PHIL 809 The Common Good
The idea of the common good has served as an ideal for political institutions and practices in the West since antiquity. We will look at some classical texts on the common good from Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Aquinas. Then we will examine more recent philosophical work on the common good by, e.g., Charles De Koninck, Jacques Maritain, Yves Simon, John Finnis, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Mark Murphy. Among the chief questions we will discuss are (1) how are the contemporary discussions related to the classical historical texts? (2) How should we characterize the theoretical disagreements between the various modern accounts? (3) What are the respective merits of the recent discussions? (4) Is the common good still a helpful way to think about political practices and institutions in the context of contemporary politics?