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Aesthetic realism is a technical term of analytic philosophical aesthetics. It is also the name of Eli Siegel's philosophy, and the group which follows and evangelizes it.

Aesthetic Realism was founded by minor American poet Eli Siegel in 1941. It postulates that every person’s deepest desire is to like the world honestly, and that people also have a contrary desire to have contempt for the world. The followers of the philosophy operate the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York City, and have -largely unsuccessfully- sought to popularize Siegel's teachings by a variety of mechanisms, including the promotion of the philosophy as the answer to homosexuality, racism, poverty, capitalism, youth violence, anorexia, bulemia, stuttering, attention deficit disorders, and terrorism, and by protesting against what they imagined to be a press "boycott" of their philosophy. Adherents of Aesthetic Realism say the philosophy improves their relationships with other people and encourages kindness and creativity. The philosophy achieved its greatest renown by promoting itself as a means for homosexuals to become heterosexual.

The philosophy is taught by people termed "consultants" at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation through a series of seminars and group sessions.

Some, saying Aesthetic Realism's students exhibit fanatical devotion to their founder, a paranoid sense of persecution, an intolerance of criticism, a stylized and ritualized form of speech, and a de facto practice of shunning, call Aesthetic Realism a cult. Supporters of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation deny this, saying Eli Siegel is the "greatest of all men", whom it is "an honor to praise". They feel those who criticize Aesthetic Realism as a cult are simply seeking to "attempt to tarnish and discredit the philosophy Aesthetic Realism, its founder, the great American poet and critic Eli Siegel, and every person who has shown respect for this knowledge and for him." They excoriate this criticism as "deep-dyed falsehoods", and compare the reception of Aesthetic Realism to that of Darwin, Newton, and Copernicus: a hostile response to new thought - though the response to Aesthetic Realism has generally been simply unenthusiastic rather than hostile.

Aesthetic Realism and poetry
Aesthetic Realism says that the world should be seen poetically. Whatever we may meet--whether fortunate or unfortunate--we can be proud of how we see it. Siegel explains why he thinks poetry is needed for this: “Poetry, like life, states that the very self of a thing is its relations, its having-to-do with other things. Whatever is in the world, whatever person, has meaning because it has to do with the whole universe: immeasurable and crowded reality.” Followers of Aesthetic Realism find this meaningful.

One of Eli Siegel's poems won a publishing award. He can be classified as a minor poet; his work is infrequently anthologized and had no significant consequences on English literature. His followers, however, do not appear capable of believing that anyone - including Shakespeare - was a better writer than Eli Siegel. This should be somewhat embarrassing for people whose philosophy is based on aesthetics, but they nonetheless seem unabashed.

Aesthetic Realism: the philosophy
Aesthetic Realism is based on the idea that reality, or the world, has a structure that is beautiful&mdash;like the structure of a successful poem or painting. Since reality is made in a beautiful way it can be liked honestly.

For beauty, explains Siegel, “is the oneness of the permanent opposites in reality.” The permanent opposites include order and freedom, energy and repose, many and one. A good poem, for instance, is both logical and passionate at once. Logic is order, passion accentuates freedom. So a good poem represents the structure of the world: freedom and order made one. Freedom at one with order is what we see in an electron, the solar system, a tree whose leaves are shaking in a summer breeze.

The reasoning is similar for other opposites. Take many and one. Walt Whitman explained (his 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass) that a good poem arises the way an organic form arises: it is one thing with many details that serve one another. American philosophers like Emerson wrote of reality as one while it has many manifestations. Siegel said that reality is beautiful and can be liked the way we like a good poem. One Aesthetic Realism paper explained that the success of Walt Whitman's poetry is evidence that he wasn't homosexual.

Aesthetic Realism explains it is every person's "greatest, deepest desire to like the world on an honest or accurate basis." But there is another desire opposing this--the hope to have contempt for the world and what is in it, for that makes one feel more important.

Since its beginnings in the 1920s Aesthetic Realism has said three things have to change for the world to be kind. First, wrote Siegel, is the contempt for “human beings placed differently from ourselves”&mdash;the contempt that causes racism and makes war attractive. Second, the ill will on which the ownership of land, industry, & commodities is based must change&mdash;enabling people “to think that they are dealt with justly.” And third, the thoughts known only to oneself&mdash;in which one feels “the world’s failure or the failure of a person enhances one’s own life”&mdash;need to go for good will rather than ill will (“Civilization Begins,” The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, no. 229, 17 August 1977).

