GRICE E FALCIGLIA: SENSI

 sensus compositus: composite or compounded sense. The term has two applications. (1) A logical application, as distinguished from a divided or isolated sense (sensus divisus). In the composite sense (in sensu composito), a subject is understood in necessary connection with or as conditioned by its predicates or attributes; in the divided sense (in sensu diviso), the subject is understood in a hypothetical or contingent relationship to its predicates or attributes. Thus in the composite sense, it is necessary that a blind man cannot see or that a man who is running is in motion; whereas in the divided sense, a man is now blind, but it is possible that he could see; a man is now running, and it is possible that he stand still. The sensus compositus can be used to indicate a necessity of the consequent thing (necessitas consequentis, q.v.), while the sensus divisus can be used to indicate a contingency, namely, a necessity of the consequence (necessitas consequentiae, q.v.). And (2) a rhetorical or exegetical application, also identified as the sensus literalis compositus: composite or compounded literal sense; viz., either the literal meaning understood as a figure or type, with the allegorical, mystical, or moral sense embedded figuratively in the text as part of the literal meaning, or the literal sense of a larger unit as distinguished from the sense of an individual term, particularly in cases where one term is in itself unclear or subject to multiple interpretations but capable of a clear, unitary sense in its context. When the composite sense of a text rests on figurative meaning or on a type that is fully understood only with a view to its antitype, the Protestant exegesis stands in positive relation to the medieval quadriga (q.v.), albeit capable of denying multiple meanings.  sensus divisus: the divided sense; i.e., the meaning of a word or idea in itself apart from its general relation to other words of a text or apart from its logical relation to another term or thing; the opposite of sensus compositus (q.v.).