What ‘Common Sense’ Really Means

There was a time when “common sense” actually meant something. Aristotle used it to describe how humans and other animals distinguish and identify physical entities. The Romans thought of common sense as people’s natural sensitivity for others. Both interpretations of the phrase incorporate a shared knowledge intrinsic to all members of a group. Common sense, therefore, is not something that has to be taught. It’s self-evident. It’s unalienable.

Back in the day of the Founding Fathers, the term “common sense realism” was thrown around a lot in philosophical and political circles. It came from Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Thomas Reid, who declared that “‘the first principles of all sciences are the dictates of common sense and lie open to all men.’”

Robert Curry, author of Common Sense Nation: Unlocking the Forgotten Power of the American Idea, writes:

“The American Founders claimed they were guided by self-evident truths. For our purpose of understanding the Founders, the Declaration, and the Constitution, the important point is that their claims about self-evident truths reveal that their deliberations were deeply informed by the thinking of Thomas Reid.”

This idea of self-evident truths — of common sense — continued to dominate the American psyche “for more than 150 years. That was true both within academia and in American society outside of academia as well. In the years after the Founding era, common sense realism became ever more ingrained in the American character and the American way of thinking. It was studied and taught in American colleges, and its precepts pervaded American society. It was the coin of the realm in American thinking.”

So what happened? How did we get to a place where our Congress doesn’t even consider the Constitutionality of a law before passing it?

“If you want to understand the political assault on the Constitution during the course of the twentieth century, the place to start is with Woodrow Wilson. Wilson… re-made Princeton, this time on the model of the German university. He was a disciple of the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. Hegel exalted the state and rejected the idea of individual liberty. By championing Hegel, Wilson played a leading role in introducing a German strain of thought into the American body politic that was alien to the self-evident truths and the unalienable rights of the Founders.”

Since Wilson called those unalienable rights “‘nonsense,’” America has drifted further than ever from its founding ideas. Robert Curry wants to restore common sense as the founders knew it. His book, Common Sense Nation, is a first step.