 Current Issues of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known
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Profits & Feeling in America
July 21, 2010
Issue #1775
We are proud to publish, from notes taken at the time, the lecture Eli Siegel gave on April 17, 1947, at Steinway Hall. In The Unconscious of America, he explains what people now, six decades later, need to know: what is the biggest question in the life of each of us, and also the biggest question America as nation needs to answer.... “The unconscious” is not talked about as much as it used to be. In 1947, when this lecture was given, the Freudian picture of the unconscious was everywhere one turned....
Meanwhile, today most people would grant that there are things in them they don’t know, that they’re affected in ways they don’t understand. In the 1940s, Mr. Siegel gave this description of the unconscious—so clear, and so different from the murky cauldron Freud depicted: “The unconscious is, most deeply, what we want which we don’t know we want” (Self and World, p.112)....
Weeks ago I wrote about the explosion and ensuing oil spill off Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s clear to millions of Americans that this spill, which is really a continuous gushing, was caused by the profit motive. Millions of people are conscious that the company, BP, did not take the needed precautions, and for only one reason: to do so would have cut into BP’s profits, which mattered much more to it than people’s lives. There is fury in America about this fact. more
Your Self: A Philosophic Drama
July 7, 2010
Issue #1774
In this issue we publish the second half of Aesthetic Realism Doesn’t Mind Being Philosophic, the great lecture Eli Siegel gave on September 19, 1946, at Steinway Hall. With grace and logic, he does something enormous. He describes what the human self is—the self that is our own, so particular to each of us, that walks down the street, goes into restaurants, speaks, dreams, can feel delighted and also awful.
He shows, in keeping with the lecture’s title, that the one way to understand our self is philosophically—what we are is aesthetic, described by this principle: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”... Aesthetic Realism explains what nothing else does: there is a fight going on in every person between the desire to be affected resoundingly, deeply, multitudinously, indeed unlimitedly, by the world—and the desire to be unmoved, affected by nothing but ourselves. more
Our Selves Are Philosophic
June 23, 2010
Issue #1773
We’re honored to publish here the first half of Aesthetic Realism Doesn’t Mind Being Philosophic, from the lecture series Eli Siegel gave in 1946-7 at Steinway Hall.
I love this talk, with its grace, clarity, and definitive explanation of what the self—so specific to each of us—really is. It’s based on the Aesthetic Realism principle “The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.” And what Mr. Siegel shows is what people now, six decades later, want achingly to know. The self of everyone—with our hopes, worries, confusions, triumphs, defeats, angers, mistakes—is philosophic, because it’s composed the way reality itself is composed: of opposites....
As a prelude to this talk, I’ll comment on a particular trouble the self can have. My purpose is to illustrate the fact that the one way we’ll ever really understand ourselves, and therefore be ourselves, see and feel as we hope to, is through the explanation Mr. Siegel is presenting. more
Pretense, Love, & an Oil Spill
June 9, 2010
Issue #1772
In this issue we publish, based on notes taken at the time, the second half of the 1947 lecture Pretense and Self-Conflict, by Eli Siegel. What he explains in this section is the means to understand so much of the daily pain of people: the nagging, often quiet, sometimes fierce feeling that what I’m doing doesn’t fully represent me and I don’t know what would, but there’s something false and empty in my life.
The basis of what Mr. Siegel explains is 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.” If we don’t see that both opposites—for example, logic and emotion—stand for us, and if we’re not trying to make them one, we’ll inevitably be pretending. That’s because we’ll sometimes act as though one opposite represents us, and sometimes another—while neither in itself does....
Published here too is something very much in keeping with Mr. Siegel’s lecture: part of a paper presented recently by Aesthetic Realism consultant Bennett Cooperman at a seminar titled “How Can a Man Be Confident about Love?”
At this time, America is much affected by the explosion of and massive spill from a BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion immediately killed 11 people. The resulting spill is in process of ruining the livelihoods of thousands and ending the lives of other creatures that depend on the habitat into which oil is now pouring. The matter of pretense is in this catastrophe importantly—and not just the overt pretense of the company’s dissembling about what it did and didn’t do, and about how much oil is actually gushing into the gulf waters every day. more
The Right Of is edited by Ellen Reiss, Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism, who is author of its commentaries.
Note: The issues of TRO that include the lectures Eli Siegel gave in 1946 and 1947 in Steinway Hall, New York City, beginning with Issue 1735, are archived on the Aesthetic Realism & Mind page, as they are published.
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. |
| 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.
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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 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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