コモン•センス海をわたる (平成一六年六月一五日 提出)

抄録

When Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet in Philadelphia to justify and encourage the revolutionary war, it was entitled Common Sense by Benjamin Rush, a Continental Congressman who had studied medicine in Edinburgh under Willam Cullen. Since Cullen was quite familier with the literati of the Scottish Enlightenment including such pioneers of the common sense school of philosophy as Lord Kames, Thomas Reid, and Dugald Stewart, their vocabulary might have been popular among medical students. Thus it is almost certain that Rush took the words common sense from the Scottish Enlightenment to give it to Paine's pamphlet. However, by this trans-Atlantic transfer the word changed its meaning from conservative to radical. Needless to say Paine's common sense was that of the American common peope longing for independence whereas in the Scottish origin it was the common sense of those men of taste who were vehemently attacking the revolting colonies.
Although it is an open question how clearly Rush was conscious of the total change of the meaning of the words, it might have been that he had at least a vague idea of the change before he met Paine. He wrote that he introduced Paine to the revolutionary cause to which he had joined earlier. He had been a regular member of Catharine Macaulay's salon in London. In any case, he later clearly denied the universal validity of common sense. He critisized Cullen's Greco-worship in medicine and even the personal worship towards Cullen himself. Thus Rush changed his attitude towards common sense twice, that is say, first as a revolutionary and secondly as an empirical scientist in medicine. He was a surgeon in the revolutionary war, and a medical practitioner and professor after the war. True he was a empirical scientist he has never doubted Christianity.