Tracing the Borders of Human Free Will: Sketches after Michael Novak
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Abstract
This contribution aims to reconstruct the concept of common good, as elaborated by the American-Slovakian philosopher Michael Novak in his text The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Published in 1993 by The Free Press, this book deals both genealogically and theoretically with this notion, indicating it as the only one capable of guaranteeing integral development for human beings in the new millennium.
The common good, in fact, has the merit of tracing the limits within which human beings can be defined as persons and, in this context, indicate their freedom. This contribution, taking its starting point precisely from this definition, will be concerned, on the one hand, with presenting the fundamental stages which, according to Novak, have contributed to the formation of the common good as we know it and, on the other, with highlighting the innovations proposed by Novak himself.
The working methodology is historical-hermeneutic. After having framed the text from a historical point of view, enucleating the author's editorial motives, we will move on to analyse its key moments in order to highlight its most decisive contents.
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non–Commercial No Derivatives License which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of the Publisher must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
