Flying Solo and the Natural Law: The Common Good as Part of the Moral Order

AN OVEREMPHASIS ON INDIVIDUALISM will usually land one outside the philosophy of natural law and even outside human law properly so called. That is one reason why the natural law philosophy is largely out of favor. Individualism may be defined in a variety of ways, but ultimately, individualism looks at the common good as something merely utilitarian or useful. That is, the common good, is "a mere means to the good of individuals," and outside of this has no independent justification. Simon, 97. The common good does lead to the private good of men, but it is a misinterpretation of its importance to view it as a means, and not an end in itself. By subordinating the common good to the individual good, that is by making it the desire of private good and private action, one misinterprets it, and in fact destroys the notion altogether. There must be a common desire and a common action behind a good, and not a multiple of private desires and common actions, if a good it to be called authentically common. Adam Smith's "invisible hand" which supposedly guides individual choice and individual demand and individual supply and leads to the common good is farcical of the common good. By definition, selfishness, even if it may accidentally or even frequently also benefit the commonwealth, is not conducive to common good, at least one strictly so called.

But more is required that mere common desire and common action for there to be a common good. In addition to common desire and common action, this good, to be common, also requires a distribution to individuals; the common good must not be kept apart from or segregated from the individuals that make up the community. So Simon concludes:

A thing which has the appearance of a common good, inasmuch as it cannot be realized without common desire and common action, is not a common good and may amount to sheer destruction if it is kept apart from the persons who make up the community. . . . The accomplishments of common desire and effort if left undistributed are actually kept out of society and denied the character of common good.

Simon, 98. Three things, then, in Simon's view must exist for a common good to be a common good in theory and fact: (i) a common desire, (ii) a common action, and (iii) a distribution, in some fashion, among the individuals who make up the commonality.

Simon draws from a stray comment of the Communist Manifesto to make a point (though not by any means advocating any of its principles!). "The bourgeoisie," Marx and Engles state, "has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals." Both the Roman aqueducts and the Gothic cathedrals can be considered common goods, so long as they are not withdrawn from access by the public. All men may drink the water the aqueduct guides into the city, just like all men can drink the living waters by attending the cathedral. The pyramids, on the other hand, are not common goods. There was no equivalent distribution among the people of the sizable human labor that was expended on these monuments for the glory of the Pharaoh. "The Pyramids of Egypt are a rather clear example of an undistributed and undistributable common achievement." Such things still occur, they are often the result of "pork barrel" spending, as when "a road is built, at great public expense, for the service of a very few people." Simon, 99. This reminds one of the famous "Bridge to Nowhere," a 365 million project to link the town of Ketchikan (population 8,900) and the island of Gravina (population 50) in Alaska.

Given that there has to be some appropriate distribution of a common good among the population to retain its characteristic of a common good, Simon asks whether the common good becomes utilitarian relative to the good of the individual that participates in it. In other words, does it become a mere means? No, says Simon:

[T]he law of distribution which is that of the common good in no way prevents the common good from enjoying the character of an end, and of an end higher than the private good, and of the final end if the community under consideration has the character of a complete community.

Simon, 100-01. (That's why Aristotle referred to the common good (which he calls the "good of the polis") as "greater and more divine," κάλλιον δὲ καὶ θειότερον, than securing private good. Arist., Nic. Eth., 1094b8. This preeminence of the common good is derived from its "completeness" and "duration," qualities that we discussed in our previous blog posting.

Not only does the common good take precedence over the private good because of its relative duration and completeness, there is also a sense of hierarchy or ordering in the types of goods (and evils). Drawing upon the thought of Pascal in his Pensées, [frag. 792], Simon makes this point. In this fragment, Pascal expresses an important truth. While within certain orders goods may be incommensurable, across certain orders they may not. Some goods are of more fundamental value the others. There is a difference of kind between some goods and others, or some evils and others. Not all matters are differences in degree.

Pascal expresses, with his unique power of words, the great metaphysical and ethical truth that all good of a lower order falls sort of any good of a higher order.

Simon, 102.


