powers. Private society is not held together by
a public conviction that its
basic arrangements are just and good in themselves, but by the calcula-
tions of everyone, or of sufficiently many to maintain the scheme, that
any practicable changes would reduce the stock of means whereby they
pursue their personal ends.
It is sometimes contended that the contract doctrine entails that private
society is the ideal, at least when the division of advantages satisfies a
suitable standard of reciprocity. But this is not so,
as the notion of a
well-ordered society shows. And as I have just said, the idea of the
original position has another explanation. The account of goodness as
rationality and the social nature of mankind also requires a different view.
Now the sociability of human beings must not be understood in a trivial
fashion. It does not imply merely that society is necessary for human life,
or that by living in a community men acquire needs and interests that
prompt them to work together for mutual advantage in certain specific
ways allowed for and encouraged by their institutions.
Nor is it expressed
by the truism that social life is a condition for our developing the ability
to speak and think, and to take part in the common activities of society
and culture. No doubt even the concepts that we use to describe our plans
and situation, and even to give voice to our personal wants and purposes,
often presuppose a social setting as well as a system of belief and thought
that are the outcome of the collective efforts of a long tradition. These
facts are certainly not trivial; but to use them to characterize our ties to
one another is to give a trivial interpretation of human sociability. For all
of these things are equally true of persons who
view their relations purely
instrumentally.
The social nature of mankind is best seen by contrast with the concep-
tion of private society. Thus human beings have in fact shared final ends
and they value their common institutions and activities as good in them-
selves. We need one another as partners in ways of life that are engaged in
for their own sake, and the successes and enjoyments of others are neces-
sary for and complementary to our own good. These matters are evident
enough, but they call for some elaboration. In the account of goodness as
rationality we came to the familiar conclusion that rational plans of life
normally provide for the development of at least some of a person’s
powers. The Aristotelian Principle points in this direction.
Yet one basic
characteristic of human beings is that no one person can do everything
that he might do; nor a fortiori can he do everything that any other person
can do. The potentialities of each individual are greater than those he can
hope to realize; and they fall far short of the powers among men gener-
458
The
Good of Justice
ally. Thus everyone must select which of his abilities and possible inter-
ests he wishes to encourage; he must plan their training and exercise, and
schedule their pursuit in an orderly way. Different persons with similar or
complementary capacities may cooperate so to speak in realizing their
common or matching nature. When men are secure in the enjoyment of
the exercise of their own powers, they are disposed to appreciate the
perfections of others, especially when their several excellences have an
agreed place in a form of life the aims of which all accept.
Thus we may say following Humboldt that it is through social union
founded upon the needs and potentialities of
its members that each person
can participate in the total sum of the realized natural assets of the others.
We are led to the notion of the community of humankind the members
of which enjoy one another’s excellences and individuality elicited by
free institutions, and they recognize the good of each as an element in
the complete activity the whole scheme of which is consented to and
gives pleasure to all. This community may also be imagined to extend
over time, and therefore in the history of a society the joint contributions
of successive generations can be similarly conceived.
4
Our
predecessors
in achieving certain things leave it up to us to pursue them further; their
accomplishments affect our choice of endeavors and define a wider back-
4. This idea must have occurred to many and is surely implicit in numerous writings. Yet I have
been able to find but a few definite formulations of it as expressed in this section. See Wilhelm von
Humboldt,
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