Don Quixote (left) lives clinging to the ideals of chivalry, a common sense long since abandoned by his era.

Ideas are always born out of debate. Because new thoughts challenge the existing order, they initially meet with doubt and criticism. This is true whether they are philosophical, political, religious, or artistic in nature. Yet, as time passes, an interesting transformation occurs.

Thoughts that were once the subject of intense debate cease to be controversial. People no longer argue for them or defend them; they simply accept them as self-evident. At that point, an idea transitions from a mere theory into the common sense of society.

Common sense is a unique phenomenon. It is not written in books like laws, nor is it forced upon us like a command. Nevertheless, most people follow it naturally. If you ask someone why they think a certain way, they are more likely to answer, "Isn't that just how things are?" rather than provide a logical justification.

Common sense is not a state where explanation has been completed, but rather a state where one believes that no further explanation is needed.

Literature has always been the art form that first records these shifts in every era. When you read the novels of a particular age, you discover not just what the people of that time believed, but more importantly, what they found unnecessary to explain. That is the common sense of that era.

In ancient epics, no one explains the fact that kings and nobles are the center of the world, because it was never a matter of debate. In medieval literature, the belief that divine order dictates human destiny was so natural that the characters never questioned it.

By the time we reach the modern novel, individual freedom and choice become crucial; in contemporary literature, one's inner world and emotions are treated as the highest values. It is not that the protagonists of literature have changed, but that the premises taken for granted by society have shifted.

Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote is a work of this transitional period. Don Quixote lives by clinging to the common sense of chivalry, which the era had already discarded. While the world is driven by cold reality, he lives within outdated values. Readers may laugh at his appearance, but the question Cervantes poses is far deeper.

Why does the common sense of yesterday become the delusion of today?

This work showed, before any other, that as an era changes, common sense changes with it.

Conversely, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, we can witness the birth of new common sense. In British society at the time, wealth and status were the primary criteria for marriage. However, the novel places human character and love at the center.

Today’s readers accept this as perfectly natural, but at the time, it was a perspective that embodied a new spirit of the age. Literature allowed readers to experience a thought that had not yet become the common sense of society.

Great literature often offers a glimpse into the common sense of the future.

Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables does not view a criminal simply as a villain. It looks at poverty, social systems, and human dignity simultaneously. While this was an innovative perspective at the time, it has largely become the common sense of today when we discuss welfare and human rights. Literature, in effect, provided a way to look at human beings anew before the law did.

However, just because something has become common sense does not mean it is always right.

History has been filled with flawed common sense. For a long time, slavery was accepted as a natural order. The idea that women did not need education was also common sense. The belief that human value differed according to social status was taken for granted. The people of that era were not necessarily evil; they simply could not imagine a world otherwise.

Literature provided exactly that imagination.

In Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck is taught that helping Jim, a runaway slave, is a sin, because that was the common sense of the society of his time. Yet, he ultimately resolves, "All right, then, I'll go to hell," in choosing to help Jim.

This scene is not merely a story of friendship. It depicts a human being choosing their conscience over the common sense of society. Literature thus demonstrates to readers the courage required to move beyond common sense.

Franz Kafka’s The Trial shakes common sense in a different way. The protagonist is put on trial without even knowing why he was indicted, and no one finds the situation strange. The reader feels a greater sense of dread at the attitudes of the characters than at the situation itself.

It is not the unfair system that is most terrifying, but a society where everyone accepts it so naturally. Kafka demonstrates through literature how easily common sense can paralyze human freedom.

Literature records the common sense of an era while simultaneously testing it. As readers, we ask, "Why did people of that time think that way?" But as time passes, the question turns back on ourselves.

"Among the things I take for granted right now, what will appear strange in the future?"

It is precisely because of this question that classics transcend their eras. Good literature does not stop at explaining outdated thoughts; it shows how common sense is created, how it collapses, and how it is replaced by new common sense. Thus, reading the classics is not about studying the past, but about questioning the present.

Common sense provides human beings with convenience. We do not need to explain everything from scratch, and a community can move quickly based on common standards. However, convenience comes with a price.

We cease to question what is too familiar. Not to question is not to think, and not to think eventually means living out the premises created by someone else.

Literature breaks that silence. People think they are meeting other eras when they read novels, but in fact, they are learning how to view their own era from a distance.

Readers who initially found a character's behavior strange eventually turn to examine the premises they themselves hold as self-evident. Literature does not provide answers. Instead, it brings questions that were hidden under the guise of common sense back into the world.

Ideas are born in debate, and common sense hardens through repetition. Yet, literature shakes that hardened common sense once again. It makes us question beliefs that no one doubts and attaches a new question mark to a world where we thought all explanations were finished.

Therefore, literature is an art that creates new ideas while simultaneously and incessantly dismantling old common sense. Only through such questions can humans transcend their own era, and literature has always been our oldest companion in posing that first, essential question.

◆ Songsan Jung Gwang-je

A poet and a researcher of history and philosophy. Former board member of the Rhee Syngman Academy. Currently serving as a research advisor for the Korea Modern and Contemporary History Research Association and as the head of the philosophy forum "Lyceum." He has published four books of poetry, co-translated Heroes of Hook Hill, and authored humanities books including Joseon as Myth, Humanities on the Tatami, and A Liberal Reading Gramsci. "Songsan" is his pen name.