Aesthetic Realism

Some History

Aesthetic Realism was founded in 1941 and it has been taught continuously for more than six decades. For two decades it was promoted as a means by which men and women might change from homosexuality. “The Equality of Man” by founder Eli Siegel is the first publication about the Aesthetic Realism way of seeing people (Modern Quarterly vol. 1 no. 3, Dec. 1923). The poem “Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana” (1924) is also an early form of the Aesthetic Realism way of seeing the world. It embodies the idea, as the poet explains, that “the very self of a thing is its relations…[It] has meaning because it has to do with the whole universe: immeasurable and crowded reality” (1957). “Hot Afternoons” won the esteemed Nation magazine poetry prize in 1925 and the way of seeing that is in it was called by William Carlos Williams “a new track…The eyes back of it are new eyes…” (1971).

That way of seeing was the basis of Eli Siegel’s classes in poetry beginning in 1938. In them he discussed world poety as literary critic (he’d published numerous reviews in Scribner’s magazine by that date)--and he discussed lines of verse written by his poetry students, explaining the meaning of their poetry in relation to their lives and how they saw the world. Artist Chaim Koppelman wrote, “From these early Aesthetic Realism poetry classes I learned that poetry is a making one of opposites; that the formal structure of art and one’s most intimate feelings are related in a way I had never thought possible. I learned truth and imagination were closer than I had known. My work changed. I became more imaginative, freer in concept” (This Is the Way I See Aesthetic Realism, 1963, p. 3: New York). Other students have written, too, that as a result of these classes they began to see the world more freshly and fairly, and asked Siegel to teach, directly, the philosophy that made this new, aesthetic way of seeing the world possible. From these classes arose Aesthetic Realism lessons, in which the self is seen aesthetically; and from these lessons arose Aesthetic Realism consultations, taught by the faculty of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation. [1]

From the 1940s to the present people of diverse professions have studied Aesthetic Realism in classes, consultations, public seminars, and in other forms. Many have described how this education enabled them to see people in a kinder way than before and made them happier. See, for example, “Learn how marriage can succeed in a failed economy” by Barbara Allen, who wrote: “In Aesthetic Realism classes I learned about my own attitude to people....It was more important to me to have a man do what I wanted than to see what he felt or deserved. This attitude made me cold, hard, and unable to love anyone. I am so grateful that Aesthetic Realism broke through the ice in which I had encased myself!”

What Eli Siegel described in 1946 was continuing:

“It is hoped that Aesthetic Analysis [soon to be called Aesthetic Realism] will be seen for what it is: nothing less and nothing more. This method does things to people of a most discernible kind. It has helped to organize lives….In our method, the problem of problems, the major, constant, underlying, inevitable thing to organize, deal with sensibly, is: Self and World” (Self and World, pp. 85, 87).

Eli Siegel died in 1978. His death is described by Ellen Reiss, the Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism in “Always: Love of Reality” in The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known’’ (3 November 2004, issue no. 1626). Others have described it as well. [2], [3].

Meanwhile there are individuals who have objected to the new way of seeing the world and people that is in Aesthetic Realism. On the Aesthetic Realism Foundation website the major objection and its source is described as follows:

In the history of thought it has repeatedly happened that knowledge which brings new justice, accuracy, and beauty to the world has been met, not only with gratitude and love, but also with the resentment and anger of narrow, conceited people. So it was with the great work of persons as different as Galileo and Keats, Darwin and Spinoza and Martin Luther King. And so it has been too in the history of Aesthetic Realism. For example, for many years, persons of the press boycotted Mr. Siegel’s work. Aesthetic Realism makes for tremendous respect for the world and people, and therefore someone who feels entitled to have contempt for everything can become angry with it.

Meanwhile, history shows this about the people mentioned above —Galileo, Keats, Darwin, Spinoza, King: as years passed, those who opposed and viciously maligned them, came to be seen as disgraceful and ignorant. So it has been too in the history of Aesthetic Realism.

The press boycott of Aesthetic Realism is in process of change. In recent years, thousands of articles and letters about Aesthetic Realism and what it explains, many written by people who study and who teach it, have been published by newspapers nationwide and internationally. You may have read some of them. We have reprinted a number here (Aesthetic Realism in the News). We want you to know the knowledge and kindness we have seen firsthand.

