## 1. First Contrast: Welfare Consequentialism



The common good belongs to a family of concepts that relate to
goodness rather than rightness (Sidgwick 1874). What makes the common
good different from other concepts in this family is that it is a
notion of the good that is understood to be internal to the
requirements of a social relationship. In any community, the common
good consists of the facilities and interests that members have a
special obligation to care about in virtue of the fact that they stand
in a certain relationship with one another. In a family, for instance,
the family home is part of the common good because the familial bond
requires members to take care of the home as part of a shared effort
to care for one another's interests in shelter and safety. In a
university, the climate of academic freedom on campus is part of the
common good because the special relationship among members of the
university community requires them to care for this climate as part of
a shared effort to care for one another's interests in teaching,
learning and inquiring.



The common good differs from the various notions of the good that play
a foundational role in welfare consequentialist accounts of political
morality. Among the notions in the latter category, we can include:
the sum of pleasure over pain, total satisfaction of rational desire,
aggregate welfare adjusted for distributive considerations, welfare
prioritarianism, equality of welfare (in certain formulations), Pareto
optimality, and so on. Unlike the common good, these notions make no
essential reference to the requirements of a social relationship. They
set out fully independent standards for the goodness of actions,
motivations and states of affairs, and the independent character of
these standards allows them to serve as foundational elements in a
normative theory that has a consequentialist
 structure.[2]



According to classical utilitarianism, for example, the correct course
of action is the optimal course of action as judged from the
standpoint of an impartial concern for the pleasures and pains of all
sentient creatures (Sidgwick 1874). Suppose that a relationship
consists of a set of requirements for how people who stand in the
relationship should act towards one another--e.g., parents should
feed their children, parents should clothe their children, children
should defer to their parents' judgment, etc. According to
classical utilitarianism, an agent should perform the action that
satisfies the requirements of a relationship only when her doing so
would result in the greatest sum of pleasure over pain. The notion of
the good here--i.e., the sum of pleasure over pain--is
defined independently of the requirements of any relationship, so it
sets out a criterion for goodness that can tell us, among other
things, when it would be good for people to comply with any particular
relational requirements.



Some welfare consequentialist notions of the good incorporate a
distributive element--e.g., welfare prioritarianism--and
this feature may make it more plausible to see these notions as
internal to the requirements of a relationship. For example, some may
think that welfare prioritarianism could be internal to the family
relationship, where the relationship is understood to require family
members to perform the action that is optimal from the standpoint of
the worst off member of the group. But keep in mind that even more
distributionally sensitive notions of the good, such as welfare
prioritarianism, retain other features of a consequentialist
understanding of goodness that make it difficult to see how these
notions could be internal to a relationship in the relevant sense.



Take agent neutrality. Insofar as welfare prioritarianism is a
genuinely consequentialist notion, it says that the correct course of
action is the course of action that is optimal as judged from a
standpoint that does not change with the position of the agent or the
relationships that the agent happens to stand in (Williams 1973; Nagel
1986; cf. Sen 1993). Understood in this way, welfare prioritarianism
does not require an agent to perform the action that is optimal from
the standpoint of the worst off member of *her own*
family. Instead, it requires an agent to perform the action that is
optimal from the agent neutral standpoint of, say, the welfare of the
worst off person in the world or the average welfare of all those in
the class of people who are worst off in their respective families. If
people have reason to pay special attention to the worst off member of
their own families, on this view, it is because a pattern of reasoning
along these lines leads to the highest level of welfare for the worst
off person in the world or the highest average welfare for those in
the relevant class.



Because it is an agent neutral notion, welfare prioritarianism may
require parents to harm their own children if circumstances arise such
that doing so would bring about the best result from the standpoint of
the welfare of the worst off person in the world or the average
welfare of those in the relevant class. A parent might be required to
act this way, even when lowering the welfare of her own child would
lead to only a slightly higher level of welfare for the other people
affected. These implications are clearly at odds with our ordinary
understanding of the agent relative character of relational
requirements.



The upshot is that welfare consequentialist accounts of political
morality are not based, at the most fundamental level, on conceptions
of the common good. They are based instead on notions of the good that
are understood to be prior to and independent of any social
relationship. Nonetheless, it is worth stressing that a welfare
consequentialist account of political morality may incorporate a
conception of the common good as part of a more specific account of
the ethical obligations of citizens in public life. After all, a
certain pattern of agent relative motivation among citizens may be the
optimal pattern as judged from the standpoint of aggregate welfare (or
some other suitably agent neutral perspective). John Stuart Mill sets
out a theory along these lines in *Considerations on Representative
Government* (1862). On his view, citizens should take an active
interest in the public affairs of their community and social
institutions should be designed to generate this pattern of motivation
among citizens. The reason for this is that an orientation among
citizens towards the common affairs of their community is part of
the best political arrangement overall, as judged from the standpoint
of the principle of
 utility.[3]


## 2. Second Contrast: Public Goods



Another important contrast to draw is between the common good and a
public good. In economic theory, a public good is a particular type of
good that members of a community would not possess if they were each
motivated only by their own
 self-interest.[4]
 Here is an example. Imagine that the residents in a town could enjoy
a mosquito free summer if most every resident treats her lawn with a
bug spray. The spray costs money, but every resident would be better
off having paid for the spray and enjoying life without mosquitoes. If
most every resident sprays her lawn, everyone in the town will enjoy
the benefit, even those residents who do not spray their lawns. But
there is no feasible way to exclude the nonsprayers from enjoying the
benefit.



The problem posed by a public good is that the optimal course of
action for each individual, from the standpoint of her egoistic
rationality, is for her not to contribute to the provision of the
good, even though everyone would be better off if they all did so (see
Olson 1965). Take any resident in the town I just described. From the
standpoint of her own self-interest, she should not spray her lawn: If
the other residents spray their lawns, she would get the benefit
without paying the cost. And if the other residents do not spray their
lawns, she would save herself the cost of spraying her lawn. It
follows that as long as residents are moved only by their own
self-interest, they will not produce the good of a mosquito free
summer.



In both academic and nonacademic discussions, people often confuse the
common good with a public good or a set of public goods. But it is
important to keep the two ideas distinct. The facilities that make up
the common good resemble public goods because they are often
facilities that are supposed to be open and available to everyone
(e.g., a public library). This means that it is not possible to
exclude those who do not contribute from enjoying the benefits.
Nonetheless, the facilities that make up the common good are
conceptually different from public goods because these facilities may
not be a net benefit for each member of the community. The facilities
that make up the common good serve a special class of
interests that all citizens have in common, i.e., the interests that
are the object of the civic relationship. But each citizen will have
various private interests in addition to these common interests, so
for any particular citizen, the private interests affected by some
facility may be more important from the standpoint of her egoistic
rationality than the interests that belong to the special class of
common interests. As such, the facility may not be a net benefit to
her.



