Beyond the nations: The expansion of the common good in catholic social thought

Review of Politics

Volumn 63, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 723-754

  Barbieri Jr , William A ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34248079064     PISSN: 00346705     EISSN: 17486858     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0034670500032149     Document Type: Article

References (197)

1. For views of this problem from the standpoints of law and international relations see Lea Brilmayer, Justifying International Acts (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1989);
2. Justin Rosenberg, The Empire of Civil Society (New York: Verso, 1994).
3. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (New York: Verso, 1991), p. 5.
4. Some recent attempts to provide philosophical justifications for limited preferential treatment of one's compatriots are Maurizio Viroli, For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995);
5. Robert Goodin, "What Is So Special about Our Fellow Countrymen?" Ethics 98 (1988): 663-86;
6. Richard W. Miller, "Cosmopolitan Respect and Patriotic Concern," Philosophy and Public Affairs 27 (1998): 202-224
7. See also Martha Nussbaum et al, For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, ed. Joshua Cohen (Boston: Beacon, 1996).
8. The most important treatment is Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic, 1983), pp. 31-63;
9. see also Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University, 1979), pp. 105-15;
10. Peter Brown and Henry Shue, eds., Boundaries (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981);
11. Robert Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven: Yale University, 1989), pp. 119-131
12. In the case of liberal political theory, there is some irony in the manner in which a tradition dominated by the notion of social contract has, from Hobbes to Rawls, so consistently failed to justify, or even to focus on, the boundaries of the polity. Recent work on nationalism has helped focus attention on this issue: see Anderson, Imagined Communities;
13. Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1990);
14. Nationalism, ed. John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (Oxford: Oxford University, 1994). Noteworthy contributions on the ethics of community include Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University, 1990);
15. Joseph Carens, "Migration and Morality: A Liberal Egalitarian Perspective," in Free Movement: Ethical Issues in the Transnational Migration of People and of Money, ed. Brian Barry and Robert E. Goodin (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1992), 25-47;
16. Rainer Baubock, Transnational Citizenship: Membership and Rights in International Migration (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1994);
17. Charles Taylor et al, Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton: Princeton University, 1994);
18. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University, 1995);
19. Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. Seyla Benhabib (Princeton: Princeton University, 1996).
20. Kenneth L. Karst, Belonging to America: Equal Citizenship and the Constitution (New Haven: Yale University, 1989);
21. Judith Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1991;
22. Peter Riesenberg, Citizenship in the Western Tradition: Plato to Rousseau (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1992).
23. The literature on this development is vast. See, e.g., James W. Nickel, Making Sense of Human Rights (Berkeley: University of California, 1987);
24. Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1989);
25. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, ed., Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1992);
26. Paul Gordon Lauren, The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1998).
27. Toward a Global Civil Society, ed. Michael Walzer (Providence: Berghahn, 1995);
28. Reinhart Kdfiler and Henning Melber, Chancen internationaler Zivilgesellschaft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1993).
29. A Global Ethic: The Declaration of the Parliament of the World's Religions, ed. Hans Kiing and Karl-Josef Kuschel (New York: Continuum, 1995);
30. Hans Kiing, Weltethosfur Weltpolitik und Weltwirtschaft (Munich: Piper, 1997).
31. Allgemeine Erklarung der Menschenpflichten, ed. Helmut Schmidt (Munich: Piper, 1997).
32. On the development of the concept from Plato to Nicolas of Cusa see Peter Hibst, Utilitas Publica-Gemeiner Nutz-Gemeinwohl: Untersuchungen zur Idee eines politischen Leitbegriffes von der Antike bis zum spdten Mittelalter (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1991).
33. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, par. 131,158, in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1970), pp. 371, 391-92.
34. Thomas Hill Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, ed. A. C. Bradley (New York: Kraus, 1969;
35. orig. ed. 1883), pp. 229-89;
36. Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, ed. Paul Harris and John Morrow (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1986), esp. pp. 25-26.
37. Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation II, chap. 5, in The Limits of Jurisprudence Defined, ed. Charles Warren Everett, (New York: Columbia University, 1945), pp. 113-118
38. For a Hegelian interpretation see Anselm Min, "Hegel on Capitalism and the Common Good," Philosophy and Social Criticism 11 (1986): 39-61. The Marxian legacy is taken up in Socialism and the Common Good: New Fabian Essays, ed. Preston King (London: Frank Cass, 1996).
39. See,e.g., Whalen Lai, "The Public Good that Does the Public Good: ANew Reading of Mohism," Asian Philosophy 3 (1993): 125-141
40. Witness the heated discussion among Thomists in the 1940s over the primacy of the common good-a debate involving interpretations of Aquinas which point, ultimately, to an unresolved issue in his own conception. See Charles de Koninck, De la primautedu bien commun contre les personnalistes (Quebec: Editions de l'Universite Laval, 1943)
41. and "In Defense of Saint Thomas: A Reply to Father Eschmann's Attack on the Primacy of the Common Good," Laval Theologique et Politique 1 (1945): 1-103;
42. Thomas Eschmann, "In Defense of Jacques Maritain," The Modern Schoolman 22 (1945): 183-208;
43. Yves R. Simon, "On the Common Good," Review of Politics 6 (1944): 530-533;
44. Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good, trans. John J. Fitzgerald (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1966).
45. A helpful overview of the debate is Mary M. Keys, "Personal Dignity and the Common Good: A Twentieth-Century Thomistic Dialogue," in Catholicism, Liberalism, and Communitarianism: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition and the Moral Foundations of Democracy, ed. Kenneth L. Grasso, Gerard V. Bradley, and Robert P. Hunt (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995), pp. 173-195
46. For careful and detailed analyses of Aquinas on the point in question (the priority of personal versus communal goods) see Antoine Pierre Verpaalen, S.C.J., Der Begriffdes Gemeinwohls bei Thomas von Aquin: Ein Beitrag zum Problem des Personalismus (Heidelberg: F. H. Kerle, 1954)
47. and M. S. Kempshall, The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), pp. 76-129.
48. Commentators endorsing this view include Drew Christiansen, "The Common Good and the Politics of Self-interest: A Catholic Contribution to the Practice of Citizenship," in Beyond Individualism: Toward a Retrieval of Moral Disclosure in America, ed. Donald L. Gelpi (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1989), p. 58;
49. Oswald von Nell-Breuning, Soziallehre der Kirche: Erlauterungen der lehramtlichen Dokumente, 3rd, rev. ed. (Vienna: Europaverlag, 1983), p. 24;
50. Michael J. Schuck, That They Be One: The Social Teaching of the Papal Encyclicals 1740-1989 (Washington DC: Georgetown University, 1991), p. 180.
51. Thus, for example, solidarity may be viewed as the subjective dimension involved in the ordering of persons toward the (objective) common good.
52. The relation between these two senses stems from the normativity associated with the telos of the common good. English-language discussions of the term frequently obscure several distinct senses in which we speak of (the) (common) good: an object may, for example, be good, it may bea good, or it may be for someone's good, in each case in several different ways. Although one may speak idiosyncratically of a common good or of common goods, in conventional usage the common good is in its basic sense an abstract, indivisible substantive, comparable to "equality" or "peace." For a discussion contrasting the ideas of common good as goal and as means see Josef Endres, Gemeinwohl heute (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1989), pp. 52-64;
53. on the common good as both task and guideline see Roman Herzog, "Gemeinwohl," inHistorisches Wb'rterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Joachim Ritter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1974), p. 256.
54. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologicae (hereafter ST) 1-2, q. 91, a. l;Sententia Libri Ethicorum 1, 2, n. 11-12;
55. and especially Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo q. 4, a. lc: "The whole multitude of human beings is to be considered as like one community" (cited in John ¥ '\rmis, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory [Oxford: Oxford University, 1998], p. 115 n. 60). Cf. Louis Dupre, "The Common Good and the Open Society," The Review of Politics 55 (1993): 711.
56. Francisco de Vitoria, De Potestate Civili, par. 21. Francisco Suarez, De legibus 3, chap. 2, no. 4;
57. Defensio fidei 6, chap. 4, no.1. For a comparison of Vitoria's "organized" and Suarez' "inorganic" conceptions of the international community see James Brown Scott, The Catholic Conception of International Law (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1934), pp. 74, 181-83, 482-84.
58. Two other prominent proponents of a universal conception of the common good were Leibniz and Wolff: see Albert Heinekamp, Das Problem des Guten bei Leibniz (Bonn: H. Bouvier & Co., 1969), pp. 90-132;
59. Nicholas Greenwood Onuf, "Imagined Republics," Alternatives 19 (1994): 321.
60. Jacques Maritain, The Rights of Man and Natural Law, trans. Doris C. Anson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949), p. 21;
61. cf. Person and the Common Good, p. 55.
62. Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 197. Maritain held, more specifically, that individual nations and the world state, both imperfect in themselves, should be viewed as together constituting a perfect political society (p. 210). His discussion of "the problem of world government" concludes with the fascinating proposal of the formation of a "supranational advisory council" of sages granted a world citizenship and charged with issuing non-binding pronouncements on the burning ethico-political issues of the day (pp. 214-16). Maritain was writing in favor of the proposal for a "Federal Republic of the World" drafted by the University of Chicago's Committee to Frame a World Constitution.
63. See Robert M. Hutchins et al., Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948).
64. Maritain, Man and the State, p. 202.
65. Man and the State , Ibid., pp. 206-209.
66. See also Emmanuel Mounier, Personalism, trans. Philip Mairet (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952), pp. 109-111
67. See Heinrich Pesch, Die soziale Befahigung der Kirche, 3rd ed. (Berlin: Germania, 1911);
68. Eberhard Welty, Gemeinschaft und Einzelmensch: Line Sozialmetaphysische Untersuchung (Salzburg: Anton Pustet, 1935);
69. Gustav Gundlach, Die Ordnung der menschlichen Gesellschaft (Koln: J.P. Bachem, 1964), esp. pp. 158- 61;
70. Georg Wildmann, Personalismus, Solidarismus und Gesellschaft: Der ethische und ontologische Grundcharakter der Gesellschaftslehre der Kirche (Wien: Herder, 1961).
71. Oswald von Nell-Breuning, Gerechtigkeit und Freiheit: Grundzuge katholischer Soziallehre (Miinchen: Europaverlag, 1980), p. 37.
72. See also Oswald von Nell- Breuning, "Gemeinwohl," in Zur christlichen Gesellschaftslehre: Beitrage zu einem Worterbuch der Politik, ed. Nell-Breuning and Hermann Sacher, vol.1 (Freiburg: Herder, 1947), 1: 47-48.
73. Nell-Breuning, Gerechtigkeit und Freiheit, p. 35 (my translation).
74. Johannes Messner, Das Naturrecht: Handbuch der Gesellschaftsethik, Staatsethik und Wirtschaftsethik, 5th rev. ed. (Munich: Tyrolia, 1966), p. 216.
75. Das Naturrecht: Handbuch der Gesellschaftsethik, Staatsethik und Wirtschaftsethik , Ibid., pp. 190,290.
76. Ibid., p. 695.
77. Arthur-Fridolin Utz, Sozialethik, 1. Teil: Die Prinzipien der Gesellschaftslehre (Heidelberg: F. H. Kerle, 1964), p. 136.
