Paterson Singles
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June 13: Probably nothing boosts my spirits more than coming up with a new term--for something I consider important. Last night, in bed, it was "empatheture," ehum PAAH thuh chur. For a long time I've been trying to pin down how to define the aesthetic experience in terms of my theory of psychology. I wanted it limit it to what I call fundaceptual experience, or what our senses tell us. A major problem with that is that novels and plays are considered works of art, and narrative and characterization are more important in them than sensual imagery. Last night, I suddenly realized I could solve my problem by expanding my three kinds of verbal expression, advocature, literature and informrature to four kinds, the fourth being empatheture. Advocature is writing intended to persuade, literature is writing intended to give sensual pleasure, informrature is writing intended to impart knowledge, and empatheture is writing intended to provide anthroceptual, or people, pleasure--the engagent enjoys empathizing with a writer and/or the writer's characters.
As for narrative, I decided all four kinds have it, so it's not a defining characteristic. Needless to say, each of these kinds has traces of the defining characteristic of the other three, but each has a different major defining characteristic. And, of course, sometimes it's hard to classify a given work. So what?
At the moment, I consider both literature and empatheture art. Ha, I now see that empatheture is literature, and literature whose goal is to provide sensual delight (beauty) is . . . aesthetiture.
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