LeVine and Salvatore 75ecclesiastical organization of the Christian-Catholic type
ought to make this adaptation easier. If it is admitted that
modern civilization in its industrial-economic-political mani-
festation will end up by triumphing in the East ... why not
therefore conclude that Islam will necessarily evolve? Will
Islam be able to remain just as it was? No—it is already no
longer what it was before the war. Is it possible that it will fall
at a stroke? Absurd hypothesis ... in actual fact the most tragic
difficulty for Islam is given by the fact that a society in a state
of torpor ... has been put into brusque contact with a frenetic
civilization already in its phase of dissolution.^33Gramsci attempts to unravel the power relations between historical reli-
gions and social structures through a reading of folklore, popular reli-
gion, the religion of the intellectuals, and most important, the Vichian
“common sense” [senso comune].^34 For Gramsci, the crucial dynamics
that would determine the success of the venture of socialism would be
determined by the extent to which the common sense incorporated in
everyday religious practice could be dialectically exalted, as it were, to the
status of “good sense” [buon senso], a common sense turned reflective and
potentially dominant.
ommon sense is a central concept in Gramsci’s analysis of religion. C
Indeed, the relationship between religion and common sense is what leads
Gramsci to see a fundamental ambivalence in the historical and contem-
porary expressions of Christianity.^35 Common sense here means a shared
sense, experience or consciousness. It is inevitably fragmentary, not uni-
tary. It is disorganized and inconsistent, “realistic” and “superstitious” at
the same time. Religion is thereby the “principal element” of a larger body
of disorganized common sense, yet is never reducible to common sense
because it has the potential to constitute a total social praxis.^36
e notice here a sophisticated view of a “living tradition” (though W
not named as such by Gramsci) where fragmentation prevails, only to be
recondensed and integrated through the necessary search for coherence
inherent in practice. Moreover—and moving one step beyond Vico—
Gramsci believed that people share in the common sense, which gives
them the potential to elaborate critically the cultural base to achieve trans-
formative social praxis and thus supersede its original reality as “common