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Common Good: One Of The Three Tenets Of Modern Civil Society

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The common good is one of the three tenets of modern civil society. It is a duality “between the idea of the collective good and the idea of summed individual goods.” In laymen’s terms, this means that everyone’s view of the common good is not the same. A person’s view of the common good is biased toward what they believe to be good for them. The common good is also said to be the idea of the maximum benefit for the most people. This could potentially become problematic because minority groups could be left out of this concept of the common good. This is where Alexis de Tocqueville’s concept the “tyranny of the majority” comes in. When what is best for the majority of people is what the common good strives to achieve, it doesn’t take into …show more content…

Because of the rise of individual rights in response to a state regulated belief system, the idea of tolerance, or the “way of reconciling radically divergent of human community,” or a way to find a middle ground. Tolerance is the tool with which the common good is carved out of civil society. It is a mediator between individual rights and a commitment to communal goods. Without tolerance the idea of civil society would not have a structure to stand on. Tolerance allows for discussion to occur in a democratic civil society, without this discussion one would never be able to paint a picture of what the common good for all people actually is, one would only be able to tell others what their own common good is. By enabling discussions of individual’s common goods, tolerance creates a structure for people getting together to solve problems in society which manifests in the idea of associations. Tolerance and the common good are both part of the three main tenets of civil society, the other one being individual rights. They work together and build upon one another to hold up our civil society, if any of the three tenets were to suddenly fall apart or not exist, civil society would cease to function. In addition to being interdependent on one another to form civil society, the terms also could not exist without the other. How could one explain the common good without having the ability

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The way the view was presented was very vague which means that the moral of the view can be challenged. Assuming that the view is carried out in vision in which I interpreted it, it does support the common good as the most intelligent should lead the community. It is to be noted that depending on the people leading, corruption may occur and thus make the view non-compatible to the common

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"We, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves. " How does this relate to the stories we have read? We are going to look at "The Lottery", "Texas v. Johnson", and "American flag stands for tolerance". Also we are going to talk about the acceptance characters do or do not show in these stories. In the stories many characters show the acceptance of others and many do not show acceptance.

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In the case of Bill Gates, who is listed in an issue of this year’s Forbes as the richest man in the world, yet spends a decent amount of time attending to charity, we see that the ideals of collectivism can exist within the ideals of independence. Furthermore, in the U.S., our government provides us with social and entitlement programs which benefit many people and are thus beneficial to the common good. Proponents of extreme individualism and capitalism may argue against these programs, but when they or a family member suddenly need these services, it becomes beneficial to them to keep these programs alive. In the public school system, community service is generally encouraged, if not mandatory. This clearly benefits the common good, as it ensures there is a force out there working to fix up or perform services for the community, but many individuals who participated in these programs would contend (perhaps begrudgingly) that these programs benefited them mentally, intellectually, emotionally, physically, or any combination of the

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