Reclaiming Common Sense
Common sense resists an easy definition because it’s not as common as we’d like it to be. Even though most normal people possess enough ingenuous intelligence to practice it, it seems like it’s been on holiday recently, especially when we need it most. Furthermore, it’s an especially elusive concept nowadays because the emphasis on individual freedom and self-determination makes any trustworthy linkage with the word ‘common’, rare. For ‘common’ signifies something we can all more or less relate to. If common sense prevailed in parenthood these days, we might not have a generation of children being handed license to determine not only what is best for themselves, but what they are altogether. If I’ve said anything thus far that seems out of step with common sense, then perhaps I owe the reader a definition.
To begin, common sense captures something fundamental about thinking in a clear and orderly way. It involves observing, identifying, and perceiving objects, persons, and events of reality as they are, or at least as they purport to be. Since one doesn’t require great learning or professional credentials to employ it, to some extent it’s an essential expression of human nature. However, to a different extent, it’s clearly something we must harness and sow through effort and habit. Therefore, it is both a natural faculty and a cultivated virtue.
A person with common sense has had some experience living. That is, this person is not a child. Children are in the midst of learning basic human skills and behaviors, so they lack the maturity earned through experience to be exemplars of common sense.
Common sense is bound up with our collective memory. Our ideas and notions exist within a broad and supple frame of reference, namely, our history. Common sense was traditionally passed on from one generation to the next and was once immune to the ‘latest and greatest’ ideas and fashions of the times. Common sense has stood the test of time, despite perpetually eluding an easy definition. As to that definition…
Common sense is primarily concerned with practical affairs. Theory, innovation, speculation, hypothesis, deduction, etc. are activities outside of its jurisdiction. And yet, all of these higher mental exercises depend on principles and presuppositions that are often grounded in common sense. No advanced theory is free from a basic idea or principle about the way things are, or ought to be. Thus, common sense can furnish the intellect with a sound basis from which more advanced reasoning proceeds.
So it seems common sense does involves some rudimentary reasoning and problem solving skills of its own. For example, it’s great at ‘sorting out’ various options and then weighing their respective strengths and weaknesses. It also shines at breaking down complex concepts to reveal their fundamental meaning. Perhaps this Socratic touch is giving too much credit to common sense, but I’m not alone to suggest that most ideas or theories would be illumined by a dash of common sense. In emotionally fraught situations, common sense can (and should) come to the rescue.
Irrationality and emotional volatility are undoubtedly opposed to common sense. Predictability and consistency are two of its more, shall we say, reliable features. And since we are all beset by emotional disturbances throughout our lives, it’s imperative to cultivate and then habituate common sense to safeguard these realities. In the face of trying times, common sense says: hold on, wait a minute, or let me sleep on it. Common sense is patient, never impulsive or reckless. It urges us to let the fleeting dust devils of life settle before we steo into action. Common sense is a watchdog that naturally sniffs out unwarranted emotions and barks before they transgress the boundaries of reason. With the trained sobriety of a deadeye, it also targets pomp, pretense, and exaggeration. When it goes too far, common sense may err on the side of suspicion, but when true to itself, it’s more akin to circumspection.
In the great debate of nature versus nurture concerning the human condition, common sense does a fair job resolving the paradox. For as both a natural faculty and cultivated virtue, common sense exposes the staggering complexity of the debate, but doesn’t bear the burden of having to commit to either extreme. While we’re on the subject of human nature, common sense also recognizes that moral goodness and virtue do not come about by such a nature. It also acknowledges that we are not necessarily evil by nature either. Common sense reveals that our nature can cut for good and bad behaviors that may result in good or bad people (as adults) accordingly.
Lamentably, common sense also reveals that under the banner of common sense, others will disagree with me on at least some aspects of this definition. They will claim that common sense demonstrates there is no such thing as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and that human conventions and values do not correspond to ‘reality’ or ‘truth’ any more than Greek myths. Since its spirit is more or less democratic, many things can be said under the flag of common sense and perhaps many people with common sense realize this, but alas, I’ve offered a definition. If this definition be denied outright, I don’t think any line of reasoning can convince you otherwise, but if thus far I am not entirely out of bounds, then may the reader humor my supplication to continue reading…