This is a truth utterly forgotten by moderns, who are loathe to make judgment calls, as if all value is a matter of taste. For modern ears, the sentiments of St. Thomas or of Cardinal Newman are incomprehensible

The good of grace in a single soul is greater than the good of nature in the whole universe.

The Church . . . holds that it were better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one willful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse . . . she considers the action of this world and the action of the soul simply incommensurate, viewed in their respective spheres; she would rather save the soul of one single wild bandit of Calabria, or whining beggar of Palermo, than draw a hundred lines of railroad through the length of Italy, or carry out a sanitary reform in its fullest details in every city of Sicily, except so far as these great national works tended to some spiritual good beyond them.

S. T. Ia-IIae, q. 113, 9 ad 2; John Henry Cardinal Newman, Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching (London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1891), Vol. I, 240.

Here is a traditional truth entirely lost, one shared by St. Thomas, Cardinal Newman, Pascal, and anyone that gives a moment thought to eternal verities: "[A]ny good of the higher order is greater than the totality of the good that the lower order admits of." Simon, 102. (It should be noted that this notion is entirely lost by the advocates of the "New Natural Law Theory such as Finnis, Grisez, and George, who hold all human goods to incommensurable and do not admit of this sort of hierarchy of goods.) The physical order is subordinate to the rational order, and the rational order is subordinate to the natural moral order, and the natural moral order is subordinate (though never contradictory) to the order of grace. So, for example, one should never intentionally kill an innocent human being even to save one's physical life, or to gain riches, or to acquire knowledge, because this would be to commit a moral evil to so as to gain advantage in the physical or rational orders, violating this hierarchy that prevents such confusing of orders.

Simon then asks the question of what order--physical or moral--the common good may be placed. When one hears the Ciceronian saying: salus populi suprema lex esto, the health of the people is the supreme law, which is nothing other than the principle that the common good of a people is the centerpiece of law, is this suprema lex a law of the physical or moral order? It is, Simon insists, a principle of moral order, and so supreme, but not absolutely. That the common good should be at the center of law, should be its end, is a supreme principle:

Supreme, indeed, not absolutely speaking for the order of charity [which I've characterized as the order of Grace, L.C.], in the words of Pascal, is above all the perfections of nature; but supreme in an order that it would be most inappropriate to designate as physical, material, or external. The common good of the civil society . . . [is in the] order of moral perfection, which remains essentially naturally and never should be confused with the order of charity (in the strictly theological sense which is that of Pascal) . . . . Of this common good it should not be said that it is the ultimate end absolutely speaking, for it is an ultimate within an order which is not itself ultimate.

Simon, 105. Simon then concludes:

[T]he common good indeed enjoys primacy over the private good of the individual, when both are of the same order, but that at the same time the common good is internal to man and by its very nature requires continuous distribution among the members of society. As such it is the end of the laws of the state. . . . If the purse of law is common, the cause also must be common. Thus the law is a rule of reason, relative to the common good which, on account of its relation to the common good, proceeds from the community. . . . [t]he making of law belongs either to the community as a whole or to someone who is in charge of the community. . . . [and] has to be promulgated, it has to be conveyed to the knowledge of those who are subject to the law.

Simon, 107-08, 109.

When one gathers together all the thoughts of Simon on human law, the analogate of law with which we are most familiar, he proposes, in fact, the definition of law of St. Thomas Aquinas:

Law is an ordinance of reason for the common good, promulgated by him who has the care of the community.

[Lex] est aliud quam quaedam rationis ordinatio ad bonum commune, ab eo qui curam communitatis habet, promulgata.

Simon, 109; Ia-IIae q. 90 a. 4 co.

Using his understanding of human law as the analogate, Simon now turns to what it may tell us of the natural law, the natural moral law.

