Aesthetic Realism Foundation

How to Study

Anthropology Is about You & Everyone

Taught by Arnold Perey, PhD

Photograpy by Arnold Perey, Boys in New Guinea, on the cover of his novel GWEPeople everywhere in the world, from the grasslands of Africa to the tents of Asia and North America, are understood through the principles of Aesthetic Realism, stated by Eli Siegel. We are all trying to like the world aesthetically, as a oneness of opposites. All humanity is more alike than different–kind and cruel, accurate and wild, powerful and delicate, and more—and is trying to put these opposites together in ourselves. Through Aesthetic Realism, anthropology is essential knowledge for us to know ourselves and others with kind, scientific, and critical exactitude.

Alternate Wednesdays, 6:00 – 7:30 PM Eastern Time (USA)

Fall 2026 classes via video conference are now in session.

FALL 2026

This semester we study, and ask questions about, human evolution. Our questions are based on how Aesthetic Realism and Eli Siegel its founder has understood the human self, that self which meets the world every moment of our lives, and has a very long evolutionary history, most of which we are unaware of. Wrote R.R. Marett, a distinguished anthropologist respected by Mr. Siegel, “Anthropology is the whole history of man as fired and pervaded by the idea of evolution.” Eli Siegel, in Aesthetic Realism, opened up a new understanding of the place of ethics and art in evolution, which we explore this semester.

  • Sep 23    Planet Earth Evolves: Does it Shape a New Being—a Two-Legged Primate?

About 56 million years ago, with flesh eating dinosaurs gone, the earth came to its hottest tropical temperatures ever—the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. “The ground was too irritable,” said Mr. Siegel, jestingly, in a lecture, “and needed to cool down.” Thus, the Ice Age came. We ask, did the Ice Age, the cooling of earth, make possible the evolution of human beings? How did humans evolve, vastly more impelled to know and respect the world—than their many predecessors?

  • Oct 7   Beings Evolved, Able to Care for Each Other—Including Human Beings

Darwin points to the advancing evolution of life: even tiny, simple, insect-like “springtails” are able to care for each other—overcoming the separation and aloofness of one-celled organisms. Darwin quotes Sir J. Lubbock:  “They butt one another…like two playful lambs. Then the female pretends to run away and the male runs after her with [an] appearance of anger—they play with their antennae and seem to be all in all to one another.” (In The Descent of Man).

  • Oct 21   Emotion: Crucial for Humanity to Evolve?

In this class we ask—did emotion play a crucial role in the biological evolution from solitary wasp to complex, social bee? Sedentary clam to mobile octopus? Miocene ape to modern Human history.

  • Nov 4  The Power of the Folktale

Do folktales like “Three Billy Goats Gruff” who defeat the Troll beneath the bridge, stand for ethics in early people? Are folktales a cross-cultural, lively force for humanity’s social evolution?

  • Nov 15 (Sunday) The Place of Art in Human Evolution

We meet at 11 AM for the joint class in the Visual Arts taught by Marcia Rackow and Anthropology taught by Arnold Perey.

  • Dec 2   Mistakes and Good Sense of Early People: Can They Teach Us Now?

This class will be given to studying the mistakes and effective knowledge of early people for the purpose of seeing our kinship to them and what they were hoping for, which Aesthetic Realism in our time honors.

  • Dec 16   Students in the Anthropology Class Express What They Have Seen

 

Want to audit a class?

  • Contact the registrar at 212.777.5055, Mon–Fri, 2–6 PM (ET) or submit this brief form. Be sure to make your request at least 2 days before the class.
  • Once your request has been approved, you will receive an email with a link to pay for the class.

Fees

  • Semester (7 classes): $60
  • Audit (per class): $12

 

See Aesthetic Realism: A New Perspective for Anthropology and Sociology

Three instances of how Aesthetic Realism shows people of different cultures are more alike than has been known:

[1] What Big Mistakes Do Even Smart Men Make? With a consideration of the African story “Maliane and the Water Snake” from Lesotho.

[2] About the Ethical Unconscious. The myth of the flood: discussing anthropology, the anthropologist, and a representative American woman, Daphne Baker.

[3] “How Much Feeling—and What Kind—Should a Man Have?” Discussing my life, the life of Fusiwe, a head man of the Yanomami People, and men of the United States

Part 1  |  Part 2  |  Part 3

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