ABSTRACT
The characteristic English approach to a problem is not to reach for an ideology, but to snuffle around it and when they have isolated the core, then to seek a solution. It is an approach which is empirical and reconciling and the only ideology it believes in is Common Sense. Academic discussion of common sense reaches back to Ancient Greece, and the writings of Aristotle. Thinkers drawing upon Aristotle link common sense to the senses and basic cognitive faculties pertaining to them, as propounded by the Scottish Common Sense Realist School of the Enlightenment. Gramsci comments on another key attribute of common sense in the English language, identified – namely, its contested use among both intellectuals and wider society. The crucial role of all intellectuals, for Gramsci, was to foster hegemony to buttress their respective class. Traditional intellectuals – that is, academics, clergymen, and the like – served the interests of the propertied class to which they belonged.
