Abstract: Cultural code, as the public image of imagination, provides an analytical model for the integration of mind and social order. Vico's civil theology, through the ideas of "imaginative concept" and the "metaphor", explains the origin of human common sense, and shows the meaning of mind that the poetic wisdom brings to the community. Since the emergence of subjectivity philosophy, this has critical significance for distinguishing image from being itself. Arendt's idea of the "exemplary" combines the concrete and the common by special images' interactive communication, thereby achieving a common commonality. This is how the mechanism of the imagination progresses from the common sense of the aesthetic to the social community. The cultural code of the public image is different from the didactic and disciplinary epistemology in that the cultural code exists in the "common sense" and "public communication", and is rooted in promoting one’s life and opening to others, thereby demonstrating the public philosophical significance of "aesthetic common sense".

Key words: imagination, cultural code, public image, what is as it should be, aesthetic common sense, mind and social order