Clifford Geertz's Common Sense As A Cultural System

The article by Clifford Geertz of “Common Sense as a Cultural System” causes a reader to understand and re-evaluate what for most is a simple thought process in which many people have to react to a given situation. Clifford Geertz takes this principle of human consciousness and researches the deeper understanding of this social construct. Geertz uses many examples to demonstrate the relevance of common sense, one of the main examples he uses to explore common sense is through the use of an anthropological perspective. Geertz will explain this theory with many types of ideology such as thought vs action, religion, and other forms of disciplinary frameworks. This understanding of the disciplinary frameworks allows Geertz to analyze common sense with many different lenses. This theory is useful for the understanding of common sense and its place in the world. Clifford Geertz makes a clear statement near the beginning of his article on common sense stating, “There are a number …show more content…
Geertz’s excerpt from Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein states an understanding that common sense is a physical tool used by people to relay common information to each other. This interpretation leads Geertz to saying, “Yet we are reluctant, and anthropologists are especially reluctant, to draw from such facts the conclusion that science, ideology, art, religion, or philosophy, or at least the impulses they serve, are not the common property of all mankind.” (Geertz 6) This is a basis for the understanding of the universal theory that common sense is a world-wide phenomenon, by stating that even if the introduction to information and interpretation to specific information is different they are still to be considered the same understanding but interpreted differently by