Constitutivism in Outline

This book opened with our puzzlement at the very idea of a common good. In what sense could a group of people have one, joint well-being? My justification of government begins with an answer to that question, namely:

This answer will result from an analysis of the simplest social group, a union of two persons. Using the example of a romantic couple, I show that the joint well-being of this group and each spouse's personal well-being are interdependent metaphysically (see section “Spouses Are Separate Agents with a Common Good”). A common good is what is of this kind. And, as the example shows, common goods exist.

Next, I move on to that joint well-being which is the topic of my book, namely the common good of a people, that is, the public good (see sections “The Personal Good Within Public Institutions” and “Personal and Public Good Are Constitutive of One Another”). Personal and public good, too, exist in conjunction with one another; their case, I argue, is analogous to that of the romantic couple.

As is usual for normative entities like goods, such metaphysical interdependencies are reflected in justificatory ones; that is, they show in reasoning about these entities (Nieswandt, 2016). Here, the fact that the public good is constitutive of the personal good of each citizen means that citizens who rationally pursue their personal good often contribute toward the public good. Conversely, public institutions which rationally pursue the public good contribute toward the personal good of citizens. There is what I shall call an “interlocking teleology,” both between personal and public chains of reasoning and between personal and public good, which I describe in detail.

Chapter 4 then justifies the authority of the state from this constitutivist account of goods. In a nutshell, I argue the following: The personal good cannot be realized but within a sufficiently complex community. Therefore, membership in such a community is a necessary aspect of a happy human life (see sections “Fusing Ancient with Modern Tradition” and “Personal Identities Presuppose Social Complexity”).