One’s attitude to the world governs how we see things&mdash;the way we see a friend, a spouse, a lover, a book, food, death, disease, Paris Hilton, and people of another skin tone. When we seek self-esteem through contempt&mdash;"the addition to self through lessening something else"&mdash;we have to be unjust to people and things. Instead of building up our self-approval we dislike ourselves. And we lessen the capacity of our own minds to perceive and feel in the fullest manner. In the extreme, contempt makes for insanity. That is why in everything one does, Aesthetic Realism says, he or she has the ethical obligation to give full value to things and people as the one means of liking oneself. To honor that obligation is the same as accuracy, mental well-being, and joy. It is unethical to have contempt; all homosexuality arises from contempt; therefore homosexuals are inherently unethical.

Aesthetic Realism and preferences
Numerous articles by Aesthetic Realism students have described the Aesthetic Realism education as enabling persons to make choices that enhance their lives. Adding to this devotional and promotional literature is an important duty of Aesthetic Realism students. Part of their duty to Eli Siegel and to Aesthetic Realism is to write laudatory essays about how much their lives have been improved by them. These students state that persons learn how to make ethical decisions, consciously, which result in more self-respect. Men have come to respect women more ; women have come to respect men more ; children respect parents more ; people of diverse ethnicities come to respect those who are different ; and individuals who study Aesthetic Realism have also, for example, resolved eating disorders. This is because emotion itself, Aesthetic Realism says, is a "for and against of self shown through the body"—that is, emotion is preference, and preference can be accurate or inaccurate. We can learn to have our preferences more deeply and truly exact. Likes and dislikes may be based on adequate knowledge or insufficient knowledge. Aesthetic Realism through study of history, science, humanity&mdash;including knowledge of one’s own disposition to have contempt for what is different from oneself&mdash;inevitably increases one’s ability to be for and against accurately.

History
See also: Timeline of Aesthetic Realism

Predecessors to Aesthetic Realism
The beginning of Aesthetic Realism can be seen in Siegel's 1922-1923 essays, "The Equality of Man" and "The Scientific Criticism", and his poetry, especially the poem "Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana."

In the Baltimore Sun (2 February 1925) Siegel explained: "In "Hot Afternoons" I tried to take many things that are thought of usually as being far apart and foreign and to show, in a beautiful way, that they aren't so separate and that they do have a great deal to do with one another." The key concept of Aesthetic Realism&mdash;The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites&mdash;arises directly from this.

In 1935 Eli Siegel was the master of ceremonies at the Village Vanguard. He ran the show and introduced the poets and the Village personalities who made their home at the Vanguard. Each night, he would recite his one famous poem. This was a signal for the hecklers. "When were you in Montana on a hot afternoon?" they'd cry. Eli knew how to handle hecklers. "I wasn't in the Ford Theater when Lincoln was shot either. I know he was shot. You know he was shot. Who said you gotta be in a place to write about a place, wise guy?" Hooting, laughter, and applause. It was all part of the fun, part of the action. You came to the Vanguard to hear the poets, watch the characters, get loaded, and heckle Eli. Eli would stand waiting for the audience to grow quiet so that the show could go on. He was not a sunny, happy, loquacious M.C. He needed quiet and, by God, he was going to get it. "I shall begin by reciting the shortest poem in the world: "Why?" This set off a wave of hooting and hilarity. "Who? You?" echoed from every corner. Eli would stand firm and wait for the noise to subside. "I will now recite the second shortest poem in the world: "Jones Moans."Laughter and applause. Eli, pale, bent, dour, with the look of a Hasid, kept the show moving, at a salary of $30 a week - not bad for the depression era. Eli's introductions of poets tended to be descriptive and demeaning. Toward the end of his employment at the Vangard Eli was growing more dour and cranky than usual. Instead of sparring with the hecklers for laughs like he used to, he'd come down heavy on them, scold and snort as if he wished they were somewhere else -- not at the Vanguard -- and that he too, God willing, was somewhere else. So he was let go. His former employer, Max Goldfarb, wrote, "Eli later became the founder, leader, guru, rabbi -- take your pick -- of a movement he called Aesthetic Realism. Don't ask me what aesthetic realism is about. He ran it from a store on Greene Street in the Village. And he had a host of believers who followed the teachings of Aesthetic Realism. He was putting this movement together when he was the M.C. at the Vanguard. He told me this once when I ran into him on Jane Street almost forty years later. I didn't believe it. "You need Aesthetic Realism in your life," he said, looking me in the eye. "I know the kind of man you are. It'll straighten you out. And not only you -- it can straighten out the whole world. Aesthetic Realism can straighten out the whole world, if ony the world will listen to me." I see now what ailed Eli when he was the Vanguard M.C., why he was always getting so mad at the customers. He was trying to straighten them out, that's what he was doing. It's a good thing I got rid of him. One thing I learned in almost fifty years of running a club in New York: You don't try to straighten people out in a nightclub. You leave them alone and hope they'll leave you alone." Beginning in 1938 Siegel taught poetry classes with the concepts of Aesthetic Realism as their basis. Students of Siegel asked him to give individual lessons in which they could learn to see their own lives in relation to poetry. These were the first Aesthetic Realism lessons - not didactic, but experiental (1941). "The method does things to people of a most discernible kind,"; wrote Siegel. "It has helped to organize lives." [Preface, The Aesthetic Method in Self-Confict]

