Morality and Classical Architecture

David
May 12
3 min read

Updated: May 13

Do the Dog

No other form of architecture engenders such differing opinions about its morality or its ethics as the classical. Some see it as inextricably bound up with the evils of twentieth century fascism, others as the noble fabric of the American civic realm. Both camps tend to assign value to the language (if we can call it that) per se rather than to what is said with the language. Now, I know some “traditionalists” and classicists don’t think classical architecture is a language at all, in the sense that it can express anything beyond its own tectonic origins. But let’s defer to John Summerson’s book title The Classical Language of Architecture^[1] and consider in what way it is a language, and where the moral dimension lies if that definition of classical architecture is valid.

When we pair classical and language, we should be inevitably conducted to the ancient discipline of rhetoric—language at its best. Now, while one of the great Latin achievements was the codifying of the discipline and the educational system of rhetoric, there were those who saw rhetoric as a kind of power or tool that could be used for nefarious as well as noble ends. Quintilian was at pains to argue that a “true” rhetorician was a good person who spoke well—speaking well without something good to say was not truly the art (or science, as he calls it) of rhetoric.^[2]

Classical architecture may be intrinsically elegant, and eloquent, but it is only truly noble if it is put to noble ends. Classical architecture is not an end in itself—being “classical” guarantees a building nothing of nobility, or true beauty. The good building speaking well has a noble purpose, and articulates that purpose eloquently.

Put another way, what makes a building a noble classical one is not the architect, but the client—the purpose to which the building is put is the only impetus for classical architecture’s moral or ethical status. An elegant articulation of an ignoble purpose is no achievement; it is not rhetorical in Quintilian’s linguistic sense.

But isn’t it enough to put something of beauty in the world? Consider the art of painting, and its genres—history painting, as it once was called, was for the classicist the noblest kind of painting. Or should be, assuming no one would commission an ignoble subject. But a humble still life need not mean anything at all, and can be simply, uncomplicatedly, beautiful.

By analogy, “civic” buildings are architecture’s noblest purpose, but not all societies or their functions are inevitably noble. An ordinary house may be made beautiful by classical articulation, but like the still life it is not necessarily meaningful or noble in the largest sense.

David Watkin wrote Morality and Architecture^[3] in 1977 (the later edition of 2001 appended with Revisited) to dismantle the Modernists’ pretense of moral purpose in their style of building. Watkin, who saw all architecture as primarily a problem or question of style, was suspicious of any moral claims for style (their terms should not be conflated, i.e. one shouldn’t use moral terms like ‘honest’ or ‘true’ for buildings). And while he might have dangerously severed any connection between architecture and morality, his purpose was not amoral.

There is indeed a moral dimension to architecture, but it's not manifested in architectural form or style. It has to do with the ends to which architecture is put. As The Specials said in their 1979 song Do the Dog, “watch who you work for.”

PS: Morality and Architecture is not to be confused with OMD’s 1981 album Architecture and Morality, which includes the song Souvenir with its romantic-classical video set partly at the Palladian bridge at Stowe House. The album title was, in fact, inspired by Watkin’s book.