Not common sense in its ordinary meaning, but in Aristotle (De Anima, II, 1-2) and following him Aquinas and others, a central cognitive function that integrates and monitors the delivery of the other distinct senses, as when a shape is both seen and felt.
Sensus communis
| Philosophy Dictionary: sensus communis |
| 5min Related Video: Sensus communis |
| Wikipedia: Sensus communis |
 |
| Part of a series on Aristotle |
| Peripatetic school · physics · ethics · term logic · view of women |
| Corpus Aristotelicum |
| Physics · Organon · Nicomachean Ethics · Politics · Metaphysics · On the Soul · Rhetoric · Poetics |
| Thoughts |
| Correspondence theory of truth · hexis · virtue ethics (golden mean) · four causes · telos · temporal finitism · antiperistasis · view of God (unmoved mover) · nature · potentiality and actuality · universals (substantial form) · hylomorphism · mimesis · substances (ousia) & accidents · essence · category of being · phronesis · magnanimity · sensus communis · rational animal · |
| Influences and Followers |
| Socrates · Plato · Alexander the Great · Theophrastus · Avicenna · Averroes · Maimonides · St. Thomas Aquinas · Alasdair MacIntyre · Martha Nussbaum |
| Related |
| Platonism · Commentaries on Aristotle · Scholasticism · Conimbricenses · Pseudo-Aristotle |
Sensus communis is, according to Aristotle, the part of the psyche responsible for binding the inputs of the individual sense organs into a coherent and intelligible representation.[1] It is used in a similar sense by Thomas Aquinas.
In rhetoric, the term is used to mean the whole set of unstated assumptions, prejudices, and values that an orator can take for granted when addressing an audience. These are those opinions absorbed from society and the Zeitgeist without being exposed to critical consideration. [2]
The term is further used by Immanuel Kant in a wider philosophical sense, applying it to the whole human race. In the Critique of Judgement he says:
"..we must [here] take sensus communis to mean the idea of a sense shared [by us all], i.e., a power to judge that in reflecting takes account (a priori), in our thought, of everyone else's way of presenting [something], in order as it were to compare our own judgement with human reason in general... Now we do this as follows: we compare our judgement not so much with the actual as rather with the merely possible judgements of others, and [thus] put ourselves in the position of everyone else..." [3]
Literal translations of "common sense" or "communal spirit" would be inaccurate; the concept is more subtle.
References
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Learn More
 | Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3d Earl of Shaftesbury |
| sensation |
| Psychology (history 1450-1789) |
Help us answer these
 | Do you have a recent sensus for Ithaca WI? |
| Sensus ng pilipinas? |
| A paragraph that distribes what a sensus? |
Post a question - any question - to the WikiAnswers community:
Copyrights:
 |
 | Philosophy Dictionary. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Copyright © 1994, 1996, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Sensus communis". Read more |
Related answers
» More
ADVERTISEMENT
Answer these
- What is the purpose of sensus?
- What is the website of sensus?
- What happened to the communis?
- Definition for sensus?
- What is a communis country?
Mentioned in