Early years
In 1942-3 Eli Siegel wrote Self and World explaining the philosophic basis of Aesthetic Realism. His wife and devotee, Martha Baird, characterized the book as greater than "the Bible or Shakespeare". In 1944 Siegel's first series of philosophic lectures on the basis of Aesthetic Realism was given. In 1945 he completed Definitions, and Comment defining 134 terms needed for a philosophic outline of reality, including Existence, Change, Fixity, Freedom, Thought, Will, Wonder, Fear, Hope, Negation, Reality, and Relation.

In 1955 the Terrain Gallery was founded, and the Siegel Theory of Opposites--so termed by Siegel's students--was presented in the publication Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites? by the Terrain. Characteristically, Aesthetic Realism literature is posed as questions with which one is expected to agree, rather than as straightforward declarative sentences.

By 1969 artists and students of music had formally extended the Siegel Theory of Opposites to include discussions of photography, acting, painting, printmaking, and music. Aesthetic Realism: We Have Been There by six working artists who write on their own craft was published. Wrote the Library Journal: "Heraclitus, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and even Martin Buber have posited contraries and polarities in their philosophies. Siegel, however, seems to be the first to demonstrate that 'all beauty is the making one of the permanent opposites in reality'." (1 September 1969) [3] (http://www.definitionpress.org/WHBT-Review-LJ.htm)

Aesthetic Realism approach to racism
Aesthetic Realism has been concerned with the subject of racism and how to end it from its very beginnings. As early as 1923, when Eli Siegel was twenty-one, he wrote in his essay "The Equality of Man," published in the Modern Quarterly: "I wish very much to show the Equality of Man to be true. It is my business to go on showing it to be so."

Aesthetic Realism states that the opposition to racism lies in seeing the sameness and difference of people aesthetically. Historically, it says, race and ethnic differences have been used by people to have contempt for one another, and much pain has arisen from this. But Aesthetic Realism teaches a person to see the diversity of humanity in much the same way as notes in music--different from each other while also needing each other in their difference, and also as deeply the same because they have sound in common. In a lecture of 1951 on H.G. Wells "Outline of History", Eli Siegel stated: "While there is a force making things different, there is also a force making them the same. This is so everywhere, and it is part of aesthetic profound gratification to see it working."

During the past decade Aesthetic Realism has reached the public most widely perhaps in relation to how it sees the subject of race. The 1995 Emmy-awarding winning public service film, "The Heart Knows Better," produced by Aesthetic Realism consultant and film maker Ken Kimmelman and based on a statement by Eli Siegel, was aired frequently on broadcast networks such as CNN Headline News, the US Armed Forces Radio/Television Service and ESPN, and in 1996 and 1997 at both Yankee and Shea stadiums before every home game. It continues to be played before every New York Yankee home game during the 2005 season. Two recently published books by Aesthetic Realism students Alice Bernstein and Dr. Arnold Perey (who wrote this citation to his own work) also treat the subject extensively.

Aesthetic Realism and homosexuality
The association of the philosophy of Aesthetic Realism to the idea of ridding oneself of homosexuality was present as early as 1948, when Sheldon Kranz-previously exclusively homosexual- claimed that after his first Aesthetic Realism lesson he never had sex with a man again. Other converts followed. Four were interviewed on the David Susskind Show (1971) and published their book, The H Persuasion, containing the transcript of an earlier WNDT (Channel 13, New York City) Jonathan Black interview and personal narratives by each author.

