Commonplaces and General Principles
Could we naively say that there is common sense — a set of obvious truths about how society works or, ultimately, what is right and what is not? Or perhaps such statements are not so obvious and are not exempt from error, but rather depend on a merely circumstantial social consensus and are exposed to the influence of vested interests? It is a debate that at first glance may be contemporary: the criteria of truth as social or ideological constructions, as mere illusions, ready to be deconstructed, together with the notions of subject and capitalism. However, the same statements were also made throughout the 18th century and for this it is enough to cite two works that expressly address the issue: the "Treatise on Human Nature" by David Hume (1711-1776) and "The Theory of the Moral Sentiments” (1723-1790) of his direct disciple, Adam Smith.
The so-called Scottish Enlightenment already questioned — long before the so-called masters of suspicion, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud - the self-evident nature of the very notion of subject, the origin and legitimacy of moral norms, or the proper characteristics of the nascent form of social organization of Modernity (such as specialization, division of labor and exchange; that later came to be called, perhaps mistakenly, capitalism). Moreover, the Scottish philosophers (to the aforementioned Smith and Hume, it would be appropriate to add a myriad of authors, but mainly Adam Ferguson (1726-1816) and his "Essay on the History of Society") did not limit themselves to noting only the need to trace a genealogy -both historical and logical- of how we conceive of the human being, the normative systems and the legitimacy of the social organization, but they proposed also an explanation that was identified as "naturalistic," but that in today's language we could better call it “evolutionary.”
For this philosophical current — and for its followers in later years - human beings are characterized by limited generosity: they are more supportive of their own kin than with strangers, they follow rules of conduct for which they can provide a vague foundation, and their interactions with their other congeners result in a structure of interpersonal relationships whose complexity and consequences they could hardly have foreseen. As Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733) had noted at the time, each individual in the eager search for his own well-being generates public benefits for the whole, without ever having proposed or foreseen it, nor even understanding why. Given these observations, instead of invoking an underlying reason that is expressed in a law of history (as, among others, G.W.F. Hegel), or denounce the illegitimacy of the resulting social order and the illusory character of the conscience of the man inserted in it (as Marxism would do), the thinkers of cultural evolutionism found that from the conditions of scarcity of resources — originated in the infinite needs of human life - launched a blind process of selection of personality traits and rules of coexistence, which gave those who followed them a greater chance of survival.
To give an example, those who preferred to help strangers instead of helping their loved ones ended up alone and without any help when faced with the appearance of other subjects who gave priority to their own kin over those of others. That we morally reproach that father who takes the bread out of his own son's mouth to give it to a third party he barely knows has an evolutionary and genealogical explanation and it was not necessary for anyone in particular to promulgate any legal or moral norm, but rather the said "moral sentiments" will always appear in circumstances in which communities are endowed with a certain extension and there is a situation of scarcity of resources -since, in such circumstances, without "limited generosity," neither society nor their individuals would survive.
In short: it is irrelevant to discuss whether the norms and institutions that structure contemporary societies and the individuals that compose them depend on self-evident axioms or eternal truths, or if they are as "natural" as rivers and mountains. What counts is that they are the unforeseen consequence of a spontaneous selection process of habits, beliefs, and opinions that allow human beings to live in a structure of interpersonal relationships in which the scarcity of resources is mitigated through exchanges developed in relatively peaceful way.
Although it is difficult to relate it to the Scottish tradition — and perhaps such difficulty is an indication of the universality of such ideas - what Max Weber (1864-1920) did in his "Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism" was to trace the genealogy of the habits that gave rise to what he called the ideal type of “rational capitalism,” as an unintended consequence of the Protestant Reformation. The appearance of the modern Rechtsstaat, characterized by rationality in administrative decision-making, is another evolutionary process that Weber gave an account of in other works, such as "Economy and Society" and "General Economic History." What we consider "rational" — instrumental or subjective reason, which seeks to efficiently adapt the means to the ends - was for Weber the unexpected fruit of the blind evolution of history.
Thus, the expeditious appeal to the concept of "common sense," vague and questionable, is a hasty way of referring to notions and beliefs that are in the environment and that allow complex decisions to be made with a high degree of probability of being correct. Edmund Burke (1729-1797) reflected on this role of notions of what should be considered correct, spread spontaneously among different individuals as a means of dealing with the complexity of large societies, and his heir in the 20th century, Friedrich A. Hayek (1899-1992), gave an account of it. For him, even legal norms are the consequence of a blind selection process in which judicial work intervenes, which, determining what the law says for each specific case that judges are called upon to resolve, generates — without looking for it - a set of expectations regarding what will be considered just conduct. In turn, it is through variations with respect to precedents that the legal system exercises a process of "immanent criticism" — such were the terms used by Hayek - that allows it to gradually adapt to changes in the conditions of society.
Of course, just as there are leading cases, the widespread notions in society are also exposed to a process of trial and error — like that of Karl Popper's "conjectures and refutations" (1902-1994) - that eventually leads them to be revised, but it is this variation that allows them to survive as a set of ideas that spontaneously influence the interpretation that individuals make of reality. It is in this field that the discussion of ideas can take place, revealing which notions lead us into error and which allow us to grow within a peaceful order of coexistence. Here, too, that process of immanent criticism can occur, in which each case is judged by applying a series of extended principles, thus giving rise to the gradual emergence of new patterns of expected behavior. In return for this, the opposite option consists of submitting all the issues to an absolute critique.
Kenneth Minogue (1930-2013) wrote about this last issue in his book entitled “Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology” (1985). According to Minogue, an ideology is a set of assertions about the integral explanation of the world and its social reality, which claim to enjoy a scientific value and claim a redemptorist mission for humanity. An ideology is a clear contender to replace that set of beliefs and values, some reasonable and others wrong, that spread spontaneously in society. Ideologization is the great temptation that anyone who intends to improve society, or humanity can naturally fall into, with the risk of bringing down an entire system characterized by gradual but stable progress of ideas and habits.
Instead, the thinkers we have invoked — Hume, Smith, Ferguson, Burke, Hayek, Popper, Minogue, among many others - all of them with their various nuances, propose a more humble intellectual attitude: that of reflecting on each question in particular, without seeking to impose a system of ideas, but seeking to discover what are the principles on which an order of events rests that allow this peaceful form of coexistence that we have come to call "civil society" or "civilization." In this immanent search and critique through the debate of ideas on concrete and immediate problems, the triumph is obtained in a paradoxical and unexpected way, instead of baptizing an "-ism" (Hegelianism, Marxism, etc.), when an idea is successfully embedded in the social fabric, it becomes commonplace.
The truly great thinkers discovered ways to deal with problems through solutions that were innovative at the time of their irruption, but over time they were incorporated into the cultural heritage to the point of being obvious. Gödel's Theorem is dramatically difficult to explain and understand in all its exposition, but the notion is spreading more and more that a theory will never be able to explain reality in its entirety in a coherent way. Something similar occurs — or at least we should aim to do so - with notions that take time to be discovered and understood but whose corollaries are very beneficial if they are finally incorporated into common sense, such as the mutual benefits of exchange, by Adam Smith; comparative advantages, by David Ricardo; or the fragmented knowledge, by Friedrich Hayek. For this reason, the authentic battle of ideas does not necessarily have to take place on a level of abstract concepts, but rather moves with greater agility between the margins of general principles and everyday problems.