The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known

National and International Ethics: The Study

War versus Respect / January 5, 2011

Here is the conclusion of Contempt & World War I, the lecture Eli Siegel gave on November 28, 1975. He has been using four texts, very different from each other but all concerned with the First World War: Vachel Lindsay's 1914 poem “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight”; Woodrow Wilson's 1917 war address to Congress; Sigmund Freud's 1915 “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death”; and an account by German historian Hermann Pinnow. Through them Mr. Siegel illustrates that which he would state in writing six months later, in issue 165 of this journal:

It is necessary to see that while the contempt which is in every one of us may make ordinary life more painful than it should be, this contempt is also the main cause of wars. It was contempt that made for the trenches of France in 1915....

It is clear that a person who has identified the fundamental cause of war has accomplished something great. Eli Siegel has done this. It is one of the accomplishments of Aesthetic Realism. more

There Are Self, Truth, & War / December 22, 2010

We are serializing the lecture that Eli Siegel gave on November 28, 1975: Contempt & World War I. Definitive and scholarly, it also has informality, a great ease, and humor.

There are many valuable studies of Europe in 1914, detailing the resentments and rivalries among its nations. But it is Eli Siegel who has explained the fundamental reason young men of England and Germany (for instance) were sent to kill each other, and were so often eager to don a uniform and do so.

Aesthetic Realism has identified that in the human self from which all cruelty comes—including the cruelty that is war. This ugly thing is contempt: the feeling we are more through lessening what’s not ourselves. It is very ordinary. It is present in all of us. And the big fight in each of our lives is between our desire for contempt and our deepest desire: to be truly ourselves, expressed and original, through being just to what’s different from us.   more

Freud, Debs, & the Cause of War  / December 8, 2010

Here is part 3 of Contempt & World War I, a 1975 lecture by Eli Siegel. One of the huge, terrible mysteries these many centuries has been What is the cause of war? Why have people of one nation, or clan, or tribe, felt driven to kill those of another? Why have “nice” young men (and later, women too) been so ready to end the lives of people much like themselves who happen to be of another country; and why have they gotten a satisfaction in humiliating and tormenting that “enemy”?

Eli Siegel is the philosopher and historian who has explained at last the cause of war. It is contempt: the desire—fierce yet also quiet and ever so ordinary—to make oneself more through seeing what’s not oneself as less. Within every person, contempt is fighting with another desire: to care for ourselves, be ourselves, through being just to the world different from ourselves....

We include in this issue two poems by Eli Siegel. In 1925, after winning the Nation poetry prize for his “Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana,” he began to write as a commentator for the Baltimore American. That spring, Baltimore opened a Memorial Hall honoring soldiers who had died in World War I, and the April 5, 1925 issue of the paper contains “War Is Remembered”: four poems by Eli Siegel, each written from the point of view of a different person visiting the hall. We reprint here poems 1 and 4....In the first, a mother speaks; in the fourth, a man who had fought in France and now cannot find work. more

We continue to serialize Contempt & World War I, a lecture Eli Siegel gave in November 1975. It is about the fundamental cause of war. This cause, he explained, is contempt: the feeling, had by everyone, that we are more if we can lessen what’s not ourselves. Mr. Siegel identified contempt, in all its ordinariness, as the hurtful principle in the human self. It is behind all cruelty. And while having contempt can make a person feel temporarily important, even mighty, it is the thing that makes us pervasively ashamed, depressed, agitated, lonely—because it’s against the deepest desire we have: to express ourselves through being beautifully just to the outside world.

There is in this landmark lecture a leisureliness, and also humor, as Mr. Siegel looks at his subject. Meanwhile, something of the utmost magnitude and urgency is being presented. He intermingles various texts, which look at the First World War from different angles. He began with Vachel Lindsay’s poem “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight in Springfield, Illinois,” and his discussion of it is in our last issue, TRO 1783. Next, he speaks about Woodrow Wilson’s 1917 request for a congressional declaration of war, then about a 1915 essay of Freud, then a passage by a German historian, and then he goes back to Wilson and to Freud again. Through that almost symphonic intermingling, we have a sense of the huge, horrified, international puzzlement: how did all this killing across Europe come to be?... more

Contempt, War, & the Self of Everyone / November 10, 2010

We begin to serialize the 1975 lecture Contempt & World War I, by Eli Siegel. He is the philosopher and historian to explain that the principal, underlying cause of war is contempt….Six months after [this] lecture…, Mr. Siegel wrote the historic essay “What Caused the Wars” for issue 165 of this journal. It begins with the following sentences, beautiful in their prose, great in their comprehension:

It is necessary to see that while the contempt which is in every one of us may make ordinary life more painful than it should be, this contempt is also the main cause of wars. It was contempt that made for the trenches of France in 1915; it was contempt which made for the labor camps of the Second World War. It was contempt which made for that awful mode of retaliation called Nazism.

