Publication details
Společné dobro a přirozené právo : Společné dobro jako výzva současné právní a politické filozofii
| Title in English | The Common Good and Natural Law : The Common Good as a Challenge to Contemporary Legal and Political Philosophy |
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| Year of publication | 2026 |
| Type | Book |
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| Description | The book analyses one of the key elements of natural law theories – the concept of the common good. Its principal goal is to reconstruct this concept as a fundamental category of the natural law tradition and to defend its normative relevance. This goal is pursued through an analysis of several current debates in legal and political philosophy. Accordingly, the work is divided into three main parts. The first part introduces the reader directly in medias res, into the centre of current debates on constitutionalism, whose key concept is undoubtedly human dignity. It is shown here how the notion of the common good surfaces in these debates and why it is important to strive for a clearer understanding of it. The second part addresses the core of the discussions among natural law theorists in recent decades concerning the meaning of this concept. Within this framework, a specific conception of the common good is defended, together with an exploration of its implications for politics and law. The third part critically examines modern alternatives in which the common good does not occupy a comparable architectonic role to that which it holds in the classical natural law tradition. Particular attention is devoted to the dominant intellectual tradition of the modern era – liberalism – and, in connection with the concept of the common good, the fundamental differences between the classical natural law tradition on the one hand, and liberalism and, subsequently, pragmatic utilitarianism on the other, which is particularly relevant in our context. Understanding these similarities and differences is of fundamental importance for many practical disputes that arise in the public sphere and has significant implications for the field of law. At the same time, the analysis refines the concept of the common good and provides a foundational insight into the juridical phenomenon itself from the perspective of the classical tradition – that is, classical juridical realism. |
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