 Racism: Understanding the Cause and Solution
The discussion we begin to serialize in this issue is philosophic. But it's also about the most immediate matters in people's lives, the most intimate, the loveliest, the most terrible, the most urgent. Aesthetic Realism makes clear that in order to understand what distresses us and what we hope for, in order for people to stop being cruel, we have to see what aesthetics is: what every instance of beauty contains....
And I will comment here on one of the ugliest things humanity has had, something which people despair about, and which Aesthetic Realism explains and provides the means of ending. That is: racism, in all its brutality, is a certain dealing with the opposites of sameness and difference—the same opposites that are one in every instance of beauty.  Click here for more
Racism Can End / June 25, 1997 (Reprinted 2004)
I am completely sure that racism can end through the study of Aesthetic Realism....The big thing people have not known about racial prejudice is that it does not begin with race. It begins with the world itself, and how one sees the world..." more
The Human Self: Yours and Everyone's / January 9, 2002
"There is nothing people need more now than to see other people justly. Therefore, to illustrate Aesthetic Realism — and to show something of how Aesthetic Realism explains the self of every person — I am going to comment on instances of Arabic poetry written between the 6th and 13th centuries."...more
The Aesthetics of Equality / January 20, 1999
On the "two biggest inequalities in America today...economic inequality and racial or ethnic inequality" — and the solution: "The fact that persons of the media and politics see economic equality as completely unnecessary, is in their continual proclamations that the economy is "booming." To say our economy is "robust" while they admit that the gap between rich and poor is growing, poverty is increasing, and hunger is forcing over 26 million Americans to seek nourishment at community food pantries, shows that press and politicos do not consider the lessening of poverty an economic aim of America." ... more
The Right of Every Child / December 17, 1997
Includes the article "Science, Earth, and Prejudice" by Barbara McClung.
In the midst of all the failure and fury that pervade New York schools, it is a fact, documented year after year, that in those classrooms where the Aesthetic Realism teaching method is the basis, learning grandly succeeds. And it is a fact, as important as any in this world, that through the Aesthetic Realism method, prejudice, in all its hideousness and brutality, ends! ... more
|
The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known online |
|
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. |
|
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. |
|
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 |
|
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. |
|
Archives: The rich education provided by Aesthetic Realism in issues of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known which are online. |
|
AESTHETIC REALISM FOUNDATION
