The common good, understood as the sum total of conditions that are needed for human flourishing, is an important concept in Catholic social thought. The common good is foundational to the moral theology and ethics found in the various magisterial documents of the Catholic church, grounding other ideas such as the belief in the universal destination of goods, among others.
Some might instinctively think that the concept of the common good would find affinity in more community-oriented or relational cultures as compared to more individualistic cultures. An example of a more community-oriented or relational culture is that of the Philippines—on the one hand, Filipino culture prides itself to be one that cares for others and is communitarian. The concept of bayanihan, a Filipino value that describes a sense of community and cooperation in Filipino communities, is often lauded as core to the way of life in the country, hailing from pre-colonial times when the village or bayan would assist someone moving their house by literally helping lift the entire house from one point to another. Such bayanihan is often used to described as the resilience and care for others seen during times of calamities, where communities come together to donate and distributed needed resources to those especially affected by typhoons, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions that happen periodically across the country.[1] On the surface, the common good seems to be alive and well in the culture.
However, when one goes deeper, one sees that the common good does not run as deep, even in a supposedly community-oriented and relational culture. The current reality of Philippine politics, for example seems to point to a lack of community and the common good. Anthropologist Neil Mulders lamented that in the Philippines, the private sphere and the public sphere were two separate spheres: the private sphere was reserved for family and friends, where there was a sense of a common good from the reciprocity of care, favors, and support, while the public sphere is the space to extract as much resources as possible to bring to the private sphere, by any means.[2] Thus the public sphere becomes a tragedy of the commons: the government and environment is plundered by several wealthy families.
This experience of the “common good” in the Philippines raises the question: how do we cultivate a more robust understanding of the common good in a country like the Philippines, where the private is very distinct from the public, in that care and flourishing limited to only the people one knows?
Recognition, Vulnerability, and Virtues
James Keenan’s new work on vulnerability is an important and helpful contribution to this question, in how it fleshes out the importance of recognition and vulnerability as an important first step in moral theology and ethics. Before one acts, one needs to be vulnerably disposed and recognize others.[3] Vulnerability here is not about the possibility of being harmed or hurt, but rather a call to responsiveness and a call to be answerable and accountable—“the work of [one’s] conscience only began after [one]s vulnerable disposition recognized the man” leading to the question of what to do.[4] Tapping this vulnerability and acknowledging our ontological connectedness and answerability is foundational to recognizing others beyond our friends and family—to move from “recognizing someone as familiar to giving recognition to one to whom it is due.”[5]
Recognizing others beyond the immediate is a challenge, given that the relationships we have with people we do know such as to ourselves and our families and friends are important, and the tendency of human beings is to focus on the tangible, immediate, and felt, rather than the more indirect relationships we may have whose effects are not as felt nor as immediate. Thus, a second point to be made is also how one strikes the balance between the relationships one holds dear with immediate family and friends, and the relationships to others who one may not know or even really care for.
Once again, this piece turns to Keenan’s thoughts, this time on virtues, to discuss this tension raised above. While the usual virtues of courage, prudence, justice, and temperance are important, Keenan also notes that the cardinal virtues are meant to “perform a heuristic function to answer broadly the three questions”: who am I? who ought I to become? And how can I get there?[6] Keenan also notes the inadequacy of the traditional virtues, given that they sometimes compete with each other, and may not adequately consider or respond to the specific contexts that contemporary moral problems have when these virtues do compete. Thus, Keenan proposes a new list of cardinal virtues: alongside justice, Keenan proposes prudence, fidelity, and self-care, as human beings are relational in three ways: generally, specifically, and uniquely.[7] Justice asks us to treat people equally, while fidelity challenges us to sustain our special and specific relationships, treating with special care those who are close to us.[8] Cultivating these virtues can help people reflect on and navigate the various competing claims people have on us, over the short and long term.
To end, a deeper understanding of the common good in a supposedly community-oriented and relational community, entails recognition and vulnerability of those beyond one’s social circles, and cultivating particular virtues that can help us navigate the tensions when the needs and concerns of various people compete, balancing the needs and concerns the self, one’s friends and families, and those beyond one’s direct social circles. Rather than seeing the public sphere as simply the space to get what we can for the private sphere of one’s friends and family, a deeper understanding of the common good rejects the binary between the two, and emphasizes the connection of the private and public as part of one’s context. This invites people to go beyond the immediate and direct, and to recognize the relationships among people whom we now necessarily know or care about, which can be difficult, yet very much needed, in today’s context of a polarized world trying to work towards a common good.
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[1] Teresita Barrameda and Arlen Sandino Barrameda, “Rebuilding Communities and Lives: The Role of Damayan and Bayanihan in Disaster Resiliency,” Philippine Journal of Social Development 3 (2011): 132–51.
[2] Jorge Mojarro, “The ‘Reprivate’ of the Philippines: Or Why Metro Manila Continues to Deteriorate,” InterAksyon.com, November 24, 2014, http://www.interaksyon.com/article/99809/the-reprivate-of-the-philippines–or-why-metro-manila-continues-to-deteriorate.
[3] James F. Keenan, The Moral Life: Eight Lectures (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2024), 22.
[4] Keenan, 22.
[5] Keenan, 41.
[6] James Keenan, “Proposing Cardinal Virtues,” Theological Studies 56, no. 4 (1995): 714.
[7] Keenan, 723.
[8] Keenan, 724–25.