Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy founded by poet and critic Eli Siegel in 1941, is based on these principles stated by Siegel:

1. Every person is always trying to put together opposites in himself.
2. Every person in order to respect himself has to see the world as beautiful or good or acceptable.
3. There is a disposition in every person to think he will be for himself by making less of the outside world.
4. All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.

Eli Siegel died in 1978 but the Aesthetic Realism Foundation continues to teach the philosophy he founded.

Aesthetic Realism is the basis for scholarly work in both the arts and sciences. Online one can see, for example, excerpts from the Columbia University doctoral dissertation of anthropologist Arnold Perey sponsored by Margaret Mead, Oksapmin Society and World View. One can also see the recent ethnomusicological presentation by Perey and Professor Edward Green at the University of Graz in Austria Aesthetic Realism: A new foundation for interdisciplinary musicology.

The major publication containing the Aesthetic Realism understanding of poetry and the arts, literature, national ethics, and the self, is The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, edited by Ellen Reiss, the Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism. Lectures and poetry by Eli Siegel together with editorial commentary by Reiss--often on current and literary matters are in The Right Of. (Also see the Eli Siegel Collection).

Papers describing the Siegel Theory of Opposites in relation to painting, world art, and art education, were given at the 31st World Congress of the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Social, and Cultural Organization. One focused on how the study of art can more effectively oppose prejudice: the paper by Marcia Rackow and Perey, later published in the Proceedings of InSEA, titled "Aesthetic Realism, Art, and Anthropology: Or, Justice to People." A second described how the Siegel Theory of Opposites delineates structure in common between art and science and was presented by Rosemary Plumstead and Donita Ellison at the New York State Art Teachers' Association, and InSEA, both.

The new anthology, Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism written by persons of diverse ethnicities explores the effectiveness of the Aesthetic Realism understanding of self in defeating racism.

Some writers have noticed a resemblance between structuralism and Aesthetic Realism because both respect the dialectic process and see opposites as primal in our understanding of the world. A dialectic, writes musicologist Rose Rosengard Subotnick "enables one to grasp the two opposed priorities as simultaneously valid".

Aesthetic Realism sees the dialectic process as essentially aesthetic. Eli Siegel presented reality as having a dialectic structure, yes, but more fundamentally as having an aesthetic structure. That is why, he stated, the world--or reality--can be liked: it has a structure that is beautiful the way a painting or poem is beautiful. This differs from structuralism, which does not neccessarily accent the value--or beauty--of an object's structure, but the structure itself.

This brings us to another difference between structuralism and Aesthetic Realism. The opposites which, Siegel explained, are at the basis of reality are the metaphysical or ontological opposites: such as freedom and order, one and many, sameness and difference, matter and energy. These are qualities which are in reality as such (see for instance Aristotle's discussion of One and Many in his Metaphysics). How these opposites are present in every object, it has been pointed out, can be seen by considering the electron. An electron is both matter and energy, a particle and a wave--or substance (a thing of weight) and form (which is weightless). A sonnet is both substance and form (a Shakespearean sonnet about the Dark Lady has subject matter and sonnet form) -- see the similarity? The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle describes every instance of matter as both definite and indefinite (we can know position or momentum but not both). Monet's Waterlilies are both definite and indefinite--and beautifully so! We feel both opposites at once: hence the idea of dialectic. We see it as beautiful: hence the term aesthetic.

Eli Siegel wrote in his preface to The Aesthetic Method in Self-Conflict(Definition Press, New York: 1946): "For a fair consideration of this publication, a person must put aside probable previous associations with 'aesthetics.' Were there a word as exact as aesthetics for the purpose, we would have been glad to use it. The nearest word, other than aesthetics, is dialectics."

Claude Lévi-Strauss by comparison--the best known of structuralists today--relies on such opposites as sky and water, succulent and dessicated, raw and cooked which are not ontological, along with such opposites as diversity and unity, order and disorder which are ontological; but the structuralist approach does not see it as necessary to differentiate between them. That is, Raw and cooked are not ontological the way disorder and order are; they are not fundamental or inescapable in the description of any reality--though we do use them to describe food as well as other things that we process, e.g.: "He cooked up a plan for revenge. But it was only a half-baked plan."

To quote from another Wikipedia entry: "Lévi-Strauss explained that opposites are at the basis of social structure and culture. In his early work he demonstrated that tribal kin groups were usually found in pairs, or in paired groups that both oppose one another and need one another. For example, in the Amazon basin, two different expanded families would build their houses in two facing semi-circles that together make up a big circle. He showed too that the congnitive maps, the ways early folk categorized animals, trees, and so on, were based on a series of oppositions. Later in his most popular work The Raw and the Cooked he described the widely dispersed folk tales of tribal South America as all related to one another through a series of transformations--as one opposite in tales here changes into another opposite in tales there. As the title implies, for instance, Raw becomes its opposite Cooked. These particular opposites (Raw/Cooked) are symbolic of human culture itself, in which, by means of thought and labor, raw materials become clothes, food, weapons, art, ideas. Culture, explained Lévi-Strauss, is a dialectic process: thesis, antithesis, synthesis."

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.

Although Aesthetic Realism has attracted harsh critics (see Aesthetic Realism is a cult), William Carlos Williams was an early supporter of Siegel's poetry and defender of his views (see Something to Say, ed. by J.E.B. Breslin {New Directions})--as was Margaret Mead and Chaim Koppelman.

Today, supporters of Aesthetic Realism who have replied to these "harsh critics" include the educators E. Green, H. Mauro, B. Allen, & D. Berger in the field of music; science educators C. Balchin and R. Plumstead; and art educator D. Ellison. United Methodist Minister Rev. Wayne J. Plumstead has written on the value to religion of the way Aesthetic Realism, a secular philosophy, understands the self (see Circuit Rider, national journal of the United Methodist Church) and has an essay too in Friends of Aesthetic Realism--Countering the Lies, a website whose stated purpose is "to counter lies about Aesthetic Realism, which have been put forth on the Internet by a few individuals."

References and External links

• Lévi-Strauss, Claude. (1)The Logic of Totemic Classifications; (2)Systems of Transformations; (3)Categories, Elements, Species, Numbers. The Savage Mind. University of Chicago Press, 1966.
• Breslin, J.E.B., ed. Something to Say. New York: New Directions, 1985.
• Siegel, Eli. Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism. New York: Definition Press, 1981.
• ______. Hail, American Development. Poems. New York: Definition Press, 1968.
• ______. Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montanta: Poems. New York: Definition Press, 1958.
• Baird, Martha and Reiss, Ellen, eds. The Williams-Siegel Documentary. Including Williams' Poetry Talked about by Eli Siegel, and William Carlos Williams Present and Talking: 1952. New York: Definition Press, 1970.

• Aesthetic Realism Foundation
• The Aesthetic Realism method in Anthropology
• Emmy Award winning filmmaker & producer Ken Kimmelman writes on the important place of Aesthetic Realism in Anti-Prejudice Films
• Read 'Countering the Lies'
• Aesthetic Realism is Education
• Aesthetic Realism opposes Racism--'India Tribune'
• Eminent artist on Aesthetic Realism in 'The Journal of the Print World'
• Prize-winning composer Edward Green on the Aesthetic Realism method in musicology
• Friends of Aesthetic Realism tell "What the Attackers Don't Want You to See"
• Architect Anthony C. Romeo on the Aesthetic Realism understanding of design in Gerritt Rietveld's 'Red and Blue Chair'
• The Aesthetic Realism method in Art Criticism and Art History
• Aesthetic Realism at Graz University, Austria