It does seem as if your situation with your neighbor worked out well, and I am in no way suggesting it is possible or even desirable that an easy geometric can be applied to these situations and to finding a proper response. I am only suggesting that when one works from an ethic of love, care, and affection, one is starting from a significantly different place than those who view the world as essentially something to be fixed.

That said, we still live life, confronting each day as it comes, not knowing what it brings with it. Only knowing what we love, what we have committed together to care for, to be responsible for, to nourish and protect. Sometimes this requires fixing things, solving problems, etc. But it is done in the name of what is loved, to preserve it, to conserve its essential character; as opposed to imposing on it a standard of “common good” that is fundamentally at war with the subject being fixed, the patient being treated.

I don’t know that you would disagree, but I’m dubious of any attempt to arrive at some sort of methodological rule which would divide questions immediately into objects of public concern and objects of private indifference. This notion smacks of the naïve scientism which informs progressive technocratic politics.

You’re right; I don’t disagree with you. These things can’t be easily–or ethically–packaged into methodologically defined categories (I’ve read my Gadamer!), and the attempt to do so shouldn’t be made. I don’t think that my response was engaged in the effort to tease out methodological rules, though; I think I was trying to elicit from Caleb how he, as sincere and serious and intelligent a localist and populist as I know of, would personally respond to his question of “Where does it stop?” being turned around on him…which it can surely be seen as having been done, to him and to all of us, assuming no one reading this is living a life of complete isolation and self-sufficiency on a non-governed mountainside somewhere in Alaska. Perhaps my language bled over into the naive rule-mongering you mention, in which case I simply wasn’t sufficiently careful, but I think my point was to establish Caleb’s own (and, presumably therefore, his own defense and recommendation of) “political commitments and instincts,” as you put it.

[A]lthough I recognize the ambiguity of Frost’s poem, I am of the ‘good fences make good neighbors’ political disposition, and thus would be less likely than most to call the gendarmes in on the lunatic next door. Nonetheless, if Monsanto wanted to move into the neighborhood, I would probably be singing a NIMBY tune of some sort.

This is a nice statement about what your own “political disposition” would bring to the table at a neighborhood meeting. Does it show a naive rule-mongering–or just an annoyingly intellectual gad-flyism, perhaps?–to admit that your statement, which seems thoughtful and sensible to me, also kind of makes me interested in throwing counter-statements back at you? You admit you’d probably go NIMBY over Monsanto next door; how about an adult bookstore? An abortion clinic? A tattoo parlor and biker hang-out? The swingers with their loud music and nude sunbathing? It’s not like I have a principled–or feel like I need a principled answer–to all of these possibilities. But I confess that I do feel as though the pluralistic modernity we live within obliges me to at least be ready to ask myself such.

[R]eferences to the common good by Nosey Parkers almost always suggest that the ‘neighbors’ are incompetent and thus in need of some sort of state re-education. The therapeutic state is largely definable by reference to the presupposition that most citizens are mental invalids and thus in constant need of moral instruction and civil protection.

If this claim of yours is correct, Ken, then I guess I must conclude that the communitarian thinkers I have read must not, for the most part, be “Nosey Parkers” for whatever reason, or else that I am reading them very much incorrectly. Because when I read Benjamin Barber or Sandel or Taylor, and others, I see a constant emphasis upon community being developed and empowered from the ground up, through and by citizen action, with the presumptive role of the courts in ordering American life being harshly criticized. Participation, deliberative democracy, citizen’s councils, town meetings–none of that seems to suggest that citizens are “mental invalids and thus in constant need of moral instruction and civil protection.” But as I said, perhaps my study of communitarian thought has been flawed.

Your reply answered some of my misgivings about your initial story, though I certainly can’t speak for Caleb here. However, it also raised another set of difficulties. First, I don’t know that you would disagree, but I’m dubious of any attempt to arrive at some sort of methodological rule which would divide questions immediately into objects of public concern and objects of private indifference. This notion smacks of the naïve scientism which informs progressive technocratic politics. The answers to your questions about government involvment depends for the most part on the political commitments and instincts of your interlocutors. For example, although I recognize the ambiguity of Frost’s poem, I am of the ‘good fences make good neighbors’ political disposition, and thus would be less likely than most to call the gendarmes in on the lunatic next door. Nonetheless, if Monsanto wanted to move into the neighborhood, I would probably be singing a NIMBY tune of some sort.

