 Current Issues of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known
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It is so urgent to see the earthquake disaster in Haiti in a true and kind way, that we are posting this issue of TRO, online, in advance.
Everyday Worry & an Earthquake
February 3, 2010
Issue #1763
We publish here, from notes taken at the time, the first half of the 1947 lecture Aesthetics and Worry,
by Eli Siegel. It is one in a series that he gave at Steinway Hall early in the history of Aesthetic Realism. And it explains definitively a tormenting yet everyday matter: the inaccurate worrying that people find themselves driven to engage in.
Meanwhile, this issue of TRO is being prepared days after the earthquake in Haiti—at a time when so much
true worry is taking place, along with human anguish
and agony on a gigantic scale. We are reprinting here,
from Eli Siegel’s book Hail, American Development,
his translation titled “Some Lines from Voltaire’s Poem
on the Disaster at Lisbon.” The poem is about the
Lisbon earthquake of 1755. more
Snobbishness: What It Is & What’s Against It
January 20, 2010
Issue #1762
Snobbishness and Self-Conflict is a great lecture that Eli Siegel gave in March 1947, at Steinway Hall. We’re proud to publish it here, based on notes taken at the time. Snobbishness is something people resent (“What an awful snob she is!”), yet also envy (“I wish I were in that set”—with the implication “and could look down on everyone the way they do”). Mr. Siegel explains that we’re all more snobbish than we know. He shows the ubiquity of snobbishness. And he has humor about it. But also, not long after the end of World War II, he is showing that snobbishness is related to Nazism: a way of seeing that “nice” people have every day is related to the fascism that enslaved and brutalized so much of Europe.
In this lecture Mr. Siegel calls snobbishness “the elegant phase of contempt.” He is the philosopher who has made clear that contempt, “the addition to self through the lessening of something else,” is that in us which weakens our minds, though we can think we’re smart to have it. Aesthetic Realism explains this tremendous thing: snobbishness and mental depression always go together. more
The Two Kinds of Pleasure—& Tiger Woods
January 6, 2010
Issue #1761
To begin this new decade we publish the lecture Pleasure and Self-Conflict, by Eli Siegel. He gave it 63 years ago, and it explains what people now—in living rooms and at worksites, in schools and kitchens, at social gatherings and in halls of government and in bedrooms—most need to know. It is one of the lectures in his Steinway Hall series (1946-7). And what we print is based on notes that were taken at the time....
Aesthetic Realism is the philosophy that explains that there are two kinds of pleasure: the pleasure of contempt for the world, and the pleasure of respect. The first, contempt, is the feeling we’re more because we can see what’s not ourselves as less; and it is the most hurtful thing in the human self. This pleasure can be quietly ordinary. It can be a certain relish, a smug satisfaction, in telling ourselves someone “is an idiot.” But the pleasure of contempt is also the pleasure a white woman of Alabama had in 1860 ordering a black woman around—and feeling she was far superior to this slave and had the right to own her.
A fight between the two kinds of pleasure goes on within every one of us. It is the central matter in our lives.... The revelations about Tiger Woods—presented usually with ill will by the media—have puzzled, disappointed, and, unfortunately, titillated people. But what impelled this athlete, so revered and apparently upstanding, to have multitudinous extramarital affairs? more
Jobs for Usefulness—Not Profit
December 23, 2009
Issue #1760
Mental Conflict and Jobs, of February 1947, is one in a series of lectures that Eli Siegel gave at Steinway Hall, and, based on notes taken at the time, we publish it here. Various terms in this early Aesthetic Realism talk, like “mental conflict” and “the unconscious,” were much in use then, and the term “nervousness” took in more than it does now. But I think it is clear that the human mind of all time and our time is being understood at last, and greatly.
As to jobs: in 1947 the state of the US economy was very different from now. It seemed to be flourishing. Unions were increasingly powerful and therefore more and more people were making better and better wages. Today a huge 10 percent of our population is unemployed—over 15 million men and women. And that government figure does not include the millions of so-called “discouraged workers”—people who have stopped even looking for work. Yet what Mr. Siegel is explaining in 1947 is not only relevant and true today—it’s blazingly needed; it is, in its kindness and clarity, an emergency. more
Aesthetics; or, How Not to Be Depressed
December 9, 2009
Issue #1759
It is an honor to publish The Philosophy of Depression, by Eli Siegel. He gave this lecture on January 2, 1947, at New York’s Steinway Hall, and our text is notes of Martha Baird, taken at the time.
Speaking nearly 63 years ago, Mr. Siegel is presenting what psychiatry both then and now has not understood. For lack of this knowledge, millions of people have endured misery. And they’ve been subjected to shock treatments (then), and numbing and agitating drugs (now). They were told then that their feeling low came from repressed sexual desire. And they’re told now, with equal wrongness, that their depression is biochemically caused.
In the 1947 lecture Mr. Siegel explains, with clarity and vivid examples, what must be seen for depression to be understood: There is a desire in everyone to find what’s not oneself inferior, dull, cruel—because in doing so we feel that we are superior and special. This desire is contempt, and Aesthetic Realism shows it to be the most hurtful thing in the human self. It is the cause, for instance, of racism. And it simmers, thrusts, mingles with other desires in everyday life. more
The Right Of is edited by Ellen Reiss, Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism, who is author of its commentaries.
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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AESTHETIC REALISM FOUNDATION