[In the commentary, Ellen Reiss discusses how contempt is present in “the earliest writing about war in the western world: Homer’s Iliad,” and in the Spanish Civil War which “was about how the earth of Spain, the wealth of Spain, should be owned.”] ... more

What Caused the Wars / May 26, 1976 (Reprinted 2006)

It is necessary to see that while the contempt which is in every one of us may make ordinary life more painful than it should be, this contempt is also the main cause of wars. It was contempt that made for the trenches of France in 1915; it was contempt which made for the labor camps of the Second World War. It was contempt which made for that awful mode of retaliation called Nazism. Contempt has made Christians and Mohammedans fight daily, or want to fight daily, in Lebanon. Contempt causes terror in the Middle East. Contempt makes Bolivia a perilous place in which to live. In the unconscious, dear unknown friends, it is the other person who will have accomplished contempt for you unless you have first contempt for him.... more

The Self, Shelley, & What People Deserve / July 27, 2005

We are serializing the 1966 lecture Psychiatric Terms and Shelley, Byron, Keats, by Eli Siegel.... Th[is] stanza [from the poem "Song to the Men of England"(1818)] by Shelley is about the biggest social and economic question today. That question is: To whom should the world and its wealth belong? Shelley was passionate on the subject: the earth, he felt, should belong to everyone living on it. The idea that some few people owned the land of England, and that other people who should rightly own it too had to work for those few persons and provide wealth for them, Shelley despised. That idea is, in fact, contempt, and has the disproportion which, in another field, is insanity....more

What Interferes with Justice  / December 17, 2003

We are serializing a work of philosophic, historic, and immediate importance: Eli Siegel’s 1968 lecture We Are Unrepresented. Quoting John Stuart Mill, Aristotle, and articles from current newspapers, he describes what that tremendous, needed thing, representation, is.

In the present section, he comments on an instance of horrible misrepresentation in judicial history: the ordeal of Sacco and Vanzetti, from their arrest in 1920 to their execution seven years later. There were protests and appeals for justice by persons of thought throughout the civilized world .... more

What Representation Means  / December 10, 2003

Here is part four of the historic 1968 lecture We Are Unrepresented, by Eli Siegel. In this section he comments on the "black power" movement which was gaining strength then, and on its importance in showing what representation means.

We also print part of a paper by Steve Weiner from an Aesthetic Realism public seminar of last month. Mr. Weiner is a computer specialist for the New York City Department of Education and a union official; and the title of the seminar was "The Mix-up in Men about Coldness and Warmth." .... more

The Need to See Your Real Feeling  / February 20, 2002

A recent occurrence, important as history, stands also for a tremendous need in the life of everyone. It is the statement by Israeli soldiers that they will not take part in their army’s activities in Gaza and the West Bank. [Washington Post, January 29, 2002] ... more

What Is Loyalty to America?  / January 16, 2002

What it means to love America, really to love America, is an urgent matter. I have written on it recently and continue to, because Aesthetic Realism explains that love for country is a matter of ethics and aesthetics — in keeping with this Aesthetic Realism principle: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." The great 1968 lecture we are serializing has that principle at its basis....We need to give to America the justice which both science and art give. And so I am going to comment on a statement which has been felt to stand for American patriotism: the Pledge of Allegiance, recited in the classrooms of the land and at other gatherings of Americans. ... more

The Urgent Beauty of Our Constitution / November 28, 2001

"At this time of worry in America, it is urgent that we be clear about what America’s government fundamentally is, what makes the structure of that government beautiful and right, respectful of people’s lives — of our lives. There has been, of course, terrific injustice in America; but the governmental structure of this land, outlined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, is just and has made the countering of injustice possible."... more

The Real American Patriotism / October 3, 2001

"Patriotism is like love, and is a kind of love. Just as we need to see what real love is, we need to see what real patriotism is — and to have it, and not some false thing calling itself patriotism. People have given each other agony because what they went after and called "love" was not that but something really opposed to love."...more

When We Feel Hurt; or, Arabs and Jews  / November 1, 2000

Art, War, and the Desire to Know / April 28, 1999 

"This issue is about art, war, and the desire to know — about the fact that it is urgent for people to want to know."....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.
	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. 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. • 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.