In this regard it is important to remember the humanistic tradition, and to
ask what is to be learned from it with respect to the human sciences' mode
of knowledge. Vice's De nostri temporis studiorum ratione makes a good
starting point.25 As its very title shows, Vico's defense of humanism derives
from the Jesuit pedagogical system and is directed as much against
Jansenism as against Descartes. Like his outline of a "new science," Vico's
pedagogical manifesto is based on old truths. He appeals to the sensus
communis, common sense, and to the humanistic ideal of eloquentia—elements
already present in the classical concept of wisdom. "Talking well"
(eu legein) has always had two meanings; it is not merely a rhetorical
ideal. It also means saying the right thing—i.e., the truth—and is not just
the art of speaking—of saying something well.
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TRUTH AND METHOD
This ideal was proclaimed in the ancient world just as much by teachers
of philosophy as by those of rhetoric. Rhetoric was always in conflict with
philosophy and, in contrast to the idle speculations of the Sophists, claimed
to teach true wisdom. Here Vico, himself a teacher of rhetoric, is in a
humanistic tradition that stems from antiquity. This tradition is obviously
important for the self-understanding of the human sciences; especially so
is the positive ambiguity of the rhetorical ideal, which is condemned not
only by Plato, but by the anti-rhetorical methodology of modern times. In
Vico, we already find much of what will concern us. But apart from the
rhetorical element, his appeal to the sensus communis contains another
element from classical tradition. This is the contrast between the scholar
and the wise man on whom the scholar depends—a contrast that is drawn
for the first time in the Cynics' conception of Socrates—and its content is
based on the distinction between the ideas of sophia and phronesis. It was
first elaborated by Aristotle, developed by the Peripatetics as a critique of
the theoretical ideal of life,26 and in the Hellenistic period helped define the
image of the wise man, especially after the Greek ideal of Bildung had been
fused with the self-consciousness of the leading political class of Rome.
Late Roman legal science also developed against the background of an art
and practice of law that is closer to the practical ideal of phronesis than to
the theoretical ideal of sophia.27
With the renaissance of classical philosophy and rhetoric, the image of
Socrates became the countercry against science, as is shown, in particular,
in the figure of the idiota, the layman, who assumes a totally new role
between the scholar and the wise man.28 Likewise the rhetorical tradition
of humanism invoked Socrates and the skeptical critique of the Dogmatists.
We find that Vico criticizes the Stoics because they believe in reason
as the regula veri and, contrariwise, praises the old Academicians, who
assert only the knowledge of not knowing anything; and the new ones,
because they excel in the art of arguing (which is part of rhetoric).
Vice's appeal to the sensus communis undoubtedly exhibits a special
coloring within this humanistic tradition. In this sphere of knowledge too
there is a querelle des anciens et des modernes. It is no longer the contrast
with the "school," but the particular contrast with modern science that
Vico has in mind. He does not deny the merits of modern critical science
but shows its limits. Even with this new science and its mathematical
methodology, we still cannot do without the wisdom of the ancients and
their cultivation of prudentia and eloquentia. But the most important
thing in education is still something else—the training in the sensus
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TRANSCENDING THE AESTHETIC DIMENSION
communis, which is not nourished on the true but on the probable, the
verisimilar. The main thing for our purposes is that here sensus communis
obviously does not mean only that general faculty in all men but the sense
that founds community. According to Vico, what gives the human will its
direction is not the abstract universality of reason but the concrete
universality represented by the community of a group, a people, a nation,
or the whole human race. Hence developing this communal sense is of
decisive importance for living.
On this communal sense for what is true and right, which is not a
knowledge based on argumentation, but enables one to discover what is
evident (verisimile), Vico bases the significance and the independent rights
of rhetoric. Education cannot, he says, tread the path of critical research.
Youth demands images for its imagination and for forming its memory. But
studying the sciences in the spirit of modern criticism does not achieve this.
Thus Vico supplements the critica of Cartesianism with the old topica. This
is the art of finding arguments and serves to develop the sense of what is
convincing, which works instinctively and ex tempore, and for that very
reason cannot be replaced by science.
Vice's prescriptions have an apologetical air. They indirectly take cognizance
of science's new concept of truth by the very fact that they defend
the rights of the probable. As we have seen, he here follows an ancient
rhetorical tradition that goes back to Plato. But what Vico means goes far
beyond the defense of rhetorical persuasion. The old Aristotelian distinction
between practical and theoretical knowledge is operative here—a
distinction which cannot be reduced to that between the true and the
probable. Practical knowledge, phronesis, is another kind of knowledge.29
Primarily, this means that it is directed towards the concrete situation.