Consider the case of a public library. Suppose that a certain library
is part of the common good in a political community because it serves
an interest in the privileged class of common interests. Suppose the
relevant interest is an interest in guaranteed access to the
storehouse of human knowledge. Some individual *X* owns a
bakery. Her bakery is profitable, but it would be even more profitable
if people were not able to read certain cookbooks at the library and
so could not make her carrot muffins at home. *X* has an interest
in guaranteed access to the storehouse of human knowledge, but she
also has an interest in her bakery's profitability. If her
private interest in a muffin monopoly is more important from her
egoistic perspective than her interest in guaranteed access to the
storehouse of human knowledge, then she is actually worse off because
of the public
 library.[5]
 In this case, the public library is part of
the common good, but it is not a public good because there is someone
in the community who is worse off in virtue of the library's
existence.



Before moving on, note that people sometimes use "the
public good" to refer to something other than the technical
notion of a public good in economic theory. In academic and
nonacademic discussions, people sometimes use "the public
good" in a way that is more or less synonymous with "the
common good". This use of the term was especially prevalent
among political philosophers, roughly from the 16th century
to the 19th century. For example, in the *Second Treatise of
Government* (1698), John Locke defines political
power as the right to make binding laws and the right to mobilize the
community in defense of these laws, where both of these powers are




> 
> 
> to be directed to no other *end*, but the *Peace*,
> *Safety*, and *publick good* of the People. (1698 [1988:
> 353]). 
> 
> 
> 



Here Locke uses the term "public good" to refer to
interests that are common to all members of a political community
(e.g., the interest in bodily security and property), where members
have a relational obligation to care for these common interests. The
"public good" in this sense basically refers to the common
good, though philosophers who use the term "public good"
typically favor a thinner conception of the political relationship and
a more limited view of the powers of government.


## 3. Why Does Political Philosophy Need This Concept? Defects in a "Private Society"



Why does political philosophy need the concept of the common good?
What's the rationale for having this concept in addition to
other concepts, such as welfare, justice, or human rights? To
understand the importance of the common good, it is helpful to think
about the moral defects in a private society.



A *private society* is a society whose members care only about
their lives as private individuals (Tocqueville 1835-1840; Hegel
1821; Rawls 1971; see also Dewey 1927). Members are not necessarily
rational egoists--they may care about their family and friends.
What is central is that their motivational horizons do not extend
beyond the people and projects that are the focus of their personal
 lives.[6]
 As an individual in a private society, I might be interested in
acquiring a better home for my family or improving the local school
for my children and the other children in my neighborhood. I might
even vote in national elections insofar as the results could affect my
home or my local school. But I take no interest in national elections
insofar as the results affect citizens I don't know, those in
other states or provinces. And I take no interest in national
elections insofar as the results affect the basic fairness of my
society's laws and institutions. Having withdrawn into private
life, I care about the common affairs of the community only insofar as
these touch my private world.



Many philosophers believe that there is something morally defective
about a private society. One type of defect bears especially on the
case of a private society that consists of rational egoists. As I
noted in the last section, a community of rational egoists will not
perform the actions necessary to generate public goods. Since these
goods are desirable, the absence of public goods may be suboptimal,
both from the standpoint of aggregate welfare and from the standpoint
of each member's egoistic
 rationality.[7]
 So there are good instrumental reasons for people to create a public
agency--i.e., a state--that can use taxes, subsidies and
coercive threats to draw people into mutually beneficial patterns of
 cooperation.[8]



The common good, however, points to a different kind of defect in a
private society. The defect in this case extends to all forms of
private society, not just to a society of rational egoists, and the
defect is noninstrumental. The defect in this case is that the members
of a political community have a *relational obligation* to care
about their common affairs, so the fact that they are exclusively
concerned with their private lives is itself a moral defect in the
community, whether or not this pattern of concern leads to a suboptimal outcome.



To appreciate the point, think about the various public roles that
people may occupy in a liberal democracy (see Hegel 1821; Dewey 1927;
J. Cohen 2010: 54-58). Most obviously, citizens act in a public
capacity when they occupy positions as legislators, civil servants,
judges, prosecutors, jurors, police officers, soldiers, school
teachers, and so on. They also act in a public capacity when they
participate in the political process, voting in elections and taking
part in policy discussions in the public sphere (Habermas 1992; Mill
1862; Rawls 1993 [2005]). And
many philosophers argue that citizens act in a public
capacity--or at least in a partly public capacity--when they
act as executives in large business enterprises (McMahon 2013;
Christiano 2010); as high-ranking officials in colleges and
universities (Scanlon 2003); as journalists, lawyers, and academics
(Habermas 1992, e.g., [1996: 373-9]); as protesters engaged in
civil disobedience (Rawls 1971); and as socially conscious consumers
(Hussain 2012).



When citizens occupy public roles, political morality requires them to
think and act differently than they would if they were acting as
private individuals. If you are a judge in a criminal trial, you might
stand to benefit personally if the defendant were found guilty. But
political morality does not allow you to decide cases as if you were a
private individual, looking to advance your own private objectives. As
a judge, you are required to make decisions based on the evidence
presented at trial and the standards set out in the law. These legal
standards themselves are supposed to answer to common interests. So,
in effect, political morality directs you to think and act from the
standpoint of a shared concern for common interests.



Citizens who occupy public roles may also be required to make personal
sacrifices. Consider an historical example. During the Watergate
scandal, President Richard Nixon ordered the Attorney General of the
United States, Elliot Richardson, to fire the Watergate special
prosecutor in order to stop an investigation into Nixon's abuses
of power. Rather than carry out Nixon's order, Richardson
resigned his position. Many would argue that Richardson did the right
thing, and that, in fact, he had an obligation to refuse Nixon's
order, even if this resulted in a significant setback to his career.
As Attorney General, Richardson had an obligation to uphold the rule
of law in the United States, a practice that serves common interests,
even if this meant significant sacrifices in terms of his career
aspirations.



Now consider the following possibility. Imagine that we are living in
a liberal democracy with a full array of social roles in which people
act in a public capacity. But imagine that our society is a private
society: citizens care only about their own private affairs. In order
to ensure that various public roles are filled, our institutions
create private incentives for people to take on these
responsibilities. High salaries draw people into positions as judges
and legislators, and mutual surveillance gives these people private
incentives to carry out their duties. Suppose that our institutions
are well structured and private incentives are adequate to fill all of
the important public positions. Is there anything missing in our
society? Does our society suffer from a moral defect of some kind?



Philosophers in the common good tradition believe that the answer is
yes: there is something morally significant that is missing from our
society. What is missing is a *genuine concern for the common
good*. No one in our society actually cares about shared
facilities, such as the rule of law, or the common interests that
these facilities serve. Citizens fill various public roles simply for
the sake of the private benefits that they get from doing so.
According to a common good conception of political morality, this lack
of concern for the common good is itself a moral defect in a political
community, even if private incentives lead people to fill all of the
relevant positions.



