The Common Good
What is the Common Good?
Plato viewed the common good as anything that promotes social harmony,
cooperation, and friendship among citizens.
Socrates defined it as citizens feeling pleasure when other citizens succeed and pain
when other citizens fail. This increases society’s cohesion and unity.
Machiavelli defined the common good as resulting from the virtue of citizens, which is
measured by the degree to which citizens put the good of all over their individual
benefit.
Rousseau defined it as the end goal of any society.
More recently, John Rawls defined the common good as "certain general conditions
that are...equally to everyone's advantage“: ensuring every citizen has equal liberties
and an equal opportunity to achieve, as well as ensuring that social and economic
factors favor the least advantaged citizens.
The Catholic religious tradition, which has a long history of struggling to define and
promote the common good, defines it as "the sum of those conditions of social life
which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready
access to their own fulfillment."
By common we mean all people.
To pursue the common good is to work towards the greatest good for all persons, not
the greatest good for the greatest number and certainly not the greatest good for
only a specific group of people. There is a difference between the good for a majority
of people and the good for all people.
The Common Good consists of having:
The social systems, institutions, environments on which we all depend our work
in a manner that benefits all people.
Examples:
health care system
the road system;
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public parks;
police protection and public safety;
courts and the judicial system; public schools; museums and cultural institutions;
public transportation;
civil liberties, such as the freedom of speech and the freedom ...
The common good does not just happen. Establishing and maintaining the common good
require cooperative efforts of some, often of many, people.
The common good is a good to which all members of society have access
Example:
All persons enjoy the benefits of clean air
Unpolluted environment
In a democracy, citizens are expected to work towards the good of all citizens, rather than trying just
to maximize personal gain.
Philosophers such as John Locke, David Hume, Niccolo Machiavelli, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John
Rawls, have stated that democracy will fail if citizens become more concerned with personal benefits
than the common good.
They agree that the purpose of government is to ensure the wellbeing of all citizens and that no
government should serve only special interests, such as the interests of the wealthy and powerful.
Obstacles that hinder the society from successfully achieving the common good:
First: different people have different ideas about what constitutes “the good life for human beings”.
So, it will be difficult to agree on what particular kind of social systems, institutions, and
environments we will all pitch in to support.
We may all agree on affordable health system, a healthy educational system, a clean
environment, while others will say that more should be invested in health than in
education, others will favor directing resources to the environment over both health
and education.
Second: problem encountered by proponents of the common good is what is sometimes called the
"free-rider problem".
The benefits that a common good provides are, as we noted, available to everyone, including
those who choose not to do their part to maintain the common good.
Individuals can become "free riders" by taking the benefits the common good provides while
refusing to do their part to support the common good.
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An adequate water supply, for example, is a common good from which all people benefit. But
to maintain an adequate supply of water during a drought, people must conserve water,
which entails sacrifices.
Third: problem encountered by attempts to promote the common good is that of individualism.
Traditions place a high value on individual freedom, on personal rights, and on allowing each
person to "do her own thing".
So, in this individualistic culture it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to convince people that they
should sacrifice some of their freedom, some of their personal goals, and some of their self-
interest, for the sake of the "common good".
Finally: Maintaining a common good often requires that particular individuals or particular groups
bear costs that are much greater than those accepted by others.
Maintaining an unpolluted environment, for example, may require that particular firms that
pollute install costly pollution control devices, undercutting profits.
Making employment opportunities more equal may require that some groups, such as white
males, limit for a time their own employment chances.
Making the health system affordable and accessible to all may require that insurers accept
lower premiums, that physicians accept lower salaries, or that those with particularly costly
diseases or conditions decline the medical treatment on which their live depend.