The Common Good and Its Counterfeits

THERE ARE RULES, AND THEN THERE ARE LAWS. Laws are rules, but not all rules are laws. What is it that distinguishes rules or ordinances from law in the strict sense? The distinguishing feature between laws and all other systems of order is that law "stands for a rule relative to the common good, and more precisely, to the common good of a community distinguished by [a relative] amplitude and completeness." Simon, 87. The laws' direct relation to the common good raises in tandem the question of whether the common good has a relative primacy over private good, and thereby have a superior claim to our loyalty over our private interests. This takes us directly into the question of the relationship between the individual and the community. In this post we will review Yves Simon's comments regarding the common good. In the next we will address Simon's comments regarding individualism.

The modern Western world idolizes individualism, and shuns any form of collectivism, and with such bias becomes tone deaf to the calls for the common good, to solidarity among people. Modernly, there is, without doubt, a bias against the common good to which we must become sensitive if we are to regain balance. The prevailing individualism expresses itself in the language of right at the expenses of the language of law; whereas a collectivist view will express itself in the language of law at the expense of the language of right. To walk between excessive individualism and excessive collectivism and speak in terms of the "common good" where both individual and collective good are balanced is to walk a tightrope. (The disease has infected even Evangelical Christianity which talks much of a personal, individual relationship with Christ, but seems to have completely overlooked the equally important obligation of membership in the Church and incorporation into the Body of Christ. Private prayer and private penance is given precedence over public liturgy and public confession.)

For all the value placed on the individual, it is apparent that the community has certain qualities that make it transcend the individual in the natural order. Simon places the preeminence of the community to the individual in the qualities of "duration" and "completeness" that the common good has over the private good. These qualities of the community are what justifies law, which aims to the common good, and not private good.

The common good is of greater duration than individual good. It is true that human communities do not live eternally; only individual human souls do. Knowledge of the individual soul's immortality is something that is vouchsafed by reason and by revelation. (The Church, being of divine institution and not of natural institution is excluded from this analysis, as the Church , in distinction from the State, transcends time and lives in eternity in the Church Triumphant. But there is no "Tribe Triumphant" or "State Triumphant" or "Nation Triumphant" in the Eschaton.) Though only the individual soul is immortal, the individual soul's immortality does not impeach the importance of the community in the natural order which persists beyond the individual deaths of men, irrespective of the eternal life of their souls. Simon refers to the requirements of the duration of the temporal order over and against the individual as the "problems of duration."

In this life, contemplation, joy, and the happier forms of love raise men above the world of becoming and destruction. But these true images of eternity are accessible here below, only by rare privilege, and their supratemporal way of existing is quickly suspended by the needs of a life which never ceases to be engaged in the stream of universal becoming.

Simon, 88. Wealth, education, language, science, culture, tradition. These are natural goods that must be taken up and passed down, or they would be lost by the death of the individual if not resident in the community, and these therefore have a life beyond the individual. They reside, as it were, in the community, and an individual shares in them but in passing. These endure in community, but not in the individual. Macbeth well-expresses man's short, seeming limited contribution in the natural order, albeit with the pessimism of a pagan:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Shakespeare, Macbeth, V.5.19-28.

The human species is expressed but briefly in an individual life, individual life is an ephemeral spark. Yet within the chain of individual lives one finds in the expanse of generations that occurs in the life a community, a nation (though nations come and go) and, more broadly, a human people (such as the Jews, though they come and go, e.g., the Cro-Magnons) or, more broadly yet, the human species, that human life persists virtually immortal. No individual man has the staying power, the duration of a family or tribe, much less of a nation, a people, or the species. "The duration is a trait by which the primacy of the common over the private good is clearly established." Simon, 89.

There is, however, something more than "duration" that accords a dignity to the common, rather than the individual, life. "[M]ore profoundly, it is a completeness which determines the greater excellence of the common good." Simon, 89. What does Simon mean by "completeness"? The fact is that individuals are limited. This is what drives the need for the division of labor and the specialization that comes with it. The specialization is required even for the necessaries of life: safety from aggression, shelter, food, and so forth. But the specialization is required a fortiori for the more noble pursuits: the sciences or the arts, or even moral wisdom. There is, therefore, an intrinsic need to contribute to the common life, to sociability. "This need is so deeply rooted in our rational nature," notes Simon, "that when it is frustrated it soon breeds a singular power of destruction." Simon, 90. Refuse a man a wife and friends; put him in solitary confinement, or worse, educate him in moral solipsism, and you will see what Simon means.