A central challenge for theorists in the common good tradition is to
explain why a genuine commitment to the common good matters. Why
should it matter whether citizens actually care about the common good?
Some philosophers in the tradition cite a practical problem. Even in a
well-designed arrangement, circumstances are likely to arise where
social institutions do not provide people with an adequate private
incentive to act in a publicly oriented way. For example, political
morality may require public officials to stand up for the rule of law,
even in situations where this will damage their careers. Or political
morality may require citizens to protest against an unjust law, even
if this means a private risk of being jailed or blacklisted. Political
morality may even require citizens to run the risk of losing their
lives in order to defend the constitutional order against a foreign
threat (see Walzer 1970; Rousseau 1762b [1997: 63-4]). In each
of these cases, no matter how well designed institutions are, citizens
may not have an adequate private incentive to do what political
morality requires, so a genuine concern for the common good may be
essential.



A different explanation--perhaps the most important one in the
common good tradition--stresses the idea of a social
relationship. Think of the relationship between parents and their
children. This relationship requires not only that the people involved
*act* in certain ways towards one another, but also that they
*care* about one another in certain ways. For instance, parents
are required not only to feed and clothe their children, perhaps to
avoid getting fined by the Department of Child and Family Services.
Parents are also required to care about their children: they must give
their children's interests a certain status in their practical
reasoning. Many philosophers argue that our relation to our fellow
citizens has similar features. The political bond requires not only
that we act in certain ways, but also that we give the interests of
our fellow citizens a certain status in our practical reasoning. It
would be unacceptable, on this view, for citizens to fulfill certain
public roles purely for the sake of private incentives. A Supreme
Court justice, for example, must care about the rule of law and the
common interests that this practice serves. If she were making
consistent rulings just to cash her paycheck every two weeks, she
would not be responding in the right way to her fellow citizens, who
act for the sake of common interests in doing things such as voting,
following the law, and standing ready to defend the constitutional
 order.[9]



Many philosophers believe that there is something morally defective
about a private society, even one in which private incentives move
people to fill all of the important public roles. A conception of the
common good provides us with an account of what is missing from the
practical reasoning of citizens in a private society, and it connects
this with a wider view about the relational obligations that require
citizens to reason in these ways.


## 4. Central Features of the Common Good



According to a common good conception of political morality, members
of a political community stand in a social relationship with one
another. This relationship is not as intimate as the relationship
among family members or the members of a church. But it is a genuine
social relationship nonetheless, and it requires members not only to
act in certain ways, but also to give one another's interests a
certain status in their practical reasoning. This basic outlook leads most
conceptions of the common good to share certain features.


### 4.1 A Shared Standpoint for Practical Reasoning



The first feature that most conceptions share is
that they describe a pattern of practical reasoning that is meant to
be realized in the actual thought processes of the members of a
political community. A conception of the common good is not just a
criterion for correct action, such that citizens would satisfy the
conception so long as they performed the correct action, regardless of
their subjective reasons for doing so. The point of a conception of
the common good is to define a pattern of practical reasoning, a way
of thinking and acting that constitutes the appropriate form of mutual
concern among members. In order to satisfy the conception, the
activities of the members of the community must be organized, at some
level, by thought processes that embody the relevant
 pattern.[10]



### 4.2 A Set of Common Facilities



Most conceptions of the common good identify a set of facilities that
citizens have a special obligation to maintain in virtue of the fact
that these facilities serve certain common interests. The relevant
facilities may be part of the natural environment (e.g., the
atmosphere, a freshwater aquifer, etc.) or human artifacts (e.g.,
hospitals, schools, etc.). But the most important facilities in the
literature are social institutions and practices. For example, a
scheme of private property exists when members of a community conform
to rules that assign individuals certain forms of authority over
external objects. Private property, as a social institution, serves a
common interest of citizens in being able to assert private control
over their physical environment, and so many conceptions include this
institution as part of the common good.


### 4.3 A Privileged Class of Common Interests



A conception of the common good will define a privileged class of
abstract interests. Citizens are understood to have a relational
obligation to create and maintain certain facilities because these
facilities serve the relevant interests. The interests in the
privileged class are "common" in the sense that every
citizen is understood to have these interests to a similar
 degree.[11]
 The interests are "abstract" in the sense that they may
be served by a variety of material, cultural or institutional
facilities. A wide variety of interests figure prominently in the
literature, including: the interest in taking part in the most
choiceworthy way of life (Aristotle *Pol.*
1323a14-1325b31); the interest in bodily security and property
(e.g., Locke 1698; Rousseau 1762b); the interest in living a
responsible and industrious private life (Smith 1776); the
interest in a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties (Rawls
1971 and 1993); the interest in a fair opportunity to reach the more
attractive positions in society (Rawls 1971); and the interest in
security and welfare, where these interests are understood as socially
recognized needs that are subject to ongoing political determination
(Walzer 1983).


### 4.4 A Solidaristic Concern



Most conceptions of the common good define a form of practical
reasoning that fits the model of solidarity. Many social relationships
require a form of solidarity among those who stand in the
relationship. Solidarity here basically involves one person giving a
certain subset of the interests of another person a status in her
reasoning that is analogous to the status that she gives to her own
interests in her reasoning (see, e.g., Aristotle *NE*
1166a1-33). For example, if my friend needs a place to sleep
tonight, friendship requires that I should offer him my couch. I have
to do this because friendship requires that I reason about events that
affect my friend's basic interests as if these events were
affecting my own basic interests in a similar way. A conception of the
common good typically requires citizens to maintain certain facilities
because these facilities serve certain common interests. So when
citizens reason as the conception requires, they effectively give the
interests of their fellow citizens a status in their reasoning that is
analogous to the status that they give to their own interests in their
reasoning.



An example will make the idea more intuitive. According to Rousseau, a
properly ordered political community is "a form of association
that will defend and protect the person and goods of each associate
with the full common force" (1762b [1997: 49]). Citizens in this
community are united by a solidaristic form of mutual concern that is
focused on (among other things) their common interests in physical security and property.
This form of mutual concern requires each citizen to respond to an
attack on the body or property of a fellow citizen as if this were an
attack on her own body and property. When extended over all members,
this form of mutual concern requires the whole community to respond to
an attack on any individual member as if this were an attack on every
member. In this sense, "the full common force" stands
behind each person's physical security and property. Or, as
Rousseau sometimes puts it, "one cannot injure one of the
members without attacking the body, and still less can one injure the
body without the members being affected" (1762b [1997:
 52]).[12]


### 4.5 A Nonaggregative Concern



A closely related feature is that most conceptions of the common good
do not take an aggregative view of individual interests. The
aggregative view treats the satisfaction of individuals'
interests as commensurable values, and it directs citizens to maximize
the sum of these values. Because it focuses on the aggregate, the
aggregative view may require citizens to impose a debilitating
condition on some of their fellow citizens when this would generate
sufficient gains for others.



Solidarity rules out the aggregative view. Starting with an
appropriate view of her own interests, solidarity requires each
citizen to give certain interests of her fellow citizens a status in
her reasoning that is similar to the status that she gives to her own
interests. This way of thinking does not allow citizens to abandon the
interests of any of their fellow citizens for the sake of aggregate
gains. For instance, solidarity would not allow citizens to subject
some of their fellow citizens to slavery, even if this might produce
substantial benefits for others, because enslavement would involve a
failure on the part of each citizen to give the interests of each of
her enslaved comrades the right status in her reasoning.


