Chi decide e dove si decide del bene comune?

Time and again the notion of ‘common good’ has been criticized as a ‘useless’ or even a ‘stupid’ concept, due to its vagueness as well as the many different perspectives on its content. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, for instance, common good consists of three essential elements: it presupposes respect for the person as such; it requires the social well-being and development of the group itself; it requires peace, that is, the stability and security of a just order. This paper builds on the idea that what is and what becomes common is worth reflecting not only in terms of distribution of resources, responsibilities, limits of individual freedom, but also because it is a kind of litmus paper, which allows us to highlight the model of relations that a society looks at as the premise both for development and justice. Two steps will be considered. First, the concept of commons worked out by some economists, which underlines the reciprocity between freedom and relation and provides an exemplum for the broader scope of political decisions. Second, the challenge of the fundamental rights that every individual is entitled to, which is the starting point to disengage the idea of common good from the misunderstanding of its overlapping with a ‘metaphysics’ of the State. Subsidiarity is the institutional and ‘philosophical’ way to develop common good.

Time and again the notion of 'common good' has been criticized as a 'useless' or even a 'stupid' concept, due to its vagueness as well as the many diferent perspectives on its content. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, for instance, common good consists of three essential elements : it presupposes respect for the person as such ; it requires the social well-being and development of the group itself ; it requires peace, that is, the stability and security of a just order. This paper builds on the idea that what is and what becomes common is worth relecting not only in terms of distribution of resources, responsibilities, limits of individual freedom, but also because it is a kind of litmus paper, which allows us to highlight the model of relations that a society looks at as the premise both for development and justice. Two steps will be considered. First, the concept of commons worked out by some economists, which underlines the reciprocity between freedom and relation and provides an exemplum for the broader scope of political decisions. Second, the challenge of the fundamental rights that every individual is entitled to, which is the starting point to disengage the idea of common good from the misunderstanding of its overlapping with a 'metaphysics' of the State. Subsidiarity is the institutional and 'philosophical' way to develop common good.