Abstract
This paper explores two different views about common sense—those of Clifford Geertz and Antonio Gramsci. It examines their presuppositions, assesses their utility for archaeologists, and considers the implications of current common-sense explanations of the past. It points out that common sense is both historical. Yesterday’s common sense sometimes morphs into today’s good sense or scientific truth. Today’s common sense or scientific truth often becomes tomorrow’s false consciousness or folklore. Common sense is also relational. Groups with different positionalities in hierarchically organized societies may have widely divergent views about what is common sense. Finally, it raises the question of why particular “common sense” explanations of the present—buttressed with claims that they are rooted historically in a fixed, unchanging human nature and morality—are repeatedly resurrected by fundamentalists and conservatives in both hemispheres to justify political arguments and to reassert or impose or particular power relations.
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Notes
Alice Kehoe (personal communication, 2014) points out that the Scottish Common Sense philosophers, beginning with Thomas Reid’s (1710–1796) An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764). They defended the view that the five senses are innate, first principles of the human mind that underpin our conceptions of things, and that these conceptions are empirical hypotheses. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) turned the appeal to common sense into an appeal for common language. Clifford Geertz (1973) acknowledges the influence of Wittgenstein’s ordinary language philosophy in The Interpretation of Cultures.
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Acknowledgments
This paper was prepared for a symposium, “The Archaeology of Common Sense” organized by Pamela Geller and Ann Kakaliouras for 2015 annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I want to thank them for their invitation to participate in the symposium. I also want to thank Christine Gailey, Peter Gran, Alice Kehoe, and Bob Paynter for conversations over the years and especially Wendy Ashmore, once again, for sharing her insights and critical comments.
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Patterson, T.C. Too much common sense, not enough critical thinking!. Dialect Anthropol 40, 251–258 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-016-9434-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-016-9434-5