## 5. Common Interests (i): Joint Activity



Let's turn now to some of the ways that conceptions of the
common good differ from each other. One way has to do with how they
define the privileged class of common interests that are the object of
the political relationship. We can divide the important views in the
literature into two main categories: (a) *joint activity
conceptions* and (b) *private individuality conceptions*.




A joint activity
conception defines the privileged class of common interests as
interests that members have in taking part in a complex activity that
involves all or most members of the community. Among those who endorse
this kind of view are ancient philosophers, such as Plato
(*Republic*) and Aristotle (*Politics*), secular natural
law theorists such as John Finnis (1980), and most natural law
theorists in the Catholic tradition. Aspects of the joint activity
view are also important in the work of communitarian thinkers such as
Charles Taylor (1984) and, to a lesser extent, Michael Sandel (2009).
The most important and influential view is Aristotle's.



Aristotle holds that members of a political community are not just
involved in a military alliance or an especially dense network of
contractual agreements (*Pol.* 1280b29-33). Members are
also involved in a relationship that he describes as a form of
friendship (*NE* 1159b25-35). This friendship consists in
citizens wishing one another well, their being aware of the fact that
their fellow citizens wish them well, and their taking part in a
shared life that answers to this mutual concern (*Pol.*
1280b29-1281a3). In caring about one another and wishing one
another well, what citizens care about in particular is that they and
their fellow citizens live well, that is, live the most choiceworthy
life.[13]



The most choiceworthy life, on Aristotle's view, is a pattern of
activity that fully engages and expresses the rational parts of human
nature. This pattern of activity is a pattern of *joint*
activity because, like a play, it has various interdependent
parts that can only be realized by the members of a group together.
The pattern is centered on an array of leisured activities that are
valuable in themselves, including philosophy, mathematics, art and
music. But the pattern also includes the activity of coordinating the
social effort to engage in leisured activities (i.e., statesmanship)
and various supporting activities, such as the education of citizens
and the management of resources.



On Aristotle's view, a properly ordered society will have an
array of material, cultural and institutional facilities that answer
to the common interest of citizens in living the most choiceworthy
life. These facilities form an environment in which citizens can
engage in leisured activities and in which they can perform the
various coordinating and supporting activities. Some facilities that
figure into Aristotle's account include: common mess halls and
communal meals, which provide occasions for leisured activities
(*Pol.* 1330a1-10; 1331a19-25); a communal system
of education (*Pol.* 1337a20-30); common land
(*Pol.* 1330a9-14); commonly owned slaves to work the
land (*Pol.* 1330a30-3); a shared set of political
offices (*Pol.* 1276a40-3; 1321b12-a10) and
administrative buildings (*Pol.* 1331b5-11); shared
weapons and fortifications (*Pol.* 1328b6-11;
1331a9-18); and an official system priests, temples and public
sacrifices (*Pol.* 1322b17-28).



Aristotle's account may seem distant from modern sensibilities,
but a good analogy for what he has in mind is the form of community
that we associate today with certain universities. Think of a college
like Princeton or Harvard. Members of the university community are
bound together in a social relationship marked by a certain form of
mutual concern: members care that they and their fellow members live
well, where living well is understood in terms of taking part in a
flourishing university life. This way of life is organized around
intellectual, cultural and athletic activities, such as physics, art
history, lacrosse, and so on. Members work together to maintain an
array of facilities that serve their common interest in taking part in
this joint activity (e.g., libraries, computer labs, dorm rooms,
football fields, etc.). And we can think of public life in the
university community in terms of a form of shared practical reasoning
that most members engage in, which focuses on maintaining common
facilities for the sake of their common
interest.[14]


## 6. Common Interests (ii): Private Individuality



Private individuality conceptions offer a different account of the
privileged class of common interests. According to these views,
members of a political community have a relational obligation to care
about their common interest in being able to lead lives as private
individuals. Citizens each have an interest in being able to shape
their lives through their own private choices about what activities to
pursue and what associations to form. Choices are
"private" in the relevant sense when citizens are not
required to consult with anyone in making these choices and they are
not required to reach a decision through any form of shared
deliberation.[15] 
Among the philosophers who endorse this kind
of view are many important thinkers in the liberal tradition,
including John Locke (1698), J.J. Rousseau (1762b), Adam Smith (1776),
and G.W.F. Hegel (1821). More recent figures who endorse this kind of
view include John Rawls (1971) and Michael Walzer (1983).



A sophisticated example of a private individuality conception is
Rawls's. On Rawls's view, members of a political community
have a relational obligation to care for the interests attached to the
"position of equal citizenship" which all citizens share
(1971 [1999: 82-83]). These interests are (a) the interest in a
fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties and (b) the interest in
a fair opportunity to reach the more attractive positions in society.
Rawls uses the term "the common good" to refer to the sum
total of social conditions that answer to the interests attached to
the position of equal citizenship (1971 [1999: 217]). Understood in
this way, the common good consists, *inter alia*, of: a legal
order that provides citizens with the liberty of expression, the
liberty of conscience and the other liberal freedoms; a democratic
system of government that provides citizens with political liberties,
such as the liberty to vote, hold office and participate in collective
rule-making; a system of courts to enforce the rule of law; as well as
police protection and national defense to protect the basic liberties.
The common good also consists of legal protections for free choice of
occupation; mass media mechanisms that gather and disperse information
about job possibilities; a transportation system to give people access
to work; and a system of education (whether public or private) that
ensures conditions in which people with similar talents and
motivations have similar prospects, regardless of their class or
family background.



Rawls's conception has the core features of a private
individuality view. The facilities that answer to the common interest
in equal liberty and fair opportunity put citizens in a position to
join or withdraw from various activities and associations as private
persons who can make their own independent choices. For example, the
liberty of conscience gives citizens the legal right to join or leave
a religious association based on their own private beliefs. They need
not consult with other citizens about these choices or make these
choices as part of a wider deliberative process that involves other
citizens.



Rawls's view takes the common good to consist partly in a system
of bodily security, private property and civil liberty. In this way,
his view resembles Rousseau's, which also focuses on these
common interests. Where Rawls's view differs from
Rousseau's is that it extends the privileged class of common
interests to include an interest in a wider set of basic liberties and
an interest in a fair opportunity to reach the more attractive
positions in society. These interests involve a more extensive array
of institutions and social conditions, especially when it comes to
education, communication, and economic redistribution. But it is worth
emphasizing that neither Rawls nor Rousseau incorporates a full
account of distributive justice into their conceptions of the common
good.[16] I
will say more about this in the next section.


## 7. The Common Good Perspective: Communal or Distributive?



One of the most important differences among different conceptions of
the common good has to do with how they take private and sectional
interests to factor into determining the relational obligations of
citizens. Here we can distinguish two main types of views:
(a) *communal conceptions* of the common good and
(b) *distributive conceptions* of the common good.



