Definition
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.
In the history of moral and political thought
Historical overview
Under one name or another, the common good has been a recurring theme throughout the history of political philosophy. 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; Saint Thomas Aquinas held "the common good" (bonum commune, in Latin) to be the end of law and government; John Locke
declared that "the peace, safety, and public good of the people" are
the ends of political society, and further argued that "the well being
of the people shall be the supreme law"; 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; 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; 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.
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,"
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."
Ancient Greeks
Though the phrase "common good" does not appear in texts of Plato, the Ancient Greek philosopher indicates repeatedly that a particular common goal exists in politics and society.
For Plato, the best political order is the one which best promotes
social harmony and an environment of cooperation and friendship among
different social groups, each benefiting from and adding to the common
good. In The Republic, Plato's character Socrates
contends that the greatest social good is the "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."
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 "right" constitutions, which
are in the common interest, and "wrong" constitutions, which are in the
interest of rulers.
For Aristotle, the common good is constituted in the good of
individuals. Individual good, in turn, consists in human flourishing—the
fulfillment of the human's purpose—which is the right and natural thing
for humans to do. On this teleological view, the good stems from
objective facts about human life and purpose. Aristotle is clear that there is greater value in the common good than in the individual good, noting in his Nicomachean Ethics that "even
if the end is the same for a single man and for a state, that of the
state seems at all events something greater and more complete; … though
it is worthwhile to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer and
more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-states." When Aristotle discusses the types of political regime in his Politics, he speaks of monarchy (rule by one man for the common good), aristocracy (rule by a few for the common good), and polity (rule by the many for the common good).
Yet by "common good" here, Aristotle means specifically the common good
of the citizens, and not necessarily the good of non-citizen residents
of the city, such as women, slaves, and manual laborers, who reside in
the city for the good of the citizens.
According to one common contemporary usage, rooted in Aristotle's
philosophy, common good refers to "a good proper to, and attainable
only by, the community, yet individually shared by its members."
Renaissance Florence
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 virulent
in whole premodern Europe. In a later work, Niccolo 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. 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. 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. Furthermore, the common good brought by freedom includes wealth, economic prosperity, security, enjoyment and good life.
It is important to note, however, that 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 good autocratic rulers. Nevertheless, he insists that bringing common benefit to everyone
requires intrepid courage by leaders, and the most unique people in this
respect are the founders of ancient republics and kingdoms (such as Moses, Lycurgus, Solon and Romulus) who governed themselves 'according to the laws ordered by them, placing the common utility (commune utilità) before their own advantage'.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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."
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.
Adam Smith
Individual ambition serves the common good.—Adam Smith
The 18th-century Scottish moral philosopher and political economist Adam Smith famously argues in his Wealth of Nations what has become known as the First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics: that the invisible hand of market competition automatically transforms individual self-interest into the common good.
Smith's thesis is that in a "system of natural liberty," an economic
system that allows individuals to pursue their own self-interest under
conditions of free competition and common law, would result in a
self-regulating and highly prosperous economy, generating the most
welfare for the most number.
Thus, he argues, eliminating restrictions on prices, labor, and trade
will result in advancing the common good through "universal opulence
which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people," via lower
prices, higher wages, better products, and so on.
John Rawls's Theory of Justice
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". 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'".
In non-Western moral and political thought
The idea of a common good plays a role in Confucian political philosophy,
which on most interpretations stresses the importance of the
subordinination of individual interests to group or collective
interests, or at the very least, the mutual dependence between the flourishing of the individual and the flourishing of the group. 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. 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). 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.
In political economic theory
In economics, the terms “public good” and “common good”
have technical definitions. A public good is a good that is
non-rivalrous and non-excludable. A common good is simply
non-excludable. A simple typology illustrates the differences between
various kinds of goods:
|
|
Excludable | Non-excludable |
| Rivalrous | Private goods food, clothing, cars, parking spaces |
Common-pool resources fish stocks, timber, coal |
| Non-rivalrous | Club goods cinemas, private parks, satellite television |
Public goods free-to-air television, air, national defense |
The field of welfare economics
studies social well-being. The approach begins with the specification
of a social welfare function. The choice of a social welfare function is
rooted in an ethical theory. A utilitarian social welfare function
weights the well-being of each individual equally, while a Rawlsian
social welfare function only considers the welfare of the least well-off
individual.
Neoclassical economic theory provides two conflicting lenses for
thinking about the genesis of the common good, two distinct sets of
microfoundations. On one view, the common good arises due to social
gains from cooperation. Such a view might appeal to the Prisoner’s dilemma
to illustrate how cooperation can result in superior welfare outcomes.
Moreover, a cooperative equilibrium is stable in an iterated Prisoner’s
dilemma. Under these conditions, an individual does best by pursuing the
course of action that is also optimal for society.
On the other hand, economic theory typically points to social
gains from competition as a rationale for the use of markets. Thus,
Smith described the “invisible hand,” whereby the mechanism of the
market converts individuals’ self-interested activity into gains for
society.
This insight is formalized in the First Theorem of Welfare Economics.
However, economic theory also points to market failures, including the
underprovision of public goods by markets and the failure of
self-interested individuals to internalize externalities. Because of these factors, purely self-interested behaviour often detracts from the common good.
Social choice theory
Social choice theory studies collective decision rules. Arrow's Impossibility Theorem,
an important result in social choice theory, states that no aggregative
mechanism of collective choice (restricted to ordinal inputs) can
consistently transform individual preferences into a collective
preference-ordering, across the universal domain of possible preference
profiles, while also satisfying a set of minimal normative criteria of
rationality and fairness. The Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem further demonstrates that non-dictatorial voting systems are inevitably subject to strategic manipulation of outcomes.
