The other day, in the middle of a conversation, the idea of common sense was presented as something all but gone in our culture. The subject came and went too quickly. It was only after, upon reflection of the conversation, that it came to my mind, and I couldn’t dismiss it. It stayed with me, prompting me to do a little digging as to its origins and to its current reality.

Let’s establish, first, that common sense is not a liberal or a conservative mindset. It is not a particular worldview or political position. I think many of us look at the absence of common sense as positional; to have it one must hold a certain position, usually a position that aligns with our position. That is not common sense.  

The origin of the phrase is found with a school of philosophy, which is said to hold the notion that we should begin our thinking with the fixed beliefs of mankind and move on from there. This phrase or notion, whatever you want to call it, was first penned by Aristotle who believed that all living beings have nourishing souls, but it was only human beings who possessed a rational soul. He believed it was only this rational soul that perceived. Aristotle proposed that every act of perception involved a modification of one of the five senses that then interacted with one’s entire being, when engaged with one of the fixed beliefs associated with all human beings.

Aristotle saw one’s perception as provinces of sensation and believed that human beings perceive by means of difference between the polar extremes contained within each sense. For example, he saw these provinces of sensation as a “kind of mean” between two extremes as in the difference between soft and loud in sound or bitter and sweet in taste. His inference was that human beings perceive by means of difference, but he believed that one sense cannot perceive itself. According to a host of theorists, Aristotle speculated that there must be an additional sense or a “common sense” that coordinated the other senses. He suggested that this “common sense” instituted a perception that is common to all the other senses yet one condensable to none of them. 

Most theorists agree that this common sense, referenced by Aristotle, was not a sixth sense or an additional sense; instead, it was more a sense of difference or a unity of the senses that manifests together when considering something of significance, a fixed belief, if you will, engaging all five senses, which in turn act collectively on one’s being. 

Mention common sense today and most default to the ideas of practical judgement and social awareness as both relate to an individual being living in a world with all beings, but there is a deeper implication … the one with which we started. Do most still have common sense? Or is there still a need for common sense? Both questions have implications socially and culturally. 

First, are there any commonly accepted fixed beliefs to which almost everyone, even in their differences, agree or acknowledge? It is thought that agreement or acknowledgement of these fixed beliefs manifest common sense but if there are a dwindling number of fixed beliefs … what happens to common sense? I am proposing that culturally there is indeed a diminishing number of commonly accepted fixed beliefs but that is due to all individual beliefs being given positions of acceptability. The question not yet answered is this one: does the acceptance of all individual beliefs still produce common sense in the same way a communal acceptance of a fixed belief did in the past?  

When was the last time you heard common sense referenced? I can’t say that I have heard the phrase in quite some time. As I look out at our world, I see an absence of common sense but does anyone else? Common sense seems, to me, to be an individual trait produced by communal membership. Does the absence of common sense signal an absence of community or an absence of something else? I am thinking of submission or empathy, two areas I see less of these days. 

The idea of common sense was the sense that kept you “in the middle of the road,” if you will, kept you connected with all others with your differences intact. It was this “common” amid all your differences that you shared with your fellow men and women in ways of connect-ability. It connected you with others and allowed you to keep your differences while connecting with others who were themselves different. It was “common sense” that tolerated individual differences for the sake of the collective whole. Over time, some individual differences became acceptable to our collective common sense, but what happens when all differences are given equal status of acceptability? Well, first, we lose the need for common sense, and second, I am not entirely sure, but my sense is that we lose something important … something communal … something distinctly human.    

I would love to hear your thoughts? Hit the comment section with them because thinking matters!