Members of a political community have a relational obligation to care
for certain interests that they have in common. A
"communal" conception of the common good takes these
interests to be interests that citizens have *as* citizens,
where the status of being a citizen and the interests attached to this
status are both understood to be *prior* to the various
statuses and interests that make up each member's identity as a
private individual. When citizens engage in social deliberation about
their laws and institutions, a communal conception typically directs
them to abstract away from their private interests and the sectional
interests they may have as members of one subgroup or another and to
focus instead on their common interests as citizens.



For example, imagine that citizens are considering changes to trade
rules in their society. They may be inclined to assess proposals in
terms of how attractive these are from the standpoint of their
sectional interests as members of a certain profession or participants
in a certain industry. But a communal conception of the common good
directs citizens to set these interests aside and assess proposals in
terms of how well they answer to common civic interests, such as the
interest in national security or the interest in a productive
economy.[17]



A "distributive" conception of the common good differs
from a "communal" conception in that it does not direct
citizens to abstract away from their private and sectional interests
in the same way. A distributive conception starts with the idea that
citizens belong to various groups with distinct sectional
interests. These interests make partly competing claims on the
material, cultural and institutional facilities in a community. The
distributive conception incorporates a distributive principle that
determines how social facilities should answer to these sectional
interests, and the conception says that members have a relational
obligation to maintain a set of facilities that answers to
everyone's sectional interests in the way that the distributive
principle prescribes.



As an example of a distributive view, consider the view held by many
philosophers, which defines the common good in terms of Rawls's
difference principle (see, e.g., J. Cohen 1996 [2009: 169-170];
see also section 8 below). 
According to this view, we can think of citizens as belonging to
various subgroups, each consisting of all those born into a certain
"starting position" in social life. Citizens in each group
share certain choice-independent characteristics, such as their class
position at birth and their level of innate talent. Group members have
sectional interests in better life prospects (as measured in terms of
primary goods), where these interests make partly competing claims on
the basic structure of society. The difference principle says that
social institutions should answer to the interests of each group
equally, with the caveat that institutions should incorporate whatever
inequalities would serve to maximize the prospects of the least
advantaged group. Citizens are then understood to have a relational
obligation to maintain a scheme of institutions that attends to
everyone's sectional interests in the way that the difference
principle prescribes.



The disagreement between communal and distributive conceptions of the
common good is perhaps the most important disagreement among different
conceptions, and it raises some important questions about the nature
of the political relationship. Let me make two general points.



The first has to do with the moral underpinnings of the communal
view. It is helpful to think of communal accounts of the common good
as appealing to a certain conception social life (e.g., Rousseau
1762b; Hegel 1821; Walzer 1983). According to this conception,
citizens form their various private and sectional interests within the
framework of a more fundamental effort to maintain certain social
conditions together. The political bond is prior to their private
interests in a certain way, so the political relationship may
sometimes require citizens to set their private interests aside in
order to act collectively to maintain the relevant social conditions.
Perhaps the clearest example of this is national
defense (see section 9
 below). When defending the constitutional order against a foreign
threat, political morality requires citizens to act collectively in
defense of common interests, without organizing their efforts in a way
that answers specifically to their competing private interests in
different levels of protection.



An analogy may help here. Members of a family each have distinct
interests as private individuals--e.g., in developing their
talents, pursuing relationships, cultivating career prospects, and so on. At some level,
the household must be organized in a way that answers to these
private interests. But there are some matters where the familial
relationship requires members to act together in a way that sets their
competing private interests aside. If the family home is on fire,
members are required to save the home, without special regard for how
resources are being deployed in ways that are more likely to save one
member's room rather than another's. In certain domains,
members are supposed to act from a communal point of view that focuses
on common interests that are essential to their social bond, rather
than their distinct and potentially competing interests as private
individuals. Communal conceptions of the common good see the political
relationship as having a similar
 character.[18]



The second point is that--surprisingly--Rawls himself
favours a substantially communal rather than distributive conception
of the common good. In *A Theory of Justice*, he does not
define the common good in terms of his full conception of social
justice. He defines it instead in terms of the "principle of
common interest". This principle assesses social institutions
from the position of equal citizenship. As he says, "as far as
possible, the basic structure should be appraised from the position of
equal citizenship" where this position "is defined by the
rights and liberties required by the principle of equal liberty and
the principle of fair equality of opportunity" (1971 [1999:
82-83]). Rawls thinks that a wide variety of policy questions
can be settled by appeal to the principle of common interest,
including "reasonable regulations to maintain public
order", "efficient measures for public health and
safety", and "collective efforts for national defense in a
just war" (1971 [1999: 83]).[19]



Social deliberation, on Rawls's view, should unfold, as far as
possible, within a framework of reasoning that focuses on interests
that are common to all citizens, where the difference principle enters
the discussion mainly when the appeal to common interests alone could
not properly decide an issue. But why should political deliberation
unfold in this way? Why does Rawls think that, "as far as
possible, the basic structure should be appraised from the position of
equal citizenship"? 



One possible rationale has to do with the kind of solidarity that
citizens realize through their shared status as
"citizens". When members of a society reason in terms of
the principle of common interest, they set their private and sectional
interests aside whenever possible in order to focus on their common
interests as citizens. Setting their sectional interests aside (e.g.,
as members of the least advantaged group, the second least advantaged
group, the third least advantaged group, etc.), citizens treat their
shared interests as "citizens" as being more fundamental
than their distinct and potentially competing interests as private
individuals. Each citizen effectively tells her fellow citizens,
"What unites us is more important than what divides
us". Bringing the status of "citizen" to the center
of how citizens relate to one another in public life is particularly
important for Rawls because mutual recognition on the basis of this
shared status is important to his account of how a just social order
will prevent envy and positional competition from undermining the
basic liberties (1971 [1999: 476-9]).



A closely related idea has to do with mutuality (section
 4.4
 and
 4.5
above). When members of society reason in terms of their common
interests in liberty and opportunity, they assess policies from a
standpoint that does not distinguish between one citizen and
another. They each accord the interests of their fellow citizens the
very same status in their reasoning that they accord to their own
interests. When citizens do their parts in a social arrangement that
answers to common interests, and they do so on the grounds that the
arrangement serves common interests, citizens realize a form of
solidarity that is perfectly mutual: each citizen works for the
interests of each her fellow citizens in exactly the same way that
each of her fellow citizens works for her interests.



Social cooperation on the basis of the difference principle does not
 embody the same kind of mutuality. Imagine that citizens are
reasoning about their institutions. Starting with an arrangement that
creates equal prospects for those born into every starting position,
they consider different arrangements that would yield Pareto
improvements over the egalitarian
 scheme.[20]
 Citizens must now choose between different possibilities: one
arrangement would maximize the prospects for the least advantaged
group; another would maximize the prospects for the second least
advantaged group; a third would maximize the prospects for the third
least advantaged group; and so on. Given these possibilities, the
difference principle requires citizens to choose the arrangement that
is best from the standpoint of one group in particular--i.e.,
those in the least advantaged position.



