By Haowen Tan
Summary
Ultimately, every individual is a minority of itself, and no good is ever applicable to every human being.
Introduction
The common good refers to the facilities, physical or conceptual, that a community would provide to all its members to serve common interests. For any concrete manifestation of this concept to exist, it must fulfill a set of preconditions:
a) Citizens must be in interdependent relationships with others while maintaining public and private roles that serve the common interests of all.
b) The pursuit of true common good requires each citizen to reason the common good for every other individual citizen’s interest in society as equal to their own.
c) As a corollary to B, the pursuit of common good cannot be contingent upon individuals benefiting from that common good.
Point A arises because, as argued by Aristotle, all common goods require interdependent responsibilities to be shared by different citizens (Aristotle). For example, if the public defense is a common good, citizens may be drafted during wartime to assume different collaborative roles to defeat their enemies. Points B and C are significant because the common good exists for the sake of interests shared by all members of society. As Rousseau argued, when others’ interests align with the common good, the violation of those interests is an attack on the entire society, and one must care no less about them than his benefits (Rousseau).
If any proposed common good cannot satisfy all of the preconditions, then such common good does not exist. This essay argues that any possible common good is inconceivable to satisfy its necessary requirements. Individualities constrain humanity to the absence of absolute commonality and to the dilemma of conflicting goods. Even if a governing system aims to fluidly define the common good through any given procedure, it cannot balance varying interests of society that center around different individuals and social groups.
The Lack of Absolute Commonality
If one argues that the common good consists of definitive interests that are unconditionally applicable to everyone, then the argument fails at proving the universality of the experience of good. There are numerous multiplicities to the perception of good. As Isabel Paterson argues, every human experiences different good “by virtue of his receptive and creative faculties” (Paterson). Likewise, Thomas Hobbes said, “whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire; that is...good” (Hobbes). Considering this, any proposed common good is merely pertinent to the proposer who experiences unique physical or emotional stimuli. Human experience prescribes that a certain definition of good is never identically verifiable to all. To illustrate, the medieval priest and philosopher Thomas Aquinas perceived the common good as inseparable from Christianity by arguing that “the good of the whole universe is that which is apprehended by God” (Aquinas). By contrast, as an advocate of the evidence of the senses over religion, John Locke upheld the rights to life, liberty, and property (Locke). These irreconcilable interpretations are possible due to the differences in which these two considered the role of the human race in relation to nature or a higher power. In other words, what is good to Aquinas cannot be absolutely common to Locke.
With the lack of absolute commonality, the existence of the common good violates part A and part B of the framework. For part A, the lack of absolute commonality defies the principle that citizens work in relationships to promote the common good because what one believes to be the common good is not necessarily true for another individual. For part B, citizens couldn’t give one another’s interest fair considerations because there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what that interest is in the first place.
What one believes to be the common good is not necessarily true for another individual.
The Dilemma of Conflicting Goods
With differences in human experiences, the common good would have to be broadly defined to be universal to all human beings. However, the broad-based definition of common good is defective because it fails to conceive that people’s perceptions lead them to differences in prioritization of the common goods, whether public or private, when these goods are at odds with each other.
The public common goods represent institutions or concepts that provide service or protection to the public, such as hospitals and highways. To fulfill the public common goods, the process involves resource pooling and burden sharing by every member of society. For instance, if healthcare is a public common good, then the government needs to raise a tax on its people to build infrastructures. On the other hand, the private common goods rest on equal citizenship that answers to the liberty of conscience and personal expression (Rawls). Inevitably, the public common goods will have to compromise for the private common goods and vice-versa. For example, if disease control (public) and freedom of dressing (private) are both considered common goods, in case of a pandemic, people may choose to pass mask mandates that sacrifice the private rights to dressing. The dilemma is that with humans’ differences in the perception of good, there are sharp disagreements based on how one should value the relationship between private and public common goods. This can go as extreme as how Nazi Germany completely discredited personal economic rights by upholding “General good before personal welfare” (Keys). Conversely, political theorists like G.W.F. Hegel maintained that the common good is served when a free market draws individuals into considering their private interests (Hegel). These divergences did not arise due to discord on whether an interest is common. The disagreement lied in the extent to which these two conceptions had balanced numerous possible common goods.
