Common sense as activity rather than knowledge - Hannah Arendt

·        “Common sense”, in Arendt’s use, is activity rather than knowledge; that is, it is something one does, not something one has.  Moreover, unlike the ordinary term, Arendtian common sense is not self-evident but self-altering. “Common sense” as the “sixth sense” requires individuals to engage with others in the act of perception, sharing he world in a way that corrects and amends subjective insight.  Because one’s bodily and social position in the world generates one’s perspective of reality, sharing corrects best when these positions overlap lest.  There is no absolute truth to be achieved in this process – that is no “correct” way to view reality – but there is, in her words, a “control instance” against “errors”.  Therefore, the pariah, constrained by law and custom to associate only with those most like him, is deprived of degrees of correction and alteration or, to use the language of taste she invokes, refinement. Encountering difference is the lever of correction.  Therefore, any group formed around likeness, whether that be shared ideological commitment or national belonging, risks adopting these same perceptual restrictions by shielding themselves against different perceptions of reality.  When Arendt advises the pariah to stand apart from the intimate society of the pariah group, she does not recommend self-sufficiency but plurality – that is, bringing the perceiving self into contact with non-intimate, differently situated others. The politics of plurality and common sense requires, then, something like and aesthetic of the fact, which is a discipline of perception as well as a practice of representation. (Deborah Nelson, Tough Enough,  University of Chicago Press 2017, p77-78).  

     This thought reflects perfectly a whole series of ideas I've been working on in my thesis on how innovation emerges from everyday social and work practice. The key element implied in Arendt's perspective is that of 'for better or worse' - we can't be absolutely sure of the outcomes of our actions, and that uncertainty allows for the unexpected or unplanned, whether desired, unwanted, or completely new.

     Nelson's book, which discusses a series of twentieth century women thinkers, each with a reputation for a kind of distancing toughness, including Simone Weil, Joan Didion, Diane Arbus, Susan Sontag and Mary McCarthy as well as Hannah Arendt, is highly recommended. 

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