Charles De Koninck’s passionate defense of the primacy of the common good over any merely private good, published toward the end of World War II, when an understandable reaction against totalitarianism had lead many philosophers to posit the primacy of the “personal” over the social, provoked an equally passionate response by the Rev. I. Th. Eschmann, O.P. Eschmann chiefly objected to De Koninck’s thesis that the good of the order of the whole universe is that good which God principally intends in creation, and to which all particular goods in the universe are subordinated. “Is it necessary to remind Thomists,” Eschamnn writes, “that they should not, in any way whatever, revive the old pagan blasphemy of a divine cosmos?” And if De Koninck’s thesis were true “then the personalists, and with them all the Christian Fathers and theologians and philosophers, should close their shops, go home and do penance, in cinere et cilicio, for having grossly erred and misled the Christian world throughout almost two thousand years.” According to Eschamann De Koninck’s thesis is really a Platonic/Aviccenan thesis that St Thomas was careful to avoid. De Koninck in his reply shows just how central his thesis is to St Thomas’s whole thought, and how deeply it is rooted in scripture and St Augustine. But what of the rest of the fathers and medieval theologians does one find it there? A glance at the Greek Fathers shows that the primacy of the common good was well known to them. And in the pre-Avicennan Middle Ages? Re-reading St Aelred of Rievaulx’s On Spiritual Friendship I was struck by how well developed the specific thesis of the order (or peace) of the universe as the chief intrinsic common good is in his work:
For God, who is supreme in power and goodness, is a good sufficient unto himself; he is himself his own good, his own joy, his own glory, and his own happiness. Nothing exists outside him that he could need, whether person or angel or sky or earth or anything they contain, for every creature cries out to him, “You are my God, for you have no need of my goods.” Not only is he sufficient unto himself, but he is the sufficiency of all other things, giving to some existence, to others sensation, and to still others intelligence. He is the cause of all that exists, the life of everything with sensation, and the wisdom of everyone endowed with intelligence. Therefore, as the highest nature he fashioned all natures, set everything in its place, and with discernment allotted each its own time. Moreover, since he so planned it eternally, he determined that peace should guide all his creatures and society unite them. Thus from him who is supremely and uniquely one, all should be allotted some trace of his unity. For this reason, he left no class of creatures isolated, but from the many he linked each one in a kind of society. —I.51-52
(Deus enim summe potens et summe bonus, sibi ipsi sufficiens bonum est; quoniam bonum suum, gaudium suum, gloria sua, beatitudo sua, ipse est. Nec est aliquid extra ipsum quo egeat, non homo, non angelus, non coelum, non terra, nec aliquid quod in ipsis est, cui omnis creatura proclamat: Deus meus es, quoniam bonorum meorum non eges. Nec tantum sibi sufficit ipse, sed et omnium rerum sufficientia ipse est, dans aliis esse, et aliis sentire, aliis insuper et sapere, ipse omnium existentium causa, omnium sentientium vita, omnium intellegentium sapientia. Ipse itaque summa natura omnes naturas instituit, omnia suis locis ordinavit, omnia suis temporibus discrete distribuit. Voluit autem, nam et ita ratio eius aeterna prescripsit, ut omnes creaturas suas pax componeret, et uniret societas; et ita omnia ab ipso qui summe et pure unus est quoddam unitatis vestigium sortirentur. Hinc est quod nullum genus rerum solitarium reliquit, sed ex multis quadam societate connexuit. —I.IV)
In other words, the unity of peace that unites all creatures, the tranquility of created order, is the trace of the creator in His creation–that for the sake of which he creates. Hence Aelred goes on to say that sin consists in puttung one’s private good before the common good:
But after the fall of the first human, with charity growing lukewarm, when cupidity crept in and let private gain supplant the common good…
(At post lapsum primi hominis, cum refrigescente caritate cupiditas subintrasset, fecisset que bono communi privata praeponi…)
Sancrucensis 
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