Philosophy and the critique of 'common sense'

Introduction Given the international interest, debate and controversy on questions of the subaltern classes and of relationships of hegemony, it has been thought useful to present here a number of sections (conventionally called paragraphs) from the Prison Notebooks that are as yet awaiting publication in an English translation. They will of course come out in Joseph Buttigieg’s ongoing project of the translation in their entirety of the Gerratana edition of the Notebooks, and publication of some of Gramsci’s first drafts of the pieces here included are imminent. In other cases, however, the first drafts by Gramsci, especially the paragraphs discussing Ettore Ciccotti’s articles, have actually been published in the second volume of the Buttigieg edition, not to mention of course editions in languages other than English. Apart from Gramsci’s general discussion of the emergence of the subaltern classes and their struggle for recognition and even some sort of hegemony, what readers may...

IT IS instructive for any literary student, but especially for a contributor to a new scholarly journal, to browse in the early numbers of those journals that started a generation ago-to read Ronald Crane's ruthless dissections, in the early PQ annual bibliographies, of Continental theses ponderously chasing the elusive abstractions "neo-classicism" and "pre-romanticism" through jungles of logomachy; to encounter, in RES, such wise words of Ronald McKerrow's as (1928) "Our interest now lies, not in inventing neat phrases which will serve to label these periods [of literature] and emphasize the watertight nature of their divisions, but in showing how they are interlocked one with another," or these (1934) castigating "a time when an attitude of simple faith towards the dicta of the earlier literary histories was more customary than is the rule at present, and when the picturesqueness of an anecdote or the ingenuity of a theory seemed too often to have been accepted as evidence of its truth." ExpeUas naturam furca, tamen usque recurrit. In 1960 (this survey attempts Ito cover late 1959 and most of 1960), were we in eighteenthcentury studies as far advanced as Crane's and McKerrow's readers toward the ideal for which they strove? The tendency to compartmentalize and isolate a period of literature-to "professionalize" it, in the worst sense of the term-seems innate in human mental sloth. To take one's notions of eighteenth-century history or philosophy or theology from the convenient summaries of Lecky or Leslie Stephen in Professor So-and-so's literary history is easier than to go to the original sources or to serious contemporary scholarship in those disciplines. "Gimmickism" sets in-a young scholar, anxious to get a book into print, picks up some obscure, halfunderstood term from another discipline, and proclaims it the key to the interpretation of some major writer. All this sort of thing has to ibe combatted 'by each new generation of students. I was glad to see William Walsh in the New Statesman (

E. Sarfati, Six leçons sur le sens commun. Esquisse d'une théorie du discours, éd. l'Harmattan, coll. « Du sens », Paris, 2022, 193 p. Résumé.-L'ouvrage de Georges-Elia Sarfati Six leçons de sens commun, publié aux éditions l'Harmattan, propose une grammaire de sens commun, sous-tendue par la théorie des états du discours. L'auteur insiste sur la nécessité, pour une théorie du discours, non seulement de rendre compte de la matérialisation du sens commun dans les pratiques sociales et discursives, mais surtout de caractériser de manière fine ses manifestations verbales. Après avoir montré que sa construction est inséparable de l'interaction entre l'institution du sens et les communautés de sens, et de la manière dont le sujet s'inscrit dans le monde qui nous est commun, Sarfati élabore la distinction entre le sens commun et le sens critique. L'auteur propose également de reconsidérer la manière dont on envisage les états de discours au sein des configurations discursives dont il décrit minutieusement le fonctionnement.

The topics of language and subaltern social groups appear throughout Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks. Although Gramsci often associates the problem of political fragmentation among subaltern groups with issues concerning language and common sense, there are only a few notes where he explicitly connects his overlapping analyses of language and subalternity. We build on the few places in the literature on Gramsci that focus on how he relates common sense to the questions of language or subalternity. By explicitly tracing out these relations, we hope to bring into relief the direct connections between subalternity and language by showing how the concepts overlap with respect to Gramsci's analyses of common sense, intellectuals, philosophy, folklore, and hegemony. We argue that, for Gramsci, fragmentation of any social group's 'common sense', worldview and language is a political detriment, impeding effective political organisation to counter exploitation but that...

go thanks for their willingness to listen, interrogate and give an opinion about feminism, life and literature. Finally, for all the day-today enthusiastic support at Oxford, for the laughter and the wit, for his interest, and for turning my writing-up year into a very special one, deep thanks to Matthew Preston.