78. Utz, Sozialethik, 3. Teil: Die Soziale Ordnung (1986), p. 190.
79. John Courtney Murray, S.J., We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1960). Murray's distinctions continue to animate American Catholic thought, most notably in the work of J. Bryan Hehir;
80. see, for example, his "Catholicism and Democracy: Conflict, Change, and Collaboration," in Christianity and Democracy in Global Context, ed. John Witte, Jr. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993), pp. 15-30.
81. Murray, We Hold These Truths, p. 88.
82. We Hold These Truths , Ibid., p. 287.
83. Ibid., p. 75.
84. The extent to which a "global community" may meaningfully be said to exist is, of course, partly a matter of semantics; beyond this it depends upon a complicated dialectic in which factors of cultural, political, economic, and social convergence stand over against continuing forms of division and difference. For purposes of the common good, however, we may define a community as a body constituted through the sharing of a goal or purpose. In this light, an account of developments that have attended the formation of a global community would have to include, inter alia, the confrontation with various problems such as the prospect of world wars, genocide and nuclear holocaust, and the specter of environmental degradation and overpopulation; the response to the tasks of protecting human rights and promoting development and, in the wake of the cold war, responsible political organizations; and the furthering of the projects of establishing global communication, trade, and cultural exchange. The technological ties, trade relations, international organizations, migration, transportation networks, mass media, sports tourneys and so on are, in this respect, manifestations of a burgeoning moral community of global dimensions.
85. Unless otherwise noted, Church documents cited are in Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage, ed. David J. O'Brien and Thomas A. Shannon (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1995).
86. This goes for the overwhelming number of references in early documents: e.g., Rerum Novarum, 26, 27, 28, 35;
87. Quadragesimo Anno (1931, QA), 49, 58, 84, 85, 86,110. Two references in QA (57,113), however, admit of a more internationalist interpretation. For an argument linking the notion of the international common good to the "Leonine" period of papal teaching stretching between 1878 and 1958, see Schuck, That They Be One, p. 75.
88. MM, 71, 78, 80, cf. 40,174, 202.
89. PT, 100,133,138,140, cf. 7,132,134,135,146.
90. PT, 139.
91. PT, 98,123.
92. PT, 84, 85,137.
93. GS, 26;
94. cf. 84.
95. GS, 78.
96. PP,77.
97. OA, 46.
98. SRS, 36, 38, 45;
99. cf. 35.
100. SRS, 38.
101. SRS, 38.
102. SRS, 26.
103. SRS, 38.
104. SRS, 40.
105. SRS, 39.
106. CA, 43, 51. The model here, which orders work to the needs of, in turn, family, community, nation, and humanity, differs from the earlier formulation in Laborem exercens (1981), 10, which focuses on person, family, and nation.
107. CA, 52, 58. This theme was rehearsed in John Paul II's address to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on 24 April 2001: "Now that commerce and communications are no longer bound by borders, it is the universal common good which demands that control mechanisms should accompany the inherent logic of the market.
108. CA, 51, 58;
109. cf. 60.
110. The Challenge of Peace (1983, hereafter CP), pp. 243,74. The German bishops have followed suit in Gerechter Friede (Bonn: Secretariat of the German Conference of Bishops, 2000), par. 61-62.
111. CP, 240; 237; 326.
112. E/A, 13,97,100,251.
113. EJA, 258.
114. EJA, 116,322 (on solidarity); 238 (on stewardship); 258,324 (invoking all economic actors); 256 (regarding TNCs); 322 (on citizens); 231 (on foodproducers); 363 (regarding the church); 261, 323, 325 (concerning existing international institutions).
115. Fur eine Zukunft in Solidaritat und Gerechtigkeit: Wort des Rates der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland und der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz zur wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Lage in Deutschland (Bonn: Secretariat of the German Conference of Bishops, 1997), par. 117-19, 237-242
116. This presumption characterizes Hegel and Rousseau as much as it does Aristotle.
117. See Michael Walzer, "The Moral Standing of States," in A Philosophy and Public Affairs Reader (Princeton: Princeton University, 1979).