Aesthetic Realism consultations began in 1971. At this time there were twelve teachers, three of whom&mdash; Consultation with Three&mdash;devoted themselves to men who wished to "change from homosexuality" (see Timeline, 1971). Later three more instructors, "The Masculine Inquiry," joined them. In 1986 a second book, The Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel and the Change from Homosexuality was published by Aesthetic Realism's Definition Press.

In 1978, Aesthetic Realism becan a concerted publicity campaign promoting itself as the answer for homosexuality. Ads were purchased in four major newspapers, including the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, signed by 50 people who claimed that they represented over 140 gay men and women who had become heterosexual through the study of Aesthetic Realism.

Siegel's teaching that "all homosexuality arises from contempt of the world, not liking it sufficiently" and that "this changes into contempt for women" angered many, and ran counter to the growing consensus that considered homosexuality neither pathological nor amenable to change. Siegel's claim has never been validated through scientific study. Siegel said that Aesthetic Realism made gay men straight by engendering a "more complete perception of woman and the world--giving them what they deserved" (The H Persuasion, 1971). Such choices, once made, were encouraged and reinforced in consultations. Several of the ex-gay Aesthetic Realism students married other Aesthetic Realism students. Siegel characterized his attitude as tolerant. One of the "Consultation with Three" wrote that Siegel did not "approve" of homosexuality, although he respected homosexual people. Men who claimed to have experience this "change" wrote that "not liking the world sufficiently" was countered by the study of how to see the world fairly; and in seeing the world, and women, more fairly they began to have bodily responses to the opposite sex. There are some who contend that no individuals ever changed. A number of persons who studied Aesthetic Realism in order to change from homosexuality say they did not, in fact, change. Furthermore, a number of persons who said they had changed later decided they had not changed, after all. As of this writing, it is impossible to know how many of the "changed" actually have exclusively heterosexual ideations and sex lives. The idea that male homosexuality arises as a result of distaste for women was a popular theory in the psychoanalytic era, it has been discarded in modern thought.

The members of Aesthetic Realism's "Consultation with Three" agreed that gay men would "probably find quite a lot that is offensive" in Aesthetic Realism's teachings. Siegel's assertion that all (male) homosexuality arose from contempt for women - reminiscent of discarded psychoanalytic ideas that homosexuals were afraid of women - engendered adverse feeling toward the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in many, some of whom became vocal opponents. As a result, the Aesthetic Realism Foundation--sensing that the tide had turned against them, and that not all publicity was good-- decided in 1990 to discontinue advertising their "change from homosexuality" beliefs, while still maintaining them to be true: no further public classes in the subject have been given since that time, though the Foundation continues to state publicly that it “is a fact that men and women have changed from homosexuality through study of Aesthetic Realism. "

Victim of the press
Though most of the early public attention Aesthetic Realism achieved was the result of promoting itself as a means of becoming heterosexual, it also was known for its campaign to promote itself as a "victim" of a conspiracy by the press to ignore the philosophy. 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. The press, they insisted, had a duty to report about Aesthetic Realism, and had failed in that duty. Aesthetic Realism had "a right to be heard!" Critics, speaking of Siegel as a Village guru and calling his followers a cult contend that Aesthetic Realism's claim of a press boycott was a paranoid feeling of persecution. Meanwhile, the absence of articles depicting Aesthetic Realism in a positive light in the major press for decades argues equally eloquently for the lack of Aesthetic Realism's importance as it does for a boycott. Students of Aesthetic Realism stopped wearing the buttons in the mid-1990s, saying that the "boycott" had ended. Privately, they still believe the boycott exists. For example, their website maintains that racism could have changed decades ago had the press not "blocked America's access to Aesthetic Realism". "Because," they say, "press persons can't be superior to the knowledge of Eli Siegel, and because he stands for a democracy and respect for people that many press individuals fear, they have tried to do away with that which makes their egos so uncomfortable -- principally by boycotting it. The press has embodied hate of what is new and kind long before this time." The American press, they say, prefers "the continuing pain of children and even death to being honest about Aesthetic Realism." In 1998, the New York Post ran an article about accusations that Aesthetic Realism was a destructive cult proseletizing in the New York public school system.

