The Annual Forum is the yearly heart of Sensus Communis — the seminar-led forum for judgement that brings together voices from business, academia, politics, culture and the public sphere.
“Taste could be called sensus communis aestheticus, and common human understanding sensus communis logicus.”
Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, § 40, note (AA V, 295; our translation)
The Sensus Communis Annual Forum has two interlocking parts.
Every Sensus Communis Annual Forum is framed by the — Zeitgeist — and thereby creates a way of addressing the immediate guiding questions and challenges of our present.
It comprises four complementary formats: the Sensus Communis Seminars, the public Sensus Communis Dialogues, the confidential Sensus Communis Roundtables and the Sensus Communis Debates.
The intellectual heart of the Annual Forum. Each seminar works on the “Zeitgeist”, prepared by a curated chair and carried by participants and rapporteurs. Participation requires early registration and thorough preparation for every session. The seminar meets four times a year, including the concluding seminar during the Sensus Communis Annual.
The public format of Sensus Communis. Recorded conversations, also open to a live audience, in which leading voices from business, politics, academia, culture and society deliberate and debate complex questions. No panel, no exchange of blows, but a genuine conversation that trusts its audience with what it deserves: authenticity and seriousness.
Closed-door conversations for decision-makers from politics, associations, foundations and think tanks. Under the Chatham House Rule, a space opens up in which institutional practice meets theoretical depth. The classic, more protected meeting ground of political life.
One motion, two sides, disciplined and intergenerational dissent. The format demands constructive, productive conflict and the capacity to bear ambivalence. At the end there is no winner, but a sharpened judgement and an attentive audience in which every single person has been able to put their own position to the test.
The Annual Aestheticus complements intellectual discourse with the dimension of shared, lived experience. Sensus Communis Music, Sensus Communis Theatre & Film, Sensus Communis Literature and Sensus Communis Art & Encounter open up paths that rational argument alone cannot reach. They create spaces of resonance and imagination and affirm humanism, or quite simply what it means to be human.
Where people listen together, resonance arises even before argument. Music carries the Annual Forum as a shared experience — from the concert moment to the sonic framing of the debate — and opens a way into a common sense that language alone cannot fully capture.
The stage makes situations of judgement tangible that remain abstract as long as they are only discussed. Theatre and performance place perspectives, conflicts and ambivalences in the room and invite us to put ourselves in the place of others — the staged rehearsal of shared judgement.
Literature trains the imagination and widens the sense of possibility. Readings, conversations and texts open up realms of experience beyond one’s own perspective and cultivate the narrative depth from which reflective judgement draws.
Visual art and cultural encounters create common points of reference — moments of seeing, feeling and experiencing in which a humanism that can be lived becomes tangible. Social cohesion can grow from such shared experiences.
The Annual Aestheticus does not see culture as a supporting programme, but as a contribution in its own right to sound and sharpened judgement. For where people listen, see, feel and experience together, the shared points of reference often emerge on which social cohesion can grow.
Yet the best place from which to think about the future and glimpse new horizons is the shoulders of giants. That is why Sensus Communis is, at its core, a bridge-building format — not only between positions, but above all between generations. A Mentor & Fellowship Programme accompanies the entire format throughout the year.
An institution for selecting questions. Sensus Communis does not set a random overarching theme each year. An Inquiry Season gathers, prioritises and distils — themes emerge from academia, institutions, fellows and partners. More on the Zeitgeist page.