Editing Common good (section)

{{Short description|What is shared and beneficial for all or most members of a given community}}
{{Other uses|Common Good (disambiguation){{!}}Common Good}}
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In [[philosophy]], [[Common good (economics)|economics]], and [[political science]], the '''common good''' (also '''commonwealth''', '''common weal''', '''general welfare''', or '''public benefit''') is either what is shared and beneficial for all or most members of a given [[community]], or alternatively, what is achieved by citizenship, collective action, and active participation in the realm of politics and public service. The concept of the common good differs significantly among [[List of philosophies|philosophical doctrines]].<ref name="Britannica">{{cite web|last1=Lee|first1=Simon|title=Common good|url=http://www.britannica.com/topic/common-good|website=Encyclopædia Britannica|access-date=9 March 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Tarantino |first1=Piero |title=An Alternative View of the European Idea of the Common Good: Bentham's Mathematical Model of Utility |journal=Revue d'études benthamiennes |date=2020 |issue=18 |doi=10.4000/etudes-benthamiennes.8227 |doi-access=|url=https://journals.openedition.org/etudes-benthamiennes/8227 }}</ref> Early conceptions of the common good were set out by [[Ancient Greece|Ancient Greek]] philosophers, including [[Aristotle]] and [[Plato]]. One understanding of the common good rooted in [[Aristotelianism|Aristotle's philosophy]] remains in common usage today, referring to what one contemporary scholar calls the "good proper to, and attainable only by, the community, yet individually shared by its members."<ref name="Dupré">{{cite journal|last1=Dupré|first1=Louis|title=The Common Good and the Open Society|journal=The Review of Politics|date=5 August 2009|volume=55|issue=4|pages=687–712|doi=10.1017/S0034670500018052|s2cid=143454235 }}</ref>

The concept of common good developed through the work of political theorists, moral philosophers, and public economists, including [[Thomas Aquinas]], [[Niccolò Machiavelli]], [[John Locke]], [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]], [[James Madison]], [[Adam Smith]], [[Karl Marx]], [[John Stuart Mill]], [[John Maynard Keynes]], [[John Rawls]], and many other thinkers. In contemporary economic theory, ''a'' common good is any good which is [[Rivalry (economics)|rivalrous]] yet [[Excludability|non-excludable]], while ''the'' common good, by contrast, arises in the subfield of [[welfare economics]] and refers to the outcome of a [[social welfare function]]. Such a social welfare function, in turn, would be rooted in a moral theory of the good (such as [[utilitarianism]]). [[Social choice theory]] aims to understand processes by which the common good may or may not be realized in societies through the study of [[Group decision-making|collective decision rules]]. [[Public choice theory]] applies [[Microeconomics|microeconomic]] [[methodology]] to the study of political science in order to explain how private interests affect political activities and outcomes.