ABSTRACT
There is an enormous amount of literature on common sense in its historical, philosophical, and social scientific perspectives which shows that common sense has been a concept of enduring importance and interest. This chapter focuses on the contribution of Giambattista Vico to the debates on common sense in the eighteenth century and, above all, to some fundamental features of Vico's revolutionary meaning of the concept of common sense. Giambattista Vico was a professor of rhetoric and law in Naples where he lived throughout his life. Building partly on the ideas of Francis Bacon, Vico originated a new orientation in science and philosophy, and specifically, he proposed a novel perspective on common sense thinking. In Vico's time, common sense was conceived as a sensorial capacity of humans to perceive phenomena in the world. In contrast, for Giambattista Vico common sense arises in and through a process, in which humans have created their own history.
