SPRING-SUMMER 2026

• May 9   The Mix-up in Every Wife about Dependence & Independence—& the Aesthetic Solution!

That one can be in love and not be dependent a bit, is rather difficult. How you can love a person and feel entirely independent of the person is about as hard as trying to see great music without devotedly listening to it. Love, like listening, is both independence and dependence….The relation of independence and dependence in this world is one of the most beautiful things the human mind can reach. It is sheer, warm, indispensable aesthetics.

—Eli Siegel, from The Rightness of
Aesthetic Realism: A Periodical

• Jun 13   Do Couples Use Their Care for Each Other to Be Interested in Other People?

The purpose of loving one person is to love people and things in general. What happens most often is that through loving one person, we get to be less interested in people. We have a notion that since we’ve caged a person, our job of understanding other persons is over. And so the function of love—which is the understanding of people and reality as a whole through the close, musical, complete seeing of one person—is not kept to….Love for a person cannot be dissociated from love for people in general.

—Eli Siegel, from Aesthetic Realism and People

• Jul 11   The Big Question for Every Wife: How Much Do We Want to Like at All?

When a woman consents to marry, she hopes to like this person she’ll marry. At the same time, she feels she can like her spouse without the desire to like as such. There is a big desire in people not to be pleased with what is not themselves. Does one have to be grateful that reality exists, and particular things in it, in order to have a successful marriage?

—Eli Siegel, from The Rightness of
Aesthetic Realism: A Periodical

• Aug 8   What Is Real Encouragement in Marriage?

The chief difficulty in marriage is that people think the other person worries about them and will even stick up for them when they’re attacked, but will not encourage them directly….Encouragement would mean a desire of yours is that a person, that people, get to what represents them, what they rightly hope for, and that they respect themselves. You see them from their point of view, and feel it’s good for you to see a person’s purpose… Aesthetic Realism says if you don’t encourage a person, you can’t think well of yourself. This is what I call the ethical imperative.

—Eli Siegel, from an Aesthetic Realism Lesson