What Can Economists Contribute to the Common Good Tradition?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew M. Yuengert
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Common Pool Resources ◽  
Economic Approach ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Private Provision ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Insight Into

Although most economists are skeptical of or puzzled by the Catholic concept of the common good, a rejection of the economic approach as inimical to the common good would be hasty and counterproductive. Economic analysis can enrich the common good tradition in four ways. First, economics embodies a deep respect for economic agency and for the effects of policy and institutions on individual agents. Second, economics offers a rich literature on the nature of unplanned order and how it might be shaped by policy. Third, economics offers insight into the public and private provision of various kinds of goods (private, public, common pool resources). Fourth, recent work on the development and logic of institutions and norms emphasizes sustainability rooted in the good of the individual.

scholarly journals Utopia as Topos of Boundaries Erosion between Private & Public Sphere

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yulia Malykhina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Public Life ◽  
The State ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual

The article covers ideas of public life in ancient Greek philosophy having given rise to discussion on the necessity of separation and rapprochement of public and private spheres. This study rests upon the analysis of ‘publicness’ and ‘privacy’ in the philosophical conceptions of such authors as J. Habermas who deems ‘publicness’ as communication, and H. Arendt who refers to ‘publicness’ as the polis-based worldview. Plato’s dialogue ‘The State’, which can be deemed as the first-ever example of a utopian text, provides us with the most detailed and consistent instance of criticism of the private sphere, the necessity to merge it into public life to create society. Only in this way could society become a model of an ideal polis leading to the common good. The utopism of Plato’s pattern determines characteristics of the entire utopian genre arising from the idea of the individual merging with the state, and the private sphere merging into the public sphere. Plato’s ideal polis is contrasted with the concepts of the state formed by Modern Age liberal thought, which have largely determined modern views on the division of these spheres, leading to a revision of the utopian projects and a change in the relationship between the private and the public therein. A comparison of various utopian texts results in finding out that the utopian idea of the refusal of the private sphere of life in favour of serving the common good contradicts the modern ideal of freedom, which is the reason for its criticism and for the increasing number of texts with an anti-utopian character.

scholarly journals The Legal Category "Public Good" in the Interpretation of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation

Lex Russica ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 78-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. L. Likhter
Keyword(s):  
Russian Federation ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual

The paper is devoted to the Russian Federation Constitutional Court understanding of the permissible limits of individual autonomy and boundaries of its limitation for the common good.Constitutional axiology as a form of direct relation to the model and practice of actual constitutionalism functions as the basis for the formation of a social policy. In Russia, economic cataclysms reveal problems in the system of pensions, taxation, employment and education. We are witnessing a certain deformation of the legal consciousness of the population. Such turning points inevitably raise questions about the best balance between the interests of the individual, society and the state.The threat of imbalance between public and private interests stimulates the highest judicial authorities to interfere in the formation of the hierarchy of constitutional and legal values. Increasingly, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation deals with issues of the common good, the need to take into account public interests in the resolution of tax, labor, civil and other types of disputes.

scholarly journals A TEOLOGIA NA ESFERA PÚBLICA: TRÊS TIPOS DE DISCURSO PÚBLICO

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (122) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
David Tracy
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Relationship Of

O autor sugere reabrir a participação da religião na esfera pública, considerando três noções de dimensão do discurso público, que o autor vai chamar de: Publicidade Um, Dois e Três. As afinidades da teologia católica com a filosofia e a razão, a sua auto-compreensão de comunidade, concretizada na sua ideia central de pessoa e não de indivíduo; conceitos centrais sobre o bem comum, a solidariedade, a subsidiariedade, o seu repensar sempre novo da relação intrínseca entre o amor e a justiça, todos esses recursos deveriam desempenhar um papel forte na esfera pública de nossa sociedade, tanto por meio da razão argumentativa da Publicidade Um, pela razão hermenêutica da Publicidade Dois, como pela razão contemplativameditativa e profética da Publicidade Três.ABSTRACT: The author suggests reopening the discussion on religion, as a public contribution to the public realm, by focusing on three distinct notions of public discourse, i.e., publicness, from ancient Greeks until today: hence, Publicness One, Two and Three. Catholic theology’s natural affinities for the role of philosophy and reason, its communal self-understanding, concretized in its central ideas of the person, not the individual; central concepts on the common good, solidarity, subsidiarity; its ever new rethinking of the intrinsic relationship of love and justice; all these resources should play a strong role in the public realm of our society through either the argumentative reason of Publicness One, the hermeneutical reason of Publicness Two, or the contemplative-meditative and prophetic reason of Publicness.

Translating for the Commonwealth

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Bible Translation ◽  
The Common ◽  
Modern Europe

This chapter begins by presenting translation as an aspect of the Erasmian legacy in England, and it argues that translation helps to heal the division discussed in Chapter 3 by enabling Protestantism and humanism to work together. Translation was part of a Protestant programme of nation-building and spreading the word for the common good, but it was also the means through which the literature of antiquity and of modern Europe was communicated to the public at large. Erasmus’ Paraphrases, Grimald's Cicero, and Hoby's Courtier are discussed in these two contexts. Translation points towards the Renaissance, as an insular purism based on Protestant fears of contamination and adulteration was superseded by a hospitality towards the foreign. The chapter ends by arguing that by the 1580s it is Protestant Bible translation that it is accused by Catholics of being literary.

