Talk of the “common good” is, well, common nowadays in conservative intellectual circles. As a professor of ethics and public theology, I count this as a positive development. Such a conversation necessarily enlarges conservatism’s horizon beyond the stultifying categories of expressive individualism and collectivism. The whole conversation focuses on the idea that there is, or ought to be, some goal from which to understand our reason for existing not only as individuals, but as individuals who are part of families and communities. In that liminal and mediating space is the so-called common good, an idea with a storied history framed largely by Catholic social teaching, but one that is consistent with Protestant ideas such as “sphere sovereignty” and “subsidiarity” as well.
There is not enough space here to give sufficient explanation to the richness of the idea. But the basic explanation for the common good is that government should strive to promote or facilitate the conditions optimal for human thriving. The common good assumes that there are natural goods to human experience that ought to be realized throughout a society. The idea of the common good is that government, whether by ensuring safe roadways, enforcing obscenity laws, or prioritizing the natural family, should secure and promote certain social objectives by protecting the rights of various institutions to live out their respective duties to the whole. All things being equal, the common good allows mediating institutions to cooperate toward the advancement of a just society by experiencing the excellencies that befit their existence. A lot of questions surround the common good: How would we realize we’re experiencing it? How robust or modest must the common good be? Most foreboding: Who gets to define it?
Comments