Public Good Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The idea of the public good, also called the common good, refers to those generalizable interests and values that all members of a polity share by the mere fact of being members of that polity, whether particular individuals recognize those interests and values or not. Policies, practices, and actions that support or embody such interests are said to be in the public or the common good. The public good often contrasts with one’s private or particular interests—those interests that one chooses for oneself and are not necessarily shared with other citizens or groups.

One common example of the conflict between the public good and individual self-interest is national defense of, or military service to, one’s country. Thinkers who subscribe to the theory and practice of the public or common good often argue that although it is in no single person’s interest to die in war, it is part of the common good that the polity determines some way to defend itself, including enlisting citizens in military service. Hence, universal military service is often described as a policy that is in the public good, even if many of those subject to it find it inconvenient, endangering, or oppose it. Similarly, one can argue that it is in everyone’s interest to breathe unpolluted air that does not endanger one’s health, even if few people voluntarily adopt behavior that decreases their contribution to pollution.

Civic Virtue And Private Interest

This potential conflict between the public good and individual private or particular interests points to another concept associated with the idea of the public good. Civic virtue refers to the willingness of citizens to mold, alter, tailor, revise, or even sacrifice their private interests for the public good. The exercise of civic virtue presupposes that one has an obligation to endorse those policies or laws that benefit the society as a whole, even if they are inconvenient to or in conflict with one’s self-interest or even one’s well-being.

A classic example from antiquity can be found in Leonidas, one of the kings of Sparta, and the three hundred Spartans who composed his bodyguard. They marched to the pass at Thermopylae to face a Persian army they knew numbered in the tens of thousands. Hence, they knew they marched to certain death. Yet it was a sacrifice they were willing to make in defense of Sparta and Greece as a whole. Similarly, Pat Tillman, an American football player, was willing to forgo a salary of seven million dollars to join the U. S. Army after the attacks of September 11, 2001. He died fighting in Afghanistan, the victim of friendly fire. Less dramatic examples of civic virtue include when people go out of their way to assist those who are victims of national disasters or human actions, even when lending such assistance may be inconvenient or costly. People who contributed to relief efforts of the victims of Hurricane Katrina or the earthquakes in Haiti, expecting no personal reward in return, can be said to exercise civic virtue.

In addition to the fact that the public good and civic virtue are often in tension or conflict with private interests, the notion of the public good can be contrasted with the idea of the public interest. The term public interest most commonly refers to those shared interests that citizens have that are determined by the summation of private interests. It is determined simply by calculating which of several private interests is in the majority or plurality. The public interest and the public good may overlap, but this is not a necessary element of either and there may be times when the common good and public interest are at odds with one another.

Origins Of The Public Good

The notion of the public good traces to the pre-Socratics. However, its first systematic discussion takes place in Plato’s The Republic. Plato argues that for a just society to be created and sustained, it must be ruled by those citizens who have the natural capacity and the appropriate education for moderating their passions with their reason and discovering the transcendental truth of the idea of justice. Plato refers to such citizens as philosopher-kings. Being able to control their passions, they are able to distinguish between those things that appear to be good and those that are genuinely good. Most importantly, they are able to distinguish between those policies and practices that appeal to the passions and appetites of the majority of common citizens from those that are genuinely in the public good of the polis as a whole. Plato goes to great lengths to ensure that the education of the philosopher-kings cultivates their control of their passions for just this reason. Moreover, although all their living needs are met, they are to own no possessions, for such ownership may tempt them to consider their own material advantages rather than the good of the polity.

Aristotle similarly argues for the notion of the common or public good, although he rejects Plato’s ideal of a univocal, completely undifferentiated conception of the good. Aristotle argues that each form of activity—such as music, warfare, or athletics—issues in its own conception of the good. However, at the pinnacle of all human activities is that conception of the good that has genuine human happiness as its goal. Genuine happiness does not consist of such things as wealth, status, or physical pleasure, each of which makes one dependent on something outside of oneself. Genuine happiness is that which is self-sufficient. This is to be found in fulfilling that function which is distinctively human—reason. To exercise reason well is to exercise it in relation to virtue. Hence, for Aristotle, the human good is realized in the practice of virtue. It follows that politics, concerned with the happiness of all the citizens, is concerned with the cultivation of virtue among citizens. The responsibility of the statesman is to implement those laws that enable people to act with ethical virtue consistent with the requirements of political virtue and justice.