Despite the fact that North Jakarta has been prompted as the new frontier of development with megaprojects, artificial islands, and large-scale infrastructures, little attention is paid to the development of small islands in Kepulauan Seribu, north of Jakarta, focused on Panggang island, one of the inhabited islands in Kepulauan Seribu, among Indonesia’s densest islands. There were the three challenges to the urbanization of small islands in the Jakarta megaregion, including: population growth, land availability and reclamation, and essential infrastructure provision. Through a participatory workshop with local authorities and communities, this paper proposed a model of sustainable settlement planning in Panggang Island, based on housing need assessment and spatial structure improvement to ensure the future settlement sustainability in Panggang island. To conclude, this paper critically reflects on the engagement process with local communities and the challenges in actualizing the s...

IT IS instructive for any literary student, but especially for a contributor to a new scholarly journal, to browse in the early numbers of those journals that started a generation ago-to read Ronald Crane's ruthless dissections, in the early PQ annual bibliographies, of Continental theses ponderously chasing the elusive abstractions "neo-classicism" and "pre-romanticism" through jungles of logomachy; to encounter, in RES, such wise words of Ronald McKerrow's as (1928) "Our interest now lies, not in inventing neat phrases which will serve to label these periods [of literature] and emphasize the watertight nature of their divisions, but in showing how they are interlocked one with another," or these (1934) castigating "a time when an attitude of simple faith towards the dicta of the earlier literary histories was more customary than is the rule at present, and when the picturesqueness of an anecdote or the ingenuity of a theory seemed too often to have been accepted as evidence of its truth." ExpeUas naturam furca, tamen usque recurrit. In 1960 (this survey attempts Ito cover late 1959 and most of 1960), were we in eighteenthcentury studies as far advanced as Crane's and McKerrow's readers toward the ideal for which they strove? The tendency to compartmentalize and isolate a period of literature-to "professionalize" it, in the worst sense of the term-seems innate in human mental sloth. To take one's notions of eighteenth-century history or philosophy or theology from the convenient summaries of Lecky or Leslie Stephen in Professor So-and-so's literary history is easier than to go to the original sources or to serious contemporary scholarship in those disciplines. "Gimmickism" sets in-a young scholar, anxious to get a book into print, picks up some obscure, halfunderstood term from another discipline, and proclaims it the key to the interpretation of some major writer. All this sort of thing has to ibe combatted 'by each new generation of students. I was glad to see William Walsh in the New Statesman (

Tristram Shandy deconstructs the conventions of the emerging modern novel almost as fast as its conventions were minted on the page by other 18th century writers. In consequence, readers of this early novel could not just consume the words on the page as they might do with a history but they required instead an aesthetics of disposal to help them to manage the endless digressions, the blanks in text, and the ambulation in chronology of this most disorganised of novels. In this paper listening to ruptures and fissures in the text is likened to the work of employees today, who similarly have to manage the inter-plays of convention and invention within the disorganisation of the contemporary corporation.

Drawing on Antonio Gramsci's concepts of hegemony and prestige, the paper explores the relationship between language and power. It looks at how education plays a pivotal role in creating civic consciousness in the masses, promoting awareness and independent thought through the command of the language. Gramsci considered dialect theatre a genuine form of art, as dialect  better reflected people's worldview, contrary to standard language theatre that remained elitist and distant.

Building on recent ground-breaking scholarship on the role of translation in Gramsci’s biography and theory (Carlucci, 2013; Sen, 2003), this paper presents an analysis of selected fragments from the “Prison Notebooks” in their Polish editions (1961, 1991).
The aim of this exercise is to examine the translations of Gramsci’s text from the point of view of his own complex theory of translation and translatability. The method used in the chapter pertains to Translation Studies, but reflections inspired by the corpus apply not only to the realm of language and translation but also to politics and broadly-understood struggles over hegemony.
The conclusion of the article is that the shape of the existing Polish translations of the “Prison Notebooks” was conditioned by the specific historical circumstances in which they were commissioned and published. In consequence, Gramsci is presented to the Polish public either as a classic of Marxist thought (first edition) or as a 'classic' philosopher tout court (second edition) – both of which suggest his work is a thing of the past, rather than a valid contemporary point of reference. In the closing section of the article I reflect on translation as a possible means of changing this state of affairs.