118. An important element of the perspective is its claim that the bonds and fellowship in smaller communities is a precondition for the development of civic virtue. For contemporary defenses of republicanism see Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997);
119. Michael J. Sandel, Liberalismus oder Republikanismus: Von der Notwendigkeit der Burgertugend (Vienna: Passagen, 1995).
120. See also Herfried Miinkler, ed., Biirgerreligion und Burgertugend: Debatten iiber die vorpolitischen Grundlagen politischer Ordnung (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1996).
121. Jiirgen Habermas, a contemporary republican in the tradition of Kant's Perpetual Peace, has written interestingly on how to promote a "domestic politics" encompassing all of Europe and, potentially, the entire international society. Habermas, Die postnationale Constellation: Politische Essays (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1998).
122. For a more critical view of globalization see Peter Sloterdijk, Spharen II: Globen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1999).
123. An argument regarding the incompleteness of states and the consequent openness of the logic of the common good is advanced by John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), pp. 149-156 Finnis goes on, however, to argue, in my view inconclusively, that the common good of the political community is not basic, but rather instrumental, in the sense of being in the service of the only three human goods that count as basic: namely, friendship, marriage, and religion. John Finnis, "Is Natural Law Theory Compatible with Limited Government?" in Natural Law, Liberalism, and Morality: Contemporary Essays, ed. Robert P. George (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), pp. 1-26, esp. 4-9.
124. On animals, see Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, rev. ed. (New York: Avon, 1990);
125. and Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California, 1983).
126. On more universal conceptions of community including the Gaia hypothesis see Larry Rasmussen, Earth Community Earth Ethics (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996);
127. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (San Francisco: Harper, 1992);
128. James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford: Oxford University, 1995).
129. William A. Barbieri, Jr., "The Rights of Animals," The New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol.19 (Washington: Catholic University of America, 1996), pp. 15-16.
130. See Catechism of the Catholic Church (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994); para. 1147;
131. see also William A. Barbieri, Jr., '"Therefore the Land Mourns': Environmental Hazards and Catholic Social Teaching," Chicago Studies 38 (1999
132. On the narrative dimensions of morality Paul Ricoeur's work strikes me as particularly instructive; see Time and Narrative vol. 1, chaps. 2-3, and vol. 3, chap. 8 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1988);
133. "Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator," in A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, ed. Maril J. Valdes (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1991), pp. 425-40;
134. Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blarney (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1992).
135. For a particularly insightful interpretation of the common good in light of Bernard Meland's hermeneutical notion of the "structure of experience," see Douglas Sturm, "On Meanings of Public Good: An Exploration," The Journal of Religion 58 (1978): 13-29.
136. The implications of the teleological character of practical reason for the common good is explored by Charles Sherover, "The Temporality of the Common Good: Futurity and Freedom," The Review of Metaphysics 38 (1984): 475-497
137. On the role of myths and stories in constructing a relatively universal narrative specifying the requirements for human well-being in general see Martha Nussbaum, "Aristotelian Social Democracy," in Liberalism and the Good, ed. R. Bruce Douglass, Gerald M. Mara, and Henry S. Richardson (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 203-252
138. This perspective bears some similarities to Dewey's account of "the consequences which call a public into being" (John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems [Athens, Ohio: Ohio University, 1991;
139. orig. ed. 1927], pp. 26-27). Unlike the Aristotelian tradition, however, which roots the common good in friendship, Dewey contrasts these two forms of relation.
140. A classic point of reference here is Aquinas's distinction between earthly and heavenly goods: ST 1-2, q. 91, a. 5. For a cogent exposition of the analogical character of the common good which does not, however, directly address questions of scope, see David Hollenbach, "The Common Good Revisited," Theological Studies 50 (1989): 70-94, esp. 85.
141. On this point within the context of states see Charles E. Curran, "The Common Good and Official Catholic Social Teaching," in The Common Good and U.S. Capitalism, ed. Oliver F. Williams and John W. Houck (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), p. 121.