Thus it must grasp the "circumstances" in their infinite variety. This is what
Vico expressly emphasizes about it. It is true that his main concern is to
show that this kind of knowledge lies outside the rational concept of
knowledge, but this is not in fact mere resignation. The Aristotelian
distinction refers to something other than the distinction between knowing
on the basis of universal principles and on the basis of the concrete. Nor
does he mean only the capacity to subsume the individual case under a
universal category—what we call "judgment." Rather, there is a positive
ethical motif involved that merges into the Roman Stoic doctrine of the
sensus communis. The grasp and moral control of the concrete situation
require subsuming what is given under the universal—that is, the goal that
one is pursuing so that the right thing may result. Hence it presupposes a
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TRUTH AND METHOD
direction of the will—i.e., moral being (hexis). That is why Aristotle
considers phronesis an "intellectual virtue." He sees it not only as a
capacity (dunamis), but as a determination of moral being which cannot
exist without the totality of the "ethical virtues," which in turn cannot
exist without it. Although practicing this virtue means that one distinguishes
what should be done from what should not, it is not simply
practical shrewdness and general cleverness. The distinction between what
should and should not be done includes the distinction between the proper
and the improper and thus presupposes a moral attitude, which it
continues to develop.
This idea propounded by Aristotle against Plato's "idea of the good" is in
fact what Vice's point about the sensus communis goes back to. In
scholasticism, say for St. Thomas, in elaborating on the De Anima,30 the
sensus communis is the common root of the outer senses—i.e., the faculty
that combines them, that makes judgments about what is given, a capacity
that is given to all men.31 For Vico, however, the sensus communis is the
sense of what is right and of the common good that is to be found in all
men; moreover, it is a sense that is acquired through living in the
community and is determined by its structures and aims. This concept
sounds like natural law, like the koinai ennoiai of the Stoics. But the sensus
communis is not, in this sense, a Greek concept and definitely does not
mean the koine dunamis of which Aristotle speaks in the De Anima when
he tries to reconcile the doctrine of the specific senses (aisthesis idia) with
the phenomenological finding that all perception is a differentiation and an
intention of the universal. Rather, Vico goes back to the old Roman
concept of the sensus communis, as found especially in the Roman classics
which, when faced with Greek cultivation, held firmly to the value and
significance of their own traditions of civil and social life. A critical note
directed against the theoretical speculations of the philosophers can be
heard in the Roman concept of the sensus communis; and that note Vico
sounds again from his different position of opposition to modern science
(the critica).
There is something immediately evident about grounding philological
and historical studies and the ways the human sciences work on this
concept of the sensus communis. For their object, the moral and historical
existence of humanity, as it takes shape in our words and deeds, is itself
decisively determined by the sensus communis. Thus a conclusion based
on universals, a reasoned proof, is not sufficient, because what is decisive
is the circumstances. But this is only a negative formulation. The sense of
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TRANSCENDING THE AESTHETIC DIMENSION
the community mediates its own positive knowledge. One does not at all
exhaust the mode of historical knowledge by saying that here one has to
allow "belief in other people's testimony" (Tetens32) instead of "selfconscious
deduction" (Helmholtz). Nor is it at all true that such knowledge
has less truth value. D'Alembert is correct when he writes, "Probability
operates principally in the case of historical facts, and in general for all past,
present and future events, which we attribute to a kind of chance because
we do not unravel the causes. The part of this knowledge whose object is
the present and the past, although it may be founded on testimony alone,
often produces in us a conviction as strong as that born from axioms."33
Historia is a source of truth totally different from theoretical reason. This
is what Cicero meant when he called it the vita memoriae.34 It exists in its
own right because human passions cannot be governed by the universal
prescriptions of reason. In this sphere one needs, rather, convincing
examples as only history can offer them. That is why Bacon describes
historia, which supplies these examples, as virtually another way of
philosophizing (alia ratio philosophandi).35
This, too, is negative enough in its formulation. But we will see that in
all these versions the mode of being of moral knowledge, as recognized by
Aristotle, is operative. It will be important to recall this so that the human
sciences can understand themselves more adequately.