Can Communities Protect Autonomy? Ethical Dilemmas in HIV Preventative Drug Trials

1995 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 516-523 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Zion
Keyword(s):  
Advance Directive ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Drug Trials ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Gay Community ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Trial Participants

Before sailing past the sirens' “flowery meadow,” Ulysses instructed his sailors to lash him to the mast so that he would not succumb to the siren's singing. His advance directive demonstrated that he valued his dispositional or long-term autonomy over his unquestioned right to make decisions. He also indicated to his oarsmen that he understood the nature of temptation and his inability to resist it. Ideas of autonomy and sexual choice are central to this discussion of new AIDS treatments, especially the trials of preventative vaccines. Questions arise over the rights of individuals and the extent that these should be limited by concerns of the gay community. Should the gay community intervene in the risky decisions of individuals if no explicit advance directive exists? If so, how do they justify their paternalism? Could their aims not be better served through strengthening the individual dispositional autonomy of trial participants rather than making specific claims about the common good?

Corporate Politics in the Public Sphere: Corporate Citizenspeak in a Mass Media Policy Contest

2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Nyberg ◽  
John Murray
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Corporate Political Activity ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Public Sphere

This article connects the previously isolated literatures on corporate citizenship and corporate political activity to explain how firms construct political influence in the public sphere. The public engagement of firms as political actors is explored empirically through a discursive analysis of a public debate between the mining industry and the Australian government over a proposed tax. The findings show how the mining industry acted as a corporate citizen concerned about the common good. This, in turn, legitimized corporate political activity, which undermined deliberation about the common good. The findings explain how the public sphere is refeudalized through corporate manipulation of deliberative processes via what we term corporate citizenspeak—simultaneously speaking as corporate citizens and for individual citizens. Corporate citizenspeak illustrates the duplicitous engagement of firms as political actors, claiming political legitimacy while subverting deliberative norms. This contributes to the theoretical development of corporations as political actors by explaining how corporate interests are aggregated to represent the common good and how corporate political activity is employed to dominate the public sphere. This has important implications for understanding how corporations undermine democratic principles.

scholarly journals The Common Good in an Age of Moral Hyperpluralism: A Catholic Bioethical Perspective

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 345
Author(s):  
John Kleinsman
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Innovative Work ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Contemporary Account

This article will argue that the notion of the common good is imperilled by a particular contemporary account of the moral good; one which, because of its (somewhat narrow) emphasis on the individual, readily lends itself to a state of 'moral hyperpluralism' in which 'the good' is primarily defined in terms of the promotion and protection of self-interest. At the same time, it will be argued that any quest to recover the notion of the common good cannot be achieved by either returning to, or holding onto, a more traditional account of morality. It will also be proposed that, as part of the quest to recover the common good, close attention needs to be paid to how the term is understood. The tension between individual autonomy and the welfare of society, and the differing ways in which this tension is resolved within different moral paradigms, will emerge as central to any discussion about the ongoing place of the common good in contemporary legal and moral debates. Finally, it is suggested that a solid basis for articulating a robust account of the common good may be found in the foundational and innovative work being done by thinkers of the gift to establish an alternative account of morality. 

Ethics and Reality

1998 ◽  
pp. 150-155
Author(s):  
Alison Roberts Miculan
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Alasdair Macintyre ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
Good For ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Way

One of the most pervasive problems in theoretical ethics has been the attempt to reconcile the good for the individual with the good for all. It is a problem which appears in contemporary discussions (like those initiated by Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue) as a debate between emotivism and rationalism, and in more traditional debates between relativism and absolutism. I believe that a vital cause of this difficulty arises from a failure to ground ethics in metaphysics. It is crucial, it seems to me, to begin with "the way the world is" before we begin to speculate about the way it ought to be. And, the most significant "way the world is" for ethics is that it is individuals in community. This paper attempts to develop an ethical theory based solidly on Whitehead’s metaphysics, and to address precisely the problem of the relation between the good for the individual and the common good, in such a way as to be sympathetic to both.

The Purpose and Practice of a Public Theology in a Time of Climate Change

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 356-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clive Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Public Theology ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Public Agenda ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Level Of Concern ◽  
Opinion Polls

AbstractThe nature of a public theology is to concern itself with the common good and the flourishing of all. The subject of climate change is to the forefront of the public agenda. Now and then the level of concern can slip down the opinion polls and it does attract a concerted degree of scepticism. It is nevertheless an issue that can allow us to consider the purpose and practice of a public theology. This article sets out to draw upon the insights of others who have contributed to this issue of the International Journal of Public Theology. It also sets out to place this work inside other discussions on what is a public theology and its intersection with an ecotheology.

The Argument Culture: Agonism & the Common Good

Daedalus ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 142 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Tannen
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Human Spirit ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Common

Agonism – taking a warlike stance in contexts that are not literally war – pervades our public and private discourse, leading us to approach issues and each other in an adversarial spirit. The resulting “argument culture” makes it more difficult to solve problems and is corrosive to the human spirit. While examples from the intertwined domains of politics and the press may seem beyond individuals' power to change, the domain of private interactions – where equally destructive effects of the argument culture are felt – is one in which individuals have power to make quotidian yet revolutionary contributions to the common good.

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