Civic Humanism in Florence and the Modern Welfare State: The Transformation of the Concept of the Common Good

The subject of this study is the transformation of the concept of the “common good” – bonum commune – in the political-philosophical tradition from the civic humanism of the Italian Renaissance to modern welfare states and digital democracies. The article focuses on the changing image of citizenship itself. In the republican thought of Rome and the Renaissance, the common good was understood as the shared undertaking of free citizens. It presupposed active participation in political life, civic virtue, self-government, responsibility before the republic, and a willingness to relate private interest to the aims of the political community. In modern electoral democracies, this understanding gradually shifts toward a model of distributing social goods, administering rights-claims, and managing the expectations of various groups of voters. Of particular importance is the question of how, within this new configuration, the relationship between politics and morality, freedom and obligation, civic participation and dependence on the state is transformed. The study employs historical-philosophical, comparative-conceptual, and social-philosophical analysis. The comparison is conducted according to four criteria: the understanding of political freedom, civic virtue, the form of the citizen’s participation in the common undertaking, and the mode of institutional provision of the common good. The transformation of the common good is understood as a transition from the republican model of active civic co-participation to a model of social reception. The methodological novelty of the article lies in the fact that the transformation of the common good is examined not only through changes in political institutions or in the concept of freedom, but also through a comparative analysis of civic virtues that constitute the moral infrastructure of republican citizenship. It is shown that the transition from the republican ideal of virtus civilis to an ethics of rights and claims changes the nature of the political subject. The citizen is increasingly conceived not as a participant in a common undertaking, but as a recipient of services and a bearer of claims upon the state. This leads to a weakening of political freedom, since dependence on mechanisms of redistribution reduces the need for independent civic action. The article concludes that digital forms of participation do not eliminate this gap and often intensify the atomization of political life. As a result, the classical understanding of bonum commune is displaced by competition among private interests, electoral expectations, and group claims.