Vico's return to the Roman concept of the sensus communis, and his
defense of humanist rhetoric against modern science, is of special interest
to us, for here we are introduced to an element of truth in the human
sciences that was no longer recognizable when they conceptualized
themselves in the nineteenth century. Vico lived in an unbroken tradition
of rhetorical and humanist culture, and had only to reassert anew its
ageless claim. Ultimately, it has always been known that the possibilities of
rational proof and instruction do not fully exhaust the sphere of knowledge.
Hence Vico's appeal to the sensus communis belongs, as we have
seen, in a wider context that goes right back to antiquity and whose
continued effect into the present day is our theme.36
We, on the contrary, must laboriously make our way back into this
tradition by first showing the difficulties that result from the application of
the modern concept of method to the human sciences. Let us therefore
consider how this tradition became so impoverished and how the human
sciences' claim to know something true came to be measured by a standard
foreign to it—namely the methodical thinking of modern science.
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TRUTH AND METHOD
In general, Vico and the unbroken rhetorical tradition of Italy do not
directly influence this development, which was determined chiefly by the
German "historical school." One can discern hardly any influence of Vico
on the eighteenth century. But he was not alone in his appeal to the sensus
communis. He has an important parallel in Shaftesbury, who had a
powerful influence on the eighteenth century. Shaftesbury places the
evaluation of the social significance of wit and humor under sensus
communis and explicitly cites the Roman classics and their humanist
interpreters.37 As we have noted, the concept of the sensus communis
undoubtedly reminds us of the Stoics and of the natural law. Nevertheless,
it is impossible to deny the validity of the humanistic interpretation based
on the Roman classics, which Shaftesbury follows. By sensus communis,
according to Shaftesbury, the humanists understood a sense of the
common weal, but also "love of the community or society, natural
affection, humanity, obligingness." They adopt a term from Marcus Aurelius,
koinonoemosune—a most unusual and artificial word, confirming
that the concept of sensus communis does not originate with the Greek
philosophers, but has the Stoical conception sounding in it like a harmonic.
38 The humanist Salmasius describes the content of this word as "a
restrained, customary, and regular way of thinking in a man, which as it
were looks to the community and does not refer everything to its own
advantage but directs its attention to those things with which it is
concerned, and thinks of itself with restraint and proper measure." What
Shaftesbury is thinking of is not so much a capacity given to all men, part
of the natural law, as a social virtue, a virtue of the heart more than of the
head. And if he understands wit and humor in terms of it, then in this
respect too he is following ancient Roman concepts that include in
humanitas a refined savoir vivre, the attitude of the man who understands
a joke and tells one because he is aware of a deeper union with his
interlocutor. (Shaftesbury explicitly limits wit and humour to social
intercourse among friends.) Though the sensus communis appears here
mostly as a virtue of social intercourse, there is nevertheless a moral, even
a metaphysical basis implied.
Shaftesbury is thinking of the intellectual and social virtue of sympathy;
and on it, we recall, he based not only morality, but an entire aesthetic
metaphysics. His successors, above all Hutcheson39 and Hume, elaborated
his suggestions into the doctrine of the moral sense, which was later to
serve as a foil to Kantian ethics.
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TRANSCENDING THE AESTHETIC DIMENSION
The concept of "common sense" acquired a quite central systematic
function in Scottish philosophy, which was directed polemically against
metaphysics and against its dissolution in skepticism, and built up its new
system on the basis of original and natural judgments of common sense
(Thomas Reid).40 Doubtless this was influenced by the Aristotelian and
scholastic tradition of the concept of sensus communis. Inquiry into the
senses and their cognitive capacity comes from this tradition and is
ultimately intended to correct the exaggerations of philosophical speculation.
At the same time, however, the connection between common sense
and society is preserved: "They serve to direct us in the common affairs of
life, where our reasoning faculty would leave us in the dark." In their eyes,
the philosophy of sound understanding, of good sense, is not only a cure
for the "moon-sickness" of metaphysics, but also contains the basis of a
moral philosophy that really does justice to the life of society.
The moral element in the concept of common sense or le bon sens has
remained to the present day and distinguishes these from the German
concept of "der gesunde Menschenverstand" ("sound understanding").
Take as an example Henri Bergson's fine speech on le bon sens given at the
award ceremony in 1895 at the Sorbonne.41 His criticism of the abstractions
of natural science, of language and of legal thinking, his passionate
appeal to the "inner energy of an intelligence which at each moment wins
itself back to itself, eliminating ideas already formed to give place to those
in the process of being formed" (p. 88), was called le bon sens in France.
