The Concept of Social Principle in the Context of the Common good in the Approach of the Representatives of the Lublin School

Abstract

One of the most important developmental features of the social teaching of the Church is the transition from the stress being laid on model solutions of the social issues to social principles. The representatives of the Lublin School of Catholic social doctrine grant social principles an ontological, moral and legal character. The philosophical bases of those principles they find in the social nature of man and in the personalistic conception of society. On the non-temporal level, almost ideal, we encounter, according to them, universally binding and absolute principles of social life. In the applied order, however, there are particular instructions. Such being the case, it is necessary to use the so-called operative norms, adjusted to a concrete situation.

In the scientific output of the Lublin scholars, when it comes to the system of social principles, the principle of the common good plays a particular position. Basing themselves on the common good, they show the essential framework of social philosophy and the conception of social life. The common good is, as they believe, the basic norm of each community. Only from it, as the superior norm, other social principles may draw on their normative character.