Paper's abstract

Rainer Rochlitz, Criteriology of the Just and the Beautiful
Before looking for relationships between law and aesthetics, one has to stress that the beautiful and the just obey different "logics" whose criterions are irreducibles. The logic of the beautiful splits between, on the one hand an aesthetic of nature or of everyday life and, on the other hand several artforms, which in the modern period do not anymore obey the traditional criterion for the beautiful. The criterions for artistic achievement then are coherence, a significant stake and the novelty of the work. Taking good as a point of departure, the logic of just divides itself into moral and law. Several criterions of what is just as impartiality principle have came one after the other in the course of history : rational, divine or material justice, than formal or procedural justice, based on universalisation or on the principle of the universal capacity to consent. In democratic societies law is generated according to this last principle.

Key Words : just, beauty, artform, universalisation, consent
t. 40, 1995 : p. 64-75