Dear Unknown Friends:

The remarkable 1975 lecture by Eli Siegel that we are serializing—Contempt Here and There—is about that thing which he identified as humanity’s “greatest danger or temptation.” It is contempt, the desire “to get a false importance or glory from the lessening of things not oneself.” Aesthetic Realism has shown that all the cruelty in history and now, all of what Robert Burns called “man’s inhumanity to man,” has come from contempt. Meanwhile—and this is what Mr. Siegel is describing in the present lecture—contempt is so everyday. It has thousands of forms, many of which seem like mere taken-for-granted responses and inner murmurings of human nature. Further, contempt in everyone’s life has been in a battle with our deepest desire: to be ourselves through valuing, respecting, knowing the world outside ourselves.

Contempt Has Made for This

Let us look at a conspiracy theory that in recent years has apparently gained in adherents. Its ideas, for instance, were written of approvingly by the mass shooter indicted for killing ten people and wounding three others in a Buffalo supermarket this May. It is the so-called “replacement theory”: the idea that various liberal groups are trying to rob white persons of their national power and livelihoods by “attempting to replace white citizens with nonwhite [people, including] immigrants” (britannica.com). This untrue and ridiculous notion is based on sheer contempt. It’s based on seeing oneself and those of one’s skin tone as vastly superior to others and, in one’s God-given supremacy, as being robbed of one’s birthright by them.

But the conspiracy theory is also contempt in another way, a way exceedingly fundamental. That is, it has at its basis the sense that if something good comes to a person who is not me, who is other than me-and-mine, I am less. If something a little in the field of justice, a little in the field of power and value, is achieved by a person I don’t associate in some fashion with myself—I am rooked, robbed, humiliated! For me to fare well, be important, others have to fare ill. This is the basis of “replacement theory.”

Meanwhile, it’s important, for the sake of our nation and our lives, to relate the horrible to the everyday: it’s important to see how ordinary that idea, that false logic I just described, is. In some fashion, it’s present in everyone, including persons who do not have a certain brutality. We need to understand it in its ordinariness, mildness, even politeness, in order to understand it in its full-blown viciousness.

For example, a little boy, Eric, can feel that when his mama and papa make much of his new baby sister, he is being robbed, rooked, humiliated. Or we can consider a woman named Alicia: her closest friend, Julie, has baked a delightful cake. Even as Alicia enjoys and praises it, she feels a pang: the achievement of Julie somehow lessens her, Alicia—because she didn’t produce this impressive object. And she even wishes quietly that the cake weren’t so good.

Alicia’s contempt, and Eric’s, are certainly nowhere near that of the conspiracy theorists’ in size and scope of injustice. And yet, the response of Alicia and Eric is unjust; it’s mean, and neither is proud of it. We all can have, in the hours of a day, a taken-for-granted contempt. It weakens us and makes us ashamed. Unless we see what contempt is in its everydayness, and are against it, we will not be against contempt itself: that way of seeing which is always deeply hurtful, and which can take in more and more—and more.

A “Theory” Looked at Further

The choice of words in the phrase “replacement theory” is an attempt to make something that is untrue and evil seem somehow scientific, historical, and reasoned. In that “replacement theory” is, of course, the utter lie that there exists a conspiracy to substitute others for oneself and those of one’s skin tone. But the biggest fallacy is in that term replacement. As I said: in the use of that word is the idea if certain others are seen as having rights and get some of those rights, I’m lessened, replaced! What’s being tacitly denied, assumed as impossible, is the fact—true, beautiful, and efficient—that the value of another person makes me more.

In lectures in the 1970s, Mr. Siegel explained that “ethics is a force” in human history. This is so, in many ways. There is more justice to people as such than there once was, even though there is vast injustice still. “Replacement theory” is really a euphemism for the feeling, I’m furious that I can’t have the fullness of contempt I want to have for those people—because I see them more respected all around me, and even having some power.

“Replacement theory” appeals to the feeling, much in America, that one is rooked, lessened, disrespected in some way. And it says, those people, who are gaining more rights, are the reason you’re lessened! That’s not true; but there is something that has been lessening and robbing millions of people, including those attracted to conspiracy theories. The thing that is robbing people, rooking them, is the profit system, an economy based on seeing persons of every ethnicity in terms of how much labor can I squeeze out of you while paying you as little as possible? Meanwhile, a person can prefer not to see what may really be hurting him or her. One can prefer to feel wounded in a way that has one feel contemptuously superior to people different from oneself.

