Common sense preserves layered residues of past religions and cults

Evidence

But common sense is influenced not only by the crudest and least elaborated forms of these sundry Catholicisms as they exist today. Previous religions have also had an influence and remain components of common sense to this day, and the same is true of previous forms of present Catholicism—popular heretical movements, scientific superstitions connected with past cults, etc. In common sense it is the “realistic”, materialistic elements which are predominant, the immediate product of crude sensation. This is by no means in contradiction with the religious element, far from it. But here these elements are “superstitious” and acritical. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1504

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows common sense as sedimented historical layering, a core structural concept for how belief systems stratify.
• QUESTION: Gramsci’s sedimentary model of belief suggests a method for reading contemporary Islamophobic ‘common sense’ as layered residue — worth pursuing in the module.