Note: this is a manuscript.
The full published paper is: "Translations of the Prison Notebooks into Polish: A Gramscian Analysis", in Antonini, Francesca, Aaron Bernstein, Lorenzo Fusaro, and Robert Jackson, eds. Revisiting Gramsci’s Notebooks (Brill, 2020)
For the full pdf go to https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004417694/BP000009.xml or simply contact me via Academia.edu or email: [email protected]

Article paru dans la Revue de métaphysique et de morale, N°3, septembre 2017.
Abstract : Dans la philosophie la plus contemporaine, essentiellement dominée par la revendication de « réalisme », « l’idéaliste » apparaît, en de multiples occurrences, comme celui qui, niant la réalité du monde extérieur, se confondrait, dès lors, avec un subjectivisme débridé, qui immanquablement déboucherait sur un relativisme généralisé. Or, aucun philosophe idéaliste n’a jamais soutenu ce type de position. Ce qui ne laisse pas d’étonner. Comment une doctrine, que nul n’a jamais soutenue dans l’histoire de la philosophie, peut-elle faire l’objet d’une telle unanimité dénonciatrice (des Encyclopédistes  à certains types de marxisme, de la « Réfutation de l’idéalisme » par Moore au réalisme le plus contemporain) ? A quelles conditions cette figure de l’idéaliste en négateur de monde extérieur a-t-elle pu naître (bien avant que Kant ne revendique le terme), et sur quel terreau philosophique a-t-elle pu prospérer ? C’est l’origine de cette ombre portée sur la signification de l’idéalisme ainsi que sur sa prétendue opposition à son supposé contraire absolu (le réalisme), que je voudrais prendre ici comme objet d’analyse. Suivre l’évolution sémantique du terme « idéalisme » de sa naissance en 1702 aux années 1780 (genèse), me permettra de revenir aux actes conceptuels (structure) qui ont présidé à la création de ce cliché, que l’on pourra, au terme de ces analyses, considérer pour ce qu’il est, à savoir l’un des contresens les plus spectaculaires, mais aussi les plus intéressant, de l’histoire de la philosophie.
In most contemporary philosophy, essentially dominated by realism, the idealist often appears as one who denies the reality of the external world, and is therefore thought of as a subjectivist and/or a relativist. But no idealist philosopher has ever supported such a position. How can a doctrine which no one has ever supported in the history of philosophy be subject to such denunciatory unanimity (from the Encyclopedists to different varieties of Marxism, from the "Refutation of Idealism" by Moore to the most contemporary realism)? Under what conditions could this image of the idealist as denier of the outside world have been born and on what philosophical ground has it been able to prosper?
This is the origin of the shadow cast on both the meaning of idealism and its alleged opposition to its supposed absolute antithesis, realism, which I would like to consider here as an object of analysis.
To follow the semantic evolution of the term idealism from its birth in 1702 to the 1780s (genesis) will allow me to return to the conceptual acts (structure) that presided over the creation of this cliché.
At the end of this analysis we can consider this cliché for what it is, namely one the most spectacular but also the most fascinating misinterpretations in the history of philosophy.

While Gramscian concepts continue to find purchase across a kaleidoscope of intellectual disciplines, the historical-theoretical laboratory of the Sardinian’s 'Prison Notebooks' remains an under-explored resource through which to articulate the complex interrelationship between subjectivity and the political. I suggest that Gramsci's analysis of the ‘molecular’ micro-processes of social transformation make a rich contribution to our understanding of the relationship between subjectivity and the political. In particular, the nexus between philosophy and politics, a central focal point of Gramsci’s Notebooks, retains a power to provoke stimulating encounters with more contemporary thinkers. This chapter elaborates the relationship between subjectivity and the political in his thought by examining a constellation of concepts (individuality, personality, conformism) deployed by Gramsci in his prison writings.

