Abstract

Even in a secular age, mountains continue to be sites of religious and spiritual significance, whether on account of their sublime grandeur or with regard to the sense of a different time-order, eternal or sempiternal, that they inspire. This chapter examines two modern thinkers in whom the spiritual significance of mountains is expressed in especially striking terms: John Ruskin and Martin Heidegger. Although these may seem to be thinkers of a very different stamp, they can both be seen as arguing for the importance of art in the human response to modernity and industrialization and, through their privileged artists, giving a special place to representations of mountains that are attentive to their potential spiritual significance.