本文專就美感實踐在社會生活與文化當中的位與角色問題來進行討論。本文作者一開始即指出，社會生活與文化的功能不只是在回應人類的物質性需求，也還必須維持人類的心靈存在。事實上，自我意識的發展使得人類招致無聊感，甚至可能感受空虛，並為此而焦慮。社會生活與文化基本功能正是要就此問題對症下藥。 此一功能在於維持個體的心靈存在，而美感行為(conduits esthètiques)在這當中也起了一個作用。然而，美感行為所起的作用往往是結合了社會生活與文化的其他側面，那些側面同樣也能執行這項功能。於是美感實踐混入了宗教行為，混入了社會社位或身份的表彰，混入了娛樂消遣等等。再者，即使在所謂純藝術活動的情況，也能表現出極大的不同，正如作者在有關現在藝術與當代藝術的討論中所指出的。然而，要為藝術下一個為現/當代兩皆適用的定，卻很困難。反之，每種藝術型式皆以各自的方式，擔任了相同的功能：藉感官刺激維持了存在感。

In this contribution, the author explores the role and place of aesthetic practices in social life and in culture. The author argues that social and cultural life does not have for only function to answer to human material needs, but also to sustain their psychic life. Indeed, among human beings, the development of self consciousness has the paradoxical effect of confronting them to an existential boredom and even to an uncanny feeling of emptiness. Social life and culture appear as remedies against these feelings and in doing this, they reveal one of their essential function. Aesthetic practices play a role in this process whose goal is to sustain the psychic life of individuals. However, quite often, they play this role in association with other elements of social and cultural life, which themselves play a similar role. Thus, aesthetic practices interact with religious practices, or with demonstrations of social status or of social identity, or with leisure, and so on. Moreover, even in the case of activities that are considered as being exclusively artistic, they can, after analysis, be shown to be different form each other. Hence, the author demonstrates that it is very difficult to give a definition of art that could apply indifferently to modern art and to contemporary art. However, each form fulfills a similar function: sustaining the feeling of existence through sensors stimulations.