Common Good and Self-Interest in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy: (78 The New Synthese Historical Library)

This open access volume provides an in-depth analysis of philosophical discussions concerning the common good and its relation to self-interest in the history of Western philosophy. The thirteen chapters explore both renowned and lesser-known thinkers from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, covering also the relevant ancient background. By bridging the gap between the medieval and early modern periods, they provide fresh insights into how moral and political philosophers understood the concepts of the common good and self-interest, along with their ethical and political implications. The concept of the common good occupies a central role in philosophical reflections on the public and private dimensions of moral and social life in contemporary debates. By exploring the rich and diverse ways in which the relationship between the common good and self-interest has been understood, this volume has the potential to contribute to our ongoing efforts to critically discern the possibilities and limitations of these concepts in the present. Thus, the volume will be useful for scholars interested in the multi-layered role of the notion of the common good both in the history of philosophy and in contemporary moral and political philosophy.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1. Introduction: On the Conflict between the Common Good and Individual Good (Juhana Toivanen and Heikki Haara).- Part I: Ancient and Medieval Philosophical and Theological Views.- Chapter 2. Honestum to Goodness(Calvin Normore).- Chapter 3. Interpreting Aristotle’s Concept of the Common Good(Anthony Celano).- Chapter 4. Medieval Monastic Ideas of the Compatibility between the Individual and the Common Good(Ritva Palmén).-Chapter 5. Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas on Charity and the Common Good(Iacopo Costa).- Part II: "Common and Individual Good in Late Medieval Thought".- Chapter 6. Convergences of Private Self-Interest and the Common Good in Medieval Europe: An Overview of Economic Theories, c. 1150–c. 1500(Cary Nederman).- Chapter 7. Common Goods and the Common Good in John Duns Scotus(Nicolas Faucher).- Chapter 8. Old Wine in New Wineskins: William Ockham and the Common Good in Context(Roberto Lambertini).- Chapter 9. Is Socrates Permitted to Kill Plato?.- Part III: Common and Individual Good in Early Modern Philosophy(Juhana Toivanen).- Chapter 10. Alignment of the Individual and Common Good in the Political Theory of Johannes Althusius(Jukka Ruokanen).- Chapter 11. Individual and Common Utility within Grotius’s Theory of the State(Laetitia Ramelet).- Chapter 12. The Compatibility of Individual and Common Good in Hobbes’s Philosophy(Alexandra Chadwick).- Chapter 13. Self-Interest as a Source of the Common Good in Post-Hobbesian Natural Law(Heikki Haara).- Chapter 14. Self-Interest and the Common Good in Early Modern Philosophy(Colin Heydt).

About the Author :
Heikki Haara, is University Lecturer in Political history at the University of Helsinki. His primary research interest has been theories of human nature and their relationship to moral and political thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He has been a visiting researcher at the universities of California, Berkeley and Oxford and Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. He is the author of Pufendorf’s Theory of Sociability: Passions, Habits and Social Order (Springer, 2018) and the editor of Rights at the Margins: Historical, Philosophical and Legal Perspectives (Brill, 2020) and Passions, Politics and the Limits of Society (de Gruyter, 2020).   Juhana Toivanen is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He has published widely on medieval philosophical psychology, medieval conceptions of animals, and political philosophy. His major publications include the monographs Perception and the Internal Senses (Brill, 2013) and The Political Animal in Medieval Philosophy (Brill, 2021). In addition, he has published more than fifty journal articles and book chapters. Currently he is working on social and political dimensions of moral vices in late medieval philosophy, focusing mainly on commentaries on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics from ca. 1250–1600.