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In addition to and connected with its fresh metaphysics and philosophy of religion, the British Idealist school put forward a radically new kind of moral theory; one which might be called the idealist ethic of social self-realization. Rapidly gaining popularity, its re-construal of the moral problem came to be the dominant mode of thought in ethics for twenty years, and a major force for twenty more after that. This chapter examines that system of ethics, through detailed consideration of the theories of Bradley, Green, and Edward Caird. Particular attention is paid to the concepts of self-realization, the common good, ‘My Station and its Duties’, and the social conception of the self. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the various textbooks and manuals which popularized this conception of ethics.

Are Christians the most useful citizens in French society, precisely because they live as if already belonging to another world? Their utility is seen in relation to the dangers of the present moment, characterized by nihilism. In nihilism, following Nietzsche, values possess no value in themselves, but are dependent on evaluation. Evaluation today is exchange-based, and thus unstable. “Values” has been produced and mastered by someone who decides them. This deciding involves the will willing its own elevation to power: the will to power. The answer to nihilism lies not in ceasing to will, but in willing differently. As the Gospels show, Jesus willed otherwise, willing the will of the Father. This different willing is the Christian path out of nihilism. By willing as Jesus willed, Christians begin to achieve the common good in its fullness as good of the communion, a nonpolitical model of political community. This communion is lived according to the counter logic to economic exchange found in the non-reciprocity of the gift. Christians, beneficiaries and actors of the gift, offer society a new agent of democracy, who precedes the economic proprietor of the self, acting with authority rather than power.

This chapter traces Rousseau's complex and somewhat paradoxical views on political education. For Rousseau, popular sovereignty was the only truly legitimate form of political power. However, unlike contemporary ideas of virtual or residual sovereignty, Rousseau thought popular sovereignty had to be expressed through the legislative activity by the people themselves. Such active popular sovereignty raises the question of how any given people—prior to political experience, the creation of a civic ethos, and any knowledge of legal and institutional mechanisms—could successfully create anything so complicated as a "system of laws." The short answer, according to Rousseau, is that they can't. They are therefore in need of a "great Lawgiver" such as Lycurgus or Solon. A self-governing or autonomous people, it turns out, can only be the product of a paternalism exercised by the father figure Lawgiver. The resulting paternalistic "education to autonomy" is the central paradox of Rousseau's thought. The chapter traces iterations of this paradox through The Social Contract, the Discourse on Inequality, Emile, and the constitutional projects for Corsica and Poland. Contra Rousseau, I argue that these educational projects never satisfactorily transcend their paternalistic basis. Moreover, the "Rousseauian paradox" comes to haunt the work of Hegel, Tocqueville, and Mill.

To this point in the book, leisure has been discussed primarily as a personal matter. In Chapter 8, the good life is placed more squarely in a social context where leisure and music are considered in terms of the common good. Problems identified and discussed include leisure inequality, consumerism, and individualism. By being placed in the realm of the social, leisure categories, activities, and behaviors are no longer a private or individual affair, but are compared for their potential to be “better leisure” on a collective level. Music making is thus proposed as a form of better leisure based on its collective health and well-being potential.

This chapter discusses two interrelated concerns. It begins by explaining why sentencing should engage more directly and effectively with the emotions and sensibilities of its relevant audiences before considering the broader question of how it might better serve the ‘public interest’ by contributing more effectively to the ‘common good’. The discussion then explains why an ideological commitment to shared social values is considered pivotal in encouraging adherence to penal norms and influencing conduct. It suggests that embedding and sharing values within and between communities is more likely where the state takes a positive role in encouraging the development of reciprocal notions of awareness, mutual respect, and responsibility, both individual and collective. Such policies should have moral credibility and practical relevance. Important parallels between religious and secular notions of the common good are drawn, providing insights that bear directly on sentencing policy’s role in promoting social justice.

Appeals to conscience remain a feature of public life in the secular societies of liberal democracies. This chapter addresses a troubling privatization of conscience: a tendency to treat appeals to conscience as private acts, valuable for their contribution to a particular individual’s moral agency or development, but not for their constructive contribution to public life. The objection is twofold. As regards particular individuals, privatization is objectionable because it insulates conscience against critical challenges from other individuals and groups, whose consciences speak in different voices; this is detrimental to the ethical reflection integral to individual autonomy as conceived here. As regards public life, privatization is objectionable because it blocks the flow of ethical commitments and convictions necessary for the construction of a common good by the members of social institutions. Starting from an intersubjective conception of autonomy, the chapter proposes an alternative view that shows the importance of conscience of public life.

This chapter discusses equality before the law, and equality as equal treatment under the law. Equality in the American and French Declarations excluded women and slaves. Blackstone and English law recognized equality of all people, but justified unequal treatment. For Blackstone, the Americans, and the French, the aim of society wass to protect rights of liberty, security, and property. Liberty and equality were better respected in eighteenth-century England than in France. ‘Human rights’ was first used in England in 1780. The right to equality was recognized in the twelfth to sixteenth centuries under the influence of Christianity and Roman law. Slavery in England died out under Christian ideas, but then appeared again, when Aristotle’s idea of natural slaves gained influence. Gender inequality reduced in England more than in France. The common good is the ancient idea of the good of everyone, not Bentham’s greatest good of the greatest number.

Continuing the discussion of idealist arguments that might be given for concerning oneself with the well-being of others, this chapter examines the British Idealist theory of the organic social whole (focusing on the common good theory of T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, and Marietta Kies), and the Personal Idealist theory of community (focusing on Josiah Royce and J. M. E. McTaggart). Despite their differing views regarding the metaphysics of community and the ‘separateness of persons’ these two approaches lead to remarkably similar ethical theories, in large part because the Personal Idealists understand the development of distinct moral personality as something conditional upon membership of a community. In each of the cases considered it is demonstrated how it is the thinkers’ idealism that underpins their altruistic or communtarian orientation.