This article addresses the underestimation of Medieval philosophy in the contemporary curriculum by engaging its very origins in the ‘postmodern’ dislocation of philosophy. The leading question is what would be the prospects in the 21st century of reorienting Western philosophy from its idea-historical sources, which would include its ancient traditions and the Medieval exposition, as well as the Renaissance elucidation thereof. Critically engaging the works of numerous ‘postmodern’ philosophers as well as critics of the ‘postmodern’ departure from traditional philosophy, this (...) article argues for the re-establishment of the late Medieval notion of sensus communis, both as common sense and community sense. Against this backdrop, the article reappraises Medieval thought within the context of sensus communis to combat the contemporary dislocation of philosophy, by raising the possibility of the presentation of first-order judgments via sensus communis in a new pursuit for wijsbegeerte. (shrink)

Der sensus communis vermittelt Apriori und Aposteriori, Intellektualität und Sinnlichkeit, Inter- und Intrasubjektivität. Die Studie analysiert die Bedeutungen und Funktionen des Begriffs in Kants Gesamtwerk, wobei sie Kants Einteilung der Philosophie folgt: Sie untersucht den sensus communis logicus im theoretischen Bereich, den sensus communis aestheticus im ästhetischen Bereich und den sensus communis practicus im praktischen Bereich.

John D. Schaeffer shows how the seventeenth-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico synthesized Greek and Roman ideas of what "sensus communis" and what ...

La base conceptual de lo que sería más tarde desarrollado por las vanguardias artísticas fue colonizada por alemanes de pensamiento romántico e idealista, cuya dimensión utópica puede ser fácilmente reconocida en el «antiguo programa del idealismo alemán» (1796), un texto que consagró un pensamiento idealista, que clamó por una nueva racionalidad o una mitología de la razón de Hegel, la intuición intelectual de Schelling y la Humanidad de Schiller. Aunque este proyecto de emancipación desarrollado más tarde por la vanguardia ha (...) perdido su credibilidad para nosotros, todavía tenemos que investigar en qué medida el arte de hoy puede mantener una función social. Este artículo señala algunos conceptos idealistas a la luz de una filosofía del arte, y fue creado siguiendo las líneas esbozadas en la Crítica del juicio de Kant, que han contribuido a la historia de la «avanzada» del arte. (shrink)

Prvi deo rada sadrzi pokusaj analize Kantovih pojmova svrhovitosti i harmonije i, u izvesnom smislu, njihovog medjusobnog odnosa, kao i odnosa sa osecanjem zadovoljstva. Toj analizi ce se pristupiti uz osvrt na Saftsberijev uvid u, danas tako nazvane,?second order affections?, i njihov znacaj u drustveno-politickoj filozofiji. Zakljucno ce se ovaj prvi deo rada baviti Kantovim shvatanjem sensus communis-a, i pokusati da ukaze na neke njegove specificnosti, koje omogucuju da se o njemu ne govori kao o empirijskom faktu. Drugi deo rada (...) pokusace da ukaze na polozaj sensus communis-a u Kantovoj politickoj filozofiji i situaciji, i neke implikacije koje bi se iz toga mogle izvesti. (shrink)

In the literature on Hannah Arendt’s Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, two sorts of claim have been made by different interpreters. First, there is Beiner’s observation that there is a shift in Arendt’s thoughts on judgment, which has led to the idea that Arendt develops two distinct theories of judgment. The second sort of claim concerns Arendt’s use of Kant’s transcendental principles. At its core, it has led to the critique that Arendt detranscendentalizes — or empiricalizes — Kant, by linking (...) Kant’s judgments of taste to an empirical sociability. In this article, I argue against both of these claims. Early fragments of Arendt’s on judgment make clear that she develops only one theory of judgment. It is only that it is not until later in her life that she fully elaborates it. Nor does Arendt confuse Kant’s idea of enlarged thinking with an actual dialogue with others. In fact, Arendt introduces an interesting interdependence between judgment and speech, or communication. I develop my argument by first outlining the problems Arendt hoped to resolve via judgment. Through my reading of the Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, I show how Arendt interprets Kant’s Critique of Judgment not as his theory of aesthetic judgments, but as an answer to the more general question ‘How do I judge?’ I also clarify the difference Arendt draws between common sense and community sense. With community sense, Arendt uncovers a foundation not only for men as political beings but also for the idea of humanity. This finding is often overlooked in the literature. I conclude with another Arendtian distinction that is often overlooked, that between spectators and the solitary philosopher. (shrink)

