Matteo Negro

Can we imagine a non-contradictory relationship between rational choice and common good? Is it possible that individuals with the most diverse preferences make choices for the common good? As has been fully demonstrated by the Arrow’s impossibility theorem, it is impossible to reach the harmonization among maximization of social choice and individual preferences, to reach the satisfaction of the slightest need for individual freedom combined with Pareto efficiency, non-dictatorship, independence of irrelevant alternatives and unrestricted domain. It is therefore necessary to admit the existence of an additional factor, a normative-transcendental factor, what we might call the “form” of each preference. The agent obviously cannot escape the dynamics of preference, but he or she relies on a rational criterion of preference. This normative requirement of deliberation and evaluation needs to inform the preferences, beliefs and desires of the agent. Common good is therefore not a result, that is the consequence of an impossible agreement between all the preferences, but is founded before the choices, is at the origin of the preferences themselves. Just as each individual is a self, identical over time, ontologically relational, ordered to the search for the good and provided with deliberative rationality, it is conceivable a common normative bond, which extends the class of motivators and allows the choice of appropriate means.

Conceptual activity is a normative activity, consisting in using or exercising rules which are functional in the formation of language, particularly judgments and propositions. Concepts, the essential elements of propositional content, are not to be considered as simple properties or predicates, but instead as constituting the rules of correct judgment. Two aspects of these claims are to be underlined. First, the dimension of normativity: the concept itself is a rule, a mode of functioning of understanding. Second, the notion of understanding as disposition to judgment. Anyone who expresses a judgment exercises a certain responsibility, an implicit or explicit endorsement of a rule.