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Liking the World on an Honest Basis: A Note

By Eli Siegel

(1964)

To like the world on an honest basis is to like it aesthetically: as a picture is liked, a poem, a play.

Let us say someone in distress is looking at a picture. Is it possible for that person to like the picture, even as she says, I’m greatly worried?

Is it possible to see that one likes a poem even in a time of heavy crisis?

Can one think that one saw a play or read it, and say, That play has power and form, when one, otherwise, is concerned, sadly, with something?

Do we like the structure, the makeup, the being of the world?

Let us admit our unhappiness, as much as we have it. Still, can the world be liked as world because of what it is, what it has, what it is doing?

Aesthetic Realism says, it can. When we like the world in this aesthetic, honest way, it is the other side, completing it, of the way our heartbeat, going on, likes the world.

There is an inevitable biological like of the world, instanced by the heartbeat, circulation.

There is a like of the world because we’re lucky, complimented, or are having a good time.

And there is the aesthetic like of the world which is larger, more honest than the biological way, or the luck way.

There hasn’t been so much of this aesthetic or honest way of liking the world. However there can be much more.

NOTE: “Liking the World on an Honest Basis: A Note” was printed in The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, number 604, 0ctober 31, 1984.

Copyright © 1964 by Eli Siegel

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