The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known

With this issue we conclude our serialization of It Weakens, the lecture Eli Siegel gave on January 15, 1971. It is one of his great, definitive Goodbye Profit System talks. In them, and in issues of this periodical, he did what no other economist or historian has done: he explained what has happened these years to the American and world economy, and why there is so much economic anguish in people’s lives today….

The economics of Aesthetic Realism is inseparable from its philosophy, from its seeing of what the world as such is. Mr. Siegel is speaking about Emerson’s view that deeply the world is good. A question arising from that view, which Emerson did not ask but Aesthetic Realism does, is whether an economy not in keeping with the nature of the world has something basically amiss and inefficient in it. This is a world to be known, valued accurately, cared for critically—not manipulated, grabbed, seen as a field in which to take advantage of one’s fellow humans....

There is a sonnet by Matthew Arnold that presents some of the pain profit economics has inflicted on people. And Arnold says there is a different way people need to see people. He says it in the tight 14-line structure a sonnet has, and with true poetic music. His “West London,” of 1867, begins…   more

The Victory of Good Will
December 21, 2011
Issue #1812

     It Weakens, the 1971 lecture we are serializing, is one of the Goodbye Profit System talks that Eli Siegel gave beginning in 1970. In these he showed that economics driven by the profit motive—the looking on human beings, their needs, their labor, in terms of how much money one can extract from them—had reached the point at which it could no longer succeed. It might grind on for some years. But the contempt of seeing reality, with its grandeur, and people, with all their feelings and depths and dignity, as existing for one’s private profit, would never flourish again. For an economy to succeed, that ugly motive has to be replaced by something that is new yet has been demanded in various ways throughout the centuries: economics has to be based on ethics, on that aesthetic oneness of justice to other people and to oneself which Mr. Siegel described as good will.

     The failure of the profit way, which he spoke of four decades ago, is what we are experiencing now. He documented his explanation with material from history, literature, economic thought, human life, and the news of the moment. At the point we’ve reached in It Weakens, Mr. Siegel is discussing passages of an essay by Emerson. It’s included in a book he used in several lectures, The American Transcendentalists, which contains work by Thoreau, Emerson, William Henry Channing, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, and more. Through their writing, we can see that the objection to profit economics is as American as Plymouth Rock, and was voiced by some of our most important men and women of letters.   more

Europe, America, & the Clamor for Good Will!
December 7, 2011
Issue #1811

We continue to serialize It Weakens, the lecture Eli Siegel gave on January 15, 1971. In his Goodbye Profit System talks of the 1970s Mr. Siegel explained that, after many centuries, economics based on the profit motive—on seeing people in terms of how much money can be made from them—had finally failed. The profit way would never work efficiently again, though it might be made to stagger on awhile with increasing pain to humanity. The profit system, he showed, had become an irreparable failure because of the contempt for people on which it is based. I quote again this statement, in which he describes exactly, ringingly, and kindly what is happening today on all the continents:

"There will be no economic recovery in the world until economics itself, the making of money, the having of jobs, becomes ethical; is based on good will rather than on the ill will which has been predominant for centuries."

I have commented often on economic matters in America. But let us take the trouble now going on in the European Union....The dire warnings about the need for “sacrifice”—both in Europe and here—are part of an effort to make the profit system seem inevitable: to make it seem that economics based on anything other than using earth and humanity for some individuals’ private aggrandizement is unthinkable. And therefore, senior citizens, robbed of pensions, must go hungry to save the profit system. Children must go without medical care and with insufficient clothing and food to save it. Yet people feel increasingly that another basis for an economy is not unthinkable. And such a basis is not Marxism, etc. The needed basis is ethics.  more

The Right Of is edited by Ellen Reiss, Aesthetic Realism Chairman of Educaton, who is author of its commentaries.

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.
	Art: "Aesthetic Realism sees the purpose of art as, from the beginning, the liking of the world more..."	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 online

Selected Resources online

The most comprehensive source of information about Aesthetic Realism is the website of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation—and the sites connected to it, including this one. You can start, for instance, at the Foundation's home page. Then, go on to biographical information about Eli Siegel, who founded Aesthetic Realism in 1941. You will see how the education he began teaching in those years continues now in Aesthetic Realism consultations and in public dramatic presentations and seminars at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation—as well as in the Foundation's Outreach Programs for seniors, young people, libraries, teachers. Meanwhile in the schools of New York, the dramatically effective Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method has enabled students to learn, to love learning, and to pass standardized examinations for three decades. And artists since 1955 have exhibited at the Terrain Gallery for which many have written commentaries (including on their own works), based on the philosophic principles of Aesthetic Realism. You can read about Ellen Reiss, the Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism online, as well as about every person on the faculty of the Foundation. And In the Aesthetic Realism Online Library, you'll find the largest single repositary of reviews, articles in the press, lectures, poetry; and The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known. In 2002, Eli Siegel' s centenary, the Governor of Maryland and the Mayor of Baltimore, the city where he grew up, wrote on the meaning to America of Aesthetic Realism and its founder. So did the former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, in the U.S. Congressional Record. • Subscribe to TRO • Contact Us

People in America's diverse professions—the humanities, the arts, education, the social sciences, medicine, labor—have written on the value of Aesthetic Realism. They describe the way Aesthetic Realism teaches people how to understand themselves more accurately; how the ability to be just to other people is enhanced; how one's professional attainments are augmented. Language arts teacher Leila Rosen, for example, writes on the Aesthetic Realism teaching method. Anthropologist Arnold Perey writes on the way Aesthetic Realism opposes prejudice and improves international understanding. And there are many others. Historically, new knowledge has often been met unjustly. This was true about the new, innovative thought of Louis Pasteur and John Keats, Beethoven and William Lloyd Garrison, Jonas Salk and Isaac Newton. And it has been true about Aesthetic Realism. Documenting and opposing this, the website "Friends of Aesthetic Realism — Countering the Lies," written by more than 60 individuals, refutes the falsehoods of the few persons who have attacked Aesthetic Realism and lets the facts speak for themselves. People who want to express their opinion of Aesthetic Realism, and have the knowledge to back it up, have created blogs and websites and have written numerous articles. See, for example, composer and educator Edward Green; essayist Lynette Abel; photographer Len Bernstein; teachers Ann Richards, Christopher Balchin, and Alan Shapiro. Others are listed in "What People Are Saying.". The education of Aesthetic Realism enables a person to understand oneself more exactly than has been possible before, and to like the world honestly, authentically.

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