently checked out a volume entitled A Book of Ruskin from the University Library. It is a small pocket-size compendium of excerpts from John Ruskin’s writings, published in 1927. It has a heavily worn, navy blue, hardback cover which seems to be falling off at the binding. The pages are aged, a little crumpled and rather yellow. It smells very, very musty. It is the kind of book I like.

In it, are a selection of Ruskin’s letters, both private and public, and I came across one which I particularly enjoyed, entitled ‘A Biting Retort’. By way of background, Ruskin was a staunch critic of the laissez-faire economics of his day. Part of his argument was that modern capitalism turned the lower-class factory worker into little more than a human machine – simply a means of production for the national economy. The working class were given simple, repetitive, menial jobs, with long hours and low pay, in terrible conditions, and this was said to be their fair lot in life. In addition to the obvious social injustice issues here, Ruskin argued that this robbed working class ‘work’ of any pleasure or beauty, because it destroyed its creative element (see his essay ‘The Nature of The Gothic’ in The Stones of Venice). Ruskin saw this as a deep injustice at the heart of modern, Victorian society, that was dehumanizing and anti-life. The following exchange comes in this context, and concerns a misunderstanding of Ruskin’s critique as concerned simply with an attack on machinery. I will quote in full from the book:

“A somewhat impertinent critic once wrote to Ruskin:

Since you disparage so much iron and its manufacture, may it be asked how your books are printed, and how is their paper made? Probably you are aware that both printing and paper-making machines are made with that material.

To this Ruskin replied as follows:

Sir,

I am indeed aware that printing and paper-making machines are made of iron.  I am aware also, which you perhaps are not, that ploughshares and knives and forks are.  And I am aware, which you certainly are not, that I am writing with an iron pen. And you will find in ‘Fors Clavigera’, and in all my other writings which you may have done me the honour to read, that my statement is that things which have to do the work of iron should be made of iron and things which have to do the work of wood should be made of wood ;  but that (for instance) hearts should not be made of iron, nor heads of wood – and this last statement you may wisely consider when next it enters yours to ask questions.

I am, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

J.Ruskin

(Corpus Christi College, Oxford. February 10, 1872)”.

Superb!

Reflections on _A Secular Age_

I just finished working through Charles Taylor’s mammoth 800 page tome A Secular Age this week, for one of my classes. Not only is the book 800 pages, but they are pretty big pages and the print is rather small. If I had been Taylor’s publisher I would have told him he had gone over the word limit. The book is a remarkable piece of work, but I reckon the argument could have been summed up in around 150-2oo pages.

Taylor is essentially arguing against the mainstream ’subtraction story’ regarding secularisation, which says that as society has become more enlightened, civilised and rational, religion, with all its superstitious and unscientific belief in God, has naturally declined, and will continue to do so. In contrast, Taylor argues that this account is deeply reductionistic and historically inaccurate. In Taylor’s reading, the objectifying, disenchanting, ‘excarnating’ tendencies within modernity, themselves driven originally by forms of Protestant religion, eventually remove much of the depth and fullness in life. This objectifying drive characteristic of modernity has been accompanied almost from the outset by opposition, in the form of Romantic streams of counter-enlightenment which have sought to recover the lost depth in a whole host of ways, both religious and otherwise. This is no different today, when the spiritual void opened up by modernity is more deeply felt than ever, and is evident all around us. In this ‘waste land’, far from seeing a continued decline of religion, as the mainstream secularisation theorists suggest, Taylor argues for the continued importance of religion in contemporary life. The basic conditions of belief may have changed radically over the last 500 years, so that immanent options which could not have been conceived back then (exclusive humanism, atheism, materialism) are widely accepted today, but the fundamental draw of humans towards sources of meaning and fullness has not. For Taylor, we have an option in our secular age, to look for solutions to this need for fullness by looking ever more inward, or by looking outward to a transcendent source. As a Catholic, Taylor sees the latter as the ‘real thing’:

“Modes of fullness recognised by exclusive humanisms, and others that remain within the immanent frame, are … responding to a transcendent reality, but misrecognizing it” (p.768).

Whether looking inward or outward for fullness, however, the state of belief in a secular age will remain fragile.

An Existential Reflection on Evensong

I did something a little unusual last Sunday, for me at least, by going to the Choral Evensong service at St. Mary’s Church in Nottingham. It was by far the most traditional Christian service I’ve been to in some time, but I seem to have been tending that way recently. I arrived about two minutes before start time and was met by a greeter: a tall man, probably in his 60s, with thick grey hair and a friendly face. He looked a little puzzled to see me, and asked quizzically whether I was there for the service. I replied that I was. He looked even more puzzled and passed me a parish newsletter, asking whether I’d been before. I replied that I hadn’t and he directed me to the ‘choir’ (yes, where the choir usually sits, at the front of the church, near the altar) where the service was held, explaining where I should seat myself.

I wandered up the central aisle towards the ‘choir’, and was struck by how huge the church building was. I had been here two weeks before, out of curiosity, to watch the new minister-in-charge of the Nottingham diocese get set in by the local Bishop, in front of a packed house and some media. The scene was somewhat different this time, most of the church was dim lit, and completely empty. It was cavernous. There were around 15 people (at a generous estimate) sat up in the choir (seats) amidst the candle light, waiting for the minister and choir (singers) to arrive. 

Music, Books, Beverages (2nd self-indulgent list)

What I have been listening to…

U2 // No Line on the Horizon

Lindsey Buckingham // Gift of Screws

Lindsey Buckingham // Under The Skin

Fleetwood Mac // Rumours

What I have been reading…

Charles Taylor // A Secular Age

Augustine // Confessions

Stanley Hauerwas // A Better Hope (essay collection)

G.K. Chesterton // Orthodoxy

What I have been drinking…

Highland Park 12 year old (Single Malt Island)

Glenmorangie Original 10 year old (Single Malt Highland)

Hopping Hare (Golden English Ale)

Baileys & Hot Chocolate (Cadbury’s, of course)