Abstract

Although some philosophers are still influenced by Hume's atomistic view of sense impressions, most acknowledge that we are aware not merely of isolated disparate sense data, but of concrete individual sensible things, which on the sensible plane are wholes composed of many sensible aspects. One of many philosophical problems faced by philosophers is to explain precisely how these diverse simultaneously presented sensible aspects are objectively and subjectively cognized as belonging to the same individual sensible thing. The traditional Thomistic response to the question of which sense power is responsible for these acts of unification is the sensus communis or common sense. Recently, however, the validity of that response and its support by textual evidence has been called into question. As a result, in this study I am concerned with two questions: What exactly did St. Thomas think about the nature and role of the sensus communis? and Has any philosophically significant aspect of St. Thomas' account of the sensus communis been overlooked by either the commentary tradition or its critics? ;The first chapter is a comparative and chronological exegesis of the pertinent Thomistic texts on the sensus communis in order to reconstruct his authentic teaching on the matter. The second chapter then evaluates the relative fidelity and truth of the claims of the commentary tradition and its critics. In the third chapter I focus on clarifying the overlooked notion of subjective unification and show that it is precisely this activity that constitutes the most important and fundamental epistemological act of the sensus communis because of the relation it establishes between the knower and the known. In the final two chapters I locate the insights of the preceding chapter within the broader context of St. Thomas' thought in psychology/epistemolgy, metaphysics, and philosophical theology, and explore both the preliminaries and consequences to establishing a dialogue between the thought of St. Thomas and some contemporary philosophical issues and questions