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 * This article refers to the philosophy founded by Eli Siegel in 1941 called "Aesthetic Realism". See aesthetics for the general subject; realism in the arts for applications by artistic genre; and the realism disambiguation page for other uses of the term.

[Lead Summary: Aesthetic Realism is the philosophy founded by the American poet and critic Eli Siegel in 1941. Its primary principles are: "One. The deepest desire of every person is to like the world on an honest or accurate basis. Two. 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. Three. All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." (cite TRO).]

Philosophy
Aesthetic Realism is based on the idea that reality, or the world, has a structure that is beautiful. Eli Siegel identified beauty as the making one, or unity, of opposites. In Siegel’s critical theory of art, what makes a work of art beautiful is a guide for what can make a good life. A successful novel, for example, composes opposites that people are trying to put together: oneness and manyness, intensity and calm, sameness and change. His studies led him to conclude that any successful work of art or music combines essential dualities. In the philosophy of Aesthetic Realism, Siegel developed this concept, writing that the arts and sciences all give evidence that reality has an aesthetic nature. He described the world as having a construction like art: it too, is composed of opposites. In Siegel's eyes, freedom at one with order could be seen in an electron, a tree, or the solar system. Siegel reasoned, "If...the structure of the world corresponds to the structure [of art], that much the world may be beautiful in the deepest sense of the word; and therefore can be liked."

This idea led to the primary concept of Aesthetic Realism, that the world "can be liked honestly." Further, a core teaching of Aesthetic Realism is that it is “every person's deepest desire to like the world on an honest or accurate basis.”

But Siegel recognized another competing desire which drives humans away from such an appreciation—the desire to have contempt for the world and what is in it, in order to make oneself feel more important. Siegel argued that when a person seeks self-esteem through contempt—"the addition to self through the lessening of something else"—he or she is unjust to people and things. Contempt, the philosophy maintains, may seem like a triumph, but ultimately results in self-dislike and mental distress, and lessens the capacity of one's mind to perceive and feel in the fullest manner. Siegel held that, in the extreme, contempt causes insanity.

Aesthetic Realism attests that one’s attitude to the world governs how all of life's components are seen: a friend, a spouse, a lover, a book, food, people of another skin tone. Accordingly, Aesthetic Realism argues, individuals have an ethical obligation to give full value to things and people, not devalue them in order to make oneself seem more important. Aesthetic Realism states that the conscious intention to be fair to the world and people is not only an ethical obligation, but the means of liking oneself.

The philosophy identifies contempt as the underlying cause of broader social problems as well: societal evils like racism and war arise from contempt for “human beings placed differently from ourselves” in terms of race, economic status, or nationality. Siegel stated that for centuries ill will has been the predominant purpose in humanity’s economic activities. The philosophy asserts that humanity cannot overcome its biggest problems until people cease to feel that “the world’s failure or the failure of a[nother] person enhances one’s own life.” Siegel stated that until good will rather than contempt is at the center of economics and in the thoughts of people, “civilization has yet to begin.”

Poetry and Aesthetic Realism
Eli Siegel stated that ideas central to the philosophy of Aesthetic Realism were implicitly present in “Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana,” the poem that brought him widespread fame when it was awarded The Nation's esteemed poetry prize in 1925. The philosophic principle that individuality is relation, “that the very self of a thing is its relations, its having-to-do-with other things” is in this poem. It begins with a hot, quiet afternoon in Montana and travels through time and space, showing that things usually thought of as separate and unrelated “have a great deal to do with each other.” These are lines near the end of the poem:


 * Hot afternoons are real; afternoons are; places, things, thoughts, feelings are; poetry is;


 * The world is waiting to be known; Earth, what it has in it! The past is in it;


 * All words, feelings, movements, words, bodies, clothes, girls, trees, stones, things of beauty,


 * books, desires are in it; and all are to be known;


 * Afternoons have to do with the whole world;…

The search for that which connects all branches of knowledge led Siegel to discover a key concept of Aesthetic Realism: “The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.” In Aesthetic Realism classes, he criticized the “intricate tepidity” of T. S. Eliot, whom he declared was “not a poet” and the widely accepted Freudian view of art as sublimation. Aesthetic Realism classes were scholarly and demonstrated that poetry was related to the problems of everyday life. The viewpoint of Aesthetic Realism is that “what makes a good poem is like what can make a good life.”

Siegel defined poetry as “the oneness of the permanent opposites in reality as seen by an individual.” In Aesthetic Realism classes he explained that the greatest desire of a person is to put together opposites, as, in a good poem, “emotion changes into logic: there is no rift between the two.” He maintained that music distinguishes true poetry, whatever the language, period or style; the music of a poem shows the poet has honestly perceived opposites as one, and sincerely united personal feelings with the impersonal structure of the world. “Poetry,” he wrote, “arises out of a like of the world so intense and wide that of itself, it is musical.” Therefore, Aesthetic Realism teaches, even a poem that in substance seems to condemn the world, in its technique and music is praising the world, seeing it truly.

In thousands of Aesthetic Realism lectures, Siegel demonstrated the centrality of poetry to every aspect of life, including "Poetry and Anger," "Poetry and Love," "Educational Method Is Poetic,” "Poetry and Time," "Poetry, Money, and Good Will," “A Poetic Technique of Parenthood,” “Poetry and History,” and “Hamlet Revisited; or, the Family Should Be Poetry.” His students affirm that an important aspect of the philosophy continues to be the study of how a good poem has within it “the composition, beauty, sanity we want in ourselves." This education, they assert, “makes it possible for poetry to be, as Matthew Arnold said, a criticism of life.”