W. O.: >>what "sensus communis" is about? I expect you mean to ask in Kant _specifically_? There's alas no ref. to Kant in the OED. "Alas" is meant ironically. I believe the thing was introduced by Aristotle. Apparently it's something like a sixth sense, since the Grecians thought that there are (I follow) only five senses (and no more than five). So 'common sense' was derogatorily referred to (by Juvenal?) as the 'least common of the senses'. There is a lot of punning going on there, with 'common' meaning 'shared'. So what's that the five senses (smell, see, touch, hear, taste) _share_? How this connects with Aristotle's phronesis escapes me but not R. Paul! The OED defines it as "an ‘internal’ sense which was regarded as the common bond or centre of the five senses, in which the various impressions received were reduced to the unity of a common consciousness" The first quote being 1398-1509 common wit s.v. COMMON a. 21. as 'common wit'. The strict first quote: 1543 TRAHERON Vigo's Chirurg. I. ii. 3 They [eyes] were ordeyned of nature in the former part [of the head]..that they might carye visible thinges to ye commune sens. 1606 L. BRYSKETT Civ. Life 123 Which common sense, is a power or facultie of the sensitiue soule..and is therefore called common, because it receiueth commonly the formes or images which the exteriour senses present vnto it, and hath power to distinguish the one from the other. 1621 BURTON Anat. Mel. I. i. II. vii, Inner Senses are three in number, so called, because they be within the brain-pan, as Common Sense, Phantasie, Memory..This Common sense is the Judge or Moderator of the rest, by whom we discern all differences of objects. Ibid. III. xiii, The external senses and the common sense considered together are like a circle with five lines drawn from the circumference to the centre. I think this is very good. 1842 SIR W. HAMILTON in Reid's Wks. (1872) II. 756/2 note, Common Sense ( ) was employed by Aristotle to denote the faculty in which the various reports of the several senses are reduced to the unity of a common apperception. 1645 HOWELL Lett. v. (1650) 174 Cabbage, turnips, artichocks, potatoes, and dates, are her five senses, and pepper the common sense. The endowment of natural intelligence possessed by rational beings; ordinary, normal or average understanding; the plain wisdom which is everyone's inheritance. (This is ‘common sense’ at its minimum, without which one is foolish or insane.) Formerly also in pl., in phr. besides his common senses: out of his senses or wits, ‘beside himself’. 1535 JOYE Apol. Tindale (Arb.) 36, I am suer T[indale] is not so farre besydis his comon sencis as to saye the dead bodye hereth cristis voyce. 1561 T. NORTON Calvin's Inst. I. 13 Vnlesse he be voide of all common sense and natural wit of man. 1602 T. FITZHERBERT Apol. 20a, I referre me to the iudgement of any man that hath but common sence. 1690 LOCKE Hum. Und. I. iii. §4 He would be thought void of common sense who asked on the one side, or on the other side went to give a reason, why it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be. That was very good. 1711 ADDISON Spect. No. 70 2 A Reader of plain common Sense, who would neither relish nor comprehend an Epigram of Martial. 1744 HARRIS Three Treat. Wks. (1841) 46 note, Common sense..a sense common to all, except lunatics and ideots. 1799 MACKINTOSH Study Law Nature Wks. 1846 I. 363 Whoever thoroughly understands such a science, must be able to teach it plainly to all men of common sense. 1875 JOWETT Plato (ed. 2) IV. 404 Common sense will not teach us metaphysics any more than mathematics. That was excellent, and so Anti-peripatetic! More emphatically: Good sound practical sense; combined tact and readiness in dealing with the every-day affairs of life; general sagacity. -- Or Paul's 'phronesis' 1726 AMHERST Terræ Fil. xx. 100 There is not (said a shrewd wag) a more uncommon thing in the world than common sense..By common sense we usually and justly understand the faculty to discern one thing from another, and the ordinary ability to keep ourselves from being imposed upon by gross contradictions, palpable inconsistencies, and unmask'd imposture. By a man of common sense we mean one who knows, as we say, chalk from cheese. 1775 PRIESTLEY Exam. Reid 127 Common sense..in common acceptation..has long been appropriated..to that capacity for judging of common things that persons of middling capacities are capable of. 1852 TENNYSON Ode Wellington iv, Rich in saving common-sense. 1888 WORMALL in Times 16 Jan. 8/1 The general demand was for intelligence, sagacity, soundness of judgment, clearness of perception, and that sanity of thinking called common sense. Ordinary or untutored [untrained -- Geary] perception. 1588 SHAKES. L.L.L. I. i. 57 To know..Things hid and bard from common sense..is studies god-like recompence. As a quality of things said or done (= ‘something accordant to or approved by common sense’). This is a Scots thing -- the "Scots Common Sense Philosophers" so-called 1803 MACKINTOSH Def. Peltier Wks. 1846 III. 270, I ask you again, Gentlemen, is this common sense? 