Naturally, the definition of this concept certainly contained a reference to
the senses, but for Bergson it obviously goes without saying that, unlike
the senses, le bon sens refers to the "milieu social": "while the other senses
relate us to things, 'good sense' governs our relations with persons" (p. 85).
It is a kind of genius for practical life, but less a gift than the constant task
of "renewed adaptation to new situations," a work of adapting general
principles to reality, through which justice is realized, a "tactfulness in
practical truth," a "rightness of judgment, that stems from correctness of
soul" (p. 88). Le bon sens, for Bergson, is, as the common source of
thought and will, a "sens social," which avoids both the mistakes of the
scientific dogmatists who are looking for social laws and those of the
metaphysical Utopians. "Perhaps there is, properly speaking, no method,
but rather a certain way of acting." It is true that he speaks of the
importance of classical studies for the development of this bon sens—he
sees them as an attempt to break through the "ice of words" and discover
the free flow of thought below (p. 91)—but he does not ask the contrary
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TRUTH AND METHOD
question, namely how necessary le bon sens is for classical studies—i.e., he
does not speak of its hermeneutic function. His question has nothing to do
with the sciences, but with the independent significance of le bon sens for
life. We are emphasizing only the self-evidence with which the moral and
political meaning of this concept dominated his mind and that of his
hearers.
It is very characteristic of the human sciences' self-reflection in the
nineteenth century that they proceeded not under the influence of the
tradition of moral philosophy to which both Vico and Shaftesbury belong
and which is represented primarily by France, the classical land of le bon
sens, but under the influence of the German philosophy of the age of Kant
and Goethe. Whereas even today in England and the Romance countries
the concept of the sensus communis is not just a critical slogan but a
general civic quality, in Germany the followers of Shaftesbury and
Hutcheson did not, even in the eighteenth century, take over the political
and social element contained in sensus communis. The metaphysics of the
schools and the popular philosophy of the eighteenth century—however
much they studied and imitated the leading countries of the Enlightenment,
England and France—could not assimilate an idea for which the
social and political conditions were utterly lacking. The concept of sensus
communis was taken over, but in being emptied of all political content it
lost its genuine critical significance. Sensus communis was understood as
a purely theoretical faculty: theoretical judgment, parallel to moral consciousness
(conscience) and taste. Thus it was integrated into a scholasticism
of the basic faculties, of which Herder provided the critique (in the
fourth "kritischen Waldchen," directed against Riedel), and which made
him the forerunner of historicism in the field of aesthetics also.
And yet there is one important exception: Pietism. It was important not
only for a man of the world like Shaftesbury to delimit the claims of
science—i.e., of demonstratio—against the "school" and to appeal to the
sensus communis, but also for the preacher, who seeks to reach the hearts
of his congregation. Thus the Swabian Pietist Oetinger explicitly relied on
Shaftesbury's defense of the sensus communis. We find sensus communis
translated simply as "heart" and the following description: "The sensus
communis is concerned only with things that all men see daily before
them, things that hold an entire society together, things that are concerned
as much with truths and statements as with the arrangements and patterns
comprised in statements. . . . "42 Oetinger is concerned to show that it is
not just a question of the clarity of the concepts—clarity is "not enough for
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TRANSCENDING THE AESTHETIC DIMENSION
living knowledge." Rather, there must be "certain anticipations and
predilections present." "Fathers are moved without proof to care for their
children; love does not demonstrate, but often against reason rends the
heart at the beloved's reproach." Oetinger's appeal to the sensus communis
against the rationalism of the "school" is especially interesting for us
because he gives it an expressly hermeneutical application. For Oetinger,
as a churchman, the important thing is the understanding of Scripture.
Because the mathematical, demonstrative method fails here, he demands
another, the "generative method"—i.e., the "organic presentation of
Scripture—so that justice may be planted like a shoot."
Oetinger also made the concept of sensus communis the object of an
extended and learned investigation, which is likewise directed against
rationalism.43 He sees in it the source of all truths, the very ars inveniendi,
in contrast to Leibniz, who bases everything on a mere calculus metaphysicus
(excluso omni gusto interne). According to Oetinger the true
basis of the sensus communis is the concept of vita, life (sensus communis
vitae gaudens). In contrast to the violent anatomization of nature through
experiment and calculation, he sees the natural development of the simple
into the complex as the universal law of growth of the divine creation and,
likewise, of the human spirit. For the idea that all knowledge originates in
the sensus communis he quotes Wolff, Bernoulli, and Pascal, Maupertuis'
investigation into the origin of language, Bacon, Fenelon, etc. and defines
the sensus communis as "the vivid and penetrating perception of objects
evident to all human beings, from their immediate contact and intuition,
which are absolutely simple."