Principles

Eli Siegel begins his Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism [1981] with this question:

"Is it true, as Aesthetic Realism said years ago, that man's deepest desire, his largest desire, is to like the world on an honest or accurate basis? And is it true, as Aesthetic Realism said later, that the desire to have contempt for the outside world and for people...is a continuous, unseen desire making for mental insufficiency?

"The large difference between Aesthetic Realism and other ways of seeing an individual is that Aesthetic Realism makes the attitude of an individual to the whole world the most critical thing in his life."

And Siegel stated these principles as the basis of Aesthetic Realism:

"1. The deepest desire of every person is to like the world on an honest or accurate basis.

"2. The greatest danger for a person is to have contempt for the world and what is in it .... Contempt can be defined as the lessening of what is different from oneself as a means of self-increase as one sees it.

"3. All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."

[References: The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, 5 October 2004, issue no. 1624] and Self and World, page 1.

Aesthetic Realism is the basis for scholarly work in both the arts and sciences. While its application to art has never been disputed, its application to science is, at present, predominantly in the social sciences--the study of the human self as such and in anthropology. One example of an Aesthetic Realism Foundation faculty-authored work is the Columbia University doctoral dissertation of anthropologist Arnold Perey sponsored by Margaret Mead, Oksapmin Society and World View in which he writes, for example,

It gradually became clear that Oksapmin culture is an aesthetic oneness of opposites. This perception, as ethnographic description, is in the first part of this dissertation as Oksapmin society and culture are presented.

The second part is a detailed analysis of Gwe Parish economics including the effect on children of inequalities of wealth among their fathers. Personal feeling and impersonal statistics are here.

Part three describes the anthropologist's change of orientation upon return from the field. It is the detailed theoretical basis for the fourth part. Part four is an analysis through opposites of Oksapmin culture.

In particular, the opposites recurrent in all phases of Oksapmin life, and central to explaining its aesthetic basis, are Self and World, For and Against, and Separation and Junction. These are among the opposites described by Eli Siegel as necessary to understanding the relation of world, art and self.

This is a scientific analysis of a tribal community and more generally is an approach to understanding culture as such. Further scientific work by Perey in peer-reviewed journals are available on his website http://www.perey-anthropology.net .

There is also the ethnomusicological presentation by Perey and Professor Edward Green at the University of Graz in Austria Aesthetic Realism: A new foundation for interdisciplinary musicology.

A major publication containing the Aesthetic Realism understanding of poetry and the arts, literature, national ethics, and the self, is The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, edited by Ellen Reiss, the Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism. Lectures and poetry by Eli Siegel together with editorial commentary by Reiss--often on current and literary matters are in The Right Of. (Also see the Eli Siegel Collection).

Papers describing the Siegel Theory of Opposites in relation to painting, world art, and art education, were given at the 31st World Congress of the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Social, and Cultural Organization. One focused on how the study of art can more effectively oppose prejudice: the paper by Marcia Rackow and Perey, later published in the Proceedings of InSEA, titled "Aesthetic Realism, Art, and Anthropology: Or, Justice to People." A second described how the Siegel Theory of Opposites delineates structure in common between art and science and was presented by Rosemary Plumstead and Donita Ellison at the New York State Art Teachers' Association, and InSEA, both.

The new anthology, Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism written by persons of diverse ethnicities explores the effectiveness of the Aesthetic Realism understanding of self in defeating racism.

The Relation of Structuralism to Aesthetic Realism

Some writers have noticed a resemblance between structuralism and Aesthetic Realism because both respect the dialectic process and see opposites as primal in our understanding of the world. A dialectic, writes musicologist Rose Rosengard Subotnick "enables one to grasp the two opposed priorities as simultaneously valid".

Aesthetic Realism sees the dialectic process as essentially aesthetic. Eli Siegel presented reality as having a dialectic structure, yes, but more fundamentally as having an aesthetic structure. That is why, he stated, the world--or reality--can be liked: it has a structure that is beautiful the way a painting or poem is beautiful. This differs from structuralism, which does not neccessarily accent the value--or beauty--of an object's structure, but the structure itself.

