Art, science and social progress : a study of John Ruskin's engagement with positivism

• Main Author: Harrington, Katherine
• Published: Keele University 2001
• Subjects: 828; John Stuart Mill
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.246866

This thesis contributes to the understanding of Ruskin's relationship to nineteenthcentury science through the consideration of his specific engagement with British positivism. This engagement is analysed within the context of attempts to determine the importance of science and art for social progress. The first chapter reads Modern Painters (1843-1860) as a response to John Stuart Mill's System of Logic (1843) and shows that Ruskin's participation in the constitution of Victorian science is greater than previously recognized. The second chapter focuses on Ruskin's critique in Unto this Last (1862) of Mill's positivist view of political economy. The third chapter considers Frederic Harrison's positivist reading of the social significance of Ruskin's life in his biography, John Ruskin (1902). The thesis shows that Ruskin's engagement with positivism is more extensive and more diverse than previously acknowledged.