Allegations of cult behavior
Some former students allege that "Aesthetic Realism is a cult." . They list what they call cult-like aspects of Aesthetic Realism such as:
 * "Fanatical devotion to the founder/leader"
 * "Belief that they have the one true answer to universal happiness if only people would listen"
 * "Paranoid feelings of persecution"
 * "Limited communication with family members who aren't also believers"

Some former and current students of Aesthetic Realism and their family members have contributed to a web site "Friends of Aesthetic Realism: Countering the Lies." launched to deny these allegations. They state that the technique of the people attempting to discredit Aesthetic Realism is “1) [to] find out what characteristics a cult is supposed to have, 2) then [to] say Aesthetic Realism has them,” and they deny that they have a fanatical devotion to Eli Siegel, whom they have called the greatest human ever to have lived.

Aesthetic Realism Foundation
The Aesthetic Realism Foundation is the non-profit foundation in New York City that teaches the Aesthetic Realism philosophy. It was founded by students of Eli Siegel in 1973. He visited the Aesthetic Realism Foundation only once--in 1978 shortly before his death, when he attended a public presentation there--preferring to continue teaching classes at his home on Jane Street. Since Eli Siegel's suicide in 1978, Ellen Reiss has been the "academic" head of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, and teaches "professional classes" for consultants and those who wish to become consultants at the Foundation. Ellen Mali, the former executive director, left the school and has become an outspoken critic of its methods. The executive director today, Margot Carpenter, is a poet and teacher of Aesthetic Realism.

A faculty of 46 approved consultants now teach Aesthetic Realism to the general public through classes, public programs and seminars, private consultations, and by playing the recorded lectures of Eli Siegel. Many of its faculty have blogs. It publishes books through Definition Press (other books about Aesthetic Realism have been published through Orange Angle Press and Waverly Place Press) and the biweekly journal The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, which has published over 1600 issues since its beginnings in 1973. Classes in a variety of subjects are offered throughout the week and students may enroll for as many or few as they desire. There are also seminars and public presentations of Aesthetic Realism offered to the public on a regular basis as well as privately scheduled consultations for those who wish to study how Aesthetic Realism principles relate to their own individual lives. The faculty and those studying to teach on the faculty attend the professional classes conducted by Ellen Reiss twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday evenings.

The Foundation's Terrain Gallery was founded in 1955 by director Dorothy Koppelman to show contemporary art and to develop the understanding of beauty in the arts provided by the Siegel Theory of Opposites: "In reality opposites are one; art shows this." For its opening, the Terrain published Siegel's "Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?", subsequently reprinted in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism and other sources both academic and otherwise. Artists from the 1950s on who exhibited at the Terrain included Larry Rivers, George Tooker, Rolph Scarlett, John von Wicht, Elaine de Kooning, Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein, Chaim Koppelman, Robert Blackburn, Astrid Fitzgerald. In public talks artists explored the validity of the Siegel Theory in diverse styles, periods, and media. Artists and critics began utilizing the theory in their work, including Ralph Hattersley, editor of the photography journal Infinity; Nat Herz, author of articles in Modern Photography and of the Konica Pocket Handbook: An Introduction to Better Photography (Universal Photo Books series. New York: Verlan Books, 1960); Chaim Koppelman, founder of the printmaking department at the School of Visual Arts, New York City; Anne Fielding, Obie Award winning actor; and Lou Bernstein, columnist for Camera 35. Aesthetic Realism We Have Been There was published (1969) with essays in acting, photography, painting, and printmaking. For more recent developments see “Aesthetic Realism Scholarship” below.

Aesthetic Realism scholarship
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.

Aesthetic Realism has been the basis for scholarly work in both the arts and sciences, including the work by anthropologist Arnold Perey, Oksapmin Society and World View; and by musicologist Edward Green whose paper, written with Perey, was published by the University of Graz in Austria's conference Proceedings "Aesthetic Realism: A New Foundation for Interdisciplinary Musicology". Relentless self-publishing provides the appearance of academic acceptability: some of the works are of embarrassingly poor quality, and few have been published in academic journals. Papers were recently given at the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Social, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) describing the Siegel Theory of Opposites in relation to painting, world art, and art education. One paper focused on the way the study of art can be a more effective means of opposing prejudice than ever. This was published in the Proceedings of InSEA, titled "Aesthetic Realism, Art, and Anthropology: Or, Justice to People" by Marcia Rackow and Perey.

The new anthology, "Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism", edited by Alice Bernstein, written by teachers and students from a multicultural point of view explores how effective the Aesthetic Realism way of seeing people is in understanding and defeating racism. Marguerita Washington, publisher of the Omaha Star, said of the book, "We can't have too much awareness of the inequality of the races. The approach of Aesthetic Realism is valid, exciting, and a benefit to the community."