Common good
In philosophy, economics, and political science, the common good (also commonwealth, general welfare, or public benefit) is either what is shared and beneficial for all or most members of a given community, or alternatively, what is achieved by citizenship, collective action, and active participation in the realm of politics and public service. The concept of the common good differs significantly among philosophical doctrines.[1][2] Early conceptions of the common good were set out by Ancient Greek philosophers, including Aristotle and Plato. One understanding of the common good rooted in Aristotle's philosophy remains in common usage today, referring to what one contemporary scholar calls the "good proper to, and attainable only by, the community, yet individually shared by its members."[3]
For other uses, see Common Good.The concept of common good developed through the work of political theorists, moral philosophers, and public economists, including Thomas Aquinas, Niccolò Machiavelli, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, James Madison, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, John Maynard Keynes, John Rawls, and many other thinkers. In contemporary economic theory, a common good is any good which is rivalrous yet non-excludable, while the common good, by contrast, arises in the subfield of welfare economics and refers to the outcome of a social welfare function. Such a social welfare function, in turn, would be rooted in a moral theory of the good (such as utilitarianism). Social choice theory aims to understand processes by which the common good may or may not be realized in societies through the study of collective decision rules. Public choice theory applies microeconomic methodology to the study of political science in order to explain how private interests affect political activities and outcomes.
Definition[edit]
The term common good has been used in many disparate ways and escapes a single definition. Most philosophical conceptions of the common good fall into one of two families: substantive and procedural. According to substantive conceptions, the common good is that which is shared by and beneficial to all or most members of a given community: particular substantive conceptions will specify precisely what factors or values are beneficial and shared. According to procedural formulations, by contrast, the common good consists of the outcome that is achieved through collective participation in the formation of a shared will. It is when one another respects others' dignity and rights.
In the history of moral and political thought[edit]
Historical overview[edit]
Under one name or another, the common good has been a recurring theme throughout the history of political philosophy.[4] As one contemporary scholar observes, Aristotle used the idea of "the common interest" (to koinei sympheron, in Greek) as the basis for his distinction between "right" constitutions, which are in the common interest, and "wrong" constitutions, which are in the interest of rulers;[5] Saint Thomas Aquinas held "the common good" (bonum commune, in Latin) to be the goal of law and government;[6] John Locke declared that "the peace, safety, and public good of the people" are the goals of political society, and further argued that "the well being of the people shall be the supreme law";[7] David Hume contended that "social conventions" are adopted and given moral support in virtue of the fact that they serve the "public" or "common" interest;[8] James Madison wrote of the "public", "common", or "general" good as closely tied with justice and declared that justice is the end of government and civil society;[9] and Jean-Jacques Rousseau understood "the common good" (le bien commun, in French) to be the object of a society's general will and the highest end pursued by government.[10][11]
Though these thinkers differed significantly in their views of what the common good consists in, as well as over what the state should do to promote it, they nonetheless agreed that the common good is the end of government, that it is a good of all the citizens, and that no government should become the "perverted servant of special interests",[11] whether these special interests be understood as Aristotle's "interest of the rulers", Locke's "private good", Hume's and Madison's "interested factions", or Rousseau's "particular wills".[11]
Ancient Greeks[edit]
For the Ancient Greeks, the Common Good was the flourishing of the hierarchical network of people, known as the polis (one's city, or state). The phrase "common good" then, does not appear in texts of Plato, but instead the phrase "the good of a city".[12] In The Republic, Plato's character Socrates contends repeatedly that a particular common goal exists in politics and society,[13] and that that goal is the same as the goal for a flourishing human being, namely, to be a philosopher king,[14] ruled by the highest good, Reason, rather than one of Plato's four lesser goods: honor-seeking, money-making, pleasure-seeking, or empassioned addiction. For Plato, the best political order is one in which the entire society submits to the dictates of the leaders' faculty of Reason, even communistically holding possessions, wives, and children in common,[15] creating a "cohesion and unity" that "result[s] from the common feelings of pleasure and pain which you get when all members of a society are glad or sorry for the same successes and failures."[16]
