| | What is the common good is by definition the good that is common to all. To find what this is it is necessary to examine human beings and find identify that which is life enhancing to all of them. Now there are many things which are life enhancing to specific human beings which are not life enhancing to all. In order to delimit the category, it is necessary to look at the process of human life and find that element which is life enhancing which is common to all lives. Only this can be the common good.
And to keep a long story short, it will be the Objectivist ethics, since this is what defines the fundamental values which are life enhancing.
It is important to realize that the common good is equivalent to the individual good since what is the common good must be by definition good for all, and this means all individuals, and not some isolated subset of them. Any definition of the common good which places the interests of one person or group to above the interests of another person or group, can not be good for the diminished and only good for the elevated, and thus must necessarily fall outside the definition of the common good. Those who attempt to define the common good in this way pervert its true meaning.
|
|