The idea of the public good has also been the focus of much religious political thought, including all variants of Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The version most common in the West, Christianity, received its fullest expression in the work of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas distinguishes among three kinds of law, human law, natural law, and divine law. Human laws are those promulgated by monarchs. As much as possible, such laws should be consistent with natural law. Natural law consists of those moral imperatives that are discoverable by all human beings, Christian or non-Christian, because of the capacity for reason that God has placed in all people. Divine law is that law which is discoverable only by way of the acceptance of Christianity. As long as the ruler’s laws are not a violation of the natural law of God, they are likely to fortify the common good, whether the ruler is Christian or not. Hence, all subjects owe the ruler their allegiance and obedience. If the ruler’s laws violate natural law or divine law, citizens may consider deposing the ruler, but only after every other alternative to getting the unjust laws changed has been pursued.

Modern Interpretations Of Public Good

In the modern period, the name most commonly associated with the notion of the common good and civic virtue is that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In rejecting the liberal theory of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, Rousseau argues that no just, secure, or free society can be grounded merely in the pursuit of self-interest. Although Rousseau agreed that it is to be expected that people will pursue their self-interest, they must do so only as citizens of a community with a strong notion of the public or common good. That is, the commitment of citizens to the common good must underwrite their own ways of thinking about their particular private interests. Consequently, the two must be able to dovetail.

Rousseau refers to this strong notion of public good as the general will. The general will consists of those political decisions that every citizen would will if they had the well-being of the community in mind when they deliberate about politics. Rousseau recognizes that this may not take place in all circumstances. There may be times when the general will contradicts the will of all. In such instances, citizens can be encouraged or coerced into following those laws that are consistent with the general will. It is such a formulation that has been the basis of many liberal criticisms of Rousseau.

A more recent example of the idea of the common good is found in the work of Alexis de Tocqueville. In Democracy in America (2007), Tocqueville argued that one of the things that distinguishes American political culture is the prevalence of individualism, the independence of citizens and their pursuit of self-interest. But although Americans pursued their self-interest and were concerned with their material wellbeing, Tocqueville argued that their practice of individualism was exercised with self-interest bienentendu, or self-interest well-understood. By this, Tocqueville meant that Americans tended to see their self-interest tied to the common good of the community. Consequently, the exercise of self-interest was tempered by a sense of civic virtue that took into account the needs, well-being, and sustainability of the community as a whole. So common was this among Americans, Tocqueville argued, that their sense of their civic virtue was virtually natural, constituting what he called habits of the heart. These were, in Aristotle’s terms, habituated to the practice of virtue.

Drawing in part on Tocqueville’s perspective, a number of contemporary scholars have argued that in contrast to previous historical periods, there has been a serious decline in civic engagement, participation and virtue, at least in the United States. Robert Putnam argues that, in the last several decades, American political culture has seen a rise of privatization of work and leisure and a decline in civic engagement in voluntary, community organizations. The result has been a decline in social capital, or the engagement and commitment to social and political networks and organizations that help provide the nongovernmental foundations of democracy. A serious decline in social capital is also a decline in civic engagement that a healthy democracy requires, according to Putnam.

Similarly, in their book Habits of the Heart, a title making its debt to Tocqueville clear, Robert Bellah and colleagues argue that the ideas and practices of individualism in the United States have undergone significant change. In the early years of the American colonies, individualism took the form of what the authors call the biblical and republican traditions. Both embodied the idea that one’s economic self-interest had to be tempered by the concern for the well-being of one’s fellow citizens, and in the case of the biblical tradition, their spiritual salvation as well. Slowly these early practices of individualism have been replaced by utilitarian and expressivist individualism. Utilitarian individualism calculates self-interest solely in terms of the material benefits to oneself. Expressivist individualism sees self-interest in terms of self-realization or the fulfillment of some deep sense of personal satisfaction. Both utilitarianism and expressivism tend to minimize or even reject the idea that one has obligations to something called the common good that go beyond one’s personal preferences.

