6.9 Ulrich Metschl – The Common Good: A Welfarist Proposal

The purpose of the present paper is to defend a conception of the common good which remains faithful to a liberal tradition. Instead of identifying the common good with some sort of collective good that exists independently from the aims of individuals but nevertheless will impose on them constraints on the pursuit of their ends for the sake of the public well-being, it is argued here that the common good rather reflects the commitment of free and autonomous persons to societal cooperation. Thus, the common good should be understood as resulting from the aggregation of individual preferences which in turn reflect a concern for the public. Adam Smith’s construction of the impartial spectator is invoked for the details on how a welfarist conception of the common good may be understood.