Imagine now that we live in a social order that satisfies the
difference principle. There are certain facilities in
society--say, certain educational facilities--that answer
distinctively to the interests of those in the least advantaged
group. The resources involved could have been deployed in ways that
would have been better for those in the second least advantaged group,
or the third least advantaged group, etc., so the arrangement as a
whole is tilted in favour of one group in particular. Because it is
tilted in this way, the pattern of interaction lacks the property of
perfect mutuality: each citizen does not work for the interests of
each of her fellow citizens in exactly the same way each of her fellow
citizens works for her interests. Everyone works in a way that is
distinctively oriented towards the interests of the least
advantaged.



Of course, citizens realize a form of solidarity insofar as social
cooperation is organized in light of the difference principle; the
point is just that citizens realize a distinctive form of solidarity
insofar as social cooperation is organized in light of the principle
of common interest. In the latter case, they realize a
more *communal* form of solidarity, as citizens set their
private interests aside to focus on common interests and citizens
attach no special significance to the distinctions between different
groups. A more communal form of solidarity answers better to the
social dimension of the political relationship and this may be one
reason why Rawls favors a form of public reasoning in which the
principle of common interest governs "matters which concern the
interests of everyone and in regard to which distributive effects are
immaterial or irrelevant" (1971 [1999: 82-83]).


## 8. The Common Good in Politics: Democracy and Collective Decision-Making



In the vast literature on the common good, several topics stand out as
important subjects of concern. One important topic is democracy.
Democracy figures prominently in philosophical reflection about the
common good because there is broad agreement among
philosophers--though by no means universal agreement!--that
a private society would be defective in terms of the way that members
make collective decisions. Collective decision-making in a political
community must unfold in its public life, that is, in the sphere of
interaction in which citizens transcend their own private concerns and
reason from the standpoint of the common good.



On some accounts of democracy, citizens are not required to take up
the perspective of the common good. According to pluralism, for
example, democracy is best understood as a collective decision-making
process that disperses power and influence among many different groups
in society (see Dahl 1956 and 1989). Citizens each have their own
private interests and groups of citizens with similar interests
advance these interests in various rule-making forums. The overall
process is essentially a form of bargaining, where each group
strategically trades concessions with other groups in order to
maximize the satisfaction of their policy preferences. A properly
ordered democratic regime will maintain fair bargaining conditions,
where all important groups are able to exercise a meaningful degree of
influence on the collective decisions that affect their interests. But
on the pluralist view no one needs to take an interest in the common
affairs of the community: each citizen may care only about her own
private affairs, entering the public forum to advance her private
interests against the interests of others.



Many philosophers criticize pluralism and other similarly privatized
views of democratic reasoning because these views fail to capture an
important aspect of political life. As Jeremy Waldron notes, citizens
often vote on the basis of something other than their own private
interests:



> 
> 
> People often vote on the basis of what they think is the general good
> of society. They are concerned about the deficit, or about abortion,
> or about Eastern Europe, in a way that reflects nothing more about
> their own personal interests than that they have a stake in the
> issues. Similarly, the way they vote will usually take into account
> their conception of the special importance of certain interests and
> liberties. (Waldron 1990 [1993: 408])
> 
> 
> 



Many critics also contend that pluralism does not distinguish properly
between the form of practical reasoning appropriate to democratic
decision-making and the form that is appropriate in market contexts.
Managers in a firm may justify one business strategy over another on
the grounds that this strategy will improve the bottom line for the
firm, taking no account of how the strategy might harm competitors or
other groups. But citizens in a democratic process are not supposed to
reason this way:



> 
> 
> ...it is a political convention of a democratic society to appeal
> to the common interest. No political party publicly admits to pressing
> for legislation to the disadvantage of any recognized social group.
> (Rawls 1971 [1999: 280])
> 
> 
> 



If a privatized approach to democratic decision-making is morally
defective, what exactly is the problem? What is wrong with citizens
assessing laws and voting on laws based on how well these will serve
their private interests?



One prominent line of reasoning in democratic theory appeals to an *epistemic
conception* of democracy (e.g., Rousseau 1762b; J. Cohen 1986).
According to this view, there is an independent standard of
correctness for legislation, which says that laws must serve common
interests. Democratic decision-making is a requirement of political
morality because the legislative process is more likely to generate
laws that meet the standard when the process is democratic. Moreover,
a democratic process is more likely to generate laws that meet the
standard when those taking part in the process are actually trying to
identify laws that meet the standard. So citizens taking part in the
democratic process should assess legislative proposals in terms of how
well these proposals serve common interests because this is the
best way to identify and enact laws that are justified.



The other main line of reasoning in democratic theory appeals to a
*deliberative conception* of democracy (J. Cohen 1996, 2009;
Habermas 1992; Gutman & Thompson 1996). According to Joshua
Cohen's deliberative conception, political morality requires
citizens to make binding collective decisions through a process of
public reasoning in which citizens recognize one another as equal
members of the political community (J. Cohen 1989, 1996). The process
of public reasoning requires that each citizen should offer reasons to
convince others to adopt a legislative proposal, where these reasons
are reasons that she could properly expect others to accept, given the
facts of reasonable pluralism.



Cohen argues that the ideal of deliberative democracy, as he
understands it, provides a compelling account of the common good
orientation of democratic decision-making (1996 [2009:
168-170]). No citizen could reasonably expect others to accept a
legislative proposal simply because it serves her own interests, so
there is a basic requirement that any legislative proposal must be
responsive to the interests of all citizens. Furthermore, the
background idea that citizens are equal members of the political
community imposes an additional requirement. Citizens 



> 
> 
> can reject, as a reason within [the] process, that some are worth less
> than others or that the interests of one group are to count less than
> the interests of other groups. (1996 [2009: 169]) 
> 
> 
> 



This constraint on acceptable reasons leads to a substantive
requirement that legislation must be consistent with a public
understanding of the common good that treats people as equals in the
relevant sense.



Cohen cites Rawls's difference principle as one example of a
public understanding of the common good that satisfies the relevant
requirement.



> 
> 
> Treating equality as a baseline, [the difference principle] requires
> that inequalities established or sanctioned by state action must work
> to the maximal advantage of the least advantaged. That baseline [i.e.,
> equality] is a natural expression of the constraints on reasons that
> emerge from the background equal standing of citizens: it will not
> count as a reason for a system of policy that that system benefits the
> members of a particular group singled out by social class or native
> talent or any other feature that distinguishes among equal citizens.
> [...In addition, the principle] insists, roughly speaking, that
> no one be left less well off than anyone needs to be--which is
> itself a natural expression of the deliberative conception. (J. Cohen
> 1996 [2009: 169-170])
> 
> 
> 



Note that Cohen argues here for a "distributive" rather 
than a "communal"
conception of the common good (see
 section 7
 above). On Cohen's view, members of a political community have a
relational obligation to provide one another with a set of facilities
that answers to everyone's sectional interests in the way that a
certain distributive principle prescribes (i.e. the difference
principle). This differs from a communal conception, which does not
conceive of the relational obligation of citizens in terms of a
distributive principle.



