This classic and controversial book examines the roots of the idea of virtue, diagnoses the reasons for its absence in modern life, and proposes a path for its recovery.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

In recent years, business ethics and economic scholars have been paying greater attention to the development of commons organizing. The latter refers to the processes by which communities of people work in common in the pursuit of the common good. In turn, this promotes commons organizational designs based on collective forms of common goods production, distribution, management and ownership. In this paper, we build on two main literature streams: the ethical approach based on the theory of the common good of (...) the firm in virtue ethics and the economic approach based on the theory of institutions for collective action developed by Ostrom’s research on common-pool resources to avert the tragedy of the commons. The latter expands to include the novel concepts of new commons, “commoning” and polycentric governance. Drawing on the analysis of what is new in these forms of organizing, we propose a comprehensive model, highlighting the integration of two sets of organizing principles—common good and collective action – and five problem-solving processes to explain the main dimensions of commons organizing. We contribute to business ethics literature by exploring the convergence between the ethical and economic approaches in the development of a commons organizing view. (shrink)

Through a careful discussion of the relevant texts in De Regno and the Summa Theologiae, the author argues that Aquinas understands the political common good to include the full virtue and complete happiness of all of the citizens, as related to one another by bonds of justice and civic friendship. It is not something limited and instrument, as John Finnis has recently argued. Yet that the common good has this character for Aquinas does not imply that he regards political authority (...) as in principle unlimited, on account of a variety of resources available to Aquinas from Aristotelian political theory. (shrink)