Bauhaus and the Cult of Ugliness

Ethik und Ästhetik sind Eins. “Ethics and aesthetics are one,” or so the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein asserted in his 1921 treatise Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. He was by no means the first to do so. The ancient Greeks, 23 centuries earlier, formulated the societal ideal of kalokagathia, a term derived by fusing the adjectives καλός (beautiful) and ἀγαθός (good). And he would not be the last. Yukio Mishima, standing amidst the psychic rubble of his grotesque childhood, and the physical rubble of post-war Japan...