“Aesthetics is related to every particular conflict; to everyday conflict.”

—  Eli Siegel

Everything Has to Do with Hardness and Softness (1969)

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Eli Siegel photo
Eli Siegel 19
Latvian-American poet, philosopher 1902–1978

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“Creatures really have divergent and conflicting desires. Their distinct motives are not (usually) wishes for survival or for means-to-survival, but for various particular things to be done and obtained while surviving. And these can always conflict. Motivation is fundamentally plural.”

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Context: Creatures really have divergent and conflicting desires. Their distinct motives are not (usually) wishes for survival or for means-to-survival, but for various particular things to be done and obtained while surviving. And these can always conflict. Motivation is fundamentally plural. It must be so because, in evolution, all sorts of contingincies and needs arise, calling for all sorts of different responses. An obsessive creature, constantly dominated by one kind of motive, would not survive.

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Source: 1960s, Conflict and defense: A general theory, 1962, p. 2, partly cited in: Dennis Sandole (1998) A Comprehensive Mapping Of Conflict And Conflict. Resolution: A Three Pillar Approach http://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/pcs/sandole.htm

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“Every resistance reveals the ego (one's own) in conflict with another.”

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Sadism and Masochism : The Psychology of Hatred and Cruelty, Vol. 1 (1939), p. 46
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“Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with conflict by peaceful means.”

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"Address at Commencement Exercises at Eureka College in Illinois," May 9, 1982. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=42501
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