Sensus communis

Abstract

The article examines the conditions for the possibility of an unreasoning community acting on the basis of sensus communis without the use of intelligence. A problematic question: How does aesthetic pleasure, which is devoid of any universality of knowledge and will, reveal a principle that legitimizes universality? The solution is arrived at by understanding that aesthetic pleasure is a sense of pure internal consonance; this consonance can only be an “internal” coordination between two abilities, two modes in the functioning of the spirit. There is the ability to make something present, to place it before itself; and then there is the ability to combine and think something in accordance with a rule. Euphony, which is a sense of pleasure arising from the beautiful or in a judgment expressing taste, is a direct sign of this convergence of abilities. However, in a judgment expressing taste, there is no core or interiority. Because it brings about its own division, the pleasure of the beautiful is not experienced by an already established and unified subject. This sensus is not an internal feeling; an aesthetic feeling is not the subject’s attachment to itself. In contrast to the residual primitiveness of the “I”, the synthesis at work in aesthetic pleasure is simultaneously more radical, more elusive and more extensive. The feeling of the beautiful is a subject in a state of origin, the first combination of incomparable abilities. This feeling avoids the domination of the concept and the manifestation of will. It extends beyond their intrigues and their boundaries.