Moses Mendelssohn wurde immer wieder der Inkonsistenz, ja der Heu-chelei bezichtigt. Auf dem Gebiet der theoretischen Philosophie zeigt sich seine angebliche Inkonsequenz darin, dass er einerseits Anhänger der Leibniz-Wolffischen Philosophie gewesen sein soll, andererseits immer wieder für den " gesunden Menschenverstand " Partei ergriffen habe. Unbezweifelbar ist, dass Mendelssohn in der Tradition der Leibniz-Wolffischen Philosophie philosophierte. Folgt aber daraus, dass er mit den grundlegenden Thesen dieser Philosophie einverstanden war? Im Fol-genden möchte ich zeigen, dass Mendelssohn eine Erkenntnistheorie des gesunden Menschenverstandes vertrat 2 und dass er der rationalistischen Philosophie eine beschränkte und genau umrissene Rolle zudachte. Mendelssohn vertraute menschlicher Erkenntnis, sofern sich diese auf Objekte der fünf Sinne erstreckt und war skeptisch Wissensansprüchen gegenüber, die sich auf Objekte des " inneren Sinnes " , das heißt Gedanken und Wünsche der eigenen umso mehr anderer Person, und auf unsinnliche Objekte der Metaphysik beziehen. Ein weiterer Grund für Mendelssohns Skepsis ist seine Kritik der natürlichen Sprache, die zwar Objekte der sinnlichen Erfahrung, aber auch nur solche adäquat erfasse. Was ist aber dann die Aufgabe der Metaphysik in Mendelssohns Werk und wieso hat er den Ruf eines Anhängers der Leibniz-Wolffschen Schule? Für das bereits durch den gesunden Menschenverstand erworbene Wissen, wünscht sich Mendelssohn, wenn möglich, eine philosophische Be-gründung im Stile der rationalistischen Philosophie, aber er vertraut der Philosophie nicht, wenn sie mit dem Urteil des Common Sense kollidiert. Eine analoge Situation zeigt sich, wie Mendelssohn meint, in der Ma-thematik: Wir wünschten uns eine unbezweifelbare philosophische Grundlegung der Mathematik, aber wir erwarteten von der Philosophie 1 Dies ist Teil einer umfassenden Arbeit über Mendelssohns Philosophie des Ju-dentums, die noch nicht veröffentlicht wurde. 2 Im Folgenden benutze ich – wie Mendelssohn – " gemeiner Verstand " , " gesunder Menschenverstand " , " Common Sense " und " Bon Sens " synonym.

Resumen: Aristóteles argumenta a favor del principio de contradicción, tomando como base la tesis enunciada en Met. Γ 4, 1006a 29-30. El problema es la dificultad de intelección y traducción de esa frase. En este trabajo, se analizan las tres versiones principales que se han dado de ella a lo largo de la historia de las traducciones de Aristóteles. Se concluye que dos de ellas son difícilmente aceptables por motivos filológicos y claramente rechazables atendiendo al contexto del discurso y a su sentido filosófico. Finalmente se pro-pone una traducción y se esclarece el sentido de la tesis aristotélica.

Abstract: Aristotle argues in favour of the law of contradiction, based on the thesis stated in Met. Γ 4, 1006a 29-30. The problem facing us is the difficulty in the understanding and translation of that sentence. This paper analyses the three main translations given within Aristotelian scholarship. It concludes that two of them are hardly acceptable for philolog-ical reasons and clearly objectionable given the context of discourse and its philosophical sense. Finally, a new translation is proposed and the sense of the Aristotelian thesis clarified.

One of the curious consequences of the application common sense to philosophy is that we end up with something apart from the thing we say whenever we say something. It seems that “common sense” is a formula for instantiating something called reality that may be protected, perhaps, from our baser natures—our denial, perhaps, of its existence. This is probably Descartes’ fault, or the fault of any Philosophy Department that thinks that Descartes is a good place to start when thinking about anything. Or the fault, perhaps, of Philosophy Departments that think that thinking about thinking provides a good start to thinking about thinking about thinking. At any rate, it is philosophy’s answer to derivatives, or latterly, “synthetic CDOs”, and it should be shorted at the first opportunity.

