According to Gramsci, ‘common sense’ is the ‘philosophy of non-philosophers’, or in other words, the
‘conception of the world’ that is uncritically absorbed by the various social and cultural environments
in which the moral individuality of the average man is developed.3
In analysing ways of thinking
and acting, Gramsci uses a variety of terms, but many of these are equivalent, for example,
‘philosophy’, ‘ideology’, ‘conception of the world’, ‘mode of thought and action’, and ‘world view’. All of these
terms refer to the general way of thinking and acting which determines the specificity of a social
class, social group, or historical formation.4