 Racism: Understanding the Cause and Solution
 Difference & Sameness: The Human Question
/ November 16, 2005
Editor Ellen Reiss writes: 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
Are We Proud of How We Are For & Against / May 5, 2004
The bad reason for being against something is: that thing, if justly seen, interferes with our ego, questions us in some way, threatens our sense of superiority—while through despising it/him/her/them, we feel important. This reason is what racism comes from: the feeling, if I can be against those people different from me, I'm Somebody! Behind all ugly againstness is contempt, which Mr. Siegel defined as “the addition to self through the lessening of something else.”
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Education: the "Having-to-Do-With-Other-Things" / September 8 , 2004
Includes the article "Learning vs. Prejudice!" by Barbara McClung.
I learned from Aesthetic Realism that prejudice does not begin with race, but with the desire in every person to have contempt, to “lessen...what is different from oneself as a means of self-increase as one sees it.” We can be prejudiced against anything—books, food, music, clothing, sports. This desire for contempt can come to include one student’s being fiercely against another, and insulting or hurting that student, simply because his or her skin color or accent is not the same as one’s own. ... more
Learning Can Succeed — and Racism Can End! / September 4, 2002
Includes statements "on the fact that Aesthetic Realism is the means to end racism truly at last. Arnold Perey, PhD, is an anthropologist and Aesthetic Realism consultant. His Columbia University doctoral dissertation (1973) is based on Aesthetic Realism. Monique Michael is a New York City teacher; and Allan Michael is a Maritime Captain and photographer. Jaime Torres, DPM, is Chief of Podiatry at Coler-Goldwater Memorial Hospital and on the advisory board of the National Hispanic Medical Association."...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..."
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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