From this second sentence it is apparent that Oetinger throughout
combines the humanistic, political meaning of the word with the peripatetic
concept of sensus communis. The above definition reminds one here
and there ("immediate contact and intuition") of Aristotle's doctrine of
nous. He takes up the Aristotelian question of the common dunamis,
which combines seeing, hearing, etc., and for him it confirms the genuinely
divine mystery of life. The divine mystery of life is its simplicity—
even if man has lost it through the fall, he can still find his way back,
through the grace of God, to unity and simplicity: "the activity of the logos,
that is, the presence of God integrates diversity into unity" (p. 162). The
presence of God consists precisely in life itself, in this "communal sense"
that distinguishes all living things from dead—it is no accident that he
mentions the polyp and the starfish which, though cut into small pieces,
regenerate themselves and form new individuals. In man the same divine
25
TRUTH AND METHOD
power operates in the form of the instinct and inner stimulation to
discover the traces of God and to recognize what has the greatest
connection with human happiness and life. Oetinger expressly distinguishes
rational truths from receptivity to common truths—"sensible
truths," useful to all men at all times and places. The communal sense is a
complex of instincts—i.e., a natural drive towards that on which the true
happiness of life depends, and to that extent an effect of the presence of
God. Instincts are not to be understood, with Leibniz, as affects—i.e., as
confusae repraesentationes—for they are not ephemeral but deeply rooted
tendencies and have a dictatorial, divine, irresistible force.44 Based on
these instincts, sensus communis is of special importance for our knowledge,
precisely because they are a gift of God.45 Oetinger writes, "the ratio
governs itself by rules, often even without God; but sense, always with
God. Just as nature is different from art, so sense and ratio are different.
God works through nature in a simultaneous increase in growth that
spreads regularly throughout the whole. Art, however, begins with some
particular part. . . . Sense imitates nature; the ratio, art" (p. 247).
Interestingly enough, this statement comes from a hermeneutical context,
as indeed in this learned work the "Sapientia Salomonis" represents the
ultimate object and highest example of knowledge. It comes from the
chapter on the use (usus) of the sensus communis. Here Oetinger attacks
the hermeneutical theory of the Wolffian school. More important than all
hermeneutical rules is to be "sensu plenus." Naturally, this thesis is a
spiritualistic extreme, but it still has its logical foundation in the concept of
vita or sensus communis. Its hermeneutical meaning can be illustrated by
this sentence: "the ideas found in Scripture and in the works of God are the
more fruitful and purified the more that each can be seen in the whole and
all can be seen in each."46 Here what people in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries like to call "intuition" is brought back to its metaphysical
foundation: that is, to the structure of living, organic being in
which the whole is in each individual: "the whole of life has its center in
the heart, which by means of common sense grasps countless things all at
the same time" (Praef.).
More profound than all knowledge of hermeneutical rules is the
application to oneself: "above all apply the rules to yourself and then you
will have the key to understanding Solomon's proverbs" (p. 207).47 On this
basis Oetinger is able to bring his ideas into harmony with those of
Shaftesbury who, as he says, is the only one to have written about sensus
communis under this title. But he also cites others who have noted the
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TRANSCENDING THE AESTHETIC DIMENSION
one-sidedness of the rational method—e.g., Pascal's distinction between
esprit geometrique and esprit de finesse. Nevertheless, for the Swabian
Pietist what crystallizes around the concept of sensus communis is rather
a theological than a political or social interest.
Of course other Pietist theologians have emphasized application against
the dominant rationalism in the same way as Oetinger, as we can see from
the example of Rambach, whose very influential hermeneutics also dealt
with application. But when pietistic tendencies were supplanted in the
later eighteenth century, the hermeneutic function of sensus communis
declined to a mere corrective: that which contradicts the "consensus" of
feelings, judgments, and conclusions—i.e., the sensus communis—cannot
be correct.48 In contrast to the importance that Shaftesbury assigned to the
sensus communis for society and state, this negative function shows that
the concept was emptied and intellectualized by the German enlightenment.
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