142. Nell-Breuning points out this ambiguity, for example, in connection with PT, 84-85 (Nell-Breuning, Soziallehre der Kirche, p. 109).
143. Aristotle Politics 1252a 1-5,1253a 18-20;
144. Aquinas, ST1-2, q. 90, a. 2.
145. Michael J. Schuck has counseled a healthy skepticism regarding the viability of any notion of the common good in light of the ever-increasing diversity of today's societies ("Response to David Hollenbach's 'The Common Good in a Postmodern Epoch: What Role for Theology?'" in Religion, Ethics, and the Common Good, ed. James Donahue and M. Theresa Moser, R.S.C.J. [Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third Publications, 1996], pp. 23-26). Interestingly, what social groups exist is itself a question of the common good, for groups-even those conventionally thought of as "natural" such as ethnic groups or the family-are themselves to some extent the products of purposive political action and to this degree must answer to common good criteria
146. On the family, see Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic, 1989)
147. Of course, virtually all social groups are to some extent political, in the sense that they are implicated in the uses of power that shape the lives of humans and impact on their chances to flourish. The designation of the state as a "perfect community" relies, however, on the distinctive character of government as the agent par excellence of the structuring of communal life.
148. ST1-2, q. 90, a. 2 c; a. 3, ad 3.
149. Finnis, Aquinas, pp. 114-15;
150. Maritain, Person and the Common Good, p. 54.
151. On this point, Michael Novak is correct to urge a more complex conception of the common good. Michael Novak, The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Free Press, 1993), pp. 83-84.
152. The classic formulation of this principle in papal teaching is QA, 79. For a useful exposition in terms of political and legal theory see Otfried Hoffe, Vernunft und Recht: Bausteine zu einem interkulturellen Rechtsdiskurs (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1996), pp. 220-239
153. Cf. PT, 140;
154. GS, 86. For an argument from an ecumenical perspective, see John Cobb's case for a conception of the global common good that attempts to tame the dynamisms of globalization by insisting on the maintenance of "communities of communities (of communities)" integrated by a principle of subsidiarity. John B. Cobb, Jr., Sustaining the Common Good: A Christian Perspective on the Global Economy (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1994).
155. See David Hollenbach, Claims in Conflict: Retrieving and Renewing the Catholic Human Rights Tradition (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), p. 142, on the tendency of Catholic thought to minimize conflict in its conception of society.
156. Valentin Zsifkovits, "Gemeinwohl/' inKatholisches Soziallexikon, ed. Alfred Klose et al. (Wien: Tyrolia, 1980), p. 855;
157. cf. Nell-Breuning, "Gemeinwohl," p. 48.
158. By the same token, considerations of the spiritual common good may in some cases be subordinated to particularly intense requirements of the global common good. On limitations of quality and quantity applying to the priority of the common good, see Rudolf Weiler, "Gemeinwohl," in Neues Lexikon der christlichen Moral (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1990), pp. 237-242 OnAquinas's view in regard to sacrificing personal goods for the sake of the common good, see Verpaalen, "Begriff des Gemeinwohls" p. 70.
159. See, e.g., Curran, "Common Good," p. 117;
160. A. Nemetz, "Common Good," New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol.4 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1967): 15-19. Michael Novak echoes this characterization, but sees it as applying only to the material, as opposed to the formal common good- a view based, to my mind, on a misinterpretation of Maritain's account. Novak, Catholic Ethic, p. 84;
161. cf. Thomas R. Rourke, A Conscience as Large as the World: Yves R. Simon versus the Catholic Neoconservatives (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), pp. 78-81.
