Do Logic & Passion Have to Fight?
By Devorah Tarrow
Women think, with despair, that yes, logic and passion do have to fight. I did. And in a class Eli Siegel said, “The problem of man and woman is how to have kissing go along with cogitation.” That statement is so true, and I’m grateful to have learned that logic and passion don’t fight in a woman’s life when she has a purpose she’s proud of: to know the world outside of her and try to be fair to people, including a man she’s close to.
I saw myself as a logical person, and in college I got good grades. Yet while I used my logic to reason out the differences among the British empiricists, I had other purposes with it too: I’d have “intellectual” conversations with a man—to have him want me. But I felt increasingly that I was careening between what my passions seemed to demand and what my mind told me was right. I felt: why, if I was going by what the popular psychology I studied told me to go by—my instincts—did I feel so bad?
The split in me became more and more painful, and I felt love would never succeed. Then I learned about an Aesthetic Realism lesson Eli Siegel gave to two college women, in which he explained:
We can use anything—Greek or sex—for false ambition, false achievement....That is, the self can be disproportionately served....If we use sex not to see the meaning of the world but to assert ourselves, we’ll have the same guilt as using Greek that way.... Anything you do that doesn’t honor the world sufficiently, you’re guilty about—anything.
The self, I learned, has a logic: Our deepest purpose is to see meaning in things, in people. When we work against that purpose, go after the “false achievement” of contempt—whether in how we use sexual passion or our mind—we can’t like ourselves. Learning this, I felt I could finally make sense of myself and love. I saw that the reason I disliked myself was: I’d been after contempt—lessening, devaluing people to make myself important. And while I had had a true passion, for civil rights—which was in behalf of caring for what is real—with men and sex I’d had a different purpose.
In another lesson, Mr. Siegel explained: “Subtlety [of mind] is used in behalf of the fineness of truth, the exquisiteness of what is real, or it is used in behalf of giving yourself reasons for doing something which might not be right in the first place.” He asked me, “Do you think you have both kinds?” I did.
Knowledge & Love
I was coming to know Jeffrey Carduner. And for the first time with a man I was attracted to, I felt I could be different. We talked about our lives, our hopes, and where we wanted to be better. I learned from Jeffrey about subjects I hadn’t been interested in, including economics. I respected him, and wanted to understand and encourage him.
Yet I still had, too, an intense desire to put aside thought and just get a man to make a lot ofme, very much through sex. I didn’t like myself for this desire, and fortunately I was able to ask questions about it in an Aesthetic Realism class. Mr. Siegel said:
ES. Our examining purpose is usually not the same as our loving purpose. It should be, and that is one of the great divisions: mind is used to be critical, investigatory, examining; and it is also used to be enthusiastic and to love something very much. What is the difference and what is the sameness of mind there?
I said I didn’t know. And he explained:
ES. For instance, in the matter of love, there is some desire for truth.
DT. There is?!
He explained that there is knowledge present at the height of passion: for example, one is aware of touch.
ES. There’s knowledge there. Your seeing being is present no matter what you’re going through.
DT. I feel when I’m getting approval my seeing stops!
ES. I don’t believe it. You just said you were aware that you were getting approval—that shows it didn’t stop entirely.
DT. That’s true. That’s good!
ES. Aesthetic Realism says very definitely that all thought is either for the purpose of preserving, enhancing, advantaging a person, or it’s for the purpose of seeing what is true.
He composed these lines:
With respect you protect
The beauty of the world.
With contempt you protect
Your own supremacy.
Care for a Man—& Reality
After that lesson I wrote in my journal, about love: “My suffering and difficulties have come from an insufficient hope to encourage a man to care for everything and everyone else. Now I feel closer to the right track. What’s our purpose?: to use each other to learn and to understand, to question our contempt, and work to be fair to each other and the feelings and hopes of people.”
Now Jeffrey Carduner and I are married. Where once I was torn, feeling myself a woman of mind who betrayed herself with a man, I’m proud to encourage Jeffrey and myself to be fair to people, including as we’re in each other’s arms.
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