Criticisms

There are several criticisms of the idea of the public good and its reliance on civic virtue and the sacrifice it requires. One of the earliest, most notable criticisms originated with Benjamin Constant. Echoing thinkers such as Montesquieu, Constant argued that a significant change had taken place with the emergence of modernity. He distinguished the liberty of the ancients from the liberty of the moderns. The former emphasized republican civic virtue and the commitment to participate in the civic and political life of one’s political system in support of the public good. The latter emphasized instead the liberty from excessive government obligations and a respect for the individual liberties of citizens. Constant insisted that the liberty of the ancients had become obsolete. The political and social conditions for it no longer existed. Modern society, with its emphasis on commerce and its growth in size, meant republican politics of common good and civic virtue were no longer the basis for civic and political life. Instead, most people would be involved in commercial activities and leave the business of politics to elected representatives.

A second line of criticism argues that there is no way to identify the public good. It is not something that can be defined, as everyone has dramatically different ideas as to what the public good may be. While there may have been some agreement on the idea in simpler times, in modern, pluralistic societies, any attempt to identify a single notion of the public good, or set of policies in the service of the public good, distinguishable from the personal self-interest of individual citizens is impossible.

Yet a third criticism contends that the idea of the public good and the sacrifices required of civic virtue are not only imaginary, but have also been used for purposes of political manipulation, and to the advantage of some at the expense of others. Too often, political and economic elites can escape the sacrifices required of policies alleged to be in the common good while benefiting from the sacrifices imposed on lower classes. For example, much of medieval political thought argued that the hierarchical features of feudal society were required for the common good. But clearly, political and religious elites enjoyed a disproportionate share of the benefits, wealth, power, and status of that society in comparison with other classes, particularly serfs.A more recent example is found in what has become known as the chickenhawk syndrome. It is not uncommon that political elites and the economically advantaged advocate wars while evading any military obligation themselves. The burden for fighting war is then foisted upon others— either through the compulsory military service, appeals to the economic advantages of military service for the poor, or through manipulated appeals to patriotism in the name of the public good.

Fourth, the notion of the public good can result in forms of moral coercion and even political persecution. Critics argue that phenomena, such as the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution (1789–1799), Western imperialism, McCarthyism in the United States, and the killing fields of Cambodia, trace to extreme notions of the common good. Political elites, convinced of their infallibility in knowing the common good, feel justified in enforcing the most violent forms of sacrifice, including systematic extermination of recalcitrant populations, in the name of the common good.

Debate around the idea of the public or common good continues today. Liberal individualists continue to argue that the notion of the public good separate from the private interests that people have is elusive at best and dangerous at worst. Communitarians like Amitai Etzioni and Michael Sandel would agree that repressive policies implemented under the auspices of the public good are obviously objectionable and reprehensible. Nonetheless, justice and democratic politics requires an element of properly constituted civic engagement and virtue that invokes a politics of the public good even if no single version of it can ever be completely realized. Moreover, they argue that even those liberal thinkers skeptical of the public good tacitly draw upon such notions in their own arguments. Hence, the debate about the nature of the public good is likely to continue as a necessary part of democratic theory and practice.

Bibliography:

Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Terence Irwin. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1985.
Bellah, Robert, Richard Madsen,William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven Tipton. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Berlin, Isaiah. “Two Concepts of Liberty.” In Four Essays on Liberty, edited by Isaiah Berlin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Constant, Benjamin. “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns, 1816.” University of Arkansas. www.uark.edu/depts/comminfo/cambridge/ancients.html.
Etzioni, Amitai. The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society. New York: Basic Books, 1997.
The Republic. 2nd. ed. Translated by Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books, 1968.
Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. On the Social Contract with Geneva Manuscript and Political Economy. Edited by Roger D. Masters. Translated by Judith R. Masters. New York: St. Martin’s, 1978.
Sandel, Michael. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Thomas Aquinas. On Politics and Ethics. Translated and edited by Paul E. Sigmund. New York:W.W. Norton, 1988.

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