Whatever Happened To The ‘Common Good’ In Human Society?

An English case study

“The worst crimes against people were committed on a plausible pretext for the common good”
― Al Tupushev

The idea of the ‘Common Good’ has a long and rich philosophical history beginning with Aristotle and having such notables as Cicero, Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, Kant, and Marx and Engels step into the discussion for very obvious reasons. John Rawls was the last to provide a significant contribution to the concept which has once more been disputed by many recent philosophers in the domain of virtue ethics like Alasdair MacIntyre.

My piece is not about those thinkers — only in passing reference — but about where the ideas and the virtue ethics of the ‘Common Good’ can now act to challenge the deteriorating social cataclysm that our existence is now suffering particularly concerning its increasing inequalities in wealth and health.

I want to focus more on what is NOT in the Common Good rather than what is or can be contained as an example of the Common Good in applied political decision-making.

This piece was prompted not by anyone on Medium but by a professor on the BBC Newsnight program who on being interviewed on the increasingly alarming numbers in England…