We continue to serialize Poetry and Keenness, an amazing and great lecture that Eli Siegel gave in 1949.... [T]his subject of trust is tremendous and tormenting in people’s lives; and I love Aesthetic Realism for describing the criterion — the only basis on which anyone has ever trusted another human being. That criterion is: Is this person going after truth? Does he love truth — or see it as something to manipulate to suit himself? Does he prefer truth over comfort and personal importance? It is a beautiful fact that while people may flatter and cling to each other, they will never trust a person who doesn’t love truth. The word trust has the same etymological source as the word truth. And the connection is also gloriously unevadable in life itself. 

     The other aspect of this criterion is something that always accompanies the care for truth: good will. Mr. Siegel defined good will as "the desire to have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful" (TRO 121). Going after truth and having good will stand for opposites: knowledge and feeling. And so, the one basis on which anyone can be trusted is described too in this Aesthetic Realism principle stated by Mr. Siegel: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."

     ... [Now] I will comment on [trust] in relation to two other big fields of life in America now: the family; and how Americans see the persons responsible for governing our nation. I’ll comment by asking questions which can be asked only because of Aesthetic Realism — because Eli Siegel’s tremendous love for truth enabled him to come to knowledge not had before. 

     1.  Does a little boy, Keith, age 8, in Wisconsin think his parents, Paula and John, are trying to know him? Does he believe they like thinking about what he feels to himself and won’t get tired of trying to understand him? Or does he feel they mainly want him to behave well, impress others, and show how glad he is that they’re his parents? The desire to comprehend the depths of a person is part of the going after truth. Will a child ever trust a parent unless that parent is really trying to know him, and has a good time trying to know him? 

     2.  As Paula and John act as though Keith is the most wonderful boy in the world — smarter, also handsomer, and generally more precious than the other children in the neighborhood — does Keith trust them? He likes the flattery. But does he feel, without being able to put it in clear words, that his parents are not interested in what’s true, but making much of him for some selfish reason of their own? Does he also feel they’re silly about him — and that they don’t care much about being just to other people? 

     3.  Will a child ever trust a parent unless he feels this parent wants passionately to be just to other people — including people not in the family? 

     4.  Is Aesthetic Realism right in saying a child won’t trust a parent unless he feels this parent wants him to like the world? Keith gets the feeling Paula wants him to like her very much — but doesn’t feel she wants him really to like other people. When they’re together, there’s the feeling, "It’s a pretty mean world, Keith, but you and I — we’re warm to each other and will take care of each other." Sometimes he even feels she doesn’t want him to like John so much — she wants him to think that John is sort of cold and that she’s much nicer. Keith feels the person who makes him most important in the world is Paula. But he was born, Aesthetic Realism explains, into the whole world — the big world of people, ideas, facts, objects, knowledge, happenings. He was born for the purpose of seeing meaning in that whole, rich world. And so, while there’s a cozy team between him and Paula, does he trust this mother who isn’t trying to have him like that puzzling outside world? 

     5.  No matter how "nice" a person is to us — can we ever trust someone who isn’t keenly and deeply interested in the world? 

     6.  There is no greater accomplishment in the study of mind than Eli Siegel’s identifying that thing in self which is the source of all unkindness.  It is contempt, "the lessening of what is different from oneself as a means of self-increase as one sees it." Contempt is terrifically ordinary, and Keith sees it in his parents in various ways. He hears them be scornful of people who just left their home after a visit. He sees that often as they talk, they don’t really listen to each other. He feels — though he couldn’t describe it clearly — they get a triumph being disgusted with things. Each time Keith sees his parents having contempt — does he distrust them deeply? Even if we join a person in making less, does the person’s contempt always have us distrust him? 

     7.  Do we trust a person who is honestly trying to criticize himself? If (for instance) Keith heard Paula say, "John, I’ve learned from Aesthetic Realism that I’ve had a desire to have contempt for you, to be important by looking down on you. I’ve seen that this is so. I’m sorry; and I want to know where you’ve seen contempt in me" — would Keith trust and respect his mother more, immediately? 

     1. Will Americans ever trust a politician or government official unless that person says (in his own words), "My fellow citizens, the constant statements you are hearing in the media about America’s economy ‘booming’ are a big lie. Eli Siegel explained in the 1970s that an economy based on contempt — on using people’s work and needs for profit — has failed and will never recover. And that’s what has happened. A few people now are making lots of money, while most Americans are becoming poorer. There’s no recovery! Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, and are terrifically worried about paying for food and clothes for their children, about meeting their mortgage payments or paying their rent. The statements about a ‘vibrant economy’ are bunk, junk, and flimflam!"? 

     2.  Will Americans ever trust a politician who doesn't want the resources of America to belong to all the people — including a child now poor in Chicago?  Will Americans distrust anyone who says he's for democracy yet doesn't want the wealth of America, her industry, her beautiful earth, her jobs to be owned democratically? 

     3.  Will Americans at last trust their government officials if they see those officials trying to implement an economy which is based — not on contempt — but on aesthetics: on justice to all people and to each individual person? Will Americans trust politicians who honestly want America to be owned by all the people living in it? And are these the only leaders Americans will now trust? 

     The keenness Mr. Siegel describes in the following paragraphs is part of what it means to go after truth. It moves me enormously to say simply that he himself went after truth all the time. Everyone who knew him saw that. He loved truth, and he fought for it. That is why persons of the press and others resented him and Aesthetic Realism so virulently. Eli Siegel’s passionate love of truth and his unfailing good will were the greatest beauty I know in this world. They made him not only the most intelligent and kind person in history, but the person one could — yes — trust completely. Humanity of all the coming years will feel as I do: that to try to be fair to such a person and his great lifework is a privilege, and happiness. 
 

— Ellen Reiss, Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism

Keenness is related to depth. When we are deep, we are keen; because while keenness is associated with cruelty, it can be associated with love. When a person feels that another person sees into the first person, there can be a fear, but that cutting through the superfluity is also kindness. Where you look into something and you go deep and you are neat, you are being keen in the best sense. Further, if something affects you, goes deep, affects you neatly, and at the same time you are clear, you are also being affected keenly. Keenness, neatness, and depth are three very fine things, and these things are present in the universe. 

     The kindness in going deep has been expressed in a few lines from Wordsworth’s "Tintern Abbey": 

     Two things are happening, and they happen at one time: "The heavy and the weary weight /.../ Is lightened," and "We see into the life of things." So while keenness on the one hand is the destruction of superfluity, it is on the other a great kindness — because things want to be seen deeply, and whenever we see deeply, we have to cut through the surface.     

    
Click here to continue reading lecture.
Click here for previous page.