There are common goods. Yet there are also their counterfeits. Utilitarianism ("greatest good for the greatest number") suggests a recipe for the common good, but it is a counterfeit, since at the heart of its premises is still the individual good, which it merely sums up. Utilitarianism is a calculus of added individual good, and so it is qualitatively different from a true understanding of the common good. The difference between a utilitarian view versus a solidaritarian view is the difference between a bunch of people watching the same pornographic film in solitary porno booths versus men watching a football game in a stadium in common. The former really involves nothing that could be characterized as a common good. Add up the multiple individual mastubatory orgasms and you do not derive one iota of common good.

To bring forth the qualitative difference between the common good and the private good, let us remark that a good is common if, and only if, it is of such nature as to call for common pursuit and common enjoyment. It is not an addition, or a multiplication, but an objective relation of the thing desirable to the powers of desire and attainment which distinguishes the common good from the private good.

Simon, 90. Such goods as public peace and safety, the moral order, educational institutions are common goods.

It may be difficult to say in what respects man is, and in what respects he is not, a part of the community. What is not open to doubt is that insofar as the individual has the character of a part, the principle of the primacy of the whole signifies not only that the common good is greater, but also that the private good may have to be sacrificed to the greater good of the community.

Simon, 91. This is what justifies occupations such as the police, or firemen, or the military, who are expected to, and are honored for, sacrificing their lives for the good of the community if called upon to do so. They are heroes to the common good.

There are, however, counterfeits to the common good. As previously mentioned, utilitarianism is one such counterfeit. Another counterfeit is what Simon calls "the myth of a common good external to man," a myth which lends itself to "the temptation . . . to conceive a human community after the pattern of a work of art and the excellent condition of the human community after the pattern of perfection supplied by a masterwork." Simon, 92. This is the haunt of social engineers, of liberals, of socialists, of communists, of collectivists. Tied to this is a tendency to absolutize, even divinize the State.

Apotheosis of Washington, Winterhur Museum

Apotheosis of the Spanish Monarchy by Tiepolo (Fresco at Royal Palace, Madrid)

Politics is not an art; art can be morally vicious, let us say lewd, yet aesthetically or technically perfect. Politics ought not to be thought to be the same way as art. Politics, if morally vicious, is by no means good. Politics is, in its foundation, a virtue which incorporates moral right and the exercise of prudence, and so it defines itself by whether it is morally good. When the common good is treated as a thing of art alone without reference to external moral standard, technical political prowess, not political virtue distinguishes the public man. Politics becomes instrumental, not prudential. Statecraft becomes not soulcraft, but the art of manipulation, of propaganda, of show, of celebrity. It is what gives us Trumans and Clintons and Obamas instead of Washingtons. More sanguinely, it is what gave us Napoleons or Hitlers or Maos, instead of Charlemagnes or St. Louises or Charles Vs. This is because "no art solves any problem of human use," Simon, 94, and so if politics is considered an art, substantive standards are waylaid. The image Simon uses leads one to think of a Dr. Hannibal Lecter:

A clever physician known to be possessed of criminal dispositions is the least desirable person at the bedside of a patient, especially if the patient happens to be an obstacle to the physician's design.

Simon, 94. So likewise, the reign of politics ought not to be given to a man or woman that is morally unfit, even if he may be politically savvy.

The tendency to view governing or politics as an art and not a virtue is exacerbated by the overly secular and materialistic good we have of social good.

The myth which identifies the common good with the perfection of a work of art and thus represents it as something nonhuman is constantly strengthened by the assumption that society, or at least the temporal, as distinct from the spiritual society, is concerned only with external actions, such as digging, orderly conduct in the street, marching, charging and retreating according to orders, paying taxes, fulfilling contracts, etc. Political society, in this view, would have nothing to do with what goes on in the heart of men.

Simon, 95. The common good thus encompasses the whole of man under God. It is something manifestly separate from the State. The State is its servant, not its master.