Steve Weiner, computer specialist and Aesthetic Realism associate, writes:

This new issue of The Right Of, titled “An Inseparable Fighting-and-Love,” does something enormously important and kind. It’s about opposites that pain people very much: for and against, welcoming and fighting. And it explains that every instance of true beauty—including a symphony of Beethoven, a still-life by Cézanne, a poem by Walt Whitman—is a guide to how we can be for and against people and things in a way that makes sense, is just, is even beautiful, and has us be proud! A greatly rich education about yourself, art, and the world awaits you in this current issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known!

The commentary by Ellen Reiss begins:

Dear Unknown Friends:

We continue serializing the 1970 lecture by Eli Siegel Criticism Is the Art of Responding to Value. And in the present section we see something of Aesthetic Realism as sheer philosophy—philosophy at its richest and most logical—and also Aesthetic Realism as that which explains people, in all our confusions, worries, and hopes. It’s an honor to comment a little on how both those truly inseparable aspects of Aesthetic Realism are here.

There is the central principle of the philosophy Eli Siegel founded. That principle, which I’ll soon quote, describes something the centuries of art criticism have searched for—what beauty is. And it states too what no other writer on mind saw: the fundamental desire of the human self, our constant desire. Explained Mr. Siegel: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”

The present section of the lecture we’re serializing is very much about what it means for opposites to be one.

Not a Compromise

It is crucial to see that the oneness of opposites—which is beauty, and which we thirst to have—is not a compromise of opposites; it is not a “happy medium,” a middle course, or some tepid blend. Mr. Siegel explains that when, in an instance of art, opposites have been made one, there is always a living drama between them, an agogness: a simultaneous battle-and-friendship of those opposites, an inseparable fighting-and-love between them….Read more