When Ruskin says something outrageous — as when he insists in Unto This Last that the inept workman should be paid just as much as the excellent one — my experience of his work makes me stop and think: Wait, could this be true? You can’t safely assume that what Ruskin says is true — or that it is false. You have to think about it. And that makes an encounter with Ruskin immensely valuable, more useful, in an important sense, than a consistently wise or consistently foolish writer would be.
For anyone who (like me) enjoys talking about Ruskin, other parts of AJ’s article include some very dismal insights indeed.