162. On the evolving role of natural law in Catholic teaching see, e.g., Bernhard Fraling, Natur im ethischen Argument (Freiburg: Herder, 1990);
163. Ursula Nothelle- Wildfeuer," Vom Naturrecht zum Evangelium? Ein Beitrag zur neueren Diskussion um die Erkenntnistheorie der katholischen Soziallehre im Ausgang von Johannes Paul II," in Perspektiven christlicher Sozialethik: Hundert Jahre nach Rerum novarum, ed. Franz Furger and Marianne Heimbach-Steins (Munster: Regensberg, 1991), pp. 55-76;
164. Klaus Demmer, "Naturrecht und Offenbarung," inBrennpunkt Sozialethik: Theorien, Aufgaben, Methoden: Fur Franz Furger, ed. Marianne Heimbach-Steins, Andreas Lienkamp, and Joachim Wiemeyer (Freiburg: Herder, 1995), pp. 29-44.
165. So, for example, while peace may be established as a general imperative with great certitude, for progressively more specific issues-e.g., the broad legitimacy of the use of violence in pursuit of peace, criteria for humanitarian intervention on behalf of the common good, whether a specific situation warrants armed resistance-ethical judgments become increasingly contingent and uncertain. The tendency in recent pastoral teachings to affirm both just war and pacifist approaches is another sign of the emerging acknowledgement of moral pluralism in Catholic social thought.
166. Dennis McCann makes a similar suggestion, but argues that the common good should be conceived purely in proceduralist terms, along the lines proposed in Jiirgen Habermas' social theory. This seems to me to render the term unduly thin. See Dennis P. McCann, "The Good to be Pursued in Common," in The Common Good and U.S. Capitalism, pp. 158-178 Two powerful attempts by German scholars to synthesize Christian social theory and the discourse ethics of Apel and Habermas are Christian Kissling, Gemeinwohl und Gerechtigkeit: Ein Vergleich von traditioneller Naturrechtsethik und kritischer Gesellschaftstheorie (Freiburg: Herder, 1993);
167. and Hans-Joachim Hohn, Vernunft-Glaube-Politik: Reflexionsstufen einer christlichen Sozialethik (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1990). A noteworthy effort at articulating a conception of solidarity ("Gemeinwohlorientierung") rooted in discourse ethics is Lutz Wingert, Gemeinsinn und Moral: Grundziige einer intersubjektivistischen Moralkonzeption (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1993). On the pluralistic implications of a discursive practice of the common good see Gary J. Dorrien, Reconstructing the Common Good: Theology and the Social Order (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990);
168. Christopher F. Mooney, S.J., Boundaries Dimly Perceived: Law, Religion, Education, and the Common Good (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1990).
169. An intriguing transcendental phenomenological account of sociality and the common good is James G. Hart, The Person and the Common Life: Studies in a Husserlian Social Ethics (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992).
170. For arguments as to why liberal individualist anthropologies cannot ground an authentic discourse of the common good, see Ulrich Matz, "Aporien individualistischer Gemeinwohlkonzepte," in Selbstinteresse und Gemeinwohl: Beitrage zur Ordnung der Wirtschaftsgesellschaft, ed. Anton Rauscher (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1985), pp. 321-57;
171. Alasdair Maclntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1988), pp. 326-348 An excellent discussion of American debates is Brian Stiltner, Religion and the Common Good: Catholic Contributions to Building Community in a Liberal Society (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999);
172. cf. David Hollenbach, "A Communitarian Reconstruction of Human Rights: Contributions from Catholic Tradition," in Catholicism and Liberalism: Contributions to American Public Philosophy, ed. R. Bruce Douglass and David Hollenbach (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1994), pp. 127-150
173. In his illuminating study of the contemporary theory of the common good, Patrick Riordan shows how the language of the common good embodies a distinctive model of rationality. Patrick Riordan, S.]., A Politics of the Common Good (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 1996), pp. 28-42.
174. On the difference between individual and social models of action see Axel Honneth and Hans Joas, Social Action and Human Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1988);
175. Margaret Gilbert, On Social Facts (Princeton: Princeton University, 1992);
176. Nick Crossley, Intersubjectivity: The Fabric of Social Becoming (London: Sage, 1996);
177. Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987).
