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In this Article, I will argue that aesthetic, epistemic, and moral (legal, political) values are correlated because of a common underlying mechanism. Value judgments are regulated via chronologically antecedent emotions. Their attribution to a certain normative category is an analytical achievement that only occurs in a second step. “Analogical” interferences are inevitable due to the processes involved being partly identical. Jurisprudence, too, continually operates with terms that have an underlying sensuous, aesthetic component and depend on concrete experiential knowledge. This lifeworld horizon and the attendant aesthetic preferences differ from society to society, sometimes considerably from state to state, despite otherwise very similar economic and social conditions.
Using the example of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, I will demonstrate how popular stylistic elements of the New Objectivity—the ideal of “visibility” and a technoid, spare, and simple design—inspired the critics of Western democracy, liberalism, and parliamentarianism. From the moralizing and dogmatically rigid perspective of German-style functionalism, violating the imperative of purposefulness is not only an aesthetic faux pas, but also an inexcusable moral failure. Carl Schmitt’s critique of parliamentarianism, with its focus on the supposedly functionless and empty ritual of the parliamentary speech, was just a variation and echo of this moral-aesthetic leitmotif.