This brings us to another difference between structuralism and Aesthetic Realism. The opposites which, Siegel explained, are at the basis of reality are the metaphysical or ontological opposites: such as freedom and order, one and many, sameness and difference, matter and energy. These are qualities which are in reality as such (see for instance Aristotle's discussion of One and Many in his Metaphysics). How these opposites are present in every object, it has been pointed out, can be seen by considering the electron. An electron is both matter and energy, a particle and a wave--or substance (a thing of weight) and form (which is weightless). A sonnet is both substance and form (a Shakespearean sonnet about the Dark Lady has subject matter and sonnet form) -- see the similarity? The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle describes every instance of matter as both definite and indefinite (we can know position or momentum but not both). Monet's Waterlilies are both definite and indefinite--and beautifully so! We feel both opposites at once: hence the idea of dialectic. We see it as beautiful: hence the term aesthetic.

Siegel wrote in his preface to The Aesthetic Method in Self-Conflict(Definition Press, New York: 1946): "For a fair consideration of this publication, a person must put aside probable previous associations with 'aesthetics.' Were there a word as exact as aesthetics for the purpose, we would have been glad to use it. The nearest word, other than aesthetics, is dialectics."

Claude Lévi-Strauss by comparison--the best known of structuralists today--relies on such opposites as sky and water, succulent and dessicated, raw and cooked which are not ontological, along with such opposites as diversity and unity, order and disorder which are ontological; but the structuralist approach does not see it as necessary to differentiate between them. That is, Raw and cooked are not ontological the way disorder and order are; they are not fundamental or inescapable in the description of any reality--though we do use them to describe food as well as other things that we process, e.g.: "He cooked up a plan for revenge. But it was only a half-baked plan."

To quote from another Wikipedia entry: "Lévi-Strauss explained that opposites are at the basis of social structure and culture. In his early work he demonstrated that tribal kin groups were usually found in pairs, or in paired groups that both oppose one another and need one another. For example, in the Amazon basin, two different expanded families would build their houses in two facing semi-circles that together make up a big circle. He showed too that the congnitive maps, the ways early folk categorized animals, trees, and so on, were based on a series of oppositions. Later in his most popular work The Raw and the Cooked he described the widely dispersed folk tales of tribal South America as all related to one another through a series of transformations--as one opposite in tales here changes into another opposite in tales there. As the title implies, for instance, Raw becomes its opposite Cooked. These particular opposites (Raw/Cooked) are symbolic of human culture itself, in which, by means of thought and labor, raw materials become clothes, food, weapons, art, ideas. Culture, explained Lévi-Strauss, is a dialectic process: thesis, antithesis, synthesis."

While Aesthetic Realism has a resemblance to structuralism and other philosophic thought, and arises from the Western philosophic tradition, it also differs in this fundamental way: Eli Siegel stated that art, the self, and the sciences have in common a structure of fundamental opposites--opposites which make for beauty. This had not been stated elsewhere.

Criticisms / Objections

Several former students of Aesthetic Realism contend that the group which promotes its study (the Aesthetic Realism Foundation) is a cult. Michael Bluejay, whose family had discontinued its study of Aesthetic Realism when he was a teenager and calls himself a "former member" has created a website called Aesthetic Realism is a cult to promote this perspective.

One factor that has contributed to their perception that Aesthetic Realism is a cult has been that its supporters consider it the most important teaching, ever, and the founder Eli Siegel to be nearly immortal. One has described Siegel's Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism as the greatest book ever written, and others have said Siegel is the greatest man who ever lived. In [i]Aesthetic Realism and the Change from Homosexuality[/i] (ISBN 0910492344), Ellen Reiss, the current (2005) Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism says:

"Eli Siegel, founder of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism, is, in my careful opinion and that of a growing number of people, the greatest human being ever to live. That means the person fairest to the world and most useful to it. This means the person kindest, most learned, most ethical, most imaginative, and most desirous of learning; the greatest fighter against ugliness in people, the greatest encourager of beauty; the person at once most unified and diverse, most serious and humorous, powerful and subtle, magnificent and democratic."

For many years the students and teachers of Aesthetic Realism wore buttons saying "Victim of the Press", because they objected that newspapers had not reported on the principles or findings of Aesthetic Realism, despite, they said, the considerable importance of these principles to aesthetics, the social sciences, and people's lives. Critics contend that the Aesthetic Realists' claim of a press boycott is a paranoid feeling of persecution, typical of cults. In any event, Aesthetic Realists stopped wearing the buttons in the mid-1990s.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Foundation claimed it had a "cure" for homosexuality: Study Aesthetic Realism, and homosexual feelings would go away. It promoted this view in two books as well as newspaper advertisements with the headline "We Have Changed from Homosexuality," with supposedly formerly gays and lesbians signing their names and asking to be interviewed by the press. Over the years many of these success stories decided they were really gay after all and left the group. The Aesthetic Realism Foundation then had to keep editing and re-releasing their first book on the topic, [i]The H Persuasion[/i] (ISBN 091049214X) to omit the names of those who had fallen off the wagon. By 1986 they had to come out with a whole new book, profiling completely different people.

