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Aesthetic Realism: Life, Love & Learning

Leila Rosen, English Educator

  • Home
    • About Me
  • Life & Love
    • Being Important: What Does It Mean & What Mistakes Do We Make about It?
    • What Are Women Looking For in Love?
    • What’s Real Intelligence—about Ourselves & the World?
    • What, in a Woman Herself, Interferes with Love?
    • A Woman’s Determination: Right or Wrong?
    • Is Kindness Intelligent, Selfish, Strong?
    • Independence & Need in Our Lives: How Can They Make Sense?
    • Caring for People—Wisdom or Foolishness?
    • Care for Yourself & Justice to Others—Do They Have to Fight?
    • Justice versus Injustice in Men & Women
    • We Want to Be Happy—But Do We Also Want Not to Be?
    • What Does Getting Ahead Really Mean?
    • The Debate in Every Person: To Have More Feeling or Less?
    • True Self-Expression, and What Interferes
    • What Is a Husband’s Biggest Mistake?
    • Can Men & Women Be Intelligent in Love?
    • Everybody’s Big, Dramatic Question: How Much Should People Mean to Us?
    • A Man’s Imagination: What Makes It a Friend or Foe?
    • Individuality and Love: Do They Have to Fight?
    • Public Self & Private Thoughts—Does A Man Have To Pretend?
    • A Woman Whose Name Was Truth
    • Wowing People and Liking Oneself—What Is the Difference?
    • Does Our Anger Weaken or Strengthen Us?
    • What Makes a Man Truly Strong?
    • What Is Woman’s Greatest Victory—Appearing Beautiful or Seeing Beautifully?
    • Is Kindness Strength?—Aesthetic Realism & Thaddeus Stevens
  • Successful Teaching: Here’s How
    • Through Aesthetic Realism Interest Wins, Cynicism Loses
    • On Gogol’s “The Nose,” a Satire on Snobbishness
    • More on the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method
    • Through the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method, Knowledge Opposes Anger—and Students Learn!
    • Lessons on Rhyme, Using the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method
    • Poetry as Justice: Through the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method, Aesthetics Defeats Contempt
    • Students Choose Knowing the World, Not Fighting with It
  • Language, Literature & Poetry
    • Man Is Poetically Shown in Southern Road, 1932
    • How Musical Can Sadness Be?—or, Grief, Anger, Hope
    • The World Is in Idioms
    • Art Is Within Science
    • Poetry, Atmosphere, and Neatness
    • Some Poetry Is Distinguished
    • The Old Wives’ Tale, by Arnold Bennett
    • A Thrilling Talk on Literature, by Sheldon Kranz
    • Favorite Links about Literature & Teaching English
    • Literature & Life: A Blog
  • Notable Men & Women
    • Spencer Tracy
    • Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
    • Independence & Need in Our Lives: How Can They Make Sense?
    • Justice versus Injustice in Men & Women
    • The Debate in Every Person: To Have More Feeling or Less?
    • True Self-Expression, and What Interferes
    • A Woman Whose Name Was Truth
    • Is Kindness Strength?—Aesthetic Realism & Thaddeus Stevens
  • Blog: Literature & Life
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      • Dominican Republic
      • Mississippi
      • Italy, 2012
      • Puerto Rico, 2016
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      • Photographs from some of my travels
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    • To find out more about Aesthetic Realism
    • “Timothy Lynch Represents America”

Greetings

Leila RosenToday, people all over the world are experiencing unprecedented upheaval. Our lives are dramatically different as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and growing protests against horrific, systemic racism are taking place all over the world. How can we make sense of what is happening? How should we see the world in which this is happening? The study of Aesthetic Realism, which is described throughout this website, can be a means of answering those questions. To begin with, there is this question, asked by Eli Siegel, the founder of Aesthetic Realism: 

“Is this true: No matter how much of a case one has against the world—its unkindness, its disorder, its ugliness, its meaninglessness—one has to do all one can to like it, or one will weaken oneself?”

◊  ◊  ◊

I’m glad to welcome you to my website. On its pages, you’ll read about what I’ve learned from Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy founded by the American poet, critic, and educator Eli Siegel. This exciting study has given me a joyous and useful life, which includes a rich career as an English educator in New York City and a very happy marriage.

On this site, you’ll find:

articles on the tremendous effectiveness of the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method,

which has been used with great success by many K-12 teachers in the NYC area, including myself.

papers presented at public seminars at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation

on subjects that concern everyone: including love, kindness, justice, and how to see people. From these papers, by me and by my colleagues, you’ll see how the study of Aesthetic Realism makes for real pride and self-respect!

reports of lectures by Eli Siegel and classes taught by Ellen Reiss,

the Aesthetic Realism Chairman of Education, with whom I’m proud to study. Some  of these reports are on poetry, the relation of art and science, and the wonderful meaning of idioms.

links to many resources I find valuable.

I’ve included links to websites useful for English teachers. There’s also a page pointing to various resources about the study of Aesthetic Realism.

To start reading, click on any of the links on the right or the tabs in the menu above. You can also check out my other blogs: “Aesthetic Realism and the Works of Edith Wharton,” and “The Aesthetics of…”. Enjoy!

More about me

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“Ethics—Its Power & Beauty”

I love this recent issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, about a subject that affects us profoundly at every moment of our lives: ethics. And today, people are more conscious of what is ethical than at practically any time, at least in my memory. The lecture on ethics by Eli Siegel which is being serialized, beginning in this issue, is thrilling! Read it here.

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