The Common Good – Opportunity

The purpose of government has been in recent times a contentious philosophic issue which divides our society.  So in order to see what government is and ought to be, we should investigate the purpose of government beyond the first and foremost duty government has namely the protection of its citizenry.  As the social contract developed in prehistory, men and women banded together as families and tribes to prevent loneliness and protection from the elements and rival tribes who might do them harm.  As populations became larger and civilization began, the tribes formed themselves into city states to promote commerce and opportunities to enhance the lives of the tribal members.  Tribal members became citizens and the next step in the development of civilized societies was to form nations, so that the enhancements one city could not provide might be provided by another.  As societies inevitably became larger, governments and laws were established to create orderly commerce and protect the citizens from conflicts both internal and external.  Commerce was not merely economic as we have come to know it today, but all those forms of social intercourse which a society maintains, Art, Education and Culture were included so that the talents of the citizens could be actualized, and the already formed social interrelations might be maintained.

So, by this, the primary purpose of government is to protect its citizens, but immediately thereafter to provide opportunities for its citizens to enhance their talents through social relationships and actualize their talents through Education and Art.  If we forget the duty government has to fulfill the artistic and educational needs of its citizens either individually or collectively, we fail its citizens in their attempt to enhance themselves and respond to the higher callings each citizen has to become something beyond his/her present self. 

Aristotle tells us in the opening sentence of his Metaphysics that all mankind desires to know something, and we should note that for some knowing becomes perpetual and the process of coming to know is, in some sense, self-perpetuating.  So that the citizens might enjoy themselves in the commerce of their ordinary lives, some have become talented in Sculpture, Painting, Music and Theater. Governments, as part of the social contract with their citizens, take on a duty to promote these forms of intercourse and the talents of those who engage in them.  Without these enjoyments the society becomes stale,  perhaps dead.  History has shown that liberal societies have always enjoyed a renaissance through the increase in Art and Education (knowledge acquisition) and without such remain in a dark age, feudal perhaps futile state.

So to conclude this post without becoming too verbose, one should realized that the second purpose of government is to promote the talents of its citizens by providing opportunities to those citizens.  The duty of any government is to liberate its citizens from the slavery of loneliness, selfishness and mastery by others (either internal or external).  In short the liberal society creates opportunity for the members of that society to enhance themselves by removing the chains of poverty (not merely economic poverty) and free its citizens to be all that they can be both individually and collectively.