Recovering Our Common Sense Means Rediscovering The Divine

From The Federalist.com (Sept. 24, 2021):

Common sense is a strange thing. It’s supposed to be a universal trait across all humanity – that’s why it’s called “common” – but ask any stranger on the street, and many will tell you it’s in short supply, whether among everyday Americans, politicians, and even among technocratic experts.

Consider commentary regarding COVID-19 and the Centers for Disease Control, a federal organization with a $6.5 billion budget employing almost 11,000 people. Double-masking against mutant forms of the coronavirus “just makes common sense,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told NBC’s “Today Show” in January.

“The CDC is being overly cautious in a way that defies common sense,” said CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen in May, commenting on the CDC’s handling of the pandemic. More recently, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds in turn denounced the CDC’s recently revised face mask guidance for the fully vaccinated as “not grounded in reality or common sense.”

What is common sense? Is it simply a faux concept we employ to ridicule people we view as misguided or stupid? If it is lacking not only among American citizens writ large but also among respected, well-educated professionals, how can it be “common” at all?

Although few may know it, common sense derives from a particular philosophical thesis that has provoked controversy since antiquity. The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus believed all things are in a constant state of change or “becoming.”

Another ancient Greek, Parmenides, in contrast argued for the reality of eternal, unchanging being. Aristotle in turn argued for a sort of synthesis of the two, proposing that all of reality can be understood in regards to potency (what one has the potential to be) and act (the exercise of the fulfillment of that potential, i.e. change).

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We may pretend there is no meaning in the cosmos, but if our plumber were to shrug his shoulders about a water leak because life has no purpose, we’d be less than thrilled. We may claim there’s no free will, but if our waiter brought us something different than what we had ordered — perhaps casually asserting that our choices are irrelevant — we’d protest and refuse to pay.

But if we expect others to practice common sense, we must be willing to do so ourselves, and accept the logical deductions that follow from its premises. This includes recognizing that our intellect and will, which abstract from the material, must necessarily be immaterial. That being so, that would mean our soul, which is the agent of our intellect and will, is also immaterial. And if the soul is immaterial, that means its ultimate object — a being that is the ultimate origin and perfection of being — must be too. Or, as God said to Moses, “I am who I am.”

Recovering our common sense, it appears, requires recovering a sense of the divine, as well. And that, one imagines, would likely affect how we view the often hysteric, frequently contradictory approaches to this pandemic. [read more]