The Foundation now claims that it never promoted a cure for homosexuality. [Not true. Simply the word cure is not used, although persons did change--isn't the following statement clear enough?] On its site Countering the Lies it says:

Michael Bluejay writes: "AR says that homosexuality is a mental illness" and "AR professed to have the 'cure' for homosexuality." This is completely untrue.... Similarly, Aesthetic Realism never saw homosexuality as something to "cure," and--whether through Mr. Siegel or any Aesthetic Realism consultant, whether in writing or in speech--Aesthetic Realism never presented itself as having a "cure."

Critics contend that the prominent newspaper ads the Foundation took out as well as its two books on the subject suggest otherwise.

Beginning in 1990 the Foundation has stated--to quote the current update of their Statement:

“It is a fact that men and women have changed from homosexuality through study of Aesthetic Realism. Meanwhile, as is well known, there is now intense anger in America on the subject of homosexuality and how it is seen. Since this subject is by no means central to Aesthetic Realism, and since the Aesthetic Realism Foundation has not wanted to be involved in that atmosphere of anger, in 1990 the Foundation discontinued its public presentation of the fact that through Aesthetic Realism people have changed from homosexuality, and consultations to change from homosexuality are not being given. That is because we do not want this matter, which is certainly not fundamental to Aesthetic Realism, to be used to obscure what Aesthetic Realism truly is: education of the largest, most cultural kind.

“Aesthetic Realism is for full, equal civil rights for everyone.” [4]

The Foundation has rebutted the charges of being a cult on its website Countering the Lies stating that the critics have deliberately exaggerated and have even lied outright. They begin: "The purpose of this website is to counter lies about Aesthetic Realism, which have been put forth on the Internet by a few individuals." They contend that their critics simply seek self-importance, for example:

Why is he doing this? Feeling himself to be a failure in his own life, and joining with others also seeking revenge for essentially the same reason—notably Adam Mali—“Michael Bluejay” seeks the triumph of making himself important by looking down upon others. He is attempting to assuage his feeling of unimportance by attacking the persons and philosophy he very well realizes best represent truth and beauty. As most people know, jealousy and revenge are great motivators of despicable machinations. His motive is simply that: building oneself up through trying to tear down something else—through whatever means. It is the motive of the attacks on John Keats, on Darwin, on Galileo Galilei, on Socrates—on all those persons and ideas that have surprised and/or outraged “authorities”, self appointed guardians of truth and beauty. [5]

The writers include the educators E. Green, H. Mauro, B. Allen, & D. Berger in the field of music; science educators C. Balchin and R. Plumstead; and art educator D. Ellison. United Methodist Minister Rev. Wayne J. Plumstead has written on the value to religion of the way Aesthetic Realism, a secular philosophy, understands the self (see Circuit Rider, national journal of the United Methodist Church) and has an essay too in Friends of Aesthetic Realism--Countering the Lies.

References

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. (1)The Logic of Totemic Classifications; (2)Systems of Transformations; (3)Categories, Elements, Species, Numbers. The Savage Mind. University of Chicago Press, 1966.
Breslin, J.E.B., ed. Something to Say. New York: New Directions, 1985.
Siegel, Eli. Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism. New York: Definition Press, 1981.
______. Hail, American Development. Poems. New York: Definition Press, 1968.
______. Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montanta: Poems. New York: Definition Press, 1958.
Baird, Martha and Reiss, Ellen, eds. The Williams-Siegel Documentary. Including Williams' Poetry Talked about by Eli Siegel, and William Carlos Williams Present and Talking: 1952. New York: Definition Press, 1970.
Kranz, Sheldon, ed. The H Persuasion; How Persons Have Permanently Changed From Homosexuality Through the Study of Aesthetic Realism With Eli Siegel. New York: Definition Press, 1971. ISBN 03624331

External Links: Pro

External Links: Con

"Aesthetic Realism is a Cult"
- "Countering the Lies" - response to the above
“Monumental Man--The controversial legacy of poet philosopher Eli Siegel,” Melissa Goldman, reporting in Jewish Times, August 22, 2003.
- Response to the above