Common sense and Quebec philosophy: some methodological reflections

This article applies to a study in the history of thought in Quebec certain principles that I have proposed elsewhere about the historiography of philosophy in general. The chosen example is a 1976 paper by Louise Marcil-Lacoste about the use of the idea of common sense in some French-Canadian texts of the nineteenth century. I examine this case in the light of two general theses : that the historian must be able to refer to some of the real beings of which the authors of the past also spoke about; and that the phenomena that are problematic for philosophy often are of a logico-linguistic nature. Clarifying the meaning of these principles makes it possible to see under what conditions the apparently obsolete doctrines which are often dealt with by the historians of philosophy in Quebec can still be of philosophical interest, and how this interest can be highlighted.