Classical conceptions of the common good differ little between East and West, but modern interpretations are growing more distant.
Would you rather be poor in a rich nation or rich in a poor nation? This question has inspired never-ending debate since the first century A.D., when Roman historian and moralist Valerius Maximus first said of the ancient Romans that “they would rather be poor in a rich empire than rich in a poor empire.” Sentiment in the U.S. currently differs from that of the ancient Romans in the opinion of Harvard Law School professor, Adrian Vermeule, who says the current American position on the subject is “seemingly clever” but ultimately “self-defeating.”
As a polity becomes increasingly disordered, increasingly remote from a flourishing commonwealth promoting peace, justice and abundance, the claims of the common good and indeed the natural law actually become more visible, more insistent, and less debatable. This is a paradox suggested by Vermeule in a recent lecture delivered at the launch of his new book Common Good Constitutionalism. “American constitutional law has lost sight of its classical legal heritage,” he states.
The common good, defined in the classical Western legal tradition, corresponds to the Chinese concept of xiaokang, a society of moderate prosperity. “The centrality of the common good to Chinese notions of good government is transmitted by its political culture,” said John Pang, Malaysian senior fellow at Bard College in New York. It is believed that the phrase was first used to describe a well-off life in the Book of Songs, China’s first anthology of poems, which dates back more than 2,000 years.
To explore this intersection of concepts that have influenced the legal systems of both the East and the West, Beijing Review senior editor Li Fangfang interviewed Professor Vermeule and Mr. Pang via video. Here are some excerpts:
Beijing Review: A different understanding of certain terms, for example, human rights, has triggered many political and economic consequences between countries. Do you think there is a universal definition of the common good for the international community that takes into consideration the concerns of the West, East, North and South?
Adrian Vermeule: Yes and no. The classical framework of Western law posits that in principle, the proper end of temporal government is the same in all societies: to promote the flourishing of the political community as such, a state of peace, justice and abundance, and to promote the material and social preconditions for that flourishing. This flourishing of the political community is also the highest temporal good of the individuals who comprise the community, in the sense that one cannot fully enjoy even the private goods of family and individual life in an impoverished, decaying and violent political community, as we are increasingly discovering in the United States.
However, the classical framework also holds that this general aim of government must be implemented differently in different polities, according to their particular circumstances, traditions, culture, and governing institutions of the relevant society. What matters is that the prudential judgment of public authorities be directed to the common good as defined above, rather than to private or selfish benefit. Governance directed to private benefit, corrupt rule, is the classical definition of tyranny; note that this differs from modern definitions of tyranny that center on the violation of liberal, autonomy-based rights. In contrast to liberal democracy, which aims to impose a very particular institutional pattern on every society across the globe, remaking every society in its own image, the classical tradition holds that there is no one preferred set of particular institutional forms. What matters is the ends or aims to which governance is devoted, subject to the constraints of the particular civil and customary law of the polity, of the law of nations, of natural justice and the duty to practice public-spirited virtue proper to rulers. Again, the classical view here, which respects cultural differences, unlike the liberal-democratic view, which is institutionally imperialist.
John Pang: The centrality of the common good to Chinese notions of good government are transmitted by its political culture. Today the government has described as its major project the attainment of xiaokang for the Chinese people. This is a phrase that hearkens to the Book of Songs.
The people indeed are heavily burdened,
But perhaps a little ease (xiaokang) may be got for them.
Let us cherish this center of the kingdom,
To secure the repose of the four quarters of it.
Let us give no indulgence to the wily and obsequious,
In order to make the unconscientious careful,
And to repress robbers and oppressors,
Who have no fear of the clear will [of Heaven].
Then let us show kindness to those who are distant, and help those who are near; —
Thus establishing [the throne of] our king.
—Min Lao, a poem translated by the Scottish Sinologist
James Legge
You used the quote, “No man is an island,” in your lecture. This coincides with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s remark at the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation that “No one who keeps himself in isolation on a single island will have a shared future.” The benefit of the whole community being given priority when dealing with problems is a concept largely understood in China. In your opinion, what should people do to balance individual and collective benefit when having to decide between them? And what role does the legal system have in facilitating this balance?
Adrian Vermeule: The full quote is from John Donne, an English poet of the early 17th century, and goes: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.” Whatever Donne’s original intentions, if we read his aphorism as social commentary, I’m struck by the parallelism to President Xi’s quote. To put the thought another way, Robinson Crusoe, marooned alone on an island, is in one sense perfectly free, but in a deeper sense is unfree, because he is incapable of enjoying the benefits of a common civilization.
Since the 1960s, the disease of aggressive individualism has overrun American intellectual life, culture and politics. On the classical view, by contrast, the common good of the community is the highest temporal good event for individuals themselves. On this conception, if I may quibble a bit, it is not a question of balancing individual and collective goods, or of overriding individual goods by the preferences of the majority. Rather it is that the rights of individuals are always, from the beginning, themselves ordered to the common good, and their scope and weight is defined accordingly. The classical tradition thus very much recognizes rights, but justifies them in a very different way than liberal individualism does. Classically, rights are themselves justified not on the liberal ground of individual autonomy, but insofar as recognizing such rights benefits the community.
