Sensus Communis 1

These will be notes and remarks rather than an exposé: their community, in the sense of their reciprocal action which today we often call system, will remain to be established. Although they’re quite ‘common’ in the sense of trivial, this time. This preference is certainly imposed on me by lack of preparation but also by the subject. The lack of preparation proceeds from the subject. No one will ever be prepared for this sensus. Every community will forget and will have forgotten this sensus. Sensus communis isn’t intellectio communis, gesunde Verstand, good sense, sound understanding, that of communication through the mediation of the concept. Even less is it intellectio communitatis, the intelligence of the community. It’s a question of a community which is unintelligent still—but that still presents a problem. Unintelligent, therefore, that’s to say, proceeding without intellect. And unintellected, too, that’s to say one whose concept, ex hypothesi, will always be missed. And if we are condemned to think it, think of it, by means of a concept (this is required by the exposé, the exposition, the Kantian Exponieren: ‘to reduce a representation of the imagination to concepts’ ² then the said ‘community’ of sense, and through sense alone, can be situated or put in place negatively in the field of the intellectio by the exposé, in the mode of critical thought when it deals with taste: pleasure but without interest, universality but without concept, finality but without representation of an end, necessity but without argument. Lack of preparation is the very fact of my subject, sensus communis, because it demands it. It demands that the intellect be at a loss. That it have got nothing ready. Without a show of readiness. Of which it’s incapable, because it is spontaneous activity, Selbststätigkeit. This sensus and this communis appear to be ungraspable at their exposition. The concept’s other. So a good opportunity for metaphysics.