1866 G. MACDONALD Ann. Q. Neighb. iii. (1878) 34 To him it was just common sense, and common sense only. 1884 G. DENMAN in Law Rep. 29 Chanc. Div. 467 It is only common sense that..you should look at the whole of the document together. The general sense, feeling, or judgement of mankind, or of a community. 1596 SPENSER F.Q. IV. x. 2 That all the cares and evill which they meet May..seeme gainst common sence to them most sweet. 1663 J. SPENCER Prodigies (1665) 390 These are to be received by the common sense of a Nation, as Gods warning pieces. 1695 WOODWARD Nat. Hist. Earth i. (1723) 1 The common Sense of mankind. 1713 BERKELEY Hylas & Phil. III. Wks. 1871 I. 329, I am content, Hylas, to appeal to the common sense of the world for the truth of my notion. 1872 GROTE Aristotle II. App. ii. 285 What Aristotle..defines as matters of common opinion and belief includes all that is usually meant, and properly meant, by Common What what is believed by all men or by most men. That should lead us to the Greek quotation -- also in Liddell/Scott online. 1874 SIDGWICK Meth. Ethics III. xi. §6. 333 The promise which the Common Sense of mankind recognises as binding. 4. Philos. The faculty of primary truths; ‘the complement of those cognitions or convictions which we receive from nature; which all men therefore possess in common; and by which they test the truth of knowledge, and the morality of actions’ (Hamilton Reid's Wks. II. 756). Philosophy of Common Sense: that philosophy which accepts as the ultimate criterion of truth the primary cognitions or beliefs of mankind; e.g. in the theory of perception, the universal belief in the existence of a material world. Applied to the Scotch school which arose in the 18th c. in opposition to the views of Berkeley and Hume. 1705 BERKELEY Commonpl. Bk. Wks. IV. 455 Mem. To be eternally banishing Metaphisics, etc., and recalling men to Common Sense.] 1758 PRICE Rev. Quest. Morals (ed. 2) 81 Common sense, the faculty of self-evident truths. 1764 REID (title), An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. 1770 BEATTIE Ess. Truth in Ann. Reg. (1772) 253 Common Sense hath, in modern times, been used by philosophers, both French and British, to signify that power of the mind which perceives truth, or commands belief, not by progressive argumentation, but by an instantaneous, instinctive, and irresistible impulse; derived neither from education nor from habit, but from nature. 1776 CAMPBELL Philos. Rhet. (1801) I. I. ii. 99 To maintain propositions the reverse of the primary truths of common sense, doth not imply a contradiction, it only implies insanity. 1842 SIR W. HAMILTON in Reid's Wks. II. 742 On the Philosophy of Common Sense; or our primary beliefs considered as the ultimate criterion of truth. 1871 FRASER in Berkeley's Wks. I. 183 The universal concurrent assent of mankind may be thought by some an invincible argument in behalf of Matter. (Note, Commonly called the argument from Common Sense.) 1874 SIDGWICK Meth. Ethics p. xi, Dogmatic Intuitionism, in which the general rules of Common Sense are accepted as axiomatic. 5. attrib. (the two words being always hyphened). 1854 E. FORBES Lit. Papers i. 43 Common-sense views are the last to take hold on men's minds. 1872 MORLEY Voltaire (1886) 93 The air was thick with common-sense objections to Christianity, as it was with common-sense ideas as to the way in which we come to have ideas. 1874 SIDGWICK Meth. Ethics I. vi. §3. 70 Egoism and Utilitarianism may fairly be regarded as extremes between which the Common-Sense morality is a kind of media via. Hence <NOBR>csensed a., possessing common sense. <NOBR>csensely adv., in a common sense manner. common-sense-o-dox a. nonce-wd. on type of orthodox. common(-)sensible, -bly, possessing, or characterized by, common sense. (All more or less nonce-words.) 1875 M. G. PEARSE Dan. Quorm Ser. I. (1879) 26 Pithy, plain, *common-sensed. 1884 J. PARKER Apost. Life III. 66 Common-sensed and real-hearted men. ____________________________________ 1878 GROSART in H. More's Poems Introd. 36/2 Thus *common-sensely does he put the matter. ____________________________________ 1866 READE G. Gaunt I. 207 He did not think it..*common-sense-o-dox to turn his back upon their dinner. ____________________________________ 1851 HAWTHORNE Snow Image (1879) 30 This highly benevolent and *common-sensible individual. 1875 HELPS Soc. Press. xxv. 382 Common-sensible conclusions. a1907 F. THOMPSON St. Ignatius Loyola (1909) x. 200 High sanctity..is eminently common-sensible. 1931 Sat. Rev. 6 June 819/2 The Archbishop of York's speech is ranked as the best; next to that Lord Newton's, witty, humorous, and commonsensible. ____________________________________ 1890 Univ. Rev. 15 July 455 He chattered away..*common~sensibly enough. ____________________________________ (http://0-dictionary.oed.com.csulib.ctstateu.edu/cgi/entry_main/50045151?query_type=word&queryword=common+sense&first=1&max_to_show=10&single=1&sort_type=a lpha&case_id=NELO-I4wt9m-13860#top) ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com