With Jochen Bojanowski, Leonhard Emmerling, Marina Martinez Mateo, and Christoph Menke, moderated my Alix Cohen
In celebration of the 300th anniversary of Immanuel Kant’s birth, please join us for a discussion on the relevance of the philosopher’s idea of the
sensus communis to social wellbeing today.
REGISTER HERE
When Kant introduces the term
sensus communis in the
Critique of Judgment, he emphasizes two aspects: firstly, it is a shared sense, secondly, it is a faculty of judgment.
Hannah Arendt found in the
Critique of Judgement the key concept of her political theory: It is in the plurality of judgments that she anchors the principle of the political: the being-together of the many-different.
But what could be understood as
sensus communis, and what is its relation to a theory of society? Is the
sensus communis identical with common sense? Or a communal sense? How can this concept be reconciled with Arendt’s concept of the multitude, and what is the relationship between communality and diversity? Does the
sensus communis gesture towards community or society, towards concepts of voluntarism or concepts of essentialism? Does it ask for conformity or for difference? Or should it be understood as the realm of a shared rationality? In which way can its relationship to Kant’s “extended way of thinking” be defined of which he speaks in the
Critique of Judgment?
In this event, four speakers will elucidate the terminus of
sensus communis in inputs of 15 to 20 minutes each, trying to grasp its implications from different perspectives.
SPEAKERS
© Jochen Bojanowski
Prof. Dr. Jochen Bojanowski is professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois-Champaign. His research focuses on morality and political philosophy with a special interest in Kant's practical philosophy.
© Leonhard Emmerling
Dr. Leonhard Emmerling is an art historian and director of the Goethe-Institut Chicago.
© Marina Martinez Mateo
Prof. Dr. Marina Martinez Mateo is professor of Media and Technology Philosophy at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Her research focuses on Critical Philosophy of Race, feminist theory, and aesthetics.
© Christoph Menke
Prof. Dr. Christoph Menke is professor at the Institute of Philosophy at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, with a special focus on political and legal philosophy and aesthetics.
Moderator
© Alix Cohen
Alix Cohen is professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses on the work of Immanuel Kant, and it covers a wide array of topics, including anthropology, history, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics and biology.
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