Es gibt unzählige wissenschaftliche und philosophische Anthropologien zwischen Materialismus und Idealismus. Fast alle liefern triftige - monistische – Einsichten in Aspekte des Menschseins.
Dialektische Anthropologie besteht darauf, dass es eine unauflösbare Einheit der Einheit und Nichteinheit von kausalem Determiniertsein und absoluter (aus dem Nichts ableitbarer) Kreativität gibt

How do philosophical accusations of talking nonsense relate to the layperson’s notions of meaning and meaningfulness?  If one were to explain carefully what philosophical nonsense was supposed to be, would one be greeted with incredulity?  How do people react to being accused of talking nonsense themselves?  Is anything analogous to an illusion of meaning recognised in everyday life?  In dream-reports perhaps?  Or in the utterances of schizophrenics or those under the influence of drugs?  Or in certain jokes and hoaxes?  Are contradictions felt to be meaningless?  I argue that, though it is clear that experimental philosophy could shed some light on these questions, their subject matter creates special difficulties.  First, it is more difficult than usual to formulate questions and produce ‘vignettes’ that do not subtly encourage certain responses at the expense of others.  Second, the fact that philosophical nonsense is a metaphilosophical concept ensures that its investigation is going to be more indirect than would be that of knowledge or intention, for example.

Peter Forsskål (1732-1763) dürfte eines der interessantesten Gestalten der nordischen Aufklärung überhaupt sein. Heute erinnert man ihn vor allem als einen begabten Jünger des Botanikers Linnaeus, der während einer Forschungsreise nach Südarabien erst 31-jährig tragisch um sein Leben kam. Doch war Forsskåls Wirken während sein kurzes Leben vielseitiger: er war nicht nur ein eigenständiger Philosoph, der mit seinen radikal empiristischen Ansichten das damals noch wolffianisch geprägte akademische Establishment herausforderte, sondern auch ein, wenn möglich, noch radikaler politischer Pamphletist, der Aufsehen erregte, bis zu dem Grade, dass er schliesslich sein Heimatland für immer verlassen musste. In modernen Nachslagewerken figuriert Forsskål meistens als ein Finne, allerdings liegt hier insofern ein Anachronismus vor, dass Finnland bis 1809 ein Provinz Schwedens war und die Bezeichnung "Finne" damals noch lediglich im lokalpatriotischen Sinne gebraucht wurde. Seinem Selbstverständnis nach war Forsskål sicherlich ein Schwede. Er war zwar in Helsinki (schwedisch: Helsingfors -die Familienname ist aus dem Ortsnamen gebastelt) den 11. Januar 1732 als jüngster von drei Söhnen geboren und gehörte einem alten finnischen Geschlecht an, dessen Mitglieder seit dem 16. Jahrhundert kirchliche Ämte in Südwest-Finnland hielten. Aber der Vater zog schon 1741 nach eigentliche Schweden, wo er ein Pastorat im Gemeinde Tegelsmora in Uppland erhalten hatte. Peter hatte also schon als Knabe Finnland für immer verlassen. Im nächsten Jahr, 1 Dieser Artikel basiert sich zum Teil auf einem Vortrag am Wolff-Kongress in Halle April 2004, der nicht in den Kongressakten publiziert worden ist.

Fundamental problems remain with evidence-based management. We argue that, rather than being addressed, these problems are treated as digressions. One explanation for this is an ongoing incoherence: the evidence-based approach relegates narrative to a ghetto category of knowledge, but it is itself a narrative. Moreover, while this narrative is becoming more polished through repetition and selective assimilation of critique, it is also becoming simplified and less interesting. A Foucauldian, archaeological analysis accounts for this development by locating evidence-based management in a broader historical context. This analysis shows how the roots of incoherence can be informed by older exchanges between evidence and narrative.

This paper explores the problems that derive from the misuse of the conceptual tool of Abstract words. It explores the error that results from applying rigid oppositional logic as the only means to understand Abstract terms.
The article uses a 2012 discussion by Atalia Omer and Robert McCutcheon to illustrate the Tool Trap of using strict Aristotelian Logic that fails to allow the Middle Ground. The paper offers an alternative to the oppositional form of thinking and way to avoid falling into that form of Conceptual Tool Trap by realizing the true nature of Abstract Terms.

Every tool builds a conceptual box. This cognitive box means a situation within which the tool is useful. Outside of that context, that particular conceptual box, the tool ignores everything else. Thus, it is useless in its ability to guide you in thinking and exploring outside of that contextual and conceptual box. To believe that you can successfully use that tool outside of the circumstance for which it has its use is to become tool trapped. The very tool you are supposedly the wielder of, will, if used out of context, wind up metaphorically wielding you. This is what being tool trapped means.
Our most important conceptual tool is common sense logic. Where does that logic come from and what are its limitations?
This paper explores the trap create by common sense logic and thus how to avoid being trapped within its limiting box.

