The Common Good
Who Benefits?
I like the idea of the common good - we should do that which helps us all and avoid that which harms us all. To paraphrase Tonto from the Lone Ranger - who's this 'us all'?
This is not an easy question.
Democracy is a way of answering the question. With democracy we might naively think that the common good is the will of the majority. One problem with that is that a majority is a fickle thing given to enthusiasms (for whatever reason). It makes little sense for something to be good after one election and then bad after another.
A deeper issue though; the common good has to be seen at the social level of abstraction rather than at the individual level. It is often the case that individual interests can be counter to the common good. This tension can be hard to resolve.
But not always.
Traffic laws provide an easy example. It really doesn't matter how much people want to drive their cars very fast on public roads. That individual interest runs smack up against our common interest in having safe roads to drive on. And the roads are a social construction after all, not something the speeder does. But the speeder is free to build his own track where he can drive as fast as he wants.
This gives a hint about a fairly general way of resolving the tension between the common good and individual desires. Generally, in the social sphere, the common good must prevail but there needs to be accommodation by the social sphere to individual desires and interests too.
Public health measures for the public good are a harder nut to crack that way. Vaccination is a public health measure for the public good. It's proven safe (much safer than the disease it protects against) and is proven to be effective. Many infectious diseases have been overcome by vaccines.
There are people who object to them sincerely - I know a couple. They point to known risks and side effects and say they don't want anything to do with it. In the context, I adjusted my mask and moved a bit farther away - but that was more a comment than an expression of fear.
Then we come to truckers who had to be vaccinated to do their work of hauling stuff across the border to the USA. Recall that at the time Canada was doing pretty well with the pandemic because of vaccinations. The truckers were going back and forth to the States that had a much higher infection rate. The border was closed to those who couldn't prove vaccination - including truckers.
A small group of anti vax truckers formed convoys and blockaded Ottawa and some border points and most truckers were happy to be vaccinated. How were the anti-vaxxers working for the common good? They thought they were defending 'freedom' and resisting the threat of overreaching government.
I think the anti-vaxxers are a thread in a skein of right wing ideas that has a vast distrust of government.
Years ago it was plainly stated - the right wing wanted to starve government so much that it would get to be small enough to be drowned in a bathtub.
Another thread was Maggie Thatcher claiming; there is no such thing as society, there are only families and individuals.
This is barking mad stuff (I think) but if you think that way then I can see that the idea of the common good is a problem.
For me, one of the ways of thinking about the common good comes from the Capabilities Approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. It's a fairly objective measure of whether a society provides individuals with the capabilities to live as fulfilled individuals. It recognizes that it's society that provides the capabilities, but that the society will be sick if it doesn't give individuals the capabilities they need.
Society teaches how to read and write so that individuals have the capabilities to participate in politics and culture and so they can learn from libraries. Society provides healthcare so that individuals don't die from each infection or mishap.
I can think of the common good as a state of affairs where the capabilities of people are high. Of course there are many ways that a society can organize itself to provide those capabilities. We aren't looking for a perfect system. The common good evolves as circumstances change.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.