THE COMMON GOOD AND SOCIAL HOPE IN AFRICA

Authors

  • T. EBIJUWA

Abstract

There is no doubt that every society tends to operate with what they considered the good life or the common good suitable to their social formation. But, the problem here is that people sometimes disagree as to what they considered good. What this implies for our conception of the common good in Africa is that the socio-political structure should be arranged in such a way that stakeholders in the society are guaranteed of fairness in the distribution of opportunities and benefits. For, it is only when stakeholders are duly recognized in the scheme of things, that we can expect their commitment to the common good. The common good is thus a kind of social relationship, which is somehow constituted by the coordination of the personal activities of members of the state. The common good then can thus be conceived as the platform of the existence of any social order. It is a good of all members of the society. On this showing, the common good is not a mere collection of individual interests, and it is not a surrogate for the sum of the different individual goods. This paper will investigate the conflict between individual interest and the common good in African political philosophy.

Author Biography

T. EBIJUWA

Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Nigeria

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