Second, the key to your situation is that your neighbor is non compos mentis, in which case some sort of public wardship may be justifiable. The problem, however, is that references to the common good by Nosey Parkers almost always suggest that the ‘neighbors’ are incompetent and thus in need of some sort of state re-education. The therapeutic state is largely definable by reference to the presupposition that most citizens are mental invalids and thus in constant need of moral instruction and civil protection. The concept of the common good as it has been deployed in communitarian political thought and in progressive politics treats the citizen as if he or she were your crazy next-door neighbor instead of a human being whose purposes might not coincide with the notional preferences of the state.

It’s actually kind of interesting–and, I think, speaks well of our local government here in Wichita–to reflect upon how the situation with our neighbor worked out. After making initial contact with her, and being harshly rebuffed, the city workers contacted my neighbor’s father, who owned the property and paid the taxes on it. Turns out that the father had set up his daughter and had kept an eye on her there as the best alternative to putting her into a 24-hour care facility for the mentally disturbed. Because of some health issues he hadn’t been able to come over to the house personally to check on her–and not incidentally, take out the trash and mow the lawn–for a couple of months. Recognizing his desire to keep his daughter settled there rather than move her into a home, but also acknowledging he wasn’t physically able to do the work he’d originally committed to do for her any longer, the city worked with a mediation lawyer, who contacted us neighbors, and set up an arrangement with the fellow two doors down from me, whereby he’d mow her lawn for her and be compensated out of a fund the dad had set up for her. There were a couple of difficult encounters with her while it was all hammered out–she insisted the neighbor who’d volunteered to do the mowing was a vandal trying to destroy her long-unused lawn mower–but now it seems to be working smoothly.

Did we need to get the city involved to do all this? Perhaps not–perhaps if I and my fellow neighbors had been better people, with more time and more access to information, we could have found out about her father and worked out arrangements on out own. I am unsure exactly what kind of freedom was lost or bad precedent was necessarily set by allowing the city to play, as it were, a facilitator here, with solid Kansas common sense.

Might the city have insisted on being more than a facilitator–might it have decided, on the other hand, to have forcibly taken possession of the property and evict the woman? I suppose. If we were sure that would have been the result I strongly doubt that any of us would have contacted the Parks and Public Works Department. But because–speaking her just for myself–since such extreme overreactions (while I know they occur; I’ve read more than enough about them over the years!) simply haven’t been a part of my own personal experience, I suppose I didn’t calculate the potential costs in light of the possibility of such state violence.

All of which is, I suppose, just a roundabout way of addressing your very important challenge, Caleb:

When viewed through the prism of the common good everything becomes a problem to be solved, and as with all frustrated problem solvers, they will eventually turn towards the power of the central state. Where does the problem solving stop?

You’re absolutely correct that “common good” formulations lend themselves to “problem-solving” mentality, and such a mentality usually (not always, but certainly often) involves a centralization of decision-making and power. Leaving aside my belief that any kind of formulation that allows for collective or common or community concerns will open the door to the same sort of mentality, let me say two things: first, admit your point that state centralization is always problematic, and needs to be policed by citizens (which means also structuring society so that such democratic participation and supervision actually make a difference, which clearly is often not the case today); and second, beg your patience and ask–can the question not also be also turned around? That is, isn’t it possible to ask, in the face of your justifiable rebuke, “When should problem solving begin?” I mean, if the whole root problem begins with the aforementioned “problem-solving” mentality, how do we articulate those problems whose costs may outweigh the all-too-common (though not, from what I can tell at least, especially frequent around Wichita) abuses which that mentality invites?

What if my neighbor was a petrochemical factory, letting its toxic garbage pile up along the gutters of our street? Too easy a target? Okay, smaller then–what if it was little taco joint, a family place which raised and slaughtered its own chickens, but then just tossed the heads and feet in the empty lot behind both our houses, attracting rats and raccoons by the score? You’re a lawyer; I’m sure you could lay out dozens of comparable example, all the way up and down the bigness scale. At what point–if any–do you think that thinking in terms of a common good starts being useful in the larger scheme of things, and when does it stop? Or do you feel that the mentality is dangerous enough that, in principle, it simply ought always be avoided, no matter what kind or what size of concern is being addressed?

I don’t mean to be tendentious here; I agree with you that this is a very significant point of difference, not just between us but as a faultline within the whole FPR project. And don’t worry about making things personal–as you’ve noted, if we’re not prepared to get sharp and personal with our criticisms, that may mean we’re not really serious about our beliefs. You may be right that we–my neighbors and I–really screwed up with dealing with our problem resident on our street. But that case seems as good a one as any to pose the question: just what is the tolerable level of communitarian/modern/problem-solving-type thinking for a localist or populist? Because if the answer is “none,” then a lot of my purported compromises with modernity may be worse than the disease.

