reneral
Will OF ROUSSEAU
C 10
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General will, in political theory, a collectively held will that aims at the common good or common interest. The general will is central to the political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and an important concept in modern republican thought. Rousseau distinguished the general will from the particular and often contradictory wills of individuals and groups. In Du Contrat social (1762; The Social Contract), Rousseau argued that freedom and authority are not contradictory, since legitimate laws are founded on the general will of the citizens. In obeying the law, the individual citizen is thus only obeying himself as a member of the political community.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, drawing in pastels by Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, 1753; in the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva.
Courtesy of the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva; photograph, Jean Arlaud
Constitution of the United States of America
constitution: Rousseau and the general will
Whereas Hobbes created his unitary sovereign through the mechanism of individual and unilateral promises and whereas Locke prevented excessive...
The notion of the general will precedes Rousseau and has its roots in Christian theology. In the second half of the 17th century, Nicolas Malebranche attributed the general will to God. God, Malebranche argued, mostly acts in the world through a set of “general laws” instituted at the creation of the world. These laws correspond to God’s general will, in contradistinction to particular expressions of God’s will: miracles and other occasional acts of divine intervention. For Malebranche, it is because God’s will expresses itself mainly through general laws that one can make sense of the apparent contradiction between God’s will to save all of humankind and the fact that most souls will not actually be saved. Rousseau’s own understanding of the general will emerged from a critique of Denis Diderot, who transformed Malebranche’s understanding of the general will into a secular concept but who echoed Malebranche by defining it in universalistic terms. In his article “Droit naturel” (“Natural Right”) published in 1755 in the Encyclopédie, Diderot argued that morality is based on the general will of humankind to improve its own happiness. Individuals can access this moral ideal by reflecting on their interests as members of the human race. The general will, Diderot believed, is necessarily directed at the good since its object is the betterment of all.
For Rousseau, however, the general will is not an abstract ideal. It is instead the will actually held by the people in their capacity as citizens. Rousseau’s conception is thus political and differs from the more universal conception of the general will held by Diderot. To partake in the general will means, for Rousseau, to reflect upon and to vote on the basis of one’s sense of justice. Individuals become conscious of their interests as citizens, according to Rousseau, and thus of the interest of the republic as a whole, not through spirited discussions but, on the contrary, by following their personal conscience in the “silence of the passions.” In this sense, the public assembly does not debate so much as disclose the general will of the people. Rousseau argued that the general will is intrinsically right, but he also criticized in some works (mainly in his Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1750; Discourse on the Sciences and Arts) the rationalist elevation of reason above feelings. This has provoked scholarly debate about the rational and affective dimensions of the general will. On the one hand, the general will reflects the rational interest of the individual (as citizen) as well as that of the people as a whole. On the other hand, the general will is not purely rational because it emerges out of an attachment and even a love for one’s political community.