common benefit

values

2022

We explain what the common good is and how philosophy, law and economics understand it. Also, some examples of the common good.

The common good implies prioritizing the group before the individual.

What is the common good?

In general, when speaking of the common good or common welfare, reference is made to that which benefits all of the citizens of a community, specifically applied to the social, institutional and socioeconomic conditions of the same.

However, this concept can be applied to many fields of knowledge and human life. It can be found at the heart of numerous ethical, religious, or philosophical codes, as well as the legal codes with which societies they rule themselves.

The so-called common good can be studied from different perspectives, since it contains very different elements. It can be associated with the common economic wealth, the public interest of the Political Sciences, or with traditions religious like him Bonum comune of European Christian philosophy.

Even so, in all its meanings the common good entails the welfare and benefit of the community above individual desires or aspirations. In the name of the common good, however, many processes disastrous politicians, or not a few excesses have been committed, paradoxically.

Examples of the common good

It is difficult to give examples of the common good, since it is a philosophical principle. Instead, we can list the situations in which the common good prevails over individual interests, such as:

  • The organization of neighborhood cleaning days in the neighborhood.
  • The collection of clothes, food and supplies for populations victim of natural disasters or in conditions of absolute misery.
  • The collection of money to carry out common works in a building or in a community.
  • The fight against climate change and the reduction of gas emissions from greenhouse effect to atmosphere.

Common good in philosophy

In the philosophy In general, by common good is understood the set of conditions of social life that concern the well-being of all, therefore requiring the prudence of each one and especially of those who are endowed with can and authority.

This perception comes from the ancient Greek philosophers, such as Plato (c. 427 - c. 347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC), and through the scholastic tradition it reached the Middle Ages, where it had one of its highest representatives in Thomas Aquinas, who stated in his Theological summa that "... every law is ordered to the common good."

From there the social doctrine of the Catholic Church would be inspired, especially from the issuance of the encyclical Rerum Novarum ("Of the new things"), by Pope Leo XIII on Friday, May 15, 1891.

That would be the first openly social encyclical of this institution, in which the Pope proposed a socio-economic organization adapted to the times of the Industrial Revolution, which later became known as "distributism."

Common good in economics

In economics, the common good is also understood as the goods shared by all.

In terms of economic terminology, two different things can be understood as the common good:

  • The common socioeconomic welfare. The organization that brings the greatest amount of benefit to a given community. This concept, predominant in the tradition of Political Economy, for example, is also the result of the line of thought that we have detailed previously (Aristotelian-Thomist).
  • Common or public goods. That they are those that do not belong to an individual exclusively, but to all those who make up the community, and whose enjoyment corresponds, therefore, to the entire society that maintains it.

Common good in Law

It can be said that the purpose of all forms of law always tends towards the common good, that is, towards the guarantee of Liberty, security Y Justice to the individuals of a given community.

In this, the law does not stray too far from the philosophical and religious tradition that gave rise to it, since the idea that the ultimate goal of law is the common good was born precisely in the Aristotelian-Thomist philosophical current (as we saw in section previous).

Thus, for example, it was promulgated by the Venezuelan military, politician and thinker Simón Bolívar (1783-1830), El Libertador: “They are human rights: freedom, security, prosperity and equality. The happiness In general, which is the object of society, it consists in the perfect enjoyment of these rights ”.

Hence, all forms of public interest, of government and call management beef public (the "thing" of all) should always aspire to the legal common good, that is, to the Rule of law.

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