The Common Good of the Firm in the Aristotelian-Thomistic Tradition

I. What is the common good? The reknowned Austrian economist and social thinker Friedrich Augustus von Hayek wrote, “The ‘social goal’, or ‘common purpose ’ for which society is to be organized is usually vaguely described as the ‘common good’, the ‘general welfare ’ or the ‘general interest’. It does not need much reflection to see that these terms have no sufficiently definite meaning to determine a particular course of action ” (Hayek 2001: 60). The rejection of the common good has been a characteristic not only of a particular strand of economic liberalism which Hayek represents, but also of the whole of post-Enlightenment philosophy (MacIntyre 1988). Purportedly, the notion of the “common good ” has been employed by some as an ruse to advance a totalitarian agenda — however well-meaning — and trample on inalienable individual rights; while others have defended that, in an increasingly multicultural and global society, no such universal principle could exist (Keys 2006: 5-8). The term “common good ” has ended up being some sort of code word, then, to refer to an ethics and a politics inspired in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition as well as to the moral and social teaching of th