Dear Unknown Friends:

We are publishing, in this issue and the next, portions of a lecture Eli Siegel gave in 1974. He titled it What Are We Going After? And I am immensely grateful that what he described then can meet people now, at a time when there is so much turbulence and worry and even shock in America and elsewhere.

In that talk of nearly 51 years ago, Mr. Siegel discussed passages from an article in the April 1973 number of Psychology Today. He spoke on something absent from that article, something explained by Aesthetic Realism alone: What is the central purpose of a human being, whether that person is a child just born, or a man of 99 now looking out a window and thinking of his past?

In them and everyone, is there a deepest desire we have by being human and alive? Is it with us though we may not know what this fundamental purpose is, and though we may be untrue to it day after day? And does our betraying that purpose weaken our lives, make us ashamed and ill-natured, and give a certain emptiness to the hours?

I believe there’s nothing more necessary at this time than for people to want to see what is true about the largest matters in themselves and humanity. And in seeing this, there will be a longed-for greater clarity about oneself and the world we are of. It was always the time, but now it is ever so keenly the time, to see how Aesthetic Realism explains the most fundamental matters about everyone.

The Purpose

So what is the purpose of a human being, who may be ourselves? It is, Aesthetic Realism explains, to like the world through knowing it. The purpose we were born for is not to beat out others. It’s not to have various portions of reality under our command, glorifying us—but to see meaning, real meaning, in what’s not us and, through doing so, add to our own meaning. To like the world is certainly not glibly and stupidly to praise it, but to see it justly—and in seeing justly, to feel There’s no end to the value for me that is in things.

So I quote the first two paragraphs of Eli Siegel’s preface to his book Self and World. He wrote in 1976:

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 and other objects as standing for the outside world, 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.

I shall not wait another moment before stating that my own answer—very carefully arrived at—to the two questions in the first paragraph is Yes. Later I’ll comment on the subject of that second question, contempt. But now I’ll say more about the meaning of liking the world.

Each of us, Eli Siegel explained, is surrounded by a vast not-ourselves. Do we have to do with only certain things and people in the world, or do we have to do with everything? Do we have to do with a cushion we’re leaning against—but also with all of history? Do we have to do with our mother—but also with a little boy of six, walking through grass five thousand years ago in what’s now Romania? (Everyone reading this is now thinking of that boy, which certainly means we have to do with him.) We have to do with tulips in a vase in our kitchen, but also with a woman who, near the Nile in the year 1102, looked at a purple flower and liked it.

Mr. Siegel described the world as all that begins where our fingertips end. We are related to everything. And that means to things good and not good. The purpose of everyone’s life is to feel, All this has to do with me—can tell me something about who I am—and I want to be as fair to it as I can, see and feel its value truly.

As soon as we see ourselves as related to everything, already we have a sense of the true largeness of ourselves. And we are authentically prouder—and kinder.

It Is an Aesthetic Matter

The answer to the question What does liking the world mean? is so big and important that one cannot be fair to it in a few paragraphs. But the central matter is in this principle: Art, Eli Siegel showed, “is the oneness of the permanent opposites in reality as seen by an individual.” I could give examples from any of the arts, but let’s look a little at an art that people, in all their turbulence, are more interested in than ever: that is, they want to see movies.

If a film is good, it’s for the same reason a painting is, or a poem: it shows the world’s opposites as one. For example, this art, in keeping with its name, has motion, sometimes terrific motion. But for a motion picture to be good there has to be composition in that movement, something standing for the repose of structure within it all.

I’ll mention, swiftly, two other pairs of opposites.

There are the great opposites of closeness and distance: in a close-up a person or object can seem so very near us. But in the same film the camera can have us feel too—sometimes with awe—the far-reaching vastness of things.

And films are also trying to deal with the huge opposites of power and gentleness. Sometimes that has taken the form of showing that a tough guy can shed tears, or that someone who had seemed sweet could in a crisis be the most fiercely and successfully courageous person around.

The point is that the opposites I have mentioned, and others, are reality’s opposites. As art has us feel them as one, it is the world itself that we feel—a world that, in all its puzzlingness, is constructed well. Central to liking the world is seeing that the opposites in it can make sense, are one—and for this, we need to see how they are one in art.

