ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the implications of the conflicts between selfdetermination and the common good, between the fear of dependency and society's failure to enable people to become independent. As a collectivity, we certainly would support a social order in which differentials that did exist did not detract from efforts to alleviate the disadvantages suffered by those in greatest need. It is not at all remarkable that people prefer health to illness, justice to unfair treatment, security to uncertain income, knowledge to ignorance, self-respect to indignity, aesthetic satisfaction to the unattractive. For each of us these preferences represent personal goods we would rather not do without. Because they are so central to our personal well-being, civil societies institutionalize systems to promote such goods. The chapter concludes that social welfare is "a civilized response to the collective pursuit of common goods".
