'The things that lead to life': Ruskin and Cultural Value

Abstract

Ruskin’s understanding that “A truly valuable or availing thing is that which leads to life with its whole strength” underpins his thinking about culture as well as the uses he makes of it. His concept of life is drawn from the richness of experience generated by looking, drawing, thinking, and reading. In his books and social schemes, Ruskin sought to extend this vital culture to others, that they too might learn to see clearly and to live richly. Ruskin’s sense of cultural value, as this introduction argues and as the essays collected in this volume attest, is worthy of attention not only because of the influence his ideas exerted in his own day, but for what we stand to learn from them today.