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Background

Aesthetic Realism is a philosophy founded by poet and critic Eli Siegel in 1941. Its major tenets are:

  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.

Siegel started the Aesthetic Realism Foundation to the study of his philosophy, which continues to do so even after Siegel's suicide in 1978.

Adherents of Aesthetic Realism claim that it has broad application for art, science and solving social problems. Siegel's own background was in the arts, being a celebrated poet, although he lacked a college degree. One of the group's more controversial positions was that homosexuality was a form of insanity caused by one's contempt for the world, and that by studying Aesthetic Realism one could learn to like the world and thereby be "cured" of their gayness. In recent years the foundation has dropped that campaign in light of the increasing tolerance of homosexuality, and in fact denies that it ever promoted a gay cure, though the advertisements they purchased in major newspapers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, as well as their two books on the subject are ample evidence of their earlier position.

Currently, Aesthetic Realism claims to have the cure for racism.[1]

Aesthetc Realism adherents prefer to be called students, not members. The foundation encourages students to have "consultations" in which the student meets privately with three senior students, called "consultants". Thousands of people have studied formally since 1941 but the turnover is high, and the group is estimated to have only 50 entry-level students and 70 consultants or consultants-in-training (called "associates").

Students of Aesthetic Realism write about it prolifically, including the Columbia University doctoral dissertation of anthropologist Arnold Perey, sponsored by Margaret Mead, Oksapmin Society and World View. Papers were recently given at the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Social, and Cultural Organization, describing the Siegel Theory of Opposites in relation to painting, world art, and art education. For example, the paper by Rackow and Perey AESTHETIC REALISM, ART, and ANTHROPOLOGY: Or, JUSTICE to PEOPLE (PDF), by Marcia Rackow and Arnold Perey. The foundation archives articles written about Aesthetic Realism on a separate website, AestheticRealism.net.

The Philosophy

Aesthetic Realism's founder, Eli Sigel, describes the philosophy in his principal book about it, Self and World ISBN 091049228X:

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.
Aesthetic Realism in 1941 first said that it was one's way of seeing the world which caused mental mishap or difficulty. And it was in the same year, 1941, that Aesthetic Realism said the useful way of seeing mind was to look upon it as a continual question of aesthetics....
Aesthetic Realism states that ethics begins with the human obligation to see everything, living and not living, as well as one can. Where we get away from this obligation or don't see it, or diminish its meaning, it is rather clear that contempt is showing its strength; indeed, is winning.
The first victory of contempt is the feeling in people that they have the right to see other people and things pretty much as they please. For this reason, the viewpoint of Aesthetic Realism that we have an obligation to see everything as well as we can, is a critical matter.
The fact that most people have felt there is no such obligation, that they had the right to see other people and other objects in a way that seemed to go with comfort—this fact is the beginning of the injustice and pain of the world. It is contempt in its first universal, hideous form....
There are two means, as Aesthetic Realism sees it, of bringing some satisfaction to ourselves. The first is the seeing of something like a sunset, a poem, a concerto, which can stand for the world and which pleases us through what it is: its structure in mind, time, and space. This is the aesthetic victory, which is the most sensible of all victories. The other victory is our ability to depreciate anything that exists. To see the world itself as an impossible mess—and this is often not difficult at all—gives a certain triumph to the individual....

Criticism (Cult aspects)

On the one hand Aesthetic Realism is a philosophy of liking the world created by an acclaimed poet. On the other hand it's a group that promotes the study of that philosophy, which critics say operates as a mind-control cult. The most vocal of these critics are former members. Still, many of these critical former members are careful to point out that their objection is not with the philosophy of Aesthetic Realism itself, but rather the way it's promoted by the Aesthetic Realism Foundation. One such critic writes, "Ironically, [Eli Siegel's] massively harmful cult has done more to obscure the value of his work than reveal it." source

Those claiming that the Aesthetic Realism Foundation is a cult cite these cultish aspects:

  • They exhibit fanatical devotion to their founder/leader.
  • They believe that they have the one true answer to universal happiness if only people would listen.
  • Their ultimate purpose is to recruit new believers.
  • They believe they are being persecuted or censored by the rest of the world.
  • They do not tolerate any criticism or questioning of their belief system. They make very public and very personal attacks on their critics.
  • They won't communicate with non-members, even if they're family members. If they do maintain some kind of communication it's very limited.
  • They shun former members.
  • They have a peculiar way of talking, using specialized language, and repeating certain words or phrases often.

Devotion to their Leader

Followers of Aesthetic Realism consider their founder Eli Siegel to have been more than a mere mortal. In a letter to the New York Times on Oct. 3, 1971, current [April 2005] Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism, Ellen Reiss writes: "Eli Siegel is worthy to teach you. He is worthy to teach your Sunday editor and your publisher.... It is my careful judgment that he is worthy to teach Socrates."

In her afterward to The Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel and the Change from Homosexuality ISBN 0-910492-34-4 she says:

"Eli Siegel, founder of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism, is, in my careful opinion and that of a growing number of people, the greatest human being ever to live. That means the person fairest to the world and most useful to it. This means the person kindest, most learned, most ethical, most imaginative, and most desirous of learning; the greatest fighter against ugliness in people, the greatest encourager of beauty; the person at once most unified and diverse, most serious and humorous, powerful and subtle, magnificent and democratic."

