Abstract

To give concrete meaning to the phrase "Art for Life's Sake," Jenkins assumes that "the general purpose that animates all of man's activities and artifacts is adaptation to the environment and satisfaction of the conditions of life." A phenomenological survey of human experience reveals three basic modes of viewing or adapting to the world--the affective, the cognitive, and the aesthetic. Each is intertwined with the others, and all three are necessary if man is to adapt to his environment; but as one or another mode dominates experience, attention is focused on the self, the relatedness of entities, and the particular entities themselves. The view of art that emerges is a reformulation of the imitation theory; skillfully and systematically applied to the persistent facts of aesthetic life, it offers solid, common-sense illumination of traditionally obscure problems.--D. W. S.