Contempt—Understood at Last

Eli Siegel is the philosopher who not only showed what the life-purpose of a person is, and the philosopher who showed what makes for beauty in art—he also identified the thing in everyone that interferes with and weakens the person’s life and mind, and is the source of all cruelty. This thing is contempt, the “disposition in every person to think we will be for ourselves by making less of the outside world.”

Contempt in a person says: If I can look down on things and people, even have them do my bidding as I look down on them, I’m Somebody, I’m Big. There’s also an aspect of contempt that wants to get to a huge and thorough disgust with reality itself—so that one doesn’t have to think, or try to see fairly, but is miserably regal in one’s sneering. This wholesale disgust is very tempting to people these days, as it has been in other days. One should see that to be disgusted with the world as a whole because of the injustice one may find in it, is really to collaborate with that injustice.

By Way of Preface: A Short Poem

Part of that desire of desires, to like the world, is the desire for every person in it to be seen justly. So I’ll preface the first half of Eli Siegel’s lecture with a short poem of his about a person, a person imagined yet real. The poem is included in his book Hail, American Development. It was in 1930 that Mr. Siegel wrote “Zeb Duryea”:

The first line has a sound of wonder, rotundity, and a richness like that of the orangey light of sunsets. In the second line we hear something more definite, a person’s name. His first name is immediate, stays put—Zeb—while his last name, Duryea, slowly reaches forth and grows gentle. The question What is like him? is being asked, and the poem seems to say he is just himself, yet related to what’s not he.

Meanwhile, we are hearing—in the structure of these lines, the sounds of these words—that oneness of opposites which is the world itself, become musical. Notably we hear wonder and what’s definite. And that continues.

The third line has two things very different from each other. Woodcutter is of matter, the cutting of wood, while moon-watcher is space and dreaminess. Yet the structure of those two compound words is alike.

The last two lines are mystery and factuality—in both their sound and meaning. There is mystery in the wings and the smoke and the thousands. Yet those pipes are so earthy.

This poem is musical like of the world, as inseparable from justice to a person. It stands for the way Eli Siegel saw always.

—Ellen Reiss, Aesthetic Realism
Chair of Education

What Are We Going After?

By Eli Siegel

The article I’m looking at, by Jerome D. Frank, is called “The Demoralized Mind.” That is a fairly good title. It means essentially that occasionally people don’t have the spirit to go on—just as soldiers can be demoralized. Soldiers can be so hard hit by the enemy that they cannot do very well, don’t have the energy to fight. That has happened with armies all through history. There’s a disbelief in what one is doing. So demoralized would mean the loss of morale, the loss of willingness to go on.

The article begins:

The current psychotherapeutic scene is a bewildering panorama of schools and methods, practitioners with all sorts of backgrounds, and patients with an enormous variety of woes and ills…. Paraprofessionals, subprofessionals and nonprofessionals…compete with orthodox psychologists. Even leaderless, self-help groups proliferate.

The word psychotherapeutic seems to be the central word here, and that word means healing of the soul, healing of the mind. So it’s well to ask, What does mind mean? There are quite a few definitions of mind, but in keeping with the behavioral sciences, a definition of mind is the way a person sees, and the way the person sees more—with the accent on see as a kind of behavior. That idea has many things in it: perceive, infer, analyze, sense. But the large word is see. Then, the “see more” means that seeing is in motion.

Aesthetic Realism is certainly not psychotherapy in any way. It is philosophy. But the difference between Aesthetic Realism and all the other approaches to mind is in the objective. What does it mean to be “well,” with the further idea of being happy? The notion of what it is to become, or do, or be well differentiates Aesthetic Realism from other modes of looking at mind.

For instance, Frank has the phrase “an enormous variety of woes and ills.” According to Aesthetic Realism, there is only one fundamental woe: dislike of yourself and the world at the same time. If anybody can think of another woe that isn’t included in that, I’d like to hear about it. The dislike can take many forms. If you have a wounded foot, at that time you dislike the condition of your foot, which means the condition of yourself.

What Is the Objective?