Cohen is probably right that the difference principle is a natural
expression of the deliberative ideal against the background of an
assumption that all citizens are equal members of the political
community. But defenders of a communal conception might argue that the
political relationship among citizens has a social dimension that goes
beyond equal membership in the political community. Like the
relationship among friends or among members of a sports team, the
political relationship must be understood to impose obligations on
people that embody relational ideals such as solidarity and
mutuality. This means that the political relationship may require
citizens to reason with each other in ways that embody these
values. For instance, the political relationship may require citizens
to set their private and sectional interests aside in certain
deliberative contexts in order to focus on their common interests as
citizens. An implicit concern for social ideals such as solidarity and
mutuality may be one reason why Rawls identifies the common good with
the principle of common interest and gives this principle a special
role to play in political reasoning.


## 9. The Common Good in Civic Life: Burden Sharing and Resource Pooling



Many philosophers agree that citizens must transcend their private
concerns when they take part in the political process. But some
philosophers believe that there are other aspects of social life in
which citizens have a relational obligation to transcend their private
concerns. Two especially prominent examples in the literature involve
burden sharing and resource pooling. Michael Walzer's discussion
of conscription and national defense highlights several important
issues (1983: 64-71, 78-91, 97-9, and 168-70;
see also Walzer 1970).



When a foreign power threatens the constitutional order in a liberal
democracy, political morality seems to direct citizens to defend the
order in a particular way. Citizens must approach national defense as
a communal enterprise in which they organize themselves to achieve
a certain common level of security together through various forms of burden
sharing and resource pooling. Burden sharing, in this case, requires
every member of the community to participate in some way in carrying
the collective burden of fighting the threat. Some citizens will do
the actual fighting, but others will contribute by treating the
wounded, developing weapons, taking care of children, sending care
packages to soldiers, rationing essential resources, and so on.



The moral importance of burden sharing comes out most clearly when we
consider certain highly privatized ways of organizing national
defense. Consider, for example, a market based approach. A political
community might allow entrepreneurs to set up "protection
agencies" that would act as firms, hiring mercenaries, buying
weapons, and selling varying levels of protection to individual
citizens based on their preferences and their ability to pay (see
Nozick 1974). Even if it were possible to defend people's
constitutional liberties through a mechanism of this
kind,[21]
political morality seems to rule it out. One reason is that the market
scheme would allow citizens who are wealthy enough to buy protection
services for themselves, but then leave it to others to face the
actual dangers of combat. This would violate the communal ideal that
all citizens must share in some way in carrying the collective burden
of defending the community (see Walzer 1983: 98-9 and 169).



Another problem with a highly privatized approach to national defence
has to do with the injured. When soldiers get injured in combat, their
injuries have a different moral status as compared to the injuries
that they might suffer if they decide to do things as private
individuals like ride a motorcycle or work in a circus. The difference
is that combat injuries are not *private* injuries that
citizens must bear as private persons. Even in the case where soldiers
volunteer for combat, they perform a public service and we treat their
injuries as part of a collective burden that the community as a whole
must bear, e.g., by providing medical care and rehabilitation services
to the wounded free of charge.



The communal ideal of public service and burden sharing might extend
beyond national defence to other forms of socially necessary work that
is difficult or dangerous.



> 
> 
> Miners today are free citizens, but we might think of them...as
> citizens in the service of the nation. And then we might treat them as
> if they were conscripts, not sharing their risks, but sharing the
> costs of the remedy: research into mine safety, health care designed
> for their immediate needs, early retirement, decent pensions, and so
> on. (Walzer 1983: 170)
> 
> 
> 



A more extensive application of the communal ideal might require
citizens to treat the burdens associated with other occupations as
parts of a shared social burden, including the burdens faced by police
officers, firefighters, teachers, day care workers, nurses, nursing
home workers, and so on (cf. Brennan & Jaworski 2015).



Besides burden sharing, resource pooling is another way that citizens
may organize their activities in light of the common good. Many
facilities in a modern liberal democracy serve common interests,
including the armed forces, public health services, and the education
system. These facilities require material resources, and this raises
an array of questions about how to generate these resources and
incorporate them into the pool of assets that serve common
interests.



Aristotle favors an approach that works through private ownership. In
Plato's *Republic*, almost all of the resources held by
the guardians are held as collective assets that the guardians
may use for the sake of the common interest of the
 community.[22]
 Importantly, because the guardians hold almost nothing as private
property, they do nothing that is analogous to the choices that a group of
friends might make on a camping trip to voluntarily pool their
resources for the sake of common interests. In other words, the
guardians do not express their concern for the members of the
community through gifts, donations or other forms of private
contribution. Partly for this reason, Aristotle favors an arrangement
in which citizens have private ownership and control over assets and a
civic obligation to pool these assets for the sake of common interests
(see Kraut 2002: 327-56). For example, if the community faces a
naval threat, wealthy citizens in Aristotle's ideal community
would be responsible for building warships and contributing these
ships to the war effort.



Aristotle's view draws attention to an important set of
questions in contemporary market societies. The civic obligation he
has in mind comes closest to our notion of private philanthropy. But
is private philanthropy really the right way for a community to
maintain common facilities for the sake of common interests? In 2015,
Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire founder of Facebook, announced that
he would donate 99% of his shares in the company to charitable causes,
including public education (Kelly 2015). From Aristotle's point
of view, this reflects well on our society: our institutions put
wealth in private hands, thereby allowing citizens to make meaningful
choices to pool their wealth for common interests. But many would
argue that our arrangements are seriously *defective* insofar
as they put some individuals in a position to control a private
fortune worth over $45 billion, even if these individuals will
eventually devote these resources to common interests. Plato is on to
something when he says that political solidarity requires that social
institutions channel some wealth directly into the public domain. But
Plato seems to go too far in the other direction, and this leaves us
with an important set of questions about when society should pool
resources through the state and when society should pool resources
through private philanthropy.


## 10. Markets, Competition and the Invisible Hand



A third important topic in philosophical reflection about the common
good is the market. Citizens have a relational obligation to care
about certain common interests, and social coordination through
markets can draw citizens into a pattern of production activity and
consumption activity that answers to these interests. For example,
markets can lead citizens to make better use of land and labor in
society, thereby generating more resources for everyone to use in
pursuing their various ends. The problem is that market coordination
involves a privatized form of reasoning, and the proper functioning of
the market may require citizens *not* to reason from the
standpoint of the common good.



To illustrate, suppose that a society uses markets to coordinate the
education of citizens (see Friedman 1962). A system of for-profit
schools would operate as firms, hiring teachers, buying computers, and
selling education services to the public. Parents, in turn, would act
as consumers, buying the best education for their children at the
lowest cost. Each citizen in this arrangement would reason from the
standpoint of her own private concerns: as school managers, citizens
would aim to maximize profits, and as parents, citizens would aim to
get the best education for their children at the lowest cost. No one
would act out of a concern for the education system as a shared
facility that serves common interests. In fact, the market may require
citizens to avoid this perspective. After all, to lower costs
effectively, school managers must not show too much concern for the
education of their students. And in order to improve the education of
their own children, parents must not show too much concern for the
education of other people's children.