In relation to Eli Siegel's Self and World ISBN 091049228X, Martha Baird wrote: "I believe Self and World is the greatest book ever to have been written. If you think I'm saying greater than the Bible or Shakespeare -- yes, I am."

On a website critical of the group, "Aesthetic Realism is a Cult", a former student of AR writes: "While I was in AR, I did believe that Eli Siegel was greater than Christ...It would have been accurate to say I 'worshipped' him."

Belief of Persecution

AR students believe that there is a conspiracy in the news media to not share the news about Aesthetic Realism with the rest of the world. Members wore Victim of the Press buttons to proclaim their alleged persecution by the media until the 1990's, when they were chastised in the media for doing so. Though the buttons are gone, the beliefs persist. These quotes from AR students were all taken from AR's website on January 10, 2005:

"The reason people are in agony about racial inequality, and so much more that could have changed decades ago, is this: persons on the press have blocked America's access to Aesthetic Realism.... Because press persons can't be superior to the knowledge of Eli Siegel, and because he stands for a democracy and respect for people that many press individuals fear, they have tried to do away with that which makes their egos so uncomfortable -- principally by boycotting it. The press has embodied hate of what is new and kind long before this time." -- Arnold Perey

"He was a victim of the press boycott of Aesthetic Realism..." -- Dorothy Koppelman

"[it] is one of the results of the press boycott of Aesthetic Realism." -- Miriam Mondlin

"The education of Aesthetic Realism--so vital to people everywhere--has been kept from them through a cruel press boycott of over five decades." -- Marion Fenell

"I accuse the American press of preferring the continuing pain of children and even death to being honest about Aesthetic Realism." -- Robert Murphy

"The Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel, the knowledge most needed by the world, has been kept from people by a press boycott.... The boycott of Aesthetic Realism comes from only one thing: members of the press have been furious that they respected Eli Siegel and Aesthetic Realism so much." -- Ellen Reiss

Little or no contact with non-believing family members

Aesthetic Realism students frequently disassociate from their families if their families are non-believers. One former student writes: "I never believed it was a cult. I didn't see my parents for 15 years, and I thought nothing of it. I used to plan trips to go home, and all the cult members would get around you and talk you out of it. My parents would be so heartbroken when I canceled at the 11th hour." (Jewish Times, Aug. 22, 2003)

Another says:

"A student won points by demonstrating their loyalty to AR through their willingness to cut off their family if their family was deemed insufficiently grateful and respectful. There were even instances of students refusing to visit their parents when one of them was dying because the parents did not "express regret" and renounce their unfairness to Eli Siegel and AR. There were parents who literally begged their son or daughter to relent so they could see them one more time, but the child refused. The parent died without ever seeing their child again. Far from being criticized for such behavior, students who went this far were seen as heroes in AR. They received public praise from Ellen Reiss." source

Shunning former members

Many former members claim that while they were involved they shunned anyone who left the group, and that they were shunned when they left themselves. One says: "It is almost impossible to describe how filthy, disgusting, degenerate, and depraved we saw anyone who left AR. Take all the worst people throughout history you can think of, roll them into one, and you have what we were conditioned to think of them. I used to believe, for example, that while Hitler was evil because he wanted to kill all Jews and did succeed in killing 6 million of them, a person who left AR was even worse. They wanted to doom every person in the whole world for the rest of time to lives deprived of AR. There was no evil greater than that." (source)

Defense

The Aesthetic Realism Foundation has not been shy about defending itself from these criticisms. In 2004 they put up the website Countering the Lies to attempt to refute the charges against them. They also compare their critics to slave-owners, the people who disbelieved Galileo and Darwin, and political traitors. The following quote is one they contributed to this article:

"Meanwhile, the furtherance of these scientific and humanistic goals, which Aesthetic Realism stands for preeminently, has angered some individuals. These have worked to disparage this new education with pejoratives much like those directed against abolitionists by slave-owning Southerners. Their motive, in the 19th century, was to have their egos uninterfered with so they could continue to own other human beings for profit. And those who have attacked Aesthetic Realism bear a resemblance to Cato the Censor (in ancient Rome) who was known for his desire to stifle what is kind, gracious, and pleasing. And the controversy here is like that between Darwin and his detractors--that is, between new knowledge about the nature of the world and man's place in it, and the ego's desire to abolish whatever it cannot be superior to."

On their Countering the Lies website, they say:

“In the history of thought it has repeatedly happened that knowledge which brings new justice, accuracy, and beauty to the world has been met, not only with gratitude and love, but also with the resentment and anger of narrow, conceited people. So it was with the great work of persons as different as Galileo and Keats, Darwin and Spinoza and Martin Luther King. And so it has been too in the history of Aesthetic Realism. . . . Aesthetic Realism makes for tremendous respect for the world and people, and therefore someone who feels entitled to have contempt for everything can become angry with it.

“Meanwhile, history shows this about the people mentioned above—Galileo, Keats, Darwin, Spinoza, King: as years passed, those who opposed and denigrated them came to be seen as disgraceful and ignorant. So it has been too in the history of Aesthetic Realism.”

"So much for the stupid lying of Mali, Bluejay and the other liars...Why is he doing this? Feeling himself to be a failure in his own life, and joining with others also seeking revenge for essentially the same reason....Michael Bluejay seeks the triumph of making himself important by looking down upon others."

External Links

Websites supporting Aesthetic Realism

Websites critical of Aesthetic Realism