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BOOK REVIEWS Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common Good. By MARY M. KEYS. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 255 pp. $26.99 (paper). ISBN 978-0-521-72238-4. Mary Keys sets out to excavate and explicate St. Thomas's understanding of the common good, especially the political common good. She skillfully distinguishes multiple levels of this project. Given the fact that Thomas left the Sententia libri Politicorum incomplete, how should we weigh it in comparison to what seems to be a richer account of social and political theory in the Secunda pars of the Summa theologiae? There is also the bevy of distinctions deployed by Thomas, which tend to recur in subtly different ways, depending upon the issue at hand. As Keys shows, some of the most acute and interesting work in social and political theory will crop up where least expected in the Summa. Finally, there is what can be called the big picture. How is Thomas's philosophy of the common good situated within his work as a whole, including anthropology, morals, and theology? "A central aim of this book," writes Keys, "is to help reinsert Aquinas into contemporary debates in political theory, to explore various ways we might enrich our political-philosophical discourse with conceptual resources drawn from his works" (8). In the first part, she briefly examines how the problem of the common good emerges in contemporary liberal political theory. Here, she treats John Rawls, Michael Sandel, and William Galston. Her treatment of Rawls is notable for the fact that she regards him-in my view, correctly-as maintaining, even in his later work, the position that political order cannot be reduced to an atomistic aggregation held together by mere procedures. This allows some room for dialogue between Rawls and a more traditional proponent of political union as a common good. But her survey of this sector of contemporary debate remains rather sketchy. Keys moves along quickly to another debate-among, and between, Aristotelians and Thomists. The chief question, which harbors a number of subsidiary questions, is how to make sense ofThomas's penchant to move well beyond the boundaries set by Aristotle. Does Thomas's doctrine of human inclination, virtue, and participation in the eternal law deepen or distort Aristotle's account of political phenomena? Once Keys situates herself within this debate, her exposition of Thomas finds its feet. It is a challenging piece of work. 487 488 BOOK REVIEWS One lesson that can be drawn from the famous exchange in the 1940s between Charles De Koninck and Ignatius Eschmann about the primacy of the common good is that the terminology of "common good" is porous and evershifting . Keys right away reminds the reader that for both Aristotle and Thomas the social and political common good stand between the two poles of unity of substance and the unity of aggregation. What is the "common" in an intersubjective collectivity? When two or more persons hold themselves out as one-in a marriage, a club, a labor union, a church, or a polity-there does not come into existence a new natural kind, if by natural kind one means a substance. Nor is their unity a mental fiction imposed upon otherwise unrelated constituent bits. Indeed, if we were to refuse to recognize the union of spouses as something more than the sum of the parts, they would be the first to remind us that we are not regarding them justly. The "common" of a society is neither substantial nor aggregational. Members of a society are not "parts" in either of these senses. Rather, they enjoy what Aristotle and Thomas call a unity of order. Every part is a whole-an acting individual who retains his own proper acts and operations. At the same time, when two or more individuals pursue a common end, and intend to have it brought about through united action, there exists a distinct kind of unity. Lawyers call it a persona moralis in order to indicate that the locus of rights and responsibilities-the personhood-consists in a shared end and structure of action. In Aristotelian parlance, such entity has a "form," which is nothing other than the unity of...

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