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1. In taking the common good to encompass both a set of facilities and aset of common interests, the entry follows the general outlines ofRawls’s discussion (see Rawls 1971 [1999], especially82–83, 205 and 217). Strictly speaking, Rawls uses the term the“common good” to refer to a set of conditions that servecertain common interests. But it is clear from his discussion that hetakes the common good to refer more generally to a standpoint thatencompasses both a set of conditions and a set of interests (seesection6 and7). Finnis (1980) also uses the common good to refer both to a set offacilities (in my sense) and a set of interests. Most other views donot draw a sharp distinction between facilities and interests.

2. A theory is consequentialist in this sense when it conceives ofpractical reason in terms of a set of values, where there areintrinsic, agent-neutral reasons for these values to be increased.

3. Mill’s view raises interesting interpretative issues. Mill isclearly a critic of “private society” (seesection 3) and he thinks that citizens have an obligation to take an interest inpublic affairs. But on Mill’s view, citizens should be orientedtowards public affairs because this orientation is part of a system ofpublic reasoning that experience has shown will bring citizens toperform the actions required by the principle of utility. OnMill’s view, citizens do not owe itto each other totake an interest in their common affairs: friendly feelings andgoodwill are useful engines for getting citizens to perform the rightactions, but these relational patterns of thought are not respondingto genuinely relational obligations. Because it lacks a principle ofreciprocity, Mill’s view should not be understood as a commongood conception.

4. One example of a private society is a society that operates accordingto the standard economic model of rational behavior (see Rawls 1971[1999: 457]). According to this model, each individual’s utilityfunction has as variables the resources that she herself holds, butnot the resources that other people hold, the level of utility thatother people achieve, or the character of society’s basicinstitutions.

5. The deepest version of the public goods argument treats institutionsthemselves as public goods. Generalized compliance with institutionalrules is a public good, so this pattern of behavior will not developin a society where individuals take a purely instrumental attitudetowards compliance (see Olson 1965; but note the special case of aconvention—e.g., Lewis 1969). There would be no market in aprivate society composed of rational egoists, that is, no pattern ofgeneralized compliance with the rules of private ownership andexchange. Even ordinary communication and linguistic understandingpresupposes certain rule-governed practices. See Gauthier 1986;Habermas 1981b; Heath 2001; see also Heath 2006.

6. You could also cultivate a more dispersed pattern of sociallyoriented motivations in citizens, such as an aversion to free riding,that would stabilize mutually beneficial patterns of cooperationwhenever they arise (see Taylor 1984; see also Axelrod 1981 and 1984;Ostrom 1990).

7. A different failure kind of failure involves cases where a SupremeCourt Justice uses her position to make decisions on the basis of herown comprehensive moral doctrine rather than a political conception ofjustice, implicit in the public culture, which could properly serve asthe content of public reason in the community (see Rawls 1993). Inthese cases, the withdrawal from public life consists in a failure toreason from appropriately public standards of justification. Somephilosophers identify the common good with “commonprinciples”—i.e., shared standards and principles ofjustification in a political community—rather than “commoninterests”. This view is closely connected with a conception ofthe political relationship as a relationship of mutual justification.See the discussion of “communal” versus“distributive” conceptions of the common good in sections7 and8.

8. Philosophers have different views about how the pattern must berealized: some argue that it must be realized in the thought processof citizens in every walk of life (PlatoRepublic), whileothers argue that the pattern need only be realized in the widerlegislative and policy debates that organize social life (e.g., Hegel1821; Rawls 1971 and 1993).

9. The privileged class includes only a subset of the interests that allcitizens share, so the mere fact that a certain interest is shareddoes not imply that it belongs in the privileged class.

10. Perhaps the most intensely solidaristic form of mutual concern is theform that Plato sets out in theRepublic (462a–466d;see also Schofield 2006: 222–7 and Vlastos 1999). Members of hisideal community conceive of themselves as working for oneanother’s good as they play their respective roles in society asfarmers, soldiers, political officials, and so on. Moreover, they notonly identify with one another’s good or interests, but actuallyfeel one another’s pleasures and pains (462b–e).

11. On Aristotle’s view, citizens are not just individuals who areeach trying to live well for their own sakes. Citizens take aparticular interest in whether theirfellow citizens areliving well, and they know that their fellow citizens take a specialinterest in whetherthey are living well (Cooper 1990). Sothe members of a political community strive to realize a choiceworthyway of life in their community, both in order to live well themselvesand in order for their fellow members to do the same.

