The Common Good “In Question”? Notes on Christian Blum

Abstract

In response to Blum, this commentary highlights the core problem: the notion of a common good is indispensable on the one hand, yet nebulous, pluralistic, and ideologically biased on the other. We do not know the processes, in retrospect, that guarantee the common good as outcome. All we can posit is that the common good is the mitigation of “common bads” and that its beneficiaries are not just societies enshrined in the confines of the nation-state but other social collectives as well.