University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository Political Science Faculty Publications Political Science 2001 General Will Richard Dagger University of Richmond, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/polisci-faculty-publications Part of the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Dagger, Richard. "General Will." In Reader's Guide to the Social Sciences, edited by Jonathan Michie, 647-48. Vol. 1. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2001. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Political Science at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Political Science Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. GENERAL WILL 647 Copyright 2001 From Reader's Guide to the Social Sciences by Jonathan Michie. Reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Group, LLC, a divison of Informa plc. General will Barry, Brian, "The Public Interest" in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary vol. 3 8 ( 1964): l-18 Bosanquet, Bernard, The Philosophical Theory of the State, 4th edition, London and New York: Macmillan, 19 51 (1st edition 1899) Dent, N.J.H., Rousseau: An Introduction to His Psychological, Social, and Political Theory, Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1988 Held, Virginia, The Public Interest and Individual Interests, New York and London: Basic Books, 1970 Jones, W.T., "Rousseau's General Will and the Problem of Consent", Journal of the History of Philosophy, 25/r ( 1987): IO 5-30 Masters, Roger D., The Political Philosophy of Rousseau, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1968 Riley, Patrick, The General Will before Rousseau: The Transformation of the Divine into the Civic, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986 Runciman, W.G. and A.K. Sen, "Games, Justice and the General Will", Mind, 74 (1965): 554-62 Shklar, Judith N., General Will entry in Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas, edited by Philip P. Wiener, New York: Scribner, 1973-74: vol. 2 Talmon, J.L., The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, London: Secker and Warburg, r 9 5 2; New York: Praeger, 1960 Trachtenberg, Zev M., Making Citizens: Rousseau's Political Theory of Culture, London and New York: Routledge, 1993 648 GENERAL WILL Although he was hardly the first to employ it, the concept of Understanding how this oppos1t1on developed and how it the general will is inextricably linked to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. informed Rousseau's thinking thus enables us to see how In Du Contrat Social (The Social Contract, 1762) Rousseau Rousseau could be both an advocate of the general will and draws a fundamental distinction between man and citizen. a champion of individuality: "Generality rules out particu­ That is, we may think of every person as a unique individual larism, not individualism; in Rousseau, an individual can and with a particular set of interests and as a member of the public should have a general will" (p.249). who shares a common interest in the welfare of the body Other scholars have turned to philosophical analysis rather politic. As a man, everyone has a private will that aims at his than history to make sense of the general will. The two particular good or personal interests; as a citizen, everyone has approaches are not mutually exclusive, as Masters demon­ a general will that aims at the common good or public interest. strates, but the commentators who take the analytical path This general will, Rousseau insists, is different from "the will typically prefer a close scrutiny of Rousseau's texts to the inves­ of all"; it is always right; it is to be found on the side of the tigation of the context in which he wrote. For these commen­ majority when votes are cast (presuming that "the character­ tators, the task is to show how those aspects of the general istics of the general will are still in the majority"); and those will that seem paradoxical, contradictory, or nonsensical are who refuse to follow it must be "forced to be free". really insightful and coherent, if not necessarily complete or Rousseau's enigmatic account of the general will has persuasive. DENT, for instance, provides an analysis of provoked a remarkable range of reactions. As SHKLAR's useful Rousseau's claim that the general will "must 'both come from survey indicates, philosophers such as G.W.F. Hegel, T.H. all and apply to all"' (p.175) that meticulously sets out the Green, and Bernard Bosanquet followed Immanuel Kant in relationship between individual volition and the public interest regarding the general will as a "higher will" that is somehow in Rousseau's compressed argument. more real than the actual wills of individual men and women. This philosophical analysis of the general will often has On BOSANQUET's interpretation, the "indestructible impulse proceeded by way of concepts drawn from economics and towards the Good, which is necessarily a common good, the game theory. Thus BARRY draws on Condorcet's jury theorem substantial unity and filling of life by the interests through to defend Rousseau's insistence that majority-rule voting is, in which man is human, is what Rousseau plainly has before him the right circumstances, the best way to declare or express the in his account of the General Will" (p.ro3). The general will general will. In similar fashion RUNCIMAN & SEN explain is thus a "Real Will'', according to Bosanquet, and this Real the general will in terms of game theory's "prisoners' Will is the foundation and justification of all "State" action. dilemma", in which individuals would do better, individually Such "metaphysical" readings of Rousseau, however, seem as well as collectively, to pursue their common interest than to have given many of Rousseau's 20th-century critics addi­ their self-interests. The Pareto principle, which holds that a tional reason to dismiss the general will as either vacuous or policy is in the common interest if it makes some member of incoherent nonsense. Other critics have deemed it downright a group better off without worsening the condition of any dangerous. TALMON, writing shortly after World War II, other member, provides the basis for a rival explanation in combined both views when he charged Rousseau with HELD. "dangerous ambiguity" (p.40). The general will is ambiguous JONES also believes that Rousseau's general will is similar because it points toward both democracy, in its attention to to the Pareto principle, but he argues, with particular refer­ the will of the people, and totalitarianism, for it "gives those ence to Runciman & Sen, that "such readings of The Social who claim to know and to represent the real and ultimate will Contract go astray if they also read Rousseau as a rational­ of the nation ... a blank cheque to act on behalf of the people, choice theonst" (p.rr8). His essay includes a brief response to without reference to the people's actual will" (p.48). Rousseau's "metaphysical" or "Hegelian" readings of Rousseau and a ambiguity thus contributes to the danger of "totalitarian helpful explication of the five procedures Rousseau relies on democracy". "to permit the general will of the assembly to emerge" More sympathetic readings have predominated in recent (pp.rro-12). years as scholars have looked for ways to make sense of Despite their differences, commentators sympathetic to Rousseau's discussion of the general will. One way to do this Rousseau typically agree that the general will is not simply the is to try to recapture Rousseau's intentions by examining his sum of individual wills. If it were, why would Rousseau distin­ use of the term in light of its use by his predecessors and guish "citizen" from "man" and "the general will" from "the contemporaries. Thus MASTERS (pp.323-34) and Shklar will of all"? According to TRACHTENBERG, however, the explain what the term meant for such thinkers as Montesquieu, general will ts the aggregation of individual wills: "the 'ingre­ Diderot, and Pufendorf in order to establish the problems dients' of the general will ... are the individual members of Rousseau was addressing and to highlight the distinctiveness society's conceptions of their own welfare" (p.9). His defence of his conception of the general will. RILEY takes this of this claim may not be persuasive, but it is subtle, sophisti­ approach further and deeper by tracing the concept to a theo­ cated, and an original contribution to the continuing effort to logical debate in the 17th century that centred on the ques­ make sense of the general will. tion, does God "have a general will that produces universal RICHARD DAGGER salvation? And if he does not, why does he will particularly See also Jean-Jacques Rousseau that some men not be saved?" (pp.4-5). By way of Pascal, Malebranche, and others, these questions entered social and political thought in the form of an opposition between the general, or the impartial, and the particular, or the selfish. .