The common good is the totality of the institutional and social conditions under which every person can actualize their fundamental form of reality in all three dimensions. It is not a collectivist good that would stand above the individual person, but rather that good which precisely serves all persons in common and makes possible the flourishing of each individual.
The common good encompasses the conditions that allow the person to live in all three dimensions. In the first dimension, this concerns existence as a bodily-spiritual unity (health care, food, housing). In the second dimension, it is a matter of the relationship to other persons (right to community, education, free association). In the third dimension, it concerns transcendence toward the absolute (freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, access to culture and truth). It would be a reduction to understand the common good in purely material terms. It includes the spiritual and moral conditions of personhood.
As an objective value, the common good is not arbitrarily determinable but can be read off from the ontological structure of the person itself. The Personalist Norm forms the criterion: a social order serves the common good precisely when it respects every person as a person and never treats them merely as a means to the end of the whole. The personal-ontological concept of the common good thereby distinguishes itself both from individualist liberalism (which knows only individual interests) and from collectivism (which subordinates the person to the whole).
The relation serves in the ontology expresses that social institutions, laws, and political structures ought to serve the common good — not the reverse. The common good is the standard by which justice in the social order is measured.
Ontological Classification
- Superordinate concept: Objective Value
- Relation: range of serves
Ontological relations:
- is a subclass of: Objective Value
- (inverse) range: serves
Institutions in Service of the Common Good
Ontological relation: an institution serves the common good. Institutions have their purpose not in themselves but in the promotion of the well-being of the persons whom they serve. Where an institution no longer serves the common good, it fails its meaning and becomes an instrument of instrumentalization.
This relation is an expression of the Thomistic principle that all social structures derive their legitimacy from service to the human person. The Personalist Norm demands that laws, political authorities, and corporate cultures always remain ordered toward the actualization of the dimensions of personhood. An instrumentalizing culture reverses this relationship and makes the person a means to institutional ends.
- Domain: Institution
- Range: Common Good
Institution
An institution is a supra-individual, enduring ordering structure that regulates persons in their relationships. It can enable or hinder the actualization of the dimensions of personhood. Institutions serve the common good and are to be measured against the standard of the Personalist Norm. Political authority is a special form of institution with jurisdiction over a political community.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Entity; subordinate concepts: Political Authority, Distribution Structure
Political Community
The political community is a community of persons ordered by political authority. It presupposes political authority and is directed toward the common good. In the political community, communal life is regulated by laws and institutions that are to be measured against the standard of the Personalist Norm. Solidarity and subsidiarity are foundational principles of its order.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Community
Solidarity
Solidarity is the reciprocal responsibility of the members of a community for one another, grounded in the equal dignity of all persons. As an interpersonal relation, solidarity expresses that persons are not isolated individuals but are essentially related to one another. It complements the principle of subsidiarity: while the latter protects the personal responsibility of the person, solidarity emphasizes mutual obligation within the community.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Interpersonal Relation
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 90, a. 2 (law as ordinance for the common good)
- Hildebrand, D. von: Ethik (1973). In: Gesammelte Werke, vol. II. Regensburg: Habbel. (German) (objective values and the moral order of the community)
- Scheler, M.: Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik (1913/1916). Halle: Niemeyer. (German) (material order of values as the foundation of the common good)