Common sense is the political sense that fits individual sense data into a shared reality; its decli… — Hannah Arendt

Common sense is the political sense that fits individual sense data into a shared reality; its decline and the rise of superstition and gullibility signal world-alienation, which is intensified in a laboring society compared to a society of producers.

By Hannah Arendt, from The Human Condition

Key Arguments

Reality’s only gauge is commonness; common sense integrates our five individual senses into reality as a whole.
A decline in common sense correlates with superstition and gullibility, indicating alienation from the world.
This alienation—atrophy of the space of appearance and withering of common sense—is worse in a laboring society than among producers.

Source Quotes

This actualization resides and comes to pass in those activities that exist only in sheer actuality. The only character of the world by which to gauge its reality is its being common to us all, and common sense occupies such a high rank in the hierarchy of political qualities because it is the one sense that fits into reality as a whole our five strictly individual senses and the strictly particular data they perceive. It is by virtue of common sense that the other sense perceptions are known to disclose reality and are not merely felt as irritations of our nerves or resistance sensations of our bodies.

It is by virtue of common sense that the other sense perceptions are known to disclose reality and are not merely felt as irritations of our nerves or resistance sensations of our bodies. A noticeable decrease in common sense in any given community and a noticeable increase in superstition and gullibility are therefore almost infallible signs of alienation from the world. This alienation—the atrophy of the space of appearance and the withering of common sense—is, of course, carried to a much greater extreme in the case of a laboring society than in the case of a society of producers.

A noticeable decrease in common sense in any given community and a noticeable increase in superstition and gullibility are therefore almost infallible signs of alienation from the world. This alienation—the atrophy of the space of appearance and the withering of common sense—is, of course, carried to a much greater extreme in the case of a laboring society than in the case of a society of producers. In his isolation, not only undisturbed by others but also not seen and heard and confirmed by them, is together not only with the product he makes but also with the world of things to which he will add his own products; in this, albeit indirect, way, he is still together with others who made the world and who also are fabricators of things.

Key Concepts

The only character of the world by which to gauge its reality is its being common to us all
common sense occupies such a high rank in the hierarchy of political qualities because it is the one sense that fits into reality as a whole our five strictly individual senses and the strictly particular data they perceive.
A noticeable decrease in common sense in any given community and a noticeable increase in superstition and gullibility are therefore almost infallible signs of alienation from the world.
This alienation—the atrophy of the space of appearance and the withering of common sense—is, of course, carried to a much greater extreme in the case of a laboring society than in the case of a society of producers.

Context

Section 29; articulation of common sense as a political faculty and diagnostic of alienation, with a contrast between laboring and producing societies.