By Eli Siegel

“It calls for more fairness to all reality…. A book that is new—revolutionary—on every one of its 400 pages.” —Smithsonian Magazine

“There is a deep and ‘dialectic’ duality facing every human being, which can be put this way: How is he to be entirely himself, and yet be fair to that world which he does not see as himself? The definition of aesthetics is to be found in a proper appreciation of this duality.” —from chapter 3, “The Aesthetic Method in Self-Conflict“

“Love and marriage, in the contemporary world, are attended often by desires to possess, desires to hate, giving of one’s body without the giving of one’s self, anger, shame, misery. It is all because that third partner in any relation of two people is not seen for what it is and not loved. One cannot really love a person without loving reality….Love is the giving to a person of all that which is coming to him or her; nothing which is not deserved; everything which is. For that, a constant, comprehensive, intense desire to know a person is necessary.”  —from chapter 7, “Love and Reality”

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