"Not Just One Common Sense": Gramsci's Common Sense and Laclau and Mouffe's Radical Democratic Politics

This article focuses on the concept of common sense in order to shed new light on the radical and pluralist democracy developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. I will argue that their move via Antonio Gramsci away from both Marxism and traditional liberal democracy cannot be fully understood without reference to the sole common sense plays in it. Focusing on common sense reveals crucial aspects of the relations between intellectuals and ordinary people in Laclau and Mouffe's political theory and how they deal with the problems of embedded hierarchy, characteristic of modern political thought.