Plato's student Aristotle, considered by many to be the father of the idea of a common good, uses the concept of "the common interest" (to koinei sympheron in Greek) as the basis for his distinction between his three "right" constitutions, which are in the common interest, and "wrong" constitutions, which are in the interest of rulers.[17][18][4] To Aristotle, Plato is wrong about the desire to simply impose top-down unity;[19] for Aristotle, a common good is synthesized upwardly/teleologically from the lesser goods of individuals, and their various kinds of larger-and-larger partnerships: marital couple, or parent-over-child, or master-over-slave; household; then village; then state.[20] In this teleological view, the good stems from objective facts about human life and purpose, which may vary, depending upon peoples' occupations, virtue-levels, etc.[13] However, noting that only citizens have the salvation (common good) of the city at heart,[21] Aristotle argues that, regardless of form of government,[17][18][22] those who have more of a rational understanding of the needs of the state's salvation, are entitled to a greater share in administering and determining justice, within the light of its common good,[23][24] than those who have less, or no such understanding or concern for it, such as selfish despots and political factions,[25] as well as uneducated artisans and freedmen, women and children, slaves, etc.[26][27] More than this, Aristotle argues that rational discourse itself is what the state's Common Good relies upon,[28] identifying those who lack it as "slaves by nature",[29][30] while those who excel in it are nearly divine,[22][31][32] possessing in themselves the whole purpose for which states exist, namely, the perfectly complete good/blessed life.[33][34] In his Nicomachean Ethics then, Aristotle ties up the Common Good of the state, with that of friendship, implying by this, that friendly, rational discourse is the primary activity by which citizens and rulers bring about the Common Good, both amongst themselves, and so far as it involves their inferiors.[35] According to one common contemporary usage, rooted in Aristotle's philosophy, common good then refers to "a good proper to, and attainable, only by the community, yet individually shared in, by its members."[3]
Renaissance Florence[edit]
During the 15th and 16th centuries, the common good was one of several important themes of political thought in Renaissance Florence. The thought goes back to Thomas Aquinas theory of common good being widespread in whole premodern Europe.[36] In a later work, Niccolò Machiavelli speaks of the bene commune ('common good') or comune utilità ('common utility'), which refers to the general well-being of a community as a whole; however, he mentions this term only 19 times throughout his works.[37] In key passages of the Discourses on Livy, he indicates that "the common good (comune utilità) . . . is drawn from a free way of life (vivere libero)" but is not identical with it.[37][38] Elsewhere in the Discourses, freedom, safety and dignity are explicitly stated to be elements of the common good and some form of property and family life are also implied.[37] Furthermore, the common good brought by freedom includes wealth, economic prosperity, security, enjoyment and good life.[37] However, though Machiavelli speaks of an instrumental relationship between freedom and common good, the general well-being is not precisely identical with political freedom: elsewhere in the Discourses, Machiavelli argues that an impressive level of common good can be achieved by sufficiently autocratic rulers.[37] Nevertheless, Machiavelli's common good can be viewed as acting for the good of the majority, even if that means to oppress others through the endeavor.[37][39] Machiavelli's common good is viewed by some scholars as not as "common", as he frequently states that the end of republics is to crush their neighbors.[40][41]
Jean-Jacques Rousseau[edit]
In Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract, composed in the mid-18th century, Rousseau argues that society can function only to the extent that individuals have interests in common, and that the end goal of any state is the realization of the common good. He further posits that the common good can be identified and implemented only by heeding the general will of a political community, specifically as expressed by that community's sovereign. Rousseau maintains that the general will always tends toward the common good, though he concedes that democratic deliberations of individuals will not always express the general will. Furthermore, Rousseau distinguished between the general will and the will of all, stressing that while the latter is simply the sum total of each individual's desires, the former is the "one will which is directed towards their common preservation and general well-being."[42] Political authority, to Rousseau, should be understood as legitimate only if it exists according to the general will and toward the common good. The pursuit of the common good, then, enables the state to act as a moral community.[1]
