For several weeks now, I have heard Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, talk about “common sense”. As soon as he mentions a decision he would take, if one day he became Prime Minister of our beautiful country, he is quick to conclude his speech with a “that’s common sense!” » well struck. This slogan can be found everywhere, even on t-shirts that he and his supporters proudly wear!
As someone who taught philosophy for years at college, I said to myself that Pierre Poilievre must perhaps be inspired by Discourse on Method by René Descartes, in which it is not a question of “fat”, but of “common sense” quite simply. Admit that it would still be unusual to have at the head of the Canadian state an enlightened, methodical politician, who draws inspiration from a great philosopher to govern the country! To find out for sure, I delved into the work of the famous French philosopher. See what he tells us at the opening of his famous speech: “Common sense is the best shared thing in the world, because everyone thinks they are so well endowed with it that even those who are the most difficult to please in anything else They are not in the habit of wanting more than they have. In which it is not likely that everyone is wrong; but rather it testifies that the power to judge well and distinguish truth from falsehood, which is properly what we call common sense or reason, is naturally equal in all men. »
We understand very well from this quote that, for Descartes, common sense, which is synonymous here with reason, represents this power or this faculty which allows the human being to make a judgment. With a few accidents or differences, all men therefore possess reason for the philosopher. For him, it is moreover what makes us men and distinguishes us from animals.
But then, if all human beings have reason or common sense, how is it that so many people on the planet say stupid things or assert falsehoods? This is because, as Descartes said so well, “it is not enough to have a good mind, but the main thing is to apply it well”. In short, having the ability to reason is not enough. What you also need is knowing how to use it well. Moreover, the goal that Descartes pursues in his Discourse on Method is to present to us the methods – Greek meta And hodos which means road or path to take — which allowed him to “guide” his reason well to seek and find a certain number of scientific truths.
Great sage or sophist?
That said, let’s return to Pierre Poilievre. When the latter appeals not to common sense, but rather to common sense, does this mean that he wants to go even further than Descartes by now using a sort of augmented reason which would allow him to have a better understanding of reality in order to be able to make more enlightened actions?
Alas, and you have probably guessed it, the common sense to which Pierre Poilievre refers has nothing to do with the philosophical approach which thrives on astonishment, practices doubt, reflection and questioning in the face of this which appears too obvious to ordinary mortals. Its approach, far from being methodical and highly rational, rather attempts to soak up the spirit of the times, to identify, for electoral purposes, what seems self-evident for a part of the population in order to make it so many causes to defend.
Its goal is therefore not to enlighten the people by offering them avant-garde ideas, but rather to score points by holding a frankly populist speech. His support for the truckers’ convoy in 2022, the arguments he puts forward against the carbon tax and the petition for the return of plastic straws represent all illuminating examples of this approach.
However, this way of thinking has played funny tricks on us in the past. If, for centuries, human beings believed that the Earth was stationary, at the center of the world and that the Sun revolved around it, it is because they relied on their common sense: their eyes showed them that the Sun “rised” in the east and set in the west, under their feet nothing seemed to move and, when they threw a stone towards the sky, it quickly joined what they were saying to be its “natural place”, this “Fixed Earth with broad sides, secure base forever offered to all living”, as Hesiod recounts in his Theogony.
To move from this geocentric conception to a heliocentric vision of the world, humanity had to count on courageous researchers, who, with the help of their reason and a scientific method, undertook, sometimes at the risk of their lives, to challenge and go beyond this naive vision of the world offered to them by this damn common sense, the same one that Pierre Poilievre shakes like a rattle to attract the attention and support of citizens.
Thus, far from being a disciple of Cartesian common sense, Pierre Poilievre presents himself to us rather as one of those sophists who try to convince the people with the help of a demagogic discourse.