El artículo original en español puede leerse aquí.
This classic assertion of the absolute primacy of the Common Good does not imply, in any way, denying the evident fact that men are also inclined to seek their own personal good. But it is always important to remember that, contrary to what personalism maintains, one’s personal good is not one’s highest good. “Personal good,” as Sylvain Luquet summarizes, “is subjectively a good, and the enjoyment one derives from it corresponds only to oneself. Believing that this is the entire calling of each person does little to foster harmony. If the true good of man were singular good, it would be unimaginable for anyone to do any good around them except for personal interest. Helping would be exploiting, and society would be a cloud of egos in conflict.”
According to this view, politics would be nothing more than the technique of reconciling the irreconcilable, in the Kantian way. Law “in the strict sense” would no longer — and could not be — the just thing. Reduced to positive law and identified merely with coercion, the law would aim to prevent the collision of absolute, isolated spheres of freedom in which individuals are encapsulated. Lacking intrinsic criteria, there would be no other way to guarantee the (negative) freedom of individuals than by establishing false criteria conventionally, unconditionally, and coercively: “Reason as much as you want, but obey!” said the man from Königsberg. A cruel sarcasm that the epigones of the Enlightenment still label classical and Catholic Ethics as heteronomous.
In the face of such aporias, and grounded as always in realism, traditional political doctrine does not deny the obvious — the diversity of individual goods — but teaches us that such diversity can and should be harmonized through the subordination of particular goods (of individuals and smaller communities) to the Common Good of the polis. The Common Good, indeed, is the highest good for man and holds absolute primacy. Thus, far from conceiving of the Common Good as a finished reality, it affirms that it is achieved through the architectonic science of politics and the prudence of the ruler and the ruled, overcoming the divergence of singular goods.
For this reason, it is clear that the Common Good should not be confused with “raison d’État” or with “general interest.” It is not something alien and external to man, nor is it just another singular good (that of the state) opposed to other singular goods, powerless before it. The Common Good, as Danilo Castellano always reminds us, is the proper good of every man as man and, therefore, common to all men. It is his greatest and most proper good. It is the very end of the political community and its constituent parts.
However, teachings like these often become incomprehensible today for many, whose minds have been ravaged and shaped by mantras and clichés that are assumed, even in the depths of the soul, as undeniable truths: “Who cares what I do or say”; “My freedom ends where the other’s begins”; “Hakuna Matata, live and let live.” It is evident that contemporary dissociety is deeply penetrated by liberalism and is entirely shaped by individualism. The modern man, and even more so the postmodern man, has been miseducated under pseudo-liberal principles. As a result, he has developed a rabidly individualistic forma mentis.
Although obvious, we must state it explicitly — liberalism is, at its very root, incompatible with the nature of the Common Good. Its most basic premises are directed precisely at rejecting both concepts of the phrase: the existence of an objective good and its essential communicability.
As Juan Fernando Segovia points out, admitting the former would entail accepting “the existence of a moral order correlated with the order of being and dependent on the order of creation.” The denial of this order constitutes one of the pillars of Modernity, which never takes being as its starting point but rather subjective consciousness. For liberalism, there is no possible objective good — except for negative freedom — only a subjective one. It consistently elevates relativism and the (impossible) pluralistic neutrality.
But no less alien to it, as we said, is the notion of the common. Under the influence of nominalism, it can only be conceived as the name given to the aggregate of individual interests. Moreover, the definition of freedom as liberation, as absolute emancipation and independence, implies that the political community is seen as an artifact and a hindrance that must be limited to interfere as little as possible with individual sovereignty. Any non-voluntary institution, not dependent on the will or consent of the associated individuals, would — absurdly but consistently — be considered harmful and contrary to the individual.
Thus, under the hegemony of liberalism (as ideology and mentality), it is no surprise that the very concept of the Common Good is met with rejection, incomprehension, and distortions. Even many Catholics, for decades, have adopted revolutionary words and concepts that are far from, and even antithetical to, the classical and Christian traditional teaching. In many cases, these are flatus vocis, hollow discourses that mishandle the term with the misguided intention of reforming the existing democratic systems without questioning their foundations (rectius, their lack thereof). Concerned with the most aberrant products of liberalism (feticide, euthanasia, transgenderism, sexual perversion, corruption of minors in state and private miseducational institutions), they fail to understand that these are the coherent consequences of their exalted premises. These are effects proportionate to the assumed causes; logical conclusions of an uninterrupted process.
We also find the subordination of the political order to the family order: a typical inversion by a certain clerical conservatism which, perhaps unwittingly, assumes individualism and merely extends its scope, to the grave detriment of the social order and, consequently, of the family itself. Distorting the principle of subsidiarity in a liberal sense and ignoring the principle of totality, it asserts that “politics exists for the family, not the family for politics.”
However, a simple and attentive look at reality reveals that the family does not come before the political community. Family, civil society, and the political community are metaphysically contemporaneous. While the latter — and its government — must respect and encourage the life of the former, it must also assist them, supplement their deficiencies, and above all, coordinate the entire social fabric of inferior (imperfect) communities. These communities are ordered to the Common Good of the polis (perfect community), which holds absolute primacy and merits the subordination and cooperation of the former, as parts that are ordered to the whole.
If the political community does not direct itself toward the Common Good, the family itself is left gravely unprotected. It is its core, its basic cell, but precisely for this reason, it is never at the forefront but in the rear guard. It is the last line of defense and never an attacking line.
Finally, the ultimate expression of this anti-political mentality is the concept of “non-negotiable values,” among which the Common Good is included — as just another value — stripped of its final causality. “Values” have, in the end, only served as an excuse to invite well-meaning Catholics to swell the electoral ranks of Christian-democratic parties, whether “moderate” or “right-wing.” This reinforces the perverse dynamics of parliamentarism and blocks the possibility of rebuilding a truly Catholic politics from solid doctrinal foundations.
Julián Oliaga, Círculo Cultural Alberto Ruiz de Galarreta
Translated by the Gremio San Jerónimo
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