Giambattista Vico first published his masterpiece The New Science in 1725, but it did not receive much attention from the academic world until the middle of the twentieth century. The last fifty years of academic research have witnessed a so-called “linguistic” and “cultural” turn which has revived our interest in this great Italian thinker. Looking at the Vichian scholarship of the recent past, it seems that Vico’s theory of poetic wisdom has gained a great deal of recognition and deservedly so, (...) but his concept of sensus communis is yet to be fully appreciated. The present article thus tries to discuss the constructive and imaginative function of language and culture not just through the notion of poetic logic but also in relation to that of common sense, which hopefully can shed some light on the perennial debate over the criterion of truth and aesthetic judgement. (shrink)

This chapter examines the imagination, its relationship to “common sense,” and its recent development in the notion of the social imaginary in Western philosophy and the contributions Miki Kiyoshi and Nakamura Yūjirō can make in this regard. I trace the historical evolution of the notion of the productive imagination from its seeds in Aristotle through Kant and into the social imagination or imaginary as bearing on our collective being-in-the-world, with semantic and ontological significance, in Paul Ricoeur, Cornelius Castoriadis, and Charles (...) Taylor. The two Japanese philosophers, when brought into dialogue with the above contemporary Western thinkers, can contribute to this recent development of the imagination’s creativity into the collective sphere. Miki shows a connection between the imagination and a certain form-formlessness dynamic he inherits from Nishida. Nakamura in turn points to a connection between imagination and place via his development of the Aristotelian notion of common sense. Both have implications on how we understand the social imaginary. (shrink)

This book reflects on the problematic relation of ethics to politics in our 'democratic' era.

Die Abhandlung widmet sich der Explikation des Gemeinsinns in der dritten Kritik Immanuel Kants. Dabei zeigt sich, dass Kant die Exposition des Gemeinsinns deutlich von der Rolle des ,sensus communis' in der Deduktion der reinen Geschmacksurteile unterscheidet. Auf den ersten Blick könnte der Eindruck entstehen, dass der ,sensus communis' lediglich eine exkursartige, randständige Bedeutung in der Kantischen Philosophie einnähme. Bei näherer Betrachtung zeigt sich aber, dass er Implikationen aufweist, die in deren Kern führen: Untersucht werden insbesondere das Verhältnis von Gemeinsinn, (...) reflektierender Urteilskraft und Moralmetaphysik sowie Gemeinsinn und Subjektivität . Schließlich ist zu fragen, ob und inwiefern die Statik der Kantischen Vernunft-Konzeption im Lichte der dritten Kritik in der Richtung einer Selbstkonstitution der Vernunft 'verflüssigt' werden kann. (shrink)

This chapter examines the imagination, its relationship to “common sense,” and its recent development in the notion of the social imaginary in Western philosophy and the contributions Miki Kiyoshi and Nakamura Yūjirō can make in this regard. I trace the historical evolution of the notion of the productive imagination from its seeds in Aristotle through Kant and into the social imagination or imaginary as bearing on our collective being-in-the-world, with semantic and ontological significance, in Paul Ricoeur, Cornelius Castoriadis, and Charles (...) Taylor. The two Japanese philosophers, when brought into dialogue with the above contemporary Western thinkers, can contribute to this recent development of the imagination’s creativity into the collective sphere. Miki shows a connection between the imagination and a certain form-formlessness dynamic he inherits from Nishida. Nakamura in turn points to a connection between imagination and place via his development of the Aristotelian notion of common sense. Both have implications on how we understand the social imaginary. (shrink)