An Analysis of the concepts of True and Real going beyond the common sense logic of Aristotle. Showing how our common sense gets confused by the dualism of the logic of Aristotle and the need to use a Non-Aristotelian logic system first described by Alfred Korzybski.

Britain in the 'long eighteenth century', after the trauma of civil war and under the influence of Enlightenment philosophy, was a breeding ground for discourses of common sense. These centred on the idea of an intuitive, pragmatic human faculty for reasonable and socially consensual behaviour. Since then, to be endowed with an abundant share of common sense has been one of the most persistent national stereotypes about Britons. In this article, an overview shall be given of the emergence of 'common sense' discourse in Britain, from its gaining currency in the late seventeenth century to its critical revision by the Romantics. Common sense discourse develops into a potent force in philosophy (from English empiricism to the Scottish "common sense" school), politics (in both internal and external affairs), and literature from early 'Augustans' like Pope and Swift to Johnson and Sterne, with a final glimpse at Coleridge). In Michel Foucault's terms, common sense discourse reveals itself here as a 'principle of exclusion': it promotes identity and homogeneity over difference and heterogeneity.

This essay argues that both Jonathan Swift's corrosive narrative satire A Tale of a Tub (1704) and Laurence Sterne's exuberantly experimental novel Tristram Shandy (1759-67) stage a play-off between common sense and self-reflexivity - with different overall results. While it has often been noted how much Sterne is indebted to Swift with regard to the use of ironic wit and disruptively digressive story-telling, the overall function of self-reflexive discursive strategies in both texts is ultimately different. Their difference consists in the value they place on common sense as a rational faculty. To put it bluntly, A Tale of a Tub affirms it, Tristram Shandy subverts it. In order to show this, first the question of genre shall be reviewed and both texts will be read as satires, with a special focus on the function of contemporaneous discourses of common sense. As a next step, A Tale of a Tub and Tristram Shandy shall be approached as metaliterature with specific self-reflexive (metafictional) techniques. As the opposition between common sense and madness is a highly illuminating one in this context, this essay shall highlight the entanglement of 'mad' self-reflexivity and 'sane' common sense in two of the seminal works of eighteenth-century English literature.

The idea of this Einladungsschrift was well expressed by the philosopher of religion Paul Deussen (also a friend of Nietzsche): «ähnlich wie schon Platon im Phaedrus Bedenken dagegen äussert, fertige Resultate mitzuteilen, und dementsprechend in vielen seiner Dialoge verfährt, indem er den Leser nötigt, die Erkenntnisse nicht fertig zu empfangen, sondern selbsttätig zu erzeugen, fordert Kant in dieser gedankenreichen kleinen Schrift von dem akademischen Lehrer, nicht Gedanken, sondern Denken, nicht Philosophie, sondern Philosophieren zu lehren». And it is a fact that, when writing on education, Kant’s way of proceeding is decidedly Platonic. What initially seems to give form and structure to the Einladungs- schrift is the question raised by Plato twice, in the Sophist (216c-217a) and in the Politicus (257b-c), namely, who is the philosopher?