The Aesthetic Answer

The countering of, the real alternative to, contempt in all its forms, including conspiracy theories, is in this principle of Aesthetic Realism: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.” What we are looking for is what all art has: the beauty, the accuracy, the thrill, the pride of seeing sameness and difference as one.

For instance, in a good painting, there are shapes that are different from each other—as we may feel different from another human being. Yet in that good painting, every shape brings out what another is, adds to it, does not belittle it—and is, itself, added to in turn, its own individuality brought forth. Further, if indeed this is a good painting, a likeness is felt among the shapes too. The curve of a particular apple may, in all its difference, be also like the curve in the way a tablecloth falls.

The American people are looking for the thrill of seeing our sameness and difference as one. That thrill will also be safety, justice, and pride.

—Ellen Reiss, Aesthetic Realism
Chair of Education

How Big the Subject Is

By Eli Siegel

Note. Mr. Siegel is looking at an 1811 review, by Francis Jeffrey, of Dramatic Works of John Ford. Ford lived from 1586 to 1639. Jeffrey’s discussion appeared in the Edinburgh Review.

I feel this matter of contempt has to be seen more and more. And I am speaking of it tonight in relation to literature.

Jeffrey, in his review, quotes passages from the most famous play of Ford. And we find that he has a hard time giving the full title. It’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore—although you don’t see that title as so apropos when you read the work itself, because it’s about the suffering of a brother and sister. But Jeffrey, in 1811, calls it “the play which stands first in this collection.”

The play has to do with preference. All drama has to do with preference. And very often one uses preference to have contempt. If you, for example, are all for your country, anybody who seems to be not interested in fighting for one’s country becomes, a little, an object of suspicion and contempt, which very often go together. Take Iago in Othello: he has contempt for Cassio because Cassio is too theoretical—he’s a soldier, but he’s not a thorough soldier. So what you are not, simply because it is what you are not, can become something you have contempt for. And this is done in many ways. The history of civilization is the history of how contempt has come to be in people’s minds.

I’m trying to show how big the subject is. It’s as if you were looking at New York City from above and could see ever so many things going on, and streets, and people moving about in the streets: you can look upon contempt that way too. And contempt is not only one city; it is many cities and you can get a vulture’s-eye view of it if you want to.

The Ordinary in the Unique

In ’Tis Pity (as the play is often called) we have a situation that is unique. Incest has been having a more conspicuous history lately, but there’s hardly a play that has the theme of this one: love of brother (Giovanni) for sister (Annabella). And it’s a good play.

Jeffrey quotes a passage, which I’ll read. Giovanni is talking to the friar—as Romeo somewhat talks to a friar; but the subject is different. Giovanni says:

And all the friar can do is say, Be repentant. Keep away from your sister. Perhaps this will leave you. As the play goes on, the sister does marry. However, that makes for tragedy.

Giovanni is thankful that the friar listens to him at all, but is pained that he gives the answer other people would give: This is impossible; get rid of it; you can’t go on living that way.

The way Aesthetic Realism sees the matter of a person’s feeling in regard to love is: it says, the important thing is whether you really like yourself for this feeling. And if a person were proud of loving someone, Aesthetic Realism would say: since you’re proud of it, it must go along with what you are.

Meanwhile, we’re looking at contempt, which can be very subtle, and what Giovanni feels as he talks with the friar is a mingling. When a person agrees with you partly, but leaves out things, there is some contempt, but there’s also some gratitude. Gratitude and contempt can be in the same situation.

Giovanni says to the friar, “To you I have unclasped my burdened soul, / Emptied the storehouse of my thoughts and heart”—I’ve said everything! And the language here is good. Then: “And yet is here the comfort I shall have?” There’s complaint in that, and there’s a touch of contempt, because if a person feels something is necessary and others don’t understand it, something like contempt must be, along with sorrow. Giovanni feels: Is that the best you can say? Is that the best you can do for me?

“Must I not do what all men else may—love?” That is a good question. Everybody has a right to love. In fact, love in the long run is the same as being good, because if you don’t love what can be loved and should be loved, you’re a caitiff and an oaf. (I could use a few other nouns, unexpected.)

