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: 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 2025 classes via video conference are now in session.

FALL 2025

  • Sep 17   Respect for Animals in Anthropology

“The bees always expect to be informed of a wedding, and to have their hives decorated with a favor…in Derbyshire, Wiltshire, and Oxfordshire.” —The Wedding Day by Edward J. Wood (1869)

Humans have respected animals, often warmly. Is it a way of seeing reality more truly? We ask about this, including in legend, myth, and story—including a brave woodpecker in the Hiawatha legend. Meanwhile, some animals embody our own worst traits—a leopard, beautiful but treacherous in West African legend. Why is that?

  • Oct 1   Anthropology and Domestic Life

What does domestic life—let’s say, in a leafy shelter in Africa’s Ituri Rainforest—tell us about the way a people see the world?

Eli Siegel deeply and urgently writes: “One cannot be just to an individual, even if that individual is husband or wife, son or daughter, unless the desire to be just to the world or all that is not ourselves, is a true thing, a strong thing, a constant thing.”

  • Oct 15   Can Humor in One Culture be Felt by People in Another?

A Northern Paiute laughed heartily at an earthy Coyote story told in the Nevada Desert and felt good. And this was the reason, explained by Aesthetic Realism in Eli Siegel’s definition of humor: “Humor,” he wrote, “is the feeling that the ugly is beautiful, while it is still seen as ugly first.” We explore, and enjoy humorous stories told across the world—asking: Do they too have the important and philosophic meaning that Aesthetic Realism points to?

  • 
Oct 29   Anthropology Tells of Two Selves

In the Mountains of Mindanao, the Philippines, live the Bagobo people. Laura Watson Benedict tells us that “inhabiting every individual, two souls called gimokud are recognized. The right-hand soul is the ‘good soul.’ The left-hand soul is said to be the ‘bad soul.'”

Explains Eli Siegel: “In keeping with notions that have been present all through history the human being does have two sides, just as he has a profile and full face….Whether one side or the other is in play, the purpose is, in a sense, the same.” [Self and World, p. 53]

In this class we shall explore how this is so and why it matters very much, scientifically and personally.

  • (Sunday, Nov. 9). Joint Class: Art and Anthropology
    The Ugly Given Meaningful Form

The subject of the joint Anthropology and Art Class, 11 AM – 12:30 PM, taught by Marcia Rackow and Arnold Perey, will be announced.

  • Nov 26   Is Human Evolution an Aesthetic Situation?

We study this discussion by Eli Siegel: “It can be shown that with all the food-getting, mating, diversification of organism, survival, to be found in what is called evolution—there is the need of the world to be known by individuals and the need by individuals to see the world as different from and the same as themselves.” [TRO #2160, We Are Still Self and World ]

In this class we include, as a matter of strict anthropology, how and why modern humans (ourselves) evolved from earlier forms of life—an astonishing oneness of inevitability and chance. And why we include within our fortunate ancestry, Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA.

  • Dec 10   Anthropology Is Freshly Explored—Papers by Students in This Class

 

 

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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