Consensus gentium
Consensus Gentium (lat .:, conformity of peoples') referred to in the philosophy of an agreement on an idea, an assumption or belief that is found universally and their distribution is not based on exchange and therefore of the like nature of the reason is supposed to be founded .
The consensus is sometimes used as an argument for the truth of general concepts, especially the concepts of God and immortality . This is particularly true of the later Stoics . In the Tusculanae disputationes , Cicero speaks of the consensus nationum with a view to the idea of God (Tuscul. Disp. I, 16, 36). Further evidence can be found in Seneca (Ep. 117, 6) and Minucius Felix (Octav. 8, 1).
The thesis of the universality of religious ideas also has a special role for natural theology .
Friedrich Engels wrote about primitive peoples : "This instinct for personification created gods everywhere, and the consensus gentium [...] just proves the universality of this instinct for personification as a necessary transition stage, including religion."
The consensus , however, is no proof of the validity or truth of an idea, not even of its universality, although it can be reconstructed as an empirical induction with regard to this . Rather, it is a form of the rhetorical figure Argumentum ad populum . If it is treated as evidence anyway, it is a fallacy .