Common Sense and Libertarianism

"Philosophy and science are the greatest opponents of common sense"

common sense  Ideas that are normally believed or understood. It is useful to distinguish between common-sense reasoning (elementary logic intuitively understood) and common-sense ^*knowledge (popular theories). The careful application of the former is sometimes all that is needed to overthrow many examples of the latter. But this is unlikely to be as quick as some impatient people demand. Those who remain “still not convinced”, often after only a few minutes of argument, should remember that “wit depends on dilatory time”. ^*Philosophy and science are the greatest opponents of common sense, but they take even more time and wit.

It is almost impossible seriously to consider ^*social, ^*political, or scientific issues without moving away from common sense in many cases (or outside the ^*Overton window). And it is common sense to expect this; so common sense has the merit of knowing its own limitations. Thus, it is a mark of an ^*autonomous thinker that he has developed idiosyncratic views. However, today’s avant-garde ideas can become tomorrow’s common-sense knowledge (but that need not mean that they are ^*true). There are innumerable cases in moral and political philosophy as well as in the sciences.

^*Libertarian ^*anarchy, and many ideas used to defend it, flies in the face of common sense. So consistently unorthodox are many libertarian views, that some people even doubt the sincerity of their proponents. They can appear to be engaged in polemics for its own sake. This is rarely so. Although intellectual argument is a pleasure, and also a duty if we ought to try to sort ^*fact from fiction, it would be much better to be able to argue about matters that are just as intellectually interesting but not so ^*morally urgent.

(This is an entry from A LIBERTARIAN DICTIONARY: Explaining a Philosophical Theory [draft currently being revised]. Asterisks indicate other entries.)