Even if a hypothetical system could answer to both the private and public common goods, there are internal discordances between private common goods. While private common goods such as civil liberties apply to individuals, these rights are often conflicting between different groups in society. What’s considered a lawful right to one group under the common goods may be damaging towards another group’s rights. In many cases, the dominating majority, given by its power, can become abusive against the minorities. As an example, the unrestricted freedom of speech (private) can manifest in hate speeches and crimes against racial minorities that will violate their rights to personal safety (private). To resolve this, political philosophers such as Joshua Cohen devised a model of the common good where every member of society has a relational obligation to answer to every group’s interest under the common good (Cohen). However, as society is divided into infinite groups of individuals, there are boundless conceptions of how society should prioritize and manage sectional rights. Rawls proposed the “difference principle,” which suggests every citizen works distinctively oriented towards the interest of the least disadvantaged (Rawls). Nevertheless, this breeds numerous complexities to the question of how a group's identity is defined and how society should judge different groups in terms of disenfranchisement. There is no objective solution to this dilemma, and it can never be agreed upon by all members of a community given their individuality.
As society is divided into infinite groups of individuals, there are boundless conceptions of how society should prioritize and manage sectional rights.
As conflicting interests breed irreconcilable interpretations of the relationship between distinct common goods, this violates part B of the framework. When the proposed common goods are in interactions with one another, whichever chosen mechanism of prioritization would undeniably entail possible exclusions of certain individuals’ interpretations and consequently, their interests. These exclusions during the pursuit of the common good indicate the lack of proper consideration of every member’s interest by the entire community.
The Absence of Procedural Definition
While individual perceptions create different normative standards or prioritization of the common goods, many political philosophers contend that the definition of this concept can overcome the restriction of individuality. A framework of governance can generate a fluid definition of the common good as determined by a specific process. Under this model, through a system of governance, namely democracy, different members of society search for the common good by debating and reaching compromises on issues. As argued by James Madison in the Federalist Paper, a democratic society could rely on every distinct interest to challenge each other and outline a compromised vision, which would prevent one section from dominating society (Madison). The procedural interpretation of the common good depends on ceaseless concession between different members of society. The eventual accepted common good would require such extreme compromise that no individual can be fully satisfied.
This model has an inherent moral defect in that the process of settling the definition of the common good pivots on each member of society arguing for the maximized personal or sectional benefits. Although individuals can willingly choose to compromise with those of different interests, the motivation can be solely based on the desire for greater individual rewards. This does not comply with part C of the framework because this model has moral justification for self-centered reasoning of coming up and following the common good.
In spite of conceding the previous point, the procedural definition is still invalid. Under a democratic system that decides the definition of the common good, the process usually depends on the majority’s decisions. Based on each section’s interest, there could be possibly several compromised plans on a particular issue, and only one agreed upon by the majority will be in effect. Such common good would align with Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian view, which is the “greatest happiness of the greatest number” (Bentham). However, under such a model, the majority is given the power and justification to subject minorities to discrimination by fulfilling agreed common goods. As Chantal Mouffe argues, the system based on majority consensus will make decisions “only as a temporary result of provisional hegemony, as stabilization of power and... always entails some form of exclusion” (Mouffe). This would violate part B of the framework as the majority can choose to not reason about the common good for minorities’ interests. Taken to the extreme, if the majority deems the existence of slavery as an acceptable common good to generate economic wealth, then enslavement of certain groups will be administered by the government. Obviously, during this process, the slave-owning members of society will not have regard for the interest for freedom of those who are enslaved.
Contrary to the total tyranny of the majority, there are given means of provision that would secure the sectional interests of minorities to be considered in this model. Hypothetically, under provisions such as a constitution, the majority could not violate certain unalienable rights of the minorities. In the process of defining the common good, the decision-makers will also seek to fulfill all the interests in society. As argued by Jeremy Waldron, voters tend to vote on the basis of what they think is the general good of society, taking into account the liberties of all groups (Waldron). However, the quandary emerges for how society should decide on the prioritization of a certain group’s interest or even define the existence of sections of society. Any attempt to categorize and arrange these sectional interests put some defined or undefined minorities at disadvantage, which fails to consider their interest equally to others.
In the process of defining the common good, the decision-makers will also seek to fulfill all the interests in society.
In practicality, as the majority tends to control the procedure of defining what the common good is, they have the capability and tendency to discriminate against the minorities by redefining their interests as universal. Famously, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels believed that every ruling class would ensure that its interest is represented as the only universal and rational common good of society (Marx and Engels). When the majority is endowed with the decision-making power of the ruling class, there is no sufficient mechanism to bar them from representing their interests as the common ones because their sheer strength is capable of overruling any objection to their tyranny.
Conclusion
In the present society where people are gifted with endless variations in their individualities, there is no universal interest in human experiences. Even if people are oblivious to their fundamental differences with regard to the experience of good, a fluid definition also fails to suffice the frameworks. As Isabel Paterson contended, the rhetoric of the common good is merely “a veil for centralizing power” (Paterson). Ultimately, every individual is a minority of itself, and no good is ever applicable to every human being.
Is There Such Thing as Common Good?
Yes
No
Bibliography
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