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i don't understand what you mean by "common sense" particularly if you try--as you do in the op--to separate it from broader systems of belief. typically, what passes for common sense is a direct reflection of these broader systems that get written into the social world as an aspect of the projections about the world that are the core of what belief is, it seems to me. so appeal to "common sense"" would not move you outside of any given frame of reference. the appeal would prompt you to simply repeat it while (maybe) allowing you to tell yourself you're doing something else.
one thing i see as funny is that when ethicists who happen to be christian (it probably happens in other contexts as well, but i don't know because i haven't read that much...basically because for me reading ethics is like eating dry toast in a desert) is that their assumptions about original sin tend to make them panic at the idea---which seems to me to be the case---that ethics are basically social convention. they figure that were this to be the case, given the fallen-ness of humans and all that, it would follow that everyone who simply blow them off. whence the veering into deontology (the idea that ethics derive from some transcendent source).
personally, i see ethics as a subset of the political, which would follow from the position that ethics are basically social convention that are transposed into another register (religious, historical, legal) so as to make them binding on a particular population. this nature of this transposing follows from the assumptions particular to the dominant belief system that shapes a particular community/the structure(s) of particular communities.
dry toast. in a desert.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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