1875. Gamwell on the purpose of the state, etc.

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Gamwell on the purpose of the state, etc.

The purpose of the state's activities is to unify the community as a whole by governing individuals and the associations between them. The state's distinctive task, then, is to legislate, interpret, and enforce general norms of communal order in the manner and measure that justice requires.

Some conditions of creativity are important to anyone engaged in any occupation or project: income with which to acquire the relevant resources; access to education on the basis of which to choose a particular interest and, having chosen it, to pursue it fruitfully; freedom of association with others, and so on.

The community of love calls for the maximal emancipation, empowerment, creativity, of all. So the justice that commitment to the community of love requires calls for maximizing the measure of all such conditions to which each individual has access.

The common good in its politically relevant sense (or aspect) is realized to the extent that general conditions of creativity are equally available to all—or that all have equal access to the general conditions of creativity. And the general norms for communal order should be politically defined and enforced so as to maximize this common good, i.e., to realize it as far as possible. In this way, politics does all that it can do to maximize human mutuality—the community of love.

3 April 2004