We don't need one, and it's just a mistake to think that we need a single conception of the ultimate good in order to progress in politics.
But what does seem clear is that we need an expanded conception of what constitutes higher education.
In economics, in order to know whether any given event is a winner or a loser for you, you need an accurate conception of how the world economy works, especially when dealing with big-picture issues like opening up U.S. to foreign trade.
In order to use this information to understand the evolution of the molecular machinery, one needs a clear conception of what 'age' actually is.
But to get there, we'll also need a massive shift in conceptions of land, culture and history.
(A variant conception identifies them as goods that any rational person would want who gives priority to her interests in (1) cooperating with others on fair terms and (2) selecting and if need be revising a conception of the good and a set of life aims along with pursuing the conception and the aims).
Further, we need some conception of a role or position that does not reduce all obligations to obligations of role or position.
We either need some conception of a summum bonum, justified apart from practical reasoning, toward which acts must aim, or Dewey's theory reduces to a form of Humean instrumentalism, in which ends are given by our desires or immediate likings, and the only question is how to satisfy them.
Cohen needs to specify a conception of dignity in which bearing unequal burdens on behalf of urgent social ends invariably amounts to an assault on dignity if the burdens happen to be assigned by race.
If roles or positions generate moral or reason-giving obligations, we need some conception of roles that does not yield the implausible implication that Nazis had moral obligations to herd Jews into gas chambers.
