I’m still dragging, so I’m not sure how far I’ll get with tragedy today. One thing I’ll get out of the way is a change of terms, from “tragedy” to “negative art.” Negative art would include tragedy but any other kind of art which seems most directly an expression of something painful.
Okay, to start with, negative art causes (or tries to cause) AS (a subject) to experience the anthroceptual pleasure of learning AS is not alone. To understand how this comes about, according to knowlecular psychology (and we must, because I’m not satisfied with merely asserting that one can experience being not alone and that it will cause one pleasure), is complicated. Actually, it may be simple, but my own understanding of it is too confused right now for me to provide a simple explanation of it.
At bottom is how human beings become friends. According to the part of knowlecular psychology that has to do with the anthroceptual awareness, when AS perceives another human being, a represen- tation of a human being, the Urceptual Other, will be activated in AS’s anthroceptual awareness. In certain conditions–most social conditions, I should think–if the human being who is perceived is a stranger, AS will become passive. As a result, another representation of a human in AS’s anthroceptual awareness, the Urceptual Self, which is wired to the Urceptual Other, will copy the actions of the Urceptual Other. This will lead to anthroceptual pleasure if those actions turn out to be the same or similar to what AS’s actions would have been in the same situation. In other words, AS will think, “this person is like me.” That, fundamentally however simplistic it may seem, is the basis of friendship.
At this point, AS’s Urceptual Friend will be activated–with an automatic dose of extra pleasure; that is, whenever the Urceptual Friend is activated, automatic pleasure will result.
It is now obvious to me that I am in over my head here. I need to write a fairly extensive essay on the knowlecular basis of friendship (as I probably partially have somewhere). So I’m now leaving knowlecular psychology to make a few simpler statements about friendship and negative art.
Negative art may provide an engagent with a friend with whom one shares a reaction to the pain the art concerns–a character in a tragic play, a persona in a melancholy poem, or a reader’s impression of the author of such a poem. For example, an engagent might experience Macbeth as a friend by sympathizing with his misery over the death of his wife and his final dissatisfaction with life (even despite the evil acts he has performed). The feeling that Macbeth is an ally of the engagent against the vileness of life will then cause a pleasure possibly superior to the pain of Macbeth’s bad end, and the pain caused by his crimes.
Apologies for the mess I’ve made of this explanation. It’s valid, anyway, by gum! Later, I hope, I’ll be able to do a much better job of saying what I want to say.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll say more about my other explanations, who knows. Lucky I don’t have a cocaine connection, and a lot of money: I’d probably over-dose. I am SO sleepy!