Provides a brief overview of elements of the Islamic normative tradition. I consider three key concepts – justice, the common good and community – and ambiguities of their contemporary application. The primary focus of the discussion concerns resources (including wealth and property) – their attribution and distribution. To whom do wealth, property and resources belong, and what are their responsibilities? How, by whom, and for what purposes are wealth and resources to be distributed, and who has the authority to make such determinations? In broad strokes, I outline how, according to religious norms, resources ought to be utilized and managed for the sake of the "common good." The purpose of this discussion is to provide a framework that facilitates a deeper understanding of the extent to which religious norms have been instrumentalized and at times, reformulated in the conduct of the four oil-financed institutionalized practices explored in subsequent chapters.

I conclude with a review of my findings in Chapters 3–7. I elucidate the relationship between “oil” and “Islam” and what that relationship teaches us about politics in Gulf monarchies. The overwhelming message is that with their abundant wealth, Gulf rulers have been exploiting not only oil rents but also religious doctrine and its (re-)formulations to function as tools of social management and social control. Their aim is to bolster their authoritarian ambitions: ruling families’ capacity to both dominate and shape their societies and retain their monopoly over resources. For the sake of maintaining – and enriching – dynastic states and constructing the nation, oil and Islam are their principal tools.

Chapter 9 concludes this discussion of human perfection by looking at what many see as the most pressing global issue today – human environmental pollution and destruction. Viewed through the lens of the luminous television series A Perfect Planet, this chapter addresses the issues of unwarranted suffering from natural forces, religious and secular experiences of awe at biodiversity, and secular eschatological fears of ecological catastrophe. Damage to a perfect planet is viewed as a serious challenge to claims about human perfection. The Dominican theologians Herbert McCabe and Brian Davies (the latter debating with the philosopher Michael Ruse) are both used critically. Hope, however, is seen in the leadership offered by Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si and in a growing consensus among both faith and secular traditions that this damage must be addressed by effective action, based upon the moral concept of the common good, for the sake of both a perfect planet and the astonishing biodiversity (including human beings) within it.

After evaluating the different elements explaining the power structure, the final chapters of the book are devoted to policy strategies. As an introduction to these, the chapter considers ethical issues: the individual-society opposition, the notion of the common good, the debate concerning the notion of justice (deontological versus consequentialist conceptions, meritocratic versus equalitarian views, equality of starting points versus equality of points of arrival), the different notions of freedom (such as positive versus negative freedom. Rossellis liberal socialism is illustrated, together with Croces criticism. Finally, a distinction is drawn between fanciful and realistic utopias.

This chapter focuses on transnational solidarity conflicts, that is, a new type of distributional conflict which encompasses both quarrels about the adaptation of domestic welfare systems to EMU requirements and the distribution of costs and benefits between Member States. It seeks to understand how constitutional accountability may contribute to constructive management of such conflicts. In addressing this question, the chapter focuses specifically on the accountability goods of openness and publicness. It analyses the case law of the German and the Portuguese constitutional court as well as of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) following the Eurozone crisis. Domestic courts applied mostly a deductive approach to accountability in the EMU and thereby also tended to ‘nationalise’ transnational solidarity conflicts rather than acknowledge their European dimension. By contrast, the CJEU made the European constitutional dimension visible, thereby contributing more to openness. However, by focusing mostly on economic constitutional values, while only hesitantly applying other constitutional values such as social rights as a benchmark for substantive accountability it ensured publicness only to a limited extent. In conclusion, both domestic and European constitutional accountability mechanisms did not ensure meaningful accountability in the sense of concretizing and re-negotiating constitutional common goods.

There is no getting around the fact that we live in a social and cultural environment and there is no denying the fact that the laws of our society deeply affect its character. From the fact that law impacts the environment of those who are subject to it, it does not follow that legal officials should attempt to improve its ethical character. This chapter presents a presumptive case for why legal officials are not only permitted but also have a duty to do so. Ethical environmentalism is the political project that aims to satisfy that duty. After clarifying the notion of an ethical environment, and relating it to the aspirational ideal of the common good of a society, the chapter argues that ethical environmentalism is supported by considerations of fairness. The relation between fair treatment and neutral treatment is then explored and clarified. Ethical environmentalism presupposes a public/private distinction. The shared public world, as contrasted with the private thoughts and activities of individuals, defines its scope. With that in mind, the chapter distinguishes two forms of legal moralism, character-centered and status-centered, and discusses how each form relates to the project of ethical environmentalism.

