What is the common good value? In morality, politics, and economics, the common good refers to either what is shared and beneficial for all or most members of a given community. This can also be used in ethics, sociology, and psychology. It refers to the overall beneficial effect of one’s actions on the world around them. It can also be used to justify human rights and freedom.
The three essential elements of the common good are liberty, justice, and communal responsibility. Liberty refers to individuals’ freedom to act on their own and to live as they choose. Justice is the distribution of social goods and services that meet the needs and interests of the majority of citizens within a country. And, finally, community members would have a responsibility to their fellow community members to undertake projects that promote social well-being.
Liberty, in the common good philosophy, means both individual and community rights to decide about their own affairs. Justice, on the other hand, refers to the equal distribution of social benefits and services among citizens. Social responsibility is an obligation to care for the welfare of the community as a whole through deliberate practice, institution, and government. These three essential elements of the common good achieved through these institutions and policies are collectively called “social justice.”
This philosophy also includes what is commonly called virtue or moral goodness. Virtue is considered to be the mental state characterized by respect, honor, trustworthiness, dependability, honesty, dependability, and freedom. In this sense, the philosophers believe that virtues lead to happiness. On the other hand, social justice results in social welfare or the provision for the general welfare of the community at large, of particular individuals. The common good in this sense may also be referred to as the good of the community as a whole.
The philosophy of the good was popularized by two philosophers: distributive theory and private property theory. Distributive theory is a philosophical outlook that believes that the members of a community have an obligation to contribute to the support of the common good. It also suggests that the members of the community have a right to be self-regulating, that is, to control the use of their resources so as to meet their responsibility to other individuals. Private property theory maintains that ownership of property gives individuals the power to control access to it through use, so that only they can use it and for their own purposes.
In its most pure form, the philosophy of the common good holds that human beings are obligated to undertake interpersonal responsibilities to promote the common good of the community as a whole. One might suppose that this would be unlimited, however it does not seem that way. The concept of the good may be justified by reference to some natural fact, such as the fact that cooperation is the most likely response to environmental challenges. A different conception of the good would take into account the value of individual liberty. Individual liberty is said to be a good when it is necessary for people to act on their own, rather than in accordance with the decisions of other people.
The Common Good in Politics. The political philosophers who argue that the Common Good leads to the Good Life and is thus important to political morality include Rawls, Plato, ivism, utilitarianism, and socialism. These philosophers believe that government should promote the good by making sure that basic societal needs are provided for, and that government action should take the forms of positive action in pursuit of the common good. Public goods, like medical care and education, are understood to be public goods because they are required by the Common Good for the well-being of all citizens.
The Bad and the Good. Some further light on the idea of the common good: as much as we would like to think of ourselves as creatures of the nature, part of our brains are programmed to respond to the Good and pursue our communal instincts. This, however, is also where the Bad comes into play. The Bad is the side of human behavior that tries to use the Common Good as a means to an end and to take what is not necessarily right to ensure its own personal gain at the expense of others. For some, this makes them bad, whereas for others, it makes them a necessary part of the communal group because without them there would be no Common Good and a free-for-all for selfish reasons.