Agency Dictionary
collective consciousness
nounPronunciation: /kəˈlek.tɪv ˈkɒn.ʃəs.nəs/
In Portuguese: consciência coletiva
Society & Politics
Psychology & MindWhat does “collective consciousness” mean?
The set of beliefs, ideas and feelings shared by the members of a society, which exists beyond any single person. By extension, what a community knows and repeats in common.
Etymology
A translation of French conscience collective, the term that the sociologist Émile Durkheim used in The Division of Labour in Society (1893) for the beliefs and sentiments common to the members of a society. Collective comes from Latin collectivus, from colligere, "to gather"; consciousness is an English formation on conscious, from Latin conscius, "knowing with others, aware". Since French conscience covers both conscience and consciousness, English also has the form collective conscience.
Usage note
A term of sociology that passed into general use, where it loosely means what everybody in a community knows, remembers or repeats.
Synonyms
- collective conscience
- common consciousness
Often confused with
- collective unconscious
- The collective unconscious is Carl Jung's term in psychology for inherited patterns of the mind shared by all humans; collective consciousness is a sociological idea about beliefs shared within a society.
Word family
- collective
- collectively
- collectivity
- conscious
- consciously
Usage examples
some of these are usually sentences taken from books, scripts or even expressions of the collective consciousness.
Writing.2 - Aphorisms
Source editions
Where this entry comes from in the Agency editorial.
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Also from these editions: terms
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