Vicende del “senso comune” nella filosofia britannica del XVIII secolo

Abstract

The article reconstructs the diversity of conclusions reached regarding “common sense” in the reflections of Shaftesbury, Reid, and, with decisive contributions, Hutcheson and Hume. Not only do we see an expansion of the range of issues addressed in order to understand the specificity of the appeal to common sense, moving from those of natural sociability, virtue and beauty, considered central by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, to those that for Hume became questions of the validity of belief on the cause and effect, or the nature of human freedom, or the acceptability of testimonies about miracles. But the very nature of the criterion of common sense is understood in a different way: from a sort of firm reference to the reality of things, as it was for Hutcheson and also for Reid, made possible by the guarantees of the Author of Nature, it is transformed by Hume into a secular reality and therefore nothing more than a series of artificial habits whose genealogy and changes need to be explained.