Concept

Common good

Overview

In philosophy, economics, and political science, the common good (also commonwealth, common weal, general welfare, or public benefit) is either what is shared and beneficial for all or most members of a given community, or alternatively, what is achieved by citizenship, collective action, and active participation in the realm of politics and public service. The concept of the common good differs significantly among philosophical doctrines. Early conceptions of the common good were set out by Ancient Greek philosophers, including Aristotle and Plato. One understanding of the common good rooted in Aristotle's philosophy remains in common usage today, referring to what one contemporary scholar calls the "good proper to, and attainable only by, the community, yet individually shared by its members."

The concept of common good developed through the work of political and moral philosophers, and public economists, including Thomas Aquinas, Niccolò Machiavelli, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, James Madison, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, John Maynard Keynes, John Rawls, and many other thinkers. In contemporary economic theory, a common good is any good which is rivalrous yet non-excludable, while the common good, by contrast, arises in the subfield of welfare economics and refers to the outcome of a social welfare function. Such a social welfare function, in turn, would be rooted in a moral theory of the good (such as utilitarianism). Social choice theory aims to understand processes by which the common good may or may not be realized in societies through the study of collective decision rules. Public choice theory applies microeconomic methodology to the study of political science in order to explain how private interests affect political activities and outcomes.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Common good is discussed.

When the citizens at large govern for the public good, it is called a state; which is also a common name for all other governments, and these distinctions are consonant to reason; for it will not be difficult to find one person, or a very few, of very distinguished abilities, but almost impossible to meet with the majority [1279b] of a people eminent for every virtue; but if there is one common to a whole nation it…
Aristotle, Politics
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Interest in the common good is at present so weak a motive in the generality not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mind is not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night on things which tend only to personal advantage. When called into activity, as only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and spurred from behind by the love of distinction and the fear of shame, it…
John Stuart Mill, Autobiography
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The meaning of the term was then extended to the government of that great family, the State. To distinguish these two senses of the word, the latter is called _general_ or _political_ economy, and the former domestic or particular economy. The first only is discussed in the present discourse.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The social contract & discourses
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Laws politic, ordained for external order and regiment amongst men, are never framed as they should be, unless presuming the will of man to be inwardly obstinate, rebellious, and averse from all obedience to the sacred laws of his nature; in a word, unless presuming man to be, in regard of his depraved mind, little better than a wild beast, they do accordingly provide, notwithstanding, so to frame his outward…
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
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Inasmuch, however, as no government produces all possible beneficial effects, but all are attended with more or fewer inconveniences, and since these can not usually be combated by means drawn from the very causes which produce them, it would be often a much stronger recommendation of some practical arrangement, that it does not follow from what is called the general principle of the government, than that it does…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
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Philosophers who discussed Common good

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Social Security Act

Place in the tradition

Part of Consequentialism.

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