Sensus communis is a philosophical term originally used to refer to the perceptual power of binding the inputs of the individual sense organs

Organ (anatomy)

In biology, an organ is a collection of tissues joined in structural unit to serve a common function. Usually there is a main tissue and sporadic tissues . The main tissue is the one that is unique for the specific organ. For example, main tissue in the heart is the myocardium, while sporadic are...

 into a coherent and intelligible representation. The term originates with Aristotle (sensus communis is the Latin translation of Aristotle's ). It is used in a similar sense by Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...

 and Rene Descartes

René Descartes

René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...

.

In rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...

, the term is used to mean the whole set of unstated assumptions, prejudices, and values (see endoxa

Endoxa

Endoxa derives from the word doxa . Whereas Plato condemned doxa as a starting point for achieving Truth, Aristotle uses the term endoxa to acknowledge the beliefs of the city...

) that an orator can take for granted when addressing an audience. These are those opinions absorbed from society and the Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...

 without being exposed to critical consideration.

The term is further used by Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....

 in a wider philosophical sense, applying it to the whole human race. In the Critique of Judgement

Critique of Judgement

The Critique of Judgment , or in the new Cambridge translation Critique of the Power of Judgment, also known as the third critique, is a philosophical work by Immanuel Kant...

he says:

"..we must [here] take sensus communis to mean the idea of a sense shared [by us all], i.e., a power to judge that in reflecting takes account (a priori), in our thought, of everyone else's way of presenting [something], in order as it were to compare our own judgement with human reason in general... Now we do this as follows: we compare our judgement not so much with the actual as rather with the merely possible judgements of others, and [thus] put ourselves in the position of everyone else..."