The Metaphysics of the Common Good

One of my quests in the intellectual life is to understand how metaphysics, the most abstract and seemingly obscure of all the sciences (besides Sacred Doctrine), has any concrete bearing on life. Philosophy is not merely supposed to be an abstract pursuit, confining itself to the mind, but should flower out from the mind into every aspect of human life, so that it is the whole man who is wise, and not just a partial man. In philosophy, traditionally, the parts that pertain to practical living are the sciences of ethics and politics. Aristotle stresses more than once that the purpose of these studies is not merely in knowledge, but in practice, namely living well.

The political doctrine of the common good is, I think, one especially important application of the metaphysics of participation, which hails from the Platonic tradition. Aristotle (who I insist was a Platonist) expresses the doctrine of the primacy of the common good in these terms:

Even though the good be the same for one man and for the whole state, it seems much better and more perfect to procure and preserve the good of the whole state. It is admirable, indeed, to preserve the good of an individual but it is better still and more divine to do this for a nation and for cities. (Nicomachean Ethics, 1094b7)