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People, living in society, want to achieve common goals, develop, improve. No one is content to see their neighborhood, their city, their state, their county stagnating, just subsisting or staying the same way. It is only a comprehensive conception of the common good, of human and social development - and which also has an inescapable ethical dimension – that gives account of these expectations. The expression "common good" and some of its variants are in the letter of the law and in the mouths of politicians; more complicated is to know exactly what this common good consists of.
A frequent misunderstanding is associating the common good only with material prosperity, on the basis of the mere sum of the available assets that make up a society - almost as if we were to use GDP per capita as a criterion for evaluating the common good. As we shall see, material goods make up the common good, but they are only a part of it – and not even the most important part. Another mistake is to believe that the common good is “the happiness of the greatest number of individuals”, as utilitarians argue: this mentality would justify even disrespecting the basic rights of some, if this would benefit a larger group. This is perhaps the "good of the majority", but it isn’t the “common good”. This is a collective Project that includes everybody.
“A frequent misunderstanding is associating the common good only with material prosperity”
Excluding some possibilities, it is easier to define what the common good is. It is a situation, a state of affairs that facilitates – or at least does not hinder - to each individual the possibility of pursuing, if they wish, their own integral development (that is, of the character, professional, economic, social etc.) and its fulfillment through the pursuit of excellence.
And unfortunately, there are many circumstances that hinder the integral development of each person. Think of the absence of moral and aesthetic references, in normative and institutional chaos, in legal insecurity or in that which leaves the citizen afraid to go out into the streets, intellectual and scientific destitution, widespread mistrust, misery that prevents its victims from dedicating themselves to anything other than their survival. Concern for the common good requires unrestricted fight against these situations.
As the meaning of life in society must be to give each one greater chances of fulfillment, the common good presupposes a series of immaterial values - the presence of cultural and artistic values, an environment of peace and justice, scientific and technological knowledge and a general climate of encouragement for the pursuit of excellence - as well as material goods that make possible the development anchored in this climate and in these values.
“The conviction that virtues are the most valuable thing in human life is the best foundation for building a promising society”
In this sense, the first has an evident precedence. They are more important and are the ones that really make a society. They facilitate, in turn, the gradual and balanced increase of material prosperity. And among those immaterial components of the common good, it seems to us that the most decisive, which would have the greatest impact on the general well-being, would be the existence, in society, of a widely held conviction that there is a moral excellence that must be pursued; more, that deserves to be pursued. A widespread conviction and is at least a reality in the lives of many citizens. The conviction that virtues are the most valuable thing in human life is the best foundation for building a promising society.
The attainment of a high level of common good is not, contrary to what might seem to many, assigned fundamentally to the government. The state plays an important role - without it, for example, it would be impossible to construct the environment of peace and justice that we listed as an important value for the common good -, but citizens and organizations of civil society on the whole, have a greater impact on this task. If we think of the influence of the family, the schools, the media, the arts; if we think of the value that an example of heroism in everyday life can have, we will easily realize the immense responsibility everyone has in building the common good.