Throughout his article, Frank uses, as people do, the word professional. (In the passage I just quoted, it’s with three different prefixes. Later there are such phrases as “sought professional help” and “a therapist with professional skills.”) What does it mean to be a “professional” about mind? If a person has a clear notion of what is gone after, if the objective is clear, that person is a professional. I do not think the practitioners whom Frank refers to have that clear objective. This may sound like patriotism, but I do say it is had by Aesthetic Realism consultants: that the purpose of an Aesthetic Realism consultation is to have this person honestly like the world and honestly have good will for what is different from himself or herself.

That there can be sessions or encounters without a clear objective, which nevertheless do good, is not denied—because if a person gets good news, or if somebody shows an interest, or if one is made to express oneself, willy-nilly one likes the world more. A lot of that goes on. You meet people, and they talk, and you talk, and insofar as it’s honest it has a good effect. Meanwhile, what the good effect is, why it is had, is not wholly seen. It happens that if your team wins the World Series, you also for a while get a lift. It’s not World Series therapy, but it’s the kind of thing that occurs and can be likened to therapy.

However, if the Aesthetic Realism consultants really mean this conscious statement, We are trying to have this person like the world more and have good will for what is not himself or herself, and they really see that this would give form to the person’s life, they are true professionals.

The purpose to like the world is much larger than a “therapeutic” thing: it’s the same as the art principle, the education principle. Aesthetic Realism is always studying the meaning of liking the world. It’s a phrase that is extensible. It can be made more and more deep. It can be related more. And therefore, part of liking the world is to find out what liking the world means. The two things, care for self, care for the world, are inseparable. That’s why it’s Aesthetic Realism: it’s based on the idea that “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.” And so, a notion of poetry, a notion of art, is part of Aesthetic Realism.

On the one hand, Aesthetic Realism is something that can make a person stronger. On the other, its purpose is to have reality seen better. Reality seen straight can help you, no matter how happy you are, or unhappy.

A Tremendous Difference

If there is no large difference between Aesthetic Realism and other approaches to mind, that should be known. However, I state at this time: there is a tremendous difference. There is a notion of what is gone after that is not had by the others.

And this can be said: Once a person sees that the object he has—what he is dealing with—is the whole world, and he sees that as his partner in life, already there is something new, something different, that has occurred. Certainly, people would just as soon leave out “the world” and just be happy. I’m aware of that. Only I say it’s very stupid. The less you think about the world as such clearly, the greater the chance of your being unhappy and weak. That, too, can be looked into.

Frank has the following statement:

I have found that all psychotherapies, along with conditions they treat, share many features.

Yes, they do. They all try to instill something useful in a person. And at times, too, what occurs can be definitely useful. What is the exact cause of the being useful is another matter. And I’ll go so far as to make this general statement: Whatever the approach, whatever the mode, if a person is helped, willy-nilly his like of the world has been increased, even though that was not the conscious purpose.

What Does It Mean to Need Help?

There is this sentence of Frank:

All psychotherapists reach only a small proportion of those who are believed to need help.

Help may come from wherever it can—but whenever it comes, the result is that one looks at both oneself and the world better. If you’re told a story about a mouse and you love it, at that time you like the world more and you also like yourself more.

Frank uses the phrase “those who are believed to need help.” Well, the definition of a person needing help is: a person who feels he can be happier than he now is. That means that about everybody needs help, because everybody wants to see more, read another book, also have another conversation, and eat something they like. To live is the same as to need help. Even Schopenhauer would agree with that.

Now, of course I know what is meant in that sentence of Frank. But there’s help of two kinds. There’s a kind of help you’re ready to be proud of needing—as a person can feel, I need help—I want to enjoy modern music more. That need for help seems quite different from I need help because I can’t keep my eyes open.

A large form of needing help is in the following situation: A person says, You’re not interested in my feelings. Then, when that person is asked, Why should I be interested in your feelings? she replies, Because if you were, I’d be happier. That is a way of saying, I need help. And everyone could say it, because everyone feels that their feelings could be seen better by others. There’s not a person who ever lived who wasn’t lonely, because no person felt ever that his feelings were seen just the way he wanted them to be seen, or she wanted them to be seen.

So we’ll put forth this epigram: “Everybody needs help, but there are very few persons who are honest about their need for help.” If you don’t think you’re perfect, you feel you need help. And most people would say they’re not perfect. However, the phrase need help, like the word need itself, has such a bad press by now that its real meaning is not seen.