Conservative legal scholars have discovered the common good. And that might be a good thing. What calls itself “conservatism” in modern parlance is often associated with a radical individualism and has thus little or no regard for common concerns. With Adrian Vermeule is the eloquent spokesmen for a group of conservative legal scholars who have rediscovered the common good. Here is a report from Politico on one of their recent conferences:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/12/09/revolutionary-conservative-legal-philosophy-courts-00069201
But the devil is, as always in the details in these debates. One may be attracted to speak with Aristotle and in accord with Catholic social doctrine of the common good, but who determines what that good is?
Will it be Professor Vermeule at Harvard and his fellow warriors? Will it be some doctrinal authority in Rome? Or an assembly of evangelical clergymen reading the tea leaves of the Bible?
Is there even one single fixed common good? Do we not commonly need to compromise between what is good for some and what is good for others? How will we go about determining that compromise? There are, as we have found out, irreconcilable differences in what people regard as a common good? How much order and how much freedom are called for in a good society? There are likely to be deep disagreements between us concerning this question and these are will be linked to our most profound understandings of who we are.
If the common good is what benefits most, but not necessarily all, who will have to be sacrificed and how extreme may that sacrifice be? Aristotle spoke of the common good of the Greek polis, and he tried to convince himself that even slaves would be its beneficiaries. But were they? In the footsteps of Aristotelian philosophy, the Catholic Church has advanced its own understanding of the common good. Protestants may be forgiven for thinking that the Church’s conception of the common good has been somewhat self-serving.
If there is to be a politics of the common good, there must be a political process for determining that common good, The task can’t be left to Professor Vermeule and his fellow members in the Federalist Society. But what shape would that process have?
Would the common good be determined by majority opinion?
Would there be the need to achieve some consensus?
I would despair of the Congress of the United States or the Supreme Court declaring what the common good is. The best we can imagine is an open, political process in which we struggle together to define the parameters of a good society. The outcome of any such struggle will inevitably tentative and in need of revision. Aristotle once argued that all our actions aim (though perhaps only indirectly) at a single ultimate good. But what reasons do we have to accept his conclusion. His argument for it is certain flawed.
There may be no such thing as “the common good.” What there is and has to is rather the ongoing search for such a good. Human social life in its historical dimension is that search, In trying to make a life together we are travelers on a long road into the future but there is no single, ultimate destination to which the road leads. There is only search just as music there is only the search for harmony, not a single, fixed, eternal harmony to which all our musical efforts aspire.
Let’s resist those who want to use the idea of the common good to subject us to their will.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/politics-and-the-search-for-the-common-good/6850B6D511984131083F7E6540352EF3