Effata B- IV. Bonum Commune Melius Est Bono Privato; V. Bonum Quanto Communius, Tanto Divinius.
Signoriello´s Lexicon Explained
Bonum Commune melius est bono Privato. Ratio est, quia bonum particulare ordinatur in bonum commune, sicut in finem, siquidem, "esse partis est propter esse totius, unde et bonum gentis est divinius, quam bonum unius hominis" (Contr. Gent. III c. 17, n. 5). Iam hoc effatum intelligendum est, quatenus bonum commune, et privatum ad idem spectant genus, secus enim fieri potest, ut bonum privatum sit melius secundum genus suum, e.g. virginitas Deo dicata praefertur foeccunditati carnali" (IIa IIae, q. CLII, a. 4 ad 4).
Translation: [The common good is better than the private good. The reason is that the particular good is ordered to the common good, as to the end, indeed, "the existence of the part is for the sake of the existence of the whole, whence also the good of a nation is more divine than the good of a single man" (Contr. Gent. 3, c. 17, n. 5 ). Now this emphasis must be understood in so far as the common good and the private good refer to the same kind, for otherwise it is possible for the private good to be better according to its kind, e.g. virginity dedicated to God is preferable to carnal fertility" (IIa IIae, q. CLII, a. 4 to 4).]
Bonum quanto communis, tanto divinius. Hoc effatum "veritatem habet de communi secundum participationem unius et eiusdem rei secundum numerum. Quod enim est communius omnibus, in quantum omnes ipsam secundum aliquam similitudinem participant. Non autem habet veritatem de communi secundum praedicationem; quomodo bonum corporis est communius quam bonum spirituale hominis" (In lib. III contr. Gent. c 32). Hac ratione cavillatio illa dissolvitur, qua felicitatem hominis in bono corporeo, potius quam in spirituali sitam esse ita arguitur: Bonum, quo communius, eo divinius. Ergo si bonum corporis est communius, quam quodcumque alliud bonum spirituale hominis, sequitor quod sit divinius; et sic magis in ipso consistit felicitas, quam in bono spirituali. (In lib. IV Sent. Dist. XLIX, q. 1, a. 1, sol.)
Translation: [The more common the good, the more divine. This saying: "is true of the communal thing according to the participation in one and the same thing according to number. For that is more common to all, inasmuch as all share it according to some likeness. But it does not have the truth of the communal thing according to predication; how the good of the body is more common than the spiritual good of man." By this reason that sarcasm is dissolved, by which it is argued that man's happiness lies in bodily good rather than in spiritual good: The more common the good, the more divine. Therefore, if the good of the body is more common than any other spiritual good of man, I follow that it is more divine. and thus happiness consists more in him than in spiritual good.]
G.K. Chesterton once said of the middle ages that they were an age of common sense, the enlightenment, with its faith in science and reason was instead an age of uncommon sense, as the masses don't reason according to scientific methodology. But this current age in its rebellion against reason itself, he quipped, was an age of uncommon non-sense. Few sayings could so clearly pinpoint the current disorder in western society, our society is increasingly ordered to knee before the private exception rather than preserve the common rule. These two sentences get at the heart of the matter as regards the good: our two great errors are: (1) to make the private good is superior to the common good, and (2) to put the bodily good before the spiritual good.
Our perverted common good is ordered to preserving the privately selected good of the individual, to protect his freedom to self-determine how he pleases. In a well ordered society the individual is freed to define himself in ways productive to the good of all. If he fails to do so, there are often reprisals at the level of law and culture. Furthermore our perverted private good, what we have elevated above the common good, is considered better as a result of its differentiation from what is common: what we call individuality or at times authenticity is predicated on difference not similitude. Thus someone defines themselves in how they differ from the norm, rather than how they live out the common norms that allow them to be a productive member of society.
Defining oneself by law, duty, principle, and virtues that are common to all need not produce a dull conformity any more than a dance with form, like swing or quare dance produces conformity because of having a definite form. On the contrary, the form liberates the individual to participate in the society beautifully, to the extent they have mastered the rule. The metaphor of our current society is more like a rave, where there is a total absence of form and thus only flailing individuals, who are incapable of moving as a couple or as a group, or instead our society is more like a night club, where the base instinct alone provides a de facto minimalist antinomian form itself. Here, people basically grope eachother looking for a partner. Its ugly becuase its about the private wants of the individual, the well ordering of the couple or whole is not considered. With our dance, this private good or autonomy of the individual, this personal freedom of the self to make itself how it pleases, is considered most divine and worthy of even legal protection. And its ugly. The West, even at its current moment of near complete decay and cultural decadence, still congratulates itself for being “free,“ free meaning that here the private good may be pursued at the expense of the common good. The classical notion of freedom is to be free for the common good, to be responsible to society, to serve the common good. Those who participate in a ballroom dance are apart of an ordered society, where the rules produce a greater beauty upon the whole than are conferred upon any couple or individual. For this to occur the rules on the individual need to be more constricting. Its just the classical picture of man called such constrictions as good and such responsibilities as freedom. In our current rave, the sentiments are inverted.