Die weltweite Praxis der Vergabe von Patenten auf Gene, die isoliert und von ihren natürlichen Gegebenheiten gereinigt worden sind, wird auf die Behauptung gestützt, dass diese Gene neu, nicht offensichtlich und nützlich sind. Während die Behauptungen von Nicht-Offensichtlichkeit und Nützlichkeit unbestreitbar sind, beruht die Behauptung von Neuheit auf einer rechtlichen Fiktion und enthält einen fundamentalen logischen Fehler. Darüber hinaus stellt das Argument, das diese Fiktion unterstützt, etwas als res nullius dar, was doch tatsächlich res communis ist. Die gängige Praxis sanktioniert (...) demnach eine ungerechtfertigte Aneignung und involviert eine fundamentale Verletzung des Begriffs des Rechtsanspruchs. Im Lichte der entgegenstehenden Gründe kann diese Verletzung auch nicht unter Berufung auf wirtschaftliche Notwendigkeiten gerettet werden. Im Unterschied dazu trifft die hier vorgetragene Kritik nicht Patentansprüche für künstliche Gene oder genetisch modifizierte Lebensformen, die daher anerkannt werden sollten. Mögliche Implikationen im Hinblick auf ein genetisch modifiziertes menschliches Genom werden kurz erörtert. The worldwide practice of granting patents on genes that have been isolated and purified from their natural occurrences is based on the claim that these genes are novel, non-obvious and have utility. While the claims of non-obviousness and utility are indisputable, the claim of novelty rests on a legal fiction and involves a fundamental logical error. Moreover, the argument in support of the fiction portrays as res nullius what in fact is res communis . Current practice therefore constitutes the legal sanction of an unjustified appropriation, and involves a fundamental violation of the notion of entitlement. In light of evidence to the contrary, this violation cannot be saved by an appeal to economic necessity. By contrast, patent claims for artificial genes or genetically modified life-forms are not subject to such a critique and should be granted. Possible implications with respect to a genetically modified human genome are briefly considered. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to Lois McNay’s article “The politics of exemplarity: Ferrara on the disclosure of new political worlds.” After contextualizing her appraisal of my views on exemplarity within the current debate about critical theory and postcolonialism, and after clarifying my interpretation of Kant’s notion of sensus communis, I defend the function that this concept plays within an immanent and experience-near approach to critical theory. Sensus communis is what makes of a subjective grievance a cogent critique. I then (...) elucidate how the transcontextual communicability of human flourishing can be understood, along lines still compatible with Kant’s theory of judgment. In the final section of the paper, McNay’s suggestion to reconceptualize critique in experience-near terms is integrated as a genealogical reconstruction of sensus communis as nourished by encounters with experiences of injustice. (shrink)

Revisiting Jaspers’ critique of the idea of collective guilt, the author proposes to consider the category of shame not as an individual moral experience, but as a sensus communis. Using the Kantian interpretation of the sensus communis to understand the collective character of shame allows us to draw attention to the fact that modern democracy (in contrast to war-oriented fascism) has lost its own main mobilizing resource and that which embodies the energy of community and the establishment of equality: revolution.

Prvi deo rada sadrzi pokusaj analize Kantovih pojmova svrhovitosti i harmonije i, u izvesnom smislu, njihovog medjusobnog odnosa, kao i odnosa sa osecanjem zadovoljstva. Toj analizi ce se pristupiti uz osvrt na Saftsberijev uvid u, danas tako nazvane,?second order affections?, i njihov znacaj u drustveno-politickoj filozofiji. Zakljucno ce se ovaj prvi deo rada baviti Kantovim shvatanjem sensus communis-a, i pokusati da ukaze na neke njegove specificnosti, koje omogucuju da se o njemu ne govori kao o empirijskom faktu. Drugi deo rada (...) pokusace da ukaze na polozaj sensus communis-a u Kantovoj politickoj filozofiji i situaciji, i neke implikacije koje bi se iz toga mogle izvesti. (shrink)

Although some philosophers accept an atomistic view of sense impressions, most acknowledge that we are aware not merely of isolated disparate sense data, but of concrete sensible wholes. One of many philosophical problems faced by these philosophers, however, is to explain how these distinct simultaneously presented sensible aspects are subjectively and objectively cognized as belonging to the same particular object. The traditional Thomistic solution is the sensus communis. Recently, however, the validity of that response has been called into question. As (...) a result, the purpose of this paper is to sketch the positions involved in the debate, present St. Thomas’s account of the sensus communis, and argue that both the commentary tradition and a recent critic have overlooked an important aspect of that account. (shrink)

Diante da pandemia do Novo Coronavírus, muitos foram os problemas levantados pela filosofia a partir do modo “imunitário” com o qual a civilização industrial lidou com a crise, e muito tem sido aventado sobre a necessidade de se repensar o sentido da noção de comunidades de apoio e de resistência. Exemplos disso não faltam; dentre os filósofos que abordaram a crise, encontram-se desde Giorgio Agamben a Paul B. Preciado, entre outros. Neste artigo, pretendemos partir da discussão sobre imunologia e paradigma (...) imunitário em Roberto Espósito para nos perguntar de que modo podemos pensar essa demanda por “comunidade” em meio a uma crise imunitária, no sentido biológico e político do termo. Temos por hipótese que, mais do que postular a oposição exclusiva dos termos, levantar a questão pela articulação deles nos abre dois modos possíveis de relação com a alteridade abissal que encontramos no vírus. (shrink)

