The Esthetic Animal: Man, the Art-Created Art Creator (An Exposition-University Book) - Hardcover

What is the "missing link" that separates man from other primates? Why did primitive man have such a large brain when natural selection would dictate one slightly larger than that of an ape? If largeness of the brain is sign of intelligence, what kind of ideas preoccupied early man?

The answer to these questions is that man is an esthetic animal, an art-created art creator, who from his earliest beginnings was occupied with creating arts and, thereby, defining himself. So theorizes Robert Joyce in this wide-ranging essay that bridges the millennia from Australopithecus to modern man. If we ignore the role of the arts in human development, says Joyce, man's physical evolution makes no sense at all, for all animals man is the poorest equipped physically to survive in a hostile environment....

The author perceives our present domination by science as a real danger. If we are to survive, we must once again educe its contradiction; that is, we must enter into and believe in the arts, seeing them as the key to our reality. For such a reorientation, Joyce maintains, nothing short of an esthetic-cultural revolution must take place.