One can ask: why did this happen? Where did these ideas come from? Was this planned? And the answer can be clearly stated. This idea came first and foremost from our economic system and the theories behind it that were developed at the advent of capitalism in the 16th century. The theory that society would be best ordered if people put their individual wants before the goods of the community was first put forth by economists, who realized this would be the best way to scale markets and maximize profits. We dont realize how historically unique it is but the key distinguishing mark of our current society is the sovereignty of economics, of profit, of money. Economics used to be limited by Religion, with religious laws against usury, by politics, which controlled the production of currency and distribution of property, even by family which often restricted trade to members of the clan. From an economic mindset, these restrictions were not freedom, they severely restricted lending, shrunk markets and the ability to scale. The dream was simply, what if people were free to pursue their private interests on the market without encumbrance. To lend to whom they want at the level of interest they want, to trade with whom they want, to make and produce as they wish, according to their private wish. Usury laws, monopoly laws, tarifs, taxes and the like were intrusions of the public good against the private good, and they made everyone poorer. Mandeville´s “Fable of the Bees“ is a paradigamtic example of one of the first expressions of the radical new economic idea. This book was a thought experiment about a society that was ordered not by virtue, but by vice, where self-interest liberated the people and society rather than enslaved them. The triumph of capitalism was to put economic self-interest above all of the common things that used to restrict it, so religion, country, city, family. In this new world, you would trade with your bitterest enemy so long as it increased profits. Free market economists still, in a very naive fashion, make the argument that capitalism has spread peace for its tendency to put profits above all.
The argument was at first that this would just be about buying and selling, about production, that this mentality would not come to devour all parts of human life. But now we see that nationality, ethnicity, family, gender, religion all bow before this spirit of rent-seeking, to the extent that with social media the very creation of personalities and identities itself is monetized. Our very person and personalities are now intimately shaped by for-profit entities like facebook and instagram. They´ve hijacked, with more than willing subjects of course, the process of self formation in order to sell the information they gather to government intelligence and sell and optimize advertizing on their platforms. Millenials to some extent but really gen-Z is the first generation of for-profit personalities, where children spent their formative years being shaped by platforms that were exploiting the very images and stories and timelines they were using to define themselves as persons. The apotheosis of this sort of spirit is the cult of inclusivity, where people pursuing their private ends against public ones in their bedrooms must be congratulated, this celebration extends even to those castrating themselves in pursuit of a private fantasy. This anti-social act of mutilation is encouraged and welcomed, an act that means they forfiet their most basic service to their race or species: reproduction. The second apotheosis is to turn the entire world into an economic zone, where everyone, men and women, are to be equally devoted to serving the market, and workers can move as freely as possible. No gender, no border, no nations, no peoples, just a mass of consumers and androgenous migrant workers. The logic behind this is that it is economically efficient, people will be more wealthy supposedly but without a homeland or identity.
The second saying expands on this theme raising the doubt about whether bodily or spiritual good is more common. If the commonality is considered according to participation then the spiritual good is higher, as all humans participate in God or are ulitmately dependent upon Him to some degree. But according to predication it is not true, as material things like hunger and sex are more readily predicated of the human form of life, they are more fundamental to the survival of the individual and species. But according to this saying, something like justice, a good that can be common to all humans, is more divine than something like allegiance to a sports team, which is not of the character to be shared by all or even be very likely to generate a meanful good or benefit to mankind. But its more divine to pursue justice for all than food for all. And in fact, pursuing justice for all and ordering a society justly, where duties and rights are properly inscribed in law and culture, this is a precondition to feeding this society. Without property rights or laws against theft or a stable currency, feeding the society will be impossible. Thus we see in most of the defining documents of our political system a concern for defining immaterial rights, to speech, association, expression, etc. Its only in recent years we see a right to health care, food and other bodily goods. With the COVID pandemic it was clear that our society is more than ready to sacrifice basically all spiritual good for the bodily good of health. Churches were closed, so no freedom of religion, critics were silenced and pursecuted, so no freedom of speech. Our society has increasingly and systematically chosen to pursue what is common to man in terms of his brute needs like food and sex, and totally neglected his spiritual needs.
This unsurprisingly creates more and more division, as this principle explains, because the spiritual goods are more powerful, more divine, more common to man and his nature. The highest altruism of the current ideal is embodied by someone like Bill Gates who is an exorbitantly wealthy philanthropist and tries to use his wealth to end hunger in Africa. In the middle ages, the ideal was a Saint, someone like St Francis who went hungry and tried to use his poverty to make others spiritually weathly. But Christians are often accused of wanting to impose their spiritual goods on others, and scolded that Jesus was really concerned about healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and He was concerned about those things, but the highest thing of all is the task to spread the Gospel the most divine Good becaues it is the most common to all mankind. St Francis wrestled for weeks with Christ trying to figure out whether it was better to pray in solitude or preach to the people. As he felt preaching to the people sullied him and distracted him from God. Heaven finally answered that, while both are good a balance is necessary, but he discovered that preaching was, for his vocation at least, the most pleasing to God.
This fits exactly with the great commision Jesus left us with. That the highest good is the common good, and that the highest common good is the highest spiritual good, and the highest spiritual good is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, so announce it! In contrast, our society says the highest good is the private good, it says the highest common good is the material good, but agrees that the absolute highest good is the spiritual good, but defines it as the private spiritual good, the right to determine who one is apart from the claims of the community or even of biology. This divination of the private good has even been encoded into the law of the United States in Lawrence versus Texas in 2002, the majority decision written by the Roman Catholic Justice Kennedy, he writes in this decision: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” This can only be an invitation to the most anti-social forms of behavior, and those that will be promoted will be promoted for profit.