Agape-justice conflicts generally require collective action because many of them, especially the more intractable and complicated ones, are at the community level. This is fortuitous because the resulting requisite group action becomes the occasion for growth in collective virtues. Collective virtues are those qualities that people exemplify qua members of the group. These actions and predispositions are central to their collective self-identity, and by extension, to their individual, personal self-understanding. Collective virtues are the building blocks for the common good and are essential for heading off collective-action problems. Agape-justice conflicts paradoxically create opportunities for community building and mutual solicitude.

In this chapter the account of the Idea of the Good as the foundation of moral realism is applied to issues in religion and politics (Section #1). The question is raised and answered why Plato is confident that the gods are only good and not ever bad (Section #2). The theology of Laws10 is examined for some of the theological implications of the preeminence of the Good (Section #3). The concept of religious experience is introduced and its metaphysical underpinnings explained (Section #4). The problem of evil is addressed: how can the Good, the archē of everything, be the cause of evil? If it is not the cause, whence evil? (Section #5). The tensions between a metaphysics of the Good and the exigencies of politics, especially the authority of rulership, is examined (Section #6). The idea of the common good is introduced in order to determine if it is possible that the common good and the private good should conflict and if so, how does this impact Plato’s universal Good (Section #7). The connection between political expertise, consent, and legitimacy of types of government is examined (Section #8)

Pope Francis raised the alarm about ecology in his encyclical letter Laudato si’. On care for our common home (24 May 2015). He gathers all the aspects of the ecological crisis, which leads to the concept of ‘integral ecology’, in which the different sides of ecology are bound with human life, and in particular with the plight of the poor. The chapter explores this document and discusses its implications for the rights of and representation of nature. After an analysis of the situation and an evaluation of the ecological needs, the Pope adds paths of action and ways of contemplation. He stresses the fact that everybody is able to do something and to discover the joy in a new relationship of contemplation with his brothers and sisters, with the cosmos and with God. The encyclical is completed by the analysis of the Final Document of the Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region, held in Rome in October 2019. The Document proposes a concrete application of the encyclical Laudato si’ in the world of today.

For their politics lessons Susanne Staschen-Dielmann and Saskia Helm create a digital learnscape based on the well-known simulation Model United Nations (MUN) – usually based on the organisation of an international conference. The idea of a digital MUN emerged during the first lockdown in Great Britain and was refined using pluriliteracies principles during the second one. Within the authentic setting of a United Nations conference, learners are guided through more and more sophisticated text-production tasks. These include writing a policy cycle analysis, a draft resolution and an opening speech. Learners take part in a highly formalised debate, which requires the use of an extremely elaborate register. The digital learning space is used to ensure formal and informal communication and information exchange within groups of varying sizes as well as providing meaningful feedback.

The category of ‘human rights law’ is sometimes limited to bills and charters of rights on the model of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to the case law of courts interpreting and applying these legal measures. This chapter argues that the measures that realise human rights in the law are the everyday, unremarkable measures that make up the full corpus of legal materials directing what may, must, and must not be done. The argument explores how all sound positive law finds its source in the human goods through one of two modes of derivation: deduction or specification. These are the same two modes of positive law’s derivation from natural law, for the reach of human rights law is more or less coextensive with the reach of positive law and the human goods from which are derived human rights law are the same human goods from which are derived natural law’s practical principles and precepts.

This chapter argues that an adequate account of group rights requires an embedded understanding of moral duties and rights within the context of common action for a common good. Drawing from Alasdair MacIntyre, I explain why group agency for a common good, through various social practices, grounds a framework of natural justice with correlative duties and rights, including various group moral rights. This account of natural justice is completed by an appeal to the common agency of an institutionalised political community for a political common good. I argue that human rights are a subset of moral rights, which ‘cry out’ as a matter of justice for political enforcement or realisation, whether against violations of fundamental natural law precepts or dereliction of core political responsibilities. These include group rights where the protected aspects of personal human flourishing are pursued through the common action of groups, such as families, trade unions, religious communities, and political communities. Moreover, group rights are essential to human rights – human rights presuppose the group moral right of political authority to administer justice for the common good.