|
"Sensus communis" is the Latin translation of koinē aesthēsis which came to be recovered by Medieval scholastics when discussing perception. However, in earlier Latin during the Roman empire the term had taken a distinct human detour, developing new shades of meaning. These especially Roman meanings were apparently influenced by several Stoic Greek terms with the word koinē (meaning shared or common); not only koinē aisthēsis, but also such terms as koinē nous, koinē ennoia, and koinonoēmosunē, all of which involve nous, something which at least in Aristotle would not be present in "lower" animals.[28] Koinē ennoiai is a term from Stoic philosophy, a Greek philosophy, influenced by Aristotle, and influential in Rome. This refers to shared notions, or common conceptions, that are either in-born or imprinted by the senses on to the soul. Unfortunately few true Stoic texts survive, and our understanding of their technical terminology is limited.[29] Koinos nous is a term found in Epictetus (III.vi.8), a Stoic philosopher. C.S. Lewis (1967, p. 146) believed this to be close to a modern English meaning of "common sense", "the elementary mental outfit of the normal man", something like intelligence. He noted that sensus could be a translation of nous, (for example in the Vulgate Bible), but he only found one clear case of a Latin text showing this apparent meaning, a text by Phaedrus the fable writer. Koinonoēmosunē is found only in the work of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (Meditations I.16), also known as a Stoic. (He uses the word on its own in a list of things he learned from his adopted father.) Shaftesbury and others felt it represented the Stoic Greek original which gave the special Roman meaning of sensus communis, especially when used to refer to someone's public spirit. Shaftesbury explained the change of meaning as being due to the specific way that Stoics understood perception and intellect, saying that one should "consider withal how small the distinction was in that Philosophy, between the ὑπόληψις [conjecture], and the vulgar αἴσθησις [perception]; how generally Passion was by those Philosophers brought under the Head of Opinion".[30] Another link between Latin communis sensus and Aristotle's Greek was in rhetoric, a subject that Aristotle was the first to systematize. In rhetoric a prudent speaker must take account of the opinions (Greek doxai) which are widely held.[31] Aristotle referred to such commonly held beliefs not as koinai doxai, which is a term he used for self-evident logical axioms, but with other terms such as endoxa. In his Rhetoric for example Aristotle mentions "koinōn ... tàs písteis" or "common beliefs", saying that "our proofs and arguments must rest on generally accepted principles, [...] when speaking of converse with the multitude".[32] In a similar passage in his own work on rhetoric, De Oratore, Cicero wrote that "in oratory the very cardinal sin is to depart from the language of everyday life and the usage approved by the sense of the community". The sense of the community is in this case one translation of "communis sensus" in the Latin of Cicero.[33][34] Whether the Latin writers such as Cicero deliberately used this Aristotelian term in a new more peculiarly Roman way, probably also influenced by Stoicism, therefore remains a subject of discussion. Schaeffer (1990, p. 112) has proposed for example that the Roman republic maintained a very "oral" culture whereas in Aristotle's time rhetoric had come under heavy criticism from philosophers such as Socrates. Peters Agnew (2008) argues, in agreement with Shaftesbury in the 18th century, that the concept developed from the Stoic concept of ethical virtue, influenced by Aristotle, but emphasizing the role of both the individual perception, and shared communal understanding. But in any case a complex of ideas attached itself to the term, to be almost forgotten in the Middle Ages, and eventually returning into ethical discussion in 18th-century Europe, after Descartes. As with other meanings of common sense, for the Romans of the classical era "it designates a sensibility shared by all, from which one may deduce a number of fundamental judgments, that need not, or cannot, be questioned by rational reflection".[35] But even though Cicero did at least once use the term in a manuscript on Plato's Timaeus (concerning a primordial "sense, one and common for all [...] connected with nature"), he and other Roman authors did not normally use it as a technical term limited to discussion about sense perception, as Aristotle apparently had in De Anima, and as the Scholastics later would in the Middle Ages.[36] Instead of referring to all animal judgment, it was used to describe pre-rational human beliefs which are widely shared, and therefore it was a near equivalent to the concept of humanitas. This was a term that could be used by Romans to imply not only human nature, but also humane conduct, good breeding, refined manners, and so on.[37] Apart from Cicero, Quintilian, Lucretius, Seneca, Horace and some of the most influential Roman authors influenced by Aristotle's rhetoric and philosophy used the Latin term "sensus communis" in a range of such ways.[38] As C. S. Lewis wrote: Quintilian says it is better to send a boy to school than to have a private tutor for him at home; for if he is kept away from the herd (congressus) how will he ever learn that sensus which we call communis? (I, ii, 20). On the lowest level it means tact. In Horace the man who talks to you when you obviously don't want to talk lacks communis sensus.[39] Compared to Aristotle and his medieval followers, these Roman authors were not so strict about the boundary between animal-like common sense and specially human reasoning. As discussed above, Aristotle had attempted to make a clear distinction between, on the one hand, imagination and the sense perception which both use the sensible koina, and which animals also have; and, on the other hand, nous (intellect) and reason, which perceives another type of koina, the intelligible forms, which (according to Aristotle) only humans have. In other words, these Romans allowed that people could have animal-like shared understandings of reality, not just in terms of memories of sense perceptions, but in terms of the way they would tend to explain things, and in the language they use.[40] |
About us|Jobs|Help|Disclaimer|Advertising services|Contact us|Sign in|Website map|Search|
GMT+8, 2015-9-11 21:58 , Processed in 0.128988 second(s), 16 queries .
