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Definitions, and Comment:
Being a Description of the World
By Eli Siegel

72. Regret

Regret is pain as to the past, or from seeing the past.

Regret has direction, too. The self is, in terms of direction, always a going back, a being, a going around, and a going forward.

There is motive in regret, and there can be purpose. When we go back in our minds to the past, the past as a thing one is going back to is like the future, for it is later than the present. A person, for instance, can say: “I will think of what happened yesterday, tomorrow.”

Criticism of a self by that self implies a looking at the past of that self as an immediate whole. If a self approves of what it is, it is approving of the past; however, if the past is seen as good by a self, the future is also considered good. If a self disapproves of what it is, the past is seen as bad; and while the past remains a thing disapproved of, the future is also not liked. Criticism of a person by a person is always an interaction of past and future, retrospect and possibility.

Regret is criticism. It is punishment and hope; for if hope were not around at all, there would be no reason for regret. Regret, like all other states of mind, or emotions, aims to be efficient. We have a motive in regretting. We may be ashamed of what we may have done; but we are proud that we can be ashamed. Regret is the association of incompleteness or ugliness or disproportion of self, with pain; so that the incompleteness may be justly and usefully attacked. This is when regret is honest.

© 1945 by Eli Siegel, founder of Aesthetic Realism
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