The Common good as the Key Political Category a Contribution to the Issue: Morality and Politics

Abstract

The article is a modified version of the paper delivered at the Congress of Polish Philosophy in September 1995. The first part proves that politics, in its long-term approach, may not dispense with the category of the common good. Therefore the postulate of demoralization of politics deviates from the demands of democracy, whose aim should be to strive for the common good. The second part of the paper proves that the recognition of the common good as the key category of politics entails the following philosophical consequences: the common good has a universal, that is anti-particular, character; it has a rational profile, that is it is based on the truth; finally, such a good demands that there should be a possibility for all members of a political community to participate in it. The common good implies that man be treated as subject, therefore the Christian tradition harmonizes with the demands of the ethos of politics.