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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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