Do Lewis and Chesterton have opposing views regarding common sense?

[spangler1982]

I saw Prince Caspian this weekend. It had been so long since I read the book, that after the movie I went to the mega-bookstore next door after the movie and I picked up the book “C.S. Lewis and Narnia for Dummies” by Richard Wagner. After I refreshed myself on the plot, I began to leaf through the rest of the book.

One thing that caught my eye was that there was a little section where Wagner says that C.S. Lewis promoted the idea in his writings that common sense is often the enemy of Christianity. He then brought up examples like when Lucy was the only one to be able to see Aslan, etc.

After reading this, the phrase that I hear on EWTN a lot “G.K. Chesterton, the Apostle of Common Sense” jumped into my mind. That tells me that Chesterton believed that common sense was NOT an enemy to Christianity, as Lewis seems to argue, according Wagner.

So my question is, are these two men’s views on common sense regarding Christianity in opposition to each other? I know far less about Chesterton than I do Lewis, so I decided to bring this question to the forums. . .

 

[tee_eff_em]

Is it a problem if they do? They also have, eg, opposing views on the primacy of the pope.

tee

 

[cpayne]

No, they are not in opposition. They are just using the phrase “common sense” in different meanings. When Chesterton uses it, he is talking about philosophic realism (and Lewis would agree with him). “The reason I think I perceive a tree is because the tree is actually there”—in other words, our common-sense intuitions are correct.

Lewis is using it in the sense of details of God’s direction which sometimes seem to go against what we would ordinarily think we should do. “He who would be greatest among you must be the servant of all”—that doesn’t seem like “common sense” in this way of using the phrase.

 

[Starwynd]

There really isn’t such a thing as common sense. What it really is is common belief. And you’ll find that what makes common belief is highly dependant on culturaql values and life experiences.

For example, it could be argued that Christianity splintered over common sense, because people couldn’t agree to what constitutes good Chrisitans, what common sense. is…Protestants will be hostile to catholics because of this thing called common sense because to them it’s considered to be common sense that some catholic teachings, such as but not limited to the Crucifix, are not truly biblical.

Another example is partisan politics. One of the common behaviors of partisan politics is to use any dirty trick possible to make the other guy look bad using any trick possible. For example, the race card is often brought up because it is thought thst racism is wrong. but, it is only considered wrong whenthe other guy does it it. For in order to look better than the other guy, it is considered common sense to make oneself look better than him to justify their own racism, the exact same thing that the other guy is being heavily criticised over.

so it’s easy to see how they can be so discerning over exactly what common sense actually entails.

 

[spangler1982]

No, they are not in opposition. They are just using the phrase “common sense” in different meanings. When Chesterton uses it, he is talking about philosophic realism (and Lewis would agree with him). “The reason I think I perceive a tree is because the tree is actually there”—in other words, our common-sense intuitions are correct.

Lewis is using it in the sense of details of God’s direction which sometimes seem to go against what we would ordinarily think we should do. “He who would be greatest among you must be the servant of all”—that doesn’t seem like “common sense” in this way of using the phrase.

Thank you! That really clears things up. I need to check out Chesterton more. . .

 

[Janet_S]

Thank you! That really clears things up. I need to check out Chesterton more. . .

By “common sense,” Chesterton means the wisdom of the common man as opposed to the “nonsense” of the intellectual.

In this dialogue (from The Man Who Was Thursday), Chesterton compares the common sense motives of the petty criminal to the schemes of those more educated:

We say that the dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater fullness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people’s.”
The Man Who Was Thursday, Chapter IV