This paper examines Gilles Deleuze’s reading of Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment”. We will show a) that the author holds an interpretative thesis according to which the third Kantian Critique would not be a complement but rather a foundation of the previous ones, inasmuch as the determined agreements of the first two Critiques presuppose the possibility of an indeterminate agreement between the faculties; b) that the demand for a genesis of the sensus communis by Deleuze can (...) be summed up in three requisites: discordance, contingency, and vivification; and c) in which senses Deleuze considers that the aforementioned requirements are satisfied in the Kantian text. (shrink)

The paper defends an interpretation of Kant’s notion of the sensus communis as the normative ideal of a universal aesthetic community. It further proposes that this understanding is the key to illuminating his account of our moral interest in cultivating taste. A sensus communis is morally necessary because it is an essential means to the creation of the kingdom of ends, which it promotes through its sustaining of a shared symbolic network for the sake of ethical community. The moral advancement (...) of any historical ethical community depends upon an artistic culture that promotes social communication and unity, and mitigates the vices to which the extreme ends of the class hierarchy are vulnerable. In pursuit of the cosmopolitan ideal, agents should attempt to widen their immediate artistic culture in the service of a world culture and eventual universal ethical community. (shrink)

In a series of works published over the last thirty years, Rudolf Makkreel accomplished what can be called a hermeneutical rehabilitation of Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Such a rehabilitation has been formulated in explicit opposition to the negative hermeneutical image of Kant’s aesthetics which originated in the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, and according to which the subjectivization of aesthetics perpetrated by Kant reduced aesthetic judgments to a mere communication of feelings, sanctioning thereby their hermeneutical irrelevance. In this essay I do (...) not intend to evaluate the legitimacy of Makkreel’s considerations about the hermeneutical importance of Kant’s Third Critique. Rather, I aim to question the pertinence of those considerations for Gadamer’s criticism of Kant, specifically in relation to the notion of sensus communis, which plays a central role both in Gadamer’s and Makkreel’s analyses. (shrink)

This article argues that understanding “wild” land as terra nullius (“land belonging to no one”) emerged during historical colonialism, entered international law, and became entrenched in national constitutions and cultural mores around the world. This has perpetuated an unsustainable and unjust human relationship to land no longer tenable in the post-Lockean era of land scarcity and ecological degradation. Environmental conservation, by valuing wild lands, challenges the terra nullius assumption of the vulnerability of unused lands to encroachment, while indigenous groups reasserting (...) their rights to communal territories likewise contest individual property rights. South American case studies illustrate routinized terra nullius prejudices. (shrink)

Kant's Critique of Judgment accounts for the sharing of a common world, experienced affectively, by a diverse human plurality. In order to appreciate Kant's project, Judging Appearances retrieves the connection between appearance and judgment in the Critique of Judgment. Kleist emphasizes the important but neglected idea of a sensus communis, which provides the indeterminate criterion for judgments regarding appearance. Judging Appearances examines the themes of appearance and judgment against the background of Kant's debt to Leibniz and Shaftesbury. Drawing upon treatments (...) by Husserl, Sartre, Ricoeur and Arendt, Kleist delineates the proto-phenomenological method through which Kant uncovers the idea of a sensus communis. Kleist shows that taste is a discipline of opening oneself to appearance, requiring a subject who dwells in a common world of appearances among a diverse human plurality. This volume will prove valuable for anyone interested in a fresh approach to themes at the heart of Kant's aesthetics. (shrink)

In this paper the notion of sensus communis, as articulated by Kant in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, is discussed from the vantage point of the author's project of exporting the model of exemplary universalism underlying reflective and, specifically, aesthetic judgment beyond the realm of aesthetics. In the first section, the relevance of such a project relative to an appraisal of the new and unsuperseded philosophical context opened by the Linguistic Turn is elucidated. Then the centrality of sensus (...) communis, for making sense of the specific universalism inherent in reflective judgment, is highlighted. In the second section, the limitations inherent in two opposite strategies for conceptualizing sensus communis are discussed: namely, the hermeneutic idea of a `horizon' and the phenomenological notion of a life-world on one hand, and the Kantian minimalist, naturalized concept of sensus communis on the other. The former is argued to become entangled in relativism, the latter to run against our intuitions concerning the inter-subjective constitution of the subject. In the final section, a third notion of sensus communis is offered, still compatible with the Kantian conception, different from the Gadamerian concept of a tradition or to the phenomenological notion of Lebenswelt, yet still capable of offering a plausible ground for the exemplary universalism of aesthetic judgment. Expanding on Kant's view of aesthetic pleasure, sensus communis is understood as consisting of a universal capacity, on the part of every human being, to sense from within a plurality of coordinates the flourishing of human life and what favours it. (shrink)