What Can Social Science Teach Catholic Social Thought About the Common Good?
Recent Catholic literature on the common good centers on the state’s creation of the social condition for the flourishing of individuals. This view stands in contrast with a premodern conception of the common good as shared participation in the enterprise of the social whole, which appears incompatible with liberal pluralist societies. To get beyond this forced choice between individualism and imposed collectivism, Catholic social teaching can learn much from how social science’s richer description of the social whole depicts shared participatory structures of contention and competition as crucial for the achievement of the common good. Yet, following insights from both social science and the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, prudence must be developed to distinguish between structures of competition that do promote the common good and others that do not. The essay concludes with a revised definition of the common good that includes these insights.