We can divide the philosophical debate into two camps. The first camp
says that market society--i.e., a social order that relies
extensively on markets to coordinate social life--is compatible
with the requirements of the political relationship. Theorists in this
camp include Adam Smith (1776), G.W.F. Hegel (1821), John Rawls
(1971), Michael Sandel (2009) and perhaps Michael Walzer (1983). We
might also include deliberative democrats such as Jurgen Habermas
(1992) and Joshua Cohen (Cohen & Sabel
 1997).[23]



As an example of someone in the first camp, consider Hegel (1821) and
his view of the market. Hegel follows Adam Smith in thinking that the
market draws citizens into a pattern of specialization that serves
common interests. The market does this through prices. Each citizen
finds that she can do better for herself by developing her talents and
selling her labor at the going rate, then buying the goods
that she needs from others. But following price signals
involves a form of reasoning that is focused only on private
interests, not the common good. As a result, it is essential, on
Hegel's view, that the realm of market activity must be
integrated into a wider political community. As members of a political
community, citizens (or at least some citizens) discuss their common
interests in the public sphere, vote in elections, and find their
views represented in legislative deliberations that shape an official
conception of the common good. This official conception shapes the
laws and guides the government in managing the economy. So even if
citizens do not reason from the standpoint of the common good as
market actors, their lives as a whole are organized by a form
of reasoning that is focused on maintaining shared facilities
for the sake of common interests.



The other camp in the disagreement says that market society is not
compatible with the requirements of the political relationship.
Theorists in this camp include Aristotle (see *Pol.*
1256b39-1258a17), Rousseau (1762b), Marx (1844, 1867), and G.A.
Cohen (2009). Marx's view provides an interesting contrast to
Hegel's.



Marx agrees with Hegel that members of a political community must
organize their activities in light of a conception of the common
good. But he does not think that members live up to the ideal if most
of them never actually reason from this standpoint. A political
community must be "radically democratic" in the sense that
ordinary citizens participate directly in the collective effort to
organize social life by appeal to a conception of the common good
(Marx 1844). What makes social coordination through markets
problematic is that market actors are drawn into certain patterns of
activity through prices, which means that they never actually reason
with each other in terms of the common good. On Marx's view, a
properly ordered political community would move beyond this opaque
form of social coordination:



> 
> 
> The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material
> production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated
> as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated
> by them in accordance with a settled plan. (Marx 1867 [1967:84]).
> 
> 
> 



In a properly ordered political community, members will transcend the
authoritarian mysticism of price coordination and organize their
production and consumption activities through an open and transparent
process of reasoning that makes explicit to everyone how their
activities serve common interests.



Many contemporary issues in political philosophy revolve around
questions about the market and the standpoint of the common good. Most
theorists today hold views that fall somewhere between the two camps I
just described: they argue for some more nuanced view about when
citizens are supposed to adopt a privatized perspective and when they
must reason from the standpoint of the common good.



When it comes to corporations and corporate executives, for example,
Thomas Christiano (2010) argues for a certain kind of socially
conscious orientation: corporate leaders must reason from the
standpoint of the common good at least in limiting their strategic
pursuit of private objectives in a way that is consistent with the
broader social objectives established by democratic
 majorities.[24]
 Joseph Heath (2014) argues for a more limited view, such that market
actors must not take a purely privatized perspective in cases where
externalities and other market failures would prevent the market
process from generating attractive results. A great deal of work
remains to be done when it comes to other aspects of market life that
may require citizens to reason from a more socially conscious
perspective, particularly when it comes to labor rights, political
liberties and climate change.



Another important set of contemporary issues has to do with
competition. Market coordination typically works through a process in
which citizens compete with one another for important goods. In the
United States, for instance, labor market participants compete for
jobs that substantially determine who gets access to different levels
of income, and by extension, different levels of health care, police
protection, consideration in the justice system, and political
influence. As citizens square off against each other, each one strives
to secure important goods for herself, knowing that her activities
will--if successful--effectively deprive some other citizen
of these same goods. In this way, labor market competition requires
citizens to act with an extreme form of disregard for how their
actions affect one another's basic interests.



Many philosophers believe that the antagonistic structure of market
competition is inconsistent with the relational obligation that
members of a political community have to care about certain common
interests. G.A. Cohen (2009: 34-45) articulates the problem in
terms of a "socialist principle of community" that rules
out social arrangements that require people to view one another simply
as obstacles that must be overcome. Hussain (forthcoming) takes a more
moderate view, arguing that there is a difference between a
"friendly competition" and a "life or death
struggle". The political relationship allows for a certain
degree of competition among citizens, but it limits how severely
institutions can pit citizens against each other when it comes to
goods that are part of the common good, e.g., health care, education,
and the social bases of self-respect.


## 11. Conclusion: Social Justice and the Common Good



This article has covered the main points of agreement and disagreement among
different conceptions of the common good, as well as a few central
topics of concern. Let me conclude by saying something about the
relation between the common good and social justice.



Consider the case of friendship. Friendship is a social relationship
that requires those who stand in the relationship to think and act in
ways that embody a particular form of mutual concern. The relevant
form of concern incorporates the basic requirements of
morality--i.e., what Scanlon (1998) calls "the morality of
right and wrong"--as friends must not lie to each other,
assault each other, or take unfair advantage of each other. But even
strangers are required to conform to these basic moral standards. What
distinguishes friendship is that the form of mutual concern it
involves goes beyond basic morality and requires friends to maintain
certain patterns of conduct on the grounds that these patterns serve certain
common interests.



Members of a political community stand in a social relationship, and
this relationship also requires them to think and act in ways that
embody a certain form of mutual concern. The common good defines this
form of concern. The common good incorporates certain basic
requirements of social justice, as citizens must provide one another
with basic rights and freedoms and they must not exploit each other.
But the common good goes beyond the basic requirements of justice
because it requires citizens to maintain certain patterns of conduct
on the grounds that these patterns serve certain common interests.



The analogy with friendship should make it clear that the common good
is distinct from, but still closely related to social justice.
According to most of the major traditional views, the facilities and
interests that members of a political community have a relational
obligation to care about are partly defined in terms of social
justice. For instance, Rousseau (1762b), Hegel (1821) and Rawls (1971)
all hold that a basic system of private property is both a requirement of
justice and an element of the common good. Similarly, in *Natural
Law and Natural Rights*, Finnis holds that respect for human
rights is a requirement of justice and that "the maintenance of
human rights is a fundamental component of the common good"
(1980: 218). But the common good goes beyond the requirements of
justice because (1) it describes a pattern of inner motivation, not
just a pattern of outer conduct and (2) it may incorporate facilities
and interests that are not general requirements of justice.



All of this leaves us with some important questions. Many contemporary
social issues turn on disagreements about when citizens may take up a
privatized perspective and when they must reason from the standpoint
of the common good. Social justice is often silent on these issues
because people could, in principle, act as justice requires, whether
they are moved by a scheme of private incentives or by a concern for
common interests. These social issues are best understood as turning
on disagreements about the nature of the political relationship and
the form of mutual concern that it requires. Philosophical reflection
has an important role to play in shedding light on this relationship
and what it requires of us beyond what we owe to each other as a
matter of justice.