“No, father. In your eyes I see the change / Of pity and compassion.” You no longer pity me; you’re talking the way other disciplinarians talk. There’s a little contempt there.

Youth & Age

Giovanni continues: “From your age, / As from a sacred oracle, distils / The life of counsel.” There is a contempt between youth and age here. The old French statement is still true: Si jeunesse savait; si vieillesse pouvait. Literally, If youth knew; if age were able; or, If youth had the knowledge; if age had the strength. So, there’s ground for despising both youth and age, which both youth and age, I must say, have taken advantage of: You know what that pipsqueak did? He dared to quote me Bertrand Russell! I read Bertrand Russell when he, Russell, was bothering Cambridge during the First World War. That pipsqueak! Putting on those airs to me! Then, of course, the pipsqueak would say: He feels that there’s nothing been said since John Stuart Mill!

So there’s contempt on both sides. I think two people who are apart in age yet close to one another could say, Before we talk, let’s confess that we have a lot of contempt for each other; then, after we have done that properly, we can go on with our conversation. It would clear the air. It would make people kinder. If anyone is considerably older, you have contempt; if anyone is considerably younger, you have contempt. We can see this in Elizabethan plays. The fact that Shakespeare was bothered by it, made for the character of Adam in As You Like It.

Meanwhile, this play of Ford, as I said, has marriage in it. Annabella marries, but she’s not happy, and Giovanni knows it. In the last scene, he kills her and then himself.

There are other things in the play, but I’m not discussing the play now. It has lived. It’s one of the fairly few Elizabethan plays that have lived. (Ford can be seen as Elizabethan or Jacobean. He’s both—born in 1586, which makes him 22 years younger than Shakespeare.)

Contempt for Reality

Then, in Jeffrey’s review, we come to a play that has been reprinted and re-discussed: The Broken Heart. It is a difficult play. We have a brother and sister here too. In fact, we have two brothers and two sisters. It seems that Ford was mighty taken with the brother and sister idea.

Penthea, the leading character in The Broken Heart, is very sad. She does have an insensitive brother, Ithocles. And she comes to feel, because things happen in such a sad way, what many religious people feel: that this whole life is a vale of tears and worthy of contempt; that this life doesn’t come to much because even if it’s good you can’t have it long; and if anyone is happy, the happiness is only transient; and so on. All of which is rather true. So many arguments can be given in behalf of contempt for reality, and I’ve tried not to miss any.

Penthea talks, as Macbeth does, in a most poetic way of the world as an object of contempt. However, when contempt changes into deep feeling, it takes on something else. It takes on a character of the universe’s being there, and loses the feeling that someone is just being superior. That happens in “The Rubaiyat.” There’s contempt for life in “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,” but it is expressed so deeply that it changes into something likable—as in this quatrain:

There’s contempt there and elsewhere in “The Rubaiyat,” and at the same time, in the famous translation by Edward Fitzgerald, some of the greatest feeling in English poetry.

Penthea has been made unhappy by her brother’s insisting that the person she cares for she shouldn’t care for. Why Penthea stands for it is a question, but it seems that the brother had the power in this play, and she didn’t want to hurt him. This too—the confusion of humanity—is so much an object of contempt. It’s in every tragedy. Jeffrey quotes Penthea saying:

What Penthea is saying is: it seems that one has happiness and then one finds out that one didn’t know all about oneself or about the world, and the happiness comes to be questioned and somewhat changed. It’s a little like Macbeth’s statement “Life’s but a walking shadow.” That speech of Macbeth beginning “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” has contempt in it, in some of the loveliest poetry ever.

When Penthea says, “On the stage / Of my mortality my youth hath acted / Some scenes of vanity,” she is saying, Yes, I had my way for a while and I was pleased. Then she says there’s something one finds later that changes one’s notion of what pleased one: things one counted on

She says we get a feeling we don’t understand—here called a “troubled passion.” Well, that passage is beautiful. In it, the Elizabethan notion of contempt of the world as unsteady has changed into something beautiful. So contempt is not here alone.

There is the phrase “the unguarded castle of the mind.” The word castle was often used for a mind. Saint Teresa had used it: The Interior Castle. It was used elsewhere too.

That is from The Broken Heart, a confusing play. Perhaps I shall discuss it, because it seems that every character in the play, once he or she has a purpose, finds it necessary to despise some other purpose, have contempt for another purpose.