Shaftesbury's Reception of ‘Sensus Communis’ and its Classical Backgrounds

Abstract

The third Earl of Shaftesbury's Sensus Communis reveals that his understanding of Juvenal’s ‘sensus communis’ depends on the interpretations of Marcus Aurelius' ‘κοινονοημοσύνη’ by Isaac Casaubon, Salmasius, Meric Casaubon, and Gataker. This paper compares Shaftesbury's arguments with their original commentaries and translations, and detects three features of his reception of them. First, he shifts emphasis from ‘κοινονοημοσύνη’ to ‘sensus communis’ in order to establish a rhetorical association between the ‘common sense’ and ‘public spirit.’ Second, he does not simply reproduce the four classical scholars' statements in his footnote, but rather deliberately construct it within the Stoic framework. Third, his use of a word, ‘civility,’ may be the implicit reference to ‘civilitas’ in Isaac Casaubon and Gataker's texts.