(Apologies for the long comment; maybe I should have made this into a post. Though as I final quick point, I don’t understand “a communitarian common good that makes our ‘communities’ homeless commuter zones defined principally by property values.” The communitarians I know are all advocates of mixed housing and smart growth.)

Where does the problem solving stop? After tobacco is regulated out of existence? Trans-fats? I can’t sell my own butchered chicken to my neighbor because of the common good. And don’t forget, all of this imposing of solutions by the state gets expensive! Who is paying for that? Hence we have healthcare that makes us sick, education that makes us stupid, and a communitarian common good that makes our “communities” homeless commuter zones defined principally by property values.

I don’t want to make this personal, but needless to say I think you made the wrong choice regarding your neighbor.

But the “common good” as a political weapon is much more potent to evoke guilt, bring pressure to bear, and cause every nosey do-gooder to come out of the closet shaking their rolling pin.

Ah, but my friend, you forget that I am one of those nosey do-gooders, or at least am occasionally willing to make common cause with them. (The mentally troubled neighbor next door hasn’t removed her trash or mowed her lawn in three months. We and other neighbors have approached her, offered to mow her lawn for her, to help her out with her trash, and she’s angrily and abusively refused us. Our possible courses of action are thus either 1) ignore her and tolerate her increasingly scary lawn, or 2) in the name of the “common good” of the neighborhood, turn to the rolling pins of the Wichita City government, which can order her lawn mowed and her trash collected without her say-so, and provide the man-power to do so. I confess that I am unembarrassed to say that I chose the second route.)

I’m not trying to be insulting, but isn’t this a recipe for a replication of the same failed political structure we have now? I mean once we open the door to statism, in any of its various forms, aren’t we asking for trouble?

The “common good” evokes a state solution, while loved things held in common do not evoke a “solution” of any kind, but rather an ethic of care and affection. That is the difference, and it makes all the difference.

“Let us suppose, that nature has bestowed on the human race such profuse abundance of all external conveniencies, that, without any uncertainty in the event, without any care or industry on our part, every individual finds himself fully provided with whatever his most voracious appetites can want…

It seems evident, that, in such a happy state, every other social virtue would flourish, and receive tenfold encrease; but the cautious, jealous virtue of justice would never once have been dreamed of. For what purpose make a partition of goods, where everyone has already more than enough? Why give rise to property where there cannot possibly be any injury?
…
We see, even in the present necessitous condition of mankind, that, wherever any benefit is bestowed by nature in an unlimited abundance, we leave it always in common among the whole human race, and make no subdivisions of right and property. Water and air, though the most necessary of all objects, are not challenged as the property of individuals; nor can any man commit injustice by the most lavish use and enjoyment of these blessings.”

Of course the irony is that, impossible though it was for Hume to see, air and water now can be the subject of injustice and that we do now possess the capability to foul the air and water sufficiently that their use and misuse can be brought under the purview of justice.

Thanks for the responses. I can see your point about the language of “common good” versus “common concern,” though I wonder if this fine distinction really does function as such a conceptual gap as you both seem to suggest. Perhaps it does–but then again, perhaps in practice it is a distinction so theoretically narrow as to be negligible. For example, does the preference for clean air and water signify a commonly/collectively articulated “good,” or is it “merely” a “good” held in common? Is it a substantive good, or is “merely” a good that enables all those who live in a defined place to live better (“good”?) lives? If there is an obvious practical distinction between what can be properly discussed as “the common good” versus what should be spoken only as “a common concern,” it is not immediately apparent to me.

Augustine called this “loved things held in common.” Much better than the ever manipulable and elusive “common good.”

The post is intelligent, well-argued, and erudite in the best sense of the term. I understand a great deal of what you are doing here because my intellectual background is similar to yours. My differences with you are easily traceable to the split between the so-called Young Hegelians and the older traditionalists. I think that Hegel is easily the most important modern political philosopher (i.e., he provides us with an adequate account of the modern state), but I think that Oakeshott gets Hegel right and that Taylor gets him wrong.

I also like your dissection of various versions of communitarianism, though I am not sure that I agree with your placement of Berry in the middle of the two. You have to remember that, even if one believes that the positive meaning of community is limited by language, location, etc., it doesn’t necessarily mean that one surrenders the right to comment on ‘national issues’.

Nonetheless, I think that your post does bring up a couple of fissures among the FPRers. One, which many have already noticed, is concerned with the character of community. The other deals with the nature and function of political association. Like other communitarians, you speak a great deal about the common good. I prefer the term common concern, for reasons which relate to what I take to be the inherently limited nature of modern political associations (i.e. there is little in the modern state that could generate a real consensus about a substantive good, but, if people share a common life and enjoy it, there might be something that they would all be concerned about preserving and, possibly, improving).