The Common Good

In Book 3 of his Politics Aristotle writes:

φανερὸν τοίνυν ὡς ὅσαι μὲν πολιτεῖαι τὸ κοινῇ συμφέρον σκοποῦσιν, αὗται μὲν ὀρθαὶ τυγχάνουσιν οὖσαι κατὰ τὸ ἁπλῶς δίκαιον, ὅσαι δὲ τὸ σφέτερον μόνον τῶν ἀρχόντων, [20] ἡμαρτημέναι πᾶσαι καὶ  παρεκβάσεις τῶν ὀρθῶν πολιτειῶν: δεσποτικαὶ γάρ, ἡ δὲ πόλις κοινωνία τῶν ἐλευθέρων ἐστίν. (Politics 1279a18-22)

"It is clear then that those constitutions that aim at the common advantage are in effect rightly framed in accordance with absolute justice, while those that aim at the rulers' own advantage only are faulty, [20] and are all of them deviations from the right constitutions; for they have an element of despotism, whereas a city is a partnership of free men." (H. Rackham trans. LCL)

συμφέρον can be translated as “good”, “advantage”, “contribution”, “benefit” or “expedient” coming from the verb συμφέρω, to bring together, contribute.

Sometimes the common good is defined in Utilitarian terms as "the greatest possible good for the greatest possible number of individuals" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_good).  Here the concept becomes tricky and muddled, because it is easily confused with the will of the majority.  The reader should note that what is of common benefit (advantage) to members of a political society, may not in fact be what is beneficial to the majority, because in some sense the minority is left out of the equation.  The greatest possible number of individuals is, of course, all sentient beings who have membership in such a society.   The will of the majority may not aim at promoting the welfare of all.

Our US constitution states in the preamble: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

 It is worthwhile to see that promoting the general welfare may be, in some sense, promoting the common good.  But in more recent political philosophic discussions we have sacrificed the general welfare for the welfare of the advantaged and promoted a safety net to allow the disadvantaged at least a subsistence participation in the benefits of our nation.  We tend to see today the government as the enemy of the individual and not the promoter of the common good or general welfare of all individual members of our political society.  But it is clear that the general welfare of our society involves the infra-structure (not necessarily physical infra-structure) of our country and the abilities that such infra-structure can provide.  Yet we have been anxious to promote smaller government and less taxation, we have sacrificed our infra-structure to inevitable decay.  The majority of the people may desire less taxation, and less intrusion into their lives by government, but the common good and general welfare can only be promoted by a government with some income to do its task of promoting such common good (benefit).  As our wealthiest institutions become more powerful, a stronger (not weaker)  government becomes necessary to protect the individual from abuse by the same powerful institutions and promote the common good.

We ought to think of the common good as what is beneficial to all and not merely to the majority, what serves all the people and promotes their liberties, and not just the a majority of persons swayed by the demagoguery of a few who would not wish to contribute out of their wealth anything to the general welfare of the society.  We cannot allow our democracy to become an oligarchy.  I often hear the claim that we are a Republic and not a Democracy, which is true, but if ‘Republic’ comes to mean ‘Oligarchy’, we have simply lost our way in promoting the common interests not of the majority, but of the all.  (to be continued…)