Samenvatting

Aesthetics of law entails a philosophical inquiry into the art and beauty of jurisprudence. In respect to this field of inquiry, Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy (1872) has been largely ignored. Since Socrates’ ‘emancipation’ of the apollonian from the Dionysian element, the art of politics and law, has been founded almost exclusively on logic and scientific knowledge. This tradition of nihilistic ‘socratism’, culminated eventually in legalism and legal positivism that have subdued the acknowledgement of life, subjectivity and creativity. In line with Nietzsche, this article explores the prospective of a ‘rebirth of tragedy’. But in difference to him, it designates this rebirth to develop from out of the spirit of Christianity and Christian existentialism. Paul Scholten in particular, is interpreted as one whose biblical personalist approach resounds this tragic sense of law.