Arendt did not conceive of politics as a means for the satisfaction of individual preferences, nor as a way to integrate individuals around a shared conception of the good.
A widely shared conception of the so-called scientific ethos has been propounded by Robert Merton.
Since a shared conception of the good could figure in common ground justifications for political principles, its promotion need not express disrespect to any citizen.
As a result, the state that we now occupy is one in which we no longer enjoy a shared conception of the good, and politics has become to use MacIntyre's memorable phrase—"civil war by other means".
Very roughly, the following could be taken to be a mark of a discipline's success: (i) among its practitioners, there is a widely shared conception of the discipline's guiding questions and permissible methodology; and (ii) there is progress within the discipline in addressing its guiding questions.
Political activity is valued not because it may lead to agreement or to a shared conception of the good, but because it enables each citizen to exercise his or her powers of agency, to develop the capacities for judgment and to attain by concerted action some measure of political efficacy.
Collaboration has been broadly defined as a "coordinated, synchronous activity that is the result of a continued attempt to construct and maintain a shared conception of a problem" (Roschelle and Teasley 1995, p. 70).
But here were musicians palpably involved with a shared conception of a remarkable work, and inspired by their dynamic conductor into urgent, intense and often ravishing playing.
The nostalgic view of ancient political philosophy as predicated on widely shared conceptions of human nature and the human good, before the splintering and fracturing of modernity, is an oversimplification.
While that sentiment is widely shared, conceptions of its manifestation differ widely, especially in the corridors of power.
