What is the thing in us that weakens us? What is the best thing in us? This issue includes a discussion of cybersex — and what it means for a person to decide what we most deeply and truly want.
"In terms of history and culture: people do not understand what in the self has made for 'the best that has been known and thought in the world,' as Matthew Arnold put it; and what in the self has caused the brutality present throughout the centuries — has caused what Burns called 'man’s inhumanity to man.'" ... more
 Excitement, Byron, & the Trouble about Sex / September 15, 1999
I can say as a person who knows the field: Eli Siegel is the critic who understood Byron, both the man and the poet, supremely — as Byron thirsted to be understood. It moves me very much to comment on some of that understanding as expressed in another lecture: Lord Byron May Yet Be Known, of September 14, 1969. Early in it, after reading a passage by William Hazlitt about Byron’s intensity and his desire to escape ennui, Mr. Siegel said:
That hints at Byron’s suffering. He wanted not to fall into himself in some dull and lessening way .... Byron opposed dullness in himself in two ways: through writing and through women. His big complaint is: after the ecstasy of love he was more in himself than before.
Byron never knew — as no person has before Aesthetic Realism — what differentiates the excitement that makes us proud and more alive, from the excitement that leaves us ashamed, dull, empty. ... more
The Education of the Coming Century
/ December 29, 1999
In this final issue of the century, it is an honor to publish a poem by Eli Siegel. And we publish too something standing for the beautiful, thirsted-for, immortal education he founded in 1941: part of a paper by Pauline Meglino, from a recent public seminar at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation titled "Owning a Husband or Knowing Him — Which Will Make a Wife Happy?" ... more
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The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known online |
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Current Issues: The most recent issues in which Aesthetic Realism explains the news, happenings in people's lives, events in history, and some of the most moving works in literature. |
National Ethics: What honest criteria can we use to be good critics of ethics on the national and international levels? Aesthetic Realism looks at ethics as to loyalty, international affairs, & more. |
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Literature / Poetry: Discussing many great works of poetry and prose. Criticism, wrote Eli Siegel compactly, is showing "a good thing as good, a bad thing as bad, and a middling thing as middling." |
Love: How Aesthetic Realism describes the purpose of love--"to like the world honestly through another person." Discussion of what interferes with having real love--today and in history. |
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Racism—the Cause & Solution: The Aesthetic Realism understanding of contempt as the cause of racism, and the place of aesthetics in respecting, pleasurably, people different from oneself. |
The Economy: Why our economic system has failed to meet the needs of the American people, and the Aesthetic Realism understanding of good will as the basis for successful and fair economics |
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Education: The success of the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method in having students learn to read and write--learn science, social studies, art, every subject--and be kinder, less angry, less prejudiced. |
Eli Siegel Day in Baltimore: Talks given on August 16, 2002, Eli Siegel's Centenary, placing Mr. Siegel and Aesthetic Realism, his work, in terms of world culture and history. |
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Archives: The rich education provided by Aesthetic Realism in issues of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known which are online. |
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