Common Sense and its Problems: Some Remarks between Philosophy and Anthropology

This article offers a reconstruction of Dewey’s account of common sense, emphasising its emotional, intellectual and practical aspects. Dewey analyses the similarities and differences between everyday problem solving and the experimental method, while also emphasising the tension between qualitative immediacy and the abstractions produced by science. This framework enables us to understand the political implications of common sense. The article then places Dewey in dialogue with Clifford Geertz, whose anthropological analysis of common sense as a cultural system highlights naturalness, thinness, practicality, informality and accessibility as its five defining features. Juxtaposing Dewey and Geertz suggests a synthesis in which common sense is both culturally situated and open to pragmatic reconstruction. The conclusion briefly discusses a possible application of this Deweyan-Geertzian model to contemporary debates on the nature of the encounter between anthropologists and natives.