 Love, Marriage, and Ethics
 What Opposes Love? / February 11, 1976
Eli Siegel writes: "The history of the world and the history of literature tell us that love has been opposed by hate and contempt. Since hate or its resemblance, anger, is uncomfortable, persons have often done a great deal to change hate or anger into contempt.... Yet anger, hate, contempt, grief interchange. What has occurred in the world tells us this; and, as I said, literature does also.
"The play in French literature that stands for the discomfort of love, the unsettlement of passion, is the Phèdre of Racine, presented first in 1677. An early critic, Donneau de Visé...said something of the play and the noted heroine of the play, Phèdre, which later years have not refuted. Donneau de Visé said of Phèdre: "she detests her passion." ... more
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
The Purpose a Woman Wants / July 10, 2002
The question which torments women now, even though a woman most often does not articulate it: How can I love a man and be loved, and yet be fully myself? This matter has not fared well because, for one thing, men haven’t wanted it to. We know that men, and that thing called society, for ever so many centuries did not permit woman to be all she could be. But what has not been seen is that a woman herself has had purposes which make for a profound schism in her, a feeling that she is a different person in love from the person who wants to express herself in the wide world.
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Eli Siegel Day in Baltimore / August 28, 2002
In this issue we publish statements presented on August 16 at the Dedication of the Eli Siegel Memorial in Druid Hill Park, Baltimore, Maryland. Mr. Siegel grew up in Baltimore. And that day, the hundredth anniversary of his birth, was proclaimed "Eli Siegel Day" in Baltimore by the city’s mayor, Martin O’Malley, and "Eli Siegel Day" in Maryland by the state’s governor, Parris N. Glendening. ... Published in this issue too are Aesthetic Realism consultants Margot Carpenter and Robert Murphy, about love; and the statement by Chaim Koppelman, designer and sculptor of the memorial plaque. ... more
Freedom—& Words, Nations, Love / September 20, 2006
We want to care for someone. We also want to be free. But because a person I'll call Tom does not think freedom is the same as seeing and feeling accurately what other things are—as he's affected by his wife, Dana, he feels he's losing his freedom. Dana makes the same mistake. One result is that each has a way of not listening to what the other is saying. This happens because a good deal of what a person sees as freedom is the ability to wipe out in one's mind what's other than oneself and to feel one is a world unto oneself, apart from and superior to everything else. That is the "freedom" Tom is going for as he thinks of something else while Dana talks to him. ... more
Can Sex & Integrity Go Together? / December 27, 2006
Today—through television, film, magazine articles, psychological counselors—we have an atmosphere in which people feel that they shouldn't be ashamed as to sex no matter what takes place, and that if they are, it's because they're prudes or unduly pious. There is a tremendous pretense of ease on the subject. Meanwhile, though people may not express it—though they may speak as though they're completely comfortable about body—a big uneasiness, a gnawing self-disapproval, goes on. Men and women feel as to sex: “This happened, and we both seemed for it very much. But why don't I like myself?”
Aesthetic Realism explains why, and what can have men and women respect themselves in relation to sex—and the answer is not narrow a bit. It's in the lesson printed here. And it's in the following distinction, stated by Mr. Siegel: “Sex...is always either for contempt or respect.” ... more
Everyone's Question: How Can I Like Myself? / January 24, 2007
The biggest question people have today is the question men and women had fifty years ago, a hundred, a thousand years ago: How can I like myself—finally like myself?! The therapies that have come and gone, the exhortations to "think positively," the reassurances from friends, have not enabled people to look good to themselves deeply. Nor have they brought clarity to the accompanying question: Why don't I like myself?
The answers to those biggest of questions, those questions closest to the life of everyone, are in Aesthetic Realism. And the article by Aesthetic Realism consultant Ernest DeFilippis, printed here, gives them, with illustrations from his own experience.... more
The Beauty of Art & the Pain about Love / March 7, 2007
Part of a paper by Aesthetic Realism consultant Devorah Tarrow. It is from a public seminar of last month, titled "Mistakes Women Make in Love—What Are They, & Is There an Answer?" This TRO, then, is an illustration of the fact that Aesthetic Realism is strict logic, philosophic logic, and is also up to one's most personal confusions and the hopes and griefs of social life right now. In both respects, Aesthetic Realism is great. ... 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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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. |
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| 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. As editor of TRO her commentaries are in every issue (see, e.g., "Nature, Romanticism, & Harry Potter"; "Clothing and Emotion"; and "Jobs, Discontent, and Beauty"). 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.
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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 Anne 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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AESTHETIC REALISM FOUNDATION