12. Philosophers often assume that a joint activity conception of thecommon good is incompatible with liberalism. But some joint activityconceptions may be compatible with liberal ideals. For example,liberal neutrality says that society’s basic institutions mustnot presuppose the correctness of any particular conception of thegood or any particular comprehensive doctrine (Rawls 1993).Aristotle’s view is incompatible with neutrality, but aconception that focuses on a more abstract kind of joint activity maybe compatible with this ideal. Rawls, for instance, argues thatcitizens in a liberal democracy have reason to value being part of aflourishing social life that has the structure of a “socialunion of social unions”. They have reason to value being part ofthis kind of social life, regardless of their particular conceptionsof the good (see especially 1971 [1999: 456–64]; 1988 [2005:204–206]; 1982 [2005: 320–323]). It follows that socialinstitutions may be designed to allow for the development of a sociallife along these lines without violating the liberal ideal ofneutrality.

Rawls himself does not consider a social union of social unions to be part of the common good of a political community (seesection 6). On his view, the common good consists in social conditions thatanswer to the interests attached to the “position of equalcitizenship”, that is, the interest in an equal set of basicliberties and the interest in a fair opportunity to reach the moreattractive positions in society. A social union of social unions doesnot answer to either of these interests. Moreover, a social life thathas this structure is not mentioned in either of the two principles ofjustice, so the political relationship does not require citizens to provide oneanother with a form of life that has this structure. In this sense, asocial union of social unions is a good, but it is not a good that is“internal” to the political relationship.

Note that people may regard an ongoing enterprise—e.g., afriendship, a university, a scientific discipline, etc.—as acommon achievement (Rawls 1971 [1999: 456–464]). They may seethe enterprise as something that they sustain with the cooperation ofother participants and something they each value as a final end. Thecommon achievement may then be part of the good of each participant,and this fact may tie the participants to each other in an importantway. But the common good is a different idea and should not beconfused with this notion of a common achievement (see Hussainforthcoming).

A conception of the common good describes the distinctive way that acertain social relationship directs people who stand in therelationship to care about each other. It describes internalrequirements of the relationship itself. Now people who stand in acertain relationship may find that the relationship is a commonachievement and this may give them added reason to live up to therelevant requirements: for example, old friends may have added reasonto live up to the requirements of their friendship because theirfriendship is a common achievement. Nonetheless, the commonachievement in these cases presupposes a relationship with certaininternal requirements and the common good describes an aspect of theseinternal requirements.

13. They are, of course, free to make choices through consultation andshared deliberation if they want to.

14. For Rousseau, equality in the distribution of social and economicresources is not so much an element of the common good, as a centrallyimportant factor in the ongoing stability of a pattern of socialinteraction guided by a conception of the common good (see J. Cohen2010: 51, 53, 116–118). As Joshua Cohen correctly observes inrelation to Rousseau’s conception of the common good, “Isee no anticipation [in Rousseau’s view] of, say, Rawls’sdifference principle” (2010: 51).

15. Communal conceptions of the common good are especially important inconservative thought. Adam Smith (1776), for instance, is a classicalliberal thinker who thinks of the common good in terms of a privilegedclass of common interests in living virtuous, industrious andresponsible private lives. These interests require various facilities,including protections for natural liberties (e.g., bodily integrityand property) and an adequate system of moral and civic education(Smith 1776 [2000: 839–846]). These interests may have certaindistributive implications, but they do not incorporate a fundamentallydistributive form of concern for individual interests (see note18).

16. A communal conception of the common good, though it is notdistributive, may nonetheless have distributive implications. This isbecause the proper organization of the collective effort by citizensto maintain certain social conditions may require a particulardistribution of social resources and social authority. See Finnis1980: 165–8 and 173–5; see also Walzer’s discussionof longevity and health care (1983: 87–89).

17. Rawls also sometimes suggest a view of the principle of commoninterest that incorporates distributive concerns. For instance, in awidely cited passage, he says:

…it is a political convention of a democratic society to appealto the common interest. No political party publicly admits to pressingfor legislation to the disadvantage of any recognized social group.But how is this convention to be understood? …Since it isimpossible to maximize with respect to more than one point of view, itis natural, given the ethos of a democratic society, to single outthat of the least advantaged and to further their long-term prospectsin the best manner consistent with the equal liberties and fairopportunity. (1971 [1999: 280–281])

Here Rawls is interpreting a feature of democratic practice andarguing that the difference principle can be seen as a reasonableinterpretation of this feature. But he is not offering a definition ofthe principle of common interest or of the common good. He definesthese ideas in other passages (e.g., 1971 [1999: 82–83,217]).

18. Assume also that they limit the discussion to efficient arrangements,i.e., those that are Pareto optimal.

19. What would stop the outside threat from buying off the protectionagencies?

20. You might think of the guardians and their assets together asrepresenting what we today would call “the state”: a largegroup of citizens, holding various offices, who organize theiractivities and deploy collectively held assets for the sake of commoninterests.

21. Many of these theorists criticize market coordination when it goesbeyond certain limits, but they all accept the basic compatibilitybetween the political relationship and market society.

22. McMahon (2013) endorses a similar view, but for differentreasons.