Dear All,
The notion of 'common sense' fascinates me. Although, historically it has on occasion been employed as part of anti-establishment critique (Thomas Paine's (in)famous "Common Sense" published in the late 18th C springs to mind), it seems to me that it can be more often associated with the vital principals of conservative Christian morality. Perhaps this is all too obvious to most of us, perhaps it is just 'common sense' (though a 'common sense' which is not often pulled into the spotlight of consciousness, rather one that forms a large part of the backdrop, the unspoken assumptions and taken-for-granted ideologies, the 'historical apriori', of Western evaluation), however perhaps today the Christian roots of 'common sense' lay too often in analytical darkness. Comparatively our Western 'secular society' no longer clings as affectionately and as proudly to Christian codes of belief as did, generally, the English high-Victorian period. 'Common sense' here has moved into and filled the ideological vacuum, especially in relation to the political domain. Although it could be argued that even during the Victorian period the nature of the universalized code of 'respectability', to which the attribute of 'common-sense' was an essential element, was sometimes more 'secular' than religious, the general assertion that 'respectability' and 'common-sense' turned on the fundamental tenets of a Christian morality is hard to dispute. I say this, as part of 'a history of the present', to remind us that today when we judge and condemn someone on the basis of 'common-sense' that we are often not making a universal 'rational' decision, one to which any 'objective' inquirer would nod their assent, but are simply reinforcing the historical ascendency of the fundamental principles of Christian evaluation.
all the best
Bradley Nitins
University of Queensland