The Review of Metaphysics

This elegant, admirably clear study takes up the question of the place of the political common good in human flourishing from a broadly Thomistic-Aristotelian perspective. Its basic problematic is set by the work of John Finnis in particular, but it also draws on and engages the work of other recent natural law thinkers, especially Alasdair MacIntyre and Mark Murphy.

The main issue is whether a society’s political common good is a constituent of full human flourishing rather than “merely a means to this end.” Wright defends an affirmative answer. The first chapter presents an account of Finnis’s view as holding that the specifically political common good, identified with the operation of the state and laws as directed especially to the establishment and maintenance of justice and peace, is instrumental to the common good of the political community, understood as the pursuit by its members of their own flourishing. Wright holds that Finnis wrongly identifies the political common good as an end with the means deployed by the state in its limited jurisdiction. He objects not to the limitations on state power and law, but to the idea that they do not themselves intend the virtue and flourishing of citizens for their own sakes. For Wright, those instruments are part of a more broadly conceived political common good that is grounded in an account of civic friendship, described in some detail in chapters 4 and 5. Integral to Wright’s positive view is his interpretation of both Aristotle and Aquinas on the character of the political as indicating the totality of what is needed for individuals and smaller communities to flourish (self-sufficiency) and its aiming at the good of all citizens and groups (inclusivity). In sketching this out he adopts Mark Murphy’s classification of accounts of the common good as aggregative, instrumental, and distinctive. Where Murphy argues for an aggregative account, largely in response to his understanding of Finnis’s account as instrumental, Wright holds that the common good comprises elements of all three of Murphy’s categories, incorporating especially his own understanding of the distinctive good of the political community itself as integral to the flourishing of individuals and subpolitical communities (the approach has also been suggested by both George Duke and Jonathan Crowe). The two formal qualities of self-sufficiency and inclusivity are definitive of the nature of political community as such and so suggest a wider range of normative concern than a merely instrumental view, which, in turn, is integrally connected to a substantive component of the common good, identified by Wright with civic friendship. The common good of the political community enjoys a kind of primacy not because of the superior value of political activity as such, but because of its inclusivity of all that is necessary for human flourishing and of all citizens. Civic friendship means the mutual goodwill of citizens in their common pursuit of shared ends and means. That the political common good is an intrinsic good partially constitutive of human flourishing is argued for in the fifth chapter, which draws on the thought of Burke and [End Page 421] elements of the American political tradition to illustrate how political culture contributes to the flourishing of individual citizens and to political community itself.

The book has many strengths: The careful discussion of the political common good in terms of both formal and material components in chapters 3 and 4 are among the most illuminating of recent treatments and will repay study; the treatment of the common good of the family in chapter 2 is an insightful comparison to the political common good. The book is also written in a clear, direct, and largely nontechnical style, while being grounded in mostly quite admirable scholarship. One shortcoming is Wright’s treatment of Finnis: He cites only three works, none later than 1998, thereby missing out on developments and nuances that Finnis has added to...