178. Hollenbach, Claims in Conflict, pp. 152-155
179. For a defense of the centrality of social justice in questions of the global common good, see Rafael Caldera, "The Universal Common Good and International Social Justice," Review of Politics 38 (1976): 27-39.
180. Cf. Walter Kerber, S.J., "Ordnungspolitik, Gemeinwohl und katholische Gesellschaftslehre: Der sozialen Marktwirtschaft zum Gedachtnis," Jahrbuch fur christliche Sozialwissenschaften 31 (1990): 11-33.
181. What I term "other-centeredness" here may be interpreted in a variety of ways. Abiocentric account is that of Rasmussen, Earth Community Earth Ethics. An influential theocentric proposal is James M. Gustafson, Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1981, 1984), esp. vol.2, pp. 18-19.
182. More broadly, John Hick elaborates on a notion of "Reality"- centeredness spanning the world's religions; see John Hick, God Has Many Names (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986).
183. Vaclav Havel, meanwhile, places "Being" at the center of ethical responsibility; see Vaclav Havel, Gewissen und Politik: Reden und Ansprachen 1984- 1990, ed. Otfrid Pustejovsky and Franz Olbert (Munich: Institutum Bohemicum, 1990);
184. cf. David Hollenbach, S.J., "Tradition, History and Truth in Theological Ethics," in Christian Ethics: Problems and Prospects, ed. Lisa Sowle Cahill and James F. Childress (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 1996), pp. 60-75.
185. Cf. B. J. Diggs, "The Common Good as Reason for Political Action," Ethics 83 (1973): 292.
186. I follow here William O'Neill's suggestion, in his rich essay "Babel's Children: Reconstructing the Common Good," that human rights "are best viewed rhetorically, that is, as limning the possibility of rationally persuasive argument across our varied narrative traditions" (The Annual of the Society for Christian Ethics 18 [1998]: 164).
187. On the notion that certain human rights are basic see Hollenbach, Claims in Conflict; Christiansen, "Common Good," p. 75;
188. Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Polio/ (Princeton: Princeton University, 1980);
189. David Little, "The Nature and Basis of Human Rights," in Prospects for a Common Morality, ed. Gene Outka and John P. Reeder Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University, 1993), pp. 73-92.
190. On the need to grant greater recognition to groups in rights discourse see Ronald Garet, "Communality and Existence: The Rights of Groups," Southern California Law Review 54 (1983) 1001-1075;
191. William F. Felice, Taking Suffering Seriously: The Importance of Collective Human Rights (Albany: State University of New York, 1996).
192. See, for example, the contributions in The Quality of Life, ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993). On the philosophical side, virtue theory is a particularly valuable resource in this endeavor insofar as it is concerned with the social foundations of virtue;
193. for an overview see Lee Yearley, "Recent Work on Virtue," Religious Studies Review 16 (1990): 1-9. Also, to the extent that egalitarianism plays a role in this research program, Michael Walzer's conception of complex equality remains a still largely untapped source of insight.
194. See Walzer, Spheres of Justice, esp. pp. 17-20.
195. See Kenneth R. Himes, O. F. M., "Notes on Moral Theology: The Morality of Humanitarian Intervention," Theological Studies 55 (1993): 82-105;
196. Brian M. Kane, Just War and the Common Good: Jus ad Bellum Principles in Twentieth Century Papal Thought (San Francisco: Catholic Scholars Press, 1997), pp. 133-164 The recent conference on world peace in The Hague marks another milestone in the growth of a global discourse on the common good.
197. This is the presumption of Michael Walzer and his collaborators in Toward a Global Civil Society. See also Karl-Otto Apel, "Discourse Ethics as a Response to the Novel Challenges of Today's Reality to Coresponsibility," Journal of Religion 74 (1993): 496-513.