Jacques Maritain on Common Good- A Philosophical Critical Appraisal

Abstract

Two major theses underlie Maritain's position in The Person and The Common Good: First that the society is not a mere collection of individuals; but an ontological whole, and secondly, that as persons, humans are not part of, but wholes within society. In the light of these, Maritain evaluates and criticizes three major approaches to the common good: individualism, communism, and totalitarianism, and proposes an alternative which provides for a philosophical foundation for liberal democracy. While he criticizes the liberal conception of the common good, he insists that the common good must be "common to both the whole [society] and the parts [the persons] into which it flows back and which, in turn, must benefit from it. This paper takes a holistic look at Maritain’s political and ethical views on his concept of the common good with a view to asserting that the inconsistency of Maritain to Thomistic account of the common good arises from the fact that Maritain asserted rights to the human person prior to his involvement to the political community.