William H. Riker
articulates the standard public choice interpretation of social choice
theory, arguing that Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem “forces us to doubt
that the content of 'social welfare' or the 'public interest' can ever
be discovered by amalgamating individual value judgments. It even leads
us to suspect that no such thing as the 'public interest' exists, aside
from the subjective (and hence dubious) claims of self-proclaimed
saviors.”
Thus, Riker defends a “liberal” conception of democracy, which centers
on the role of constitutional checks on government. Public choice
theorists have tended to share this approach. Buchanan and Tullock
pursued this program in developing the field of "constitutional
political economy" in their book The Calculus of Consent.
More recent work in social choice theory, however, has
demonstrated that Arrow's impossibility result can be obviated at little
or no normative cost. Amartya Sen, for instance, argues that a range of
social choice mechanisms emerge unscathed given certain reasonable
restrictions on the domain of admissible preference profiles. In particular, requiring that preferences are single-peaked on a single dimension ensures a Condorcet winner. Moreover, many of Riker's empirical claims have been refuted.
Public choice theory
Public choice theory
(sometimes called "positive political theory") applies microeconomic
methodology to the study of political science in order to explain how
private interests inform political activities. Whereas welfare
economics, in line with classical political economy, typically assumes a
public-interest perspective on policymaking, public choice analysis
adopts a private-interest perspective in order to identify how the
objectives of policymakers affect policy outcomes. Public choice
analysis thus diagnoses deviations from the common good resulting from
activities such as rent-seeking. In The Logic of Collective Action, Mancur Olson argues that public goods will tend to be underprovided due to individuals' incentives to free-ride. Anthony Downs provided an application of this logic to the theory of voting, identifying the paradox of voting whereby rational individuals prefer to abstain from voting, because the marginal cost exceeds the private marginal benefit. Downs argues further that voters generally prefer to remain uninformed due to "rational ignorance."
Public choice scholarship can have more constructive applications. For instance, Elinor Ostrom's study of schemes for the regulation of common property resources resulted in the discovery of mechanisms for overcoming the tragedy of the commons.
In democratic theory
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Salus publica suprema lex esto, "The common good is the supreme law", in the Swiss Parliament.
In deliberative democracy, the common good is taken to be a regulative ideal.
In other words, participants in democratic deliberation aim at the
realization of the common good. This feature distinguishes deliberative
democracy from aggregative conceptions of democracy, which focus solely
on the aggregation of preferences. In contrast to aggregative
conceptions, deliberative democracy emphasizes the processes by which
agents justify political claims on the basis of judgments about the
common good. Epistemic democracy, a leading contemporary approach to deliberative democracy, advances a cognitivist account of the common good.
In Catholic social teaching
One of the earliest references in Christian literature to the concept of the common good is found in the Epistle of Barnabas:
"Do not live entirely isolated, having retreated into yourselves, as if
you were already [fully] justified, but gather instead to seek together
the common good."
The concept is strongly present in Augustine of Hippo's magnum opus City of God.
Book XIX of this, the main locus of Augustine's normative political
thought, is focused on the question, 'Is the good life social?' In other
words, 'Is human wellbeing found in the good of the whole society, the
common good?' Chapters 5-17 of Book XIX address this question.
Augustine's emphatic answer is yes (see start of chap. 5).
Augustine's understanding was taken up and, under the influence of Aristotle, developed by Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas's conception of the common good became standard in Roman Catholic moral theology.
Against that background, the common good became a central concept in the modern tradition of Catholic social teaching, beginning with the foundational document, Rerum novarum, a papal encyclical by Pope Leo XIII,
issued in 1891. This addressed the crisis of the conditions of
industrial workers in Europe and argued for a position different from
both laissez-faire capitalism and socialism. In this letter, Pope Leo guarantees the right to private property while insisting on the role of collective bargaining to establish a living wage.
Contemporary Catholic social teaching on the common good is summarised in the 2004 Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, chapter 4, part II. Quoting the Second Vatican Council document, Gaudium et spes (1965), this says, "According to its primary and broadly accepted sense, the common good
indicates 'the sum total of social conditions which allow people,
either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully
and more easily'" (#164, quoting Gaudium et spes, #26; italics original).
The Compendium later gives statements that communicate
what can be seen as a partly different sense of the concept - as not
only "social conditions" that enable persons to reach fulfilment, but as
the end of goal of human life. "[T]he common good [is]
the good of all people and of the whole person… The human person cannot
find fulfilment in himself, that is, apart from the fact that he exists
"with" others and "for" others" (#165; italics original). "The goal of life in society is in fact the historically attainable common good" (#168).
The Roman Catholic International Theological Commission drew attention to these two partly different understandings of the common good in its 2009 publication, In Search of a Universal Ethic: A New Look at the Natural Law. It referred to them as "two levels" of the common good.
Another relevant document is Veritatis Splendor, a papal encyclical by Pope John Paul II, issued in 1993 to combat the relaxation of moral norms and the political corruption
(see Paragraph 98) that affects millions of persons. In this letter,
Pope John Paul describes the characteristics and virtues that political leadership should require, which are truthfulness, honesty, fairness, temperance and solidarity
(as described in paragraph 98 to 100), given that truth extends from
honesty, good faith, and sincerity in general, to agreement with fact or
reality in particular.
In contemporary politics
United States
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." First described by Michael Tomasky in The American Prospect magazine and John Halpin at the Center for American Progress, the American political understanding of the common good has grown in recent times. The liberal magazine The Nation and the Rockridge Institute, among others, have identified the common good as a salient political message for progressive candidates. In addition, non-partisan advocacy groups like Common Good are championing political reform efforts to support the common good.
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 endeavor.