Abstract: Peirce calls philosophy “Cenoscopy”, that is, a view of the general. By that, he means that its aim is to provide a general view of the positive facts of human life and experience. Thus, cenoscopy begins its inquiries scrutinising everything experience shows us that is universal and pervasive, general and evident. The method of cenoscopic inquiry, as its very name says, rests upon the careful observation of all manifestations of usual and common experience, limiting itself to what can be inferred from it: our common-sense experiences constitute the positum of philosophical inquiry. So the biggest difficulty in philosophical inquiry is to cope with the certainties of common-sense, which are extremely vague and general, such certainties as expressed in propositions such as “fire burns”. Such experiences inform our world view, before any scientific world view, and as such it does not occur to us we can doubt them – they acquire the indubitable status of instinctive beliefs. In fact, common-sense beliefs are the very ground of our rational certainties, thus constituting the inevitable hic et nunc from where to start any philosophical and scientific inquiry. This paper aims at presenting Peirce’s main tenets of commonsense in relation to his conception of philosophy.
Resumo: Peirce chama a filosofia de “Cenoscopia”, ou seja, uma visão do geral. Com isso, ele quer dizer que seu objetivo é uma visão geral dos fatos positivos da vida humana e da experiência. Assim, a cenoscopia começa suas inquirições pelo escrutínio de tudo que a experiência nos mostra de universal e difuso, geral e evidente. O método da inquirição cenoscópica, como seu próprio nome diz, baseia-se na observação cuidadosa de todas as manifestações da experiência comum e corriqueira, limitando-se ao que pode ser inferido dela: nossas experiências do senso-comum constituem o positum da inquirição filosófica. A maior dificuldade, então, da inquirição filosófica, é lidar com as certezas do senso-comum, as quais são extremamente vagas e gerais. Essas certezas são expressas em proposições tais como “o fogo queima”. Essas experiências informam nossa visão de mundo – elas adquirem o estatuto indubitável de crenças instintivas. De fato, crenças do senso-comum são o próprio chão de nossas certezas racionais, constituindo, assim, o inevitável hic et nunc de onde começar toda inquirição filosófica e científica. Este escrito almeja apresentar os principais temas da filosofia do senso-comum de Peirce com relação a sua concepção de filosofia.

ABSTRACT:  The term bodyscape encourages thinking about representation of bodies at multiple scales—from different bodies as they move through space to the microlandscape of individual bodily differences. A hegemonic bodyscape's representations tend to idealize and essentialize bodies’ differences to reinforce normative ideas about a society's socioeconomic organization. But, a dominant bodyscape is never absolute. Bodyscapes that depart from or subvert hegemonic representations may simultaneously exist. In Western society, the biomedical bodyscape predominates in scientific understandings of bodily difference. Its representation of sex differences conveys heteronormative notions about gender and sexuality. Because the biomedical bodyscape frames studies of ancient bodies, investigators need recognize how their considerations of labor divisions, familial organization, and reproduction may situate modern (hetero)sexist representations deep within antiquity. To innovate analyses of socioeconomic relations, queer theory allows scholars to interrogate human nature. Doing so produces alternative bodyscapes that represent the diversity of past peoples’ social and sexual lives. [Keywords: bodyscape, heteronormativity, queer theory, bioarchaeology, paleoanthropology]

Th e topics of language and subaltern social groups appear throughout Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks. Although Gramsci often associates the problem of political fragmentation among subaltern groups with issues concerning language and common sense, there are only a few notes where he explicitly connects his overlapping analyses of language and subalternity. We build on the few places in the literature on Gramsci that focus on how he relates common sense to the questions of language or subalternity. By explicitly tracing out these relations, we hope to bring into relief the direct connections between subalternity and language by showing how the concepts overlap with respect to Gramsci's analyses of common sense, intellectuals, philosophy, folklore, and hegemony. We argue that, for Gramsci, fragmentation of any social group's 'common sense', worldview and language is a political detriment, impeding eff ective political organisation to counter exploitation but that such fragmentation cannot be overcome by the imposition of a 'rational' or 'logical' worldview. Instead, what is required is a deep engagement with the fragments that make up subaltern historical, social, economic and political conditions. In our view, Gramsci provides an alternative both to the celebration of fragmentation fashionable in liberal multiculturalism and uncritical postmodernism, as well as other attempts of overcoming it through recourse to some external, transcendental or imposed worldview. Th is is fully in keeping with, and further elucidates Gramsci's understanding of the importance of eff ective 'democratic centralism' of the leadership of the party in relation to the rank and fi le and the popular masses.

The starting point of every kind of knowledge is our immediate experience or common sense. This experience is the minimum knowledge of reality which everyone acquires. Aristotle considers it to be a dark and evident knowledge about sensible things, from which we progress in knowledge. The referent of this common sense knowledge is that things are, and that they exist in a certain way. These are the sensible, compounded things that are somehow known to be according to their nature. While Ross identifies this starting point with our intellectual and sensible experience of things, Trendelenburg asserts that it is by means of the common sense that we know it to be true. However, Mansion considers that Aristotle goes beyond evidence when he includes the notion of nature within common sense. This is not exact, since Mansion is talking about the notion of nature that Aristotle presents in the Physics, which is a scientific and clearly explained one. This notion must be distinguished from that on which it is founded: a dark, confusing and evident notion of nature, belonging to common sense and barely pointed out on that treaty.