John Rawls's Theory of Justice[edit]
John Rawls defines the common good as "certain general conditions that are ... equally to everyone's advantage". In his Theory of Justice, Rawls argues for a principled reconciliation of liberty and equality, applied to the basic structure of a well-ordered society, which will specify exactly such general conditions. Starting with an artificial device he calls the original position, Rawls defends two particular principles of justice by arguing that these are the positions reasonable persons would choose were they to choose principles from behind a veil of ignorance. Such a "veil" is one that essentially blinds people to all facts about themselves so they cannot tailor principles to their own advantage. According to Rawls, ignorance of these details about oneself will lead to principles that are fair to all. If an individual does not know how he will end up in his own conceived society, he is likely not going to privilege any one class of people, but rather develop a scheme of justice that treats all fairly. In particular, Rawls claims that those in the original position would all adopt a "maximin" strategy which would maximize the prospects of the least well-off individual or group. In this sense, Rawls's understanding of the common good is intimately tied with the well-being of the least advantaged. Rawls claims that the parties in the original position would adopt two governing principles, which would then regulate the assignment of rights and duties and regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages across society. The First Principle of Justice states that "First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others".[43] The Second Principle of Justice provides that social and economic inequalities are to be arranged such that "(a) they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society, consistent with the just savings principle" (the difference principle); and "(b) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of 'fair equality of opportunity'".[44]
In non-Western moral and political thought[edit]
The idea of a common good plays a role in Confucian political philosophy, which on most interpretations stresses the importance of the subordination of individual interests to group or collective interests,[45] or at the very least, the mutual dependence between the flourishing of the individual and the flourishing of the group.[46] In Islamic political thought, many modern thinkers have identified conceptions of the common good while endeavoring to ascertain the fundamental or universal principles underlying divine shari‘a law.[47] These fundamentals or universal principles have been largely identified with the "objectives" of the shari‘a (maqāṣid al-sharī‘a), including concepts of the common good or public interest (maṣlaḥa ‘āmma, in modern terminology).[47] A notion of the common good arises in contemporary Islamic discussions of the distinction between the fixed and the flexible (al-thābit wa-l-mutaghayyir), especially as it relates to modern Islamic conceptions of tolerance, equality, and citizenship: according to some, for instance, universal principles carry greater weight than specific injunctions of the Qur'an, and in case of conflict, can even supersede or suspend explicit textual injunctions (naṣṣ) if this serves the common good.[47]
In contemporary politics[edit]
United States[edit]
In contemporary American politics, language of the common good (or public wealth) is sometimes adopted by political actors on the progressive left to describe their values. Jonathan Dolhenty argues that one should distinguish in American politics between the common good, which may "be shared wholly by each individual in the family without its becoming a private good for any individual family member", and the collective good, which, "though possessed by all as a group, is not really participated in by the members of a group. It is actually divided up into several private goods when apportioned to the different individual members."[71] First described by Michael Tomasky in The American Prospect magazine[72] and John Halpin at the Center for American Progress,[73] the American political understanding of the common good has grown in recent times. The liberal magazine The Nation[74] and the Rockridge Institute,[75] among others, have identified the common good as a salient political message for progressive candidates.[76] In addition, non-partisan advocacy groups like Common Good are championing political reform efforts to support the common good.[77]
Given the central concern for sustainable development in an increasingly interdependent world, education and knowledge should thus be considered global common goods. This means that the creation of knowledge, its control, acquisition, validation, and use, are common to all people as a collective social endeavour.[78]
Sources[edit]
This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC-BY-SA IGO 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from Rethinking Education: Towards a global common good?, 80–81, UNESCO. UNESCO.