Assumptions and the General Will

§3. The General Will

1.What we have said so far about the social compact is extremely general and rather unclear. In order to get a clearer view, let’s look at the nature of the association that Rousseau thinks would be entered into given the conditions he imposes on the compact. A way to do this is to figure out how he understands the general will.4

This term occurs about seventy times in the Social Contract (including references via pronouns). The first occurrence is the one noted above. To repeat it: “Each of us puts [into the community] his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will; and in a body we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole” (SC, 1.6.9).

Thus, what provides the justification of political authority in society on matters of political justice—an authority exercised through a vote of the assembly of the people—is bona fide expressions of the general will. This will is properly expressed in fundamental political laws concerning constitutional essentials and basic justice, or in laws suitably related thereto. Fundamental laws are legitimate in virtue of their being bona fide expressions of the general will. How are we to understand this idea?

2.To begin: Each individual incorporated into political society has particular interests (SC, 1:7.7). Within the limits of civil freedom (established by the social compact), these interests are the basis of valid reasons for action. Each of us has, then, a private, or particular, will. Here, by will, I take Rousseau to mean a capacity for deliberative reason: this is the capacity for free will of the Second Discourse. One aspect of this capacity is shown in our making decisions in the light of reasons connected with our particular interests. These decisions are expressions of our particular will.

Observe that the existence of particular interests is taken for granted. The society of the social contract is not one in which people have no inter-

4. The idea of the general will has a long history. See Judith Shklar, Men and Citizens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 168–169 and 184–197. See also her article on the general will in Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. P. Weiner (New York: Scribner’s, 1973), Vol. 2, pp. 275–281; and Patrick Riley, The General Will Before Rousseau (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).

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ests separate from those of the political society, or no interests distinct from and often contrary to the general will and the common good.

3. For Rousseau the society of the social compact is not a mere aggregation of people. Rather, an essential condition of that society is that its members have what Rousseau calls a general will. About this, I shall now ask five questions:

(1)What is the general will the will of ?

(2)What does the general will will?

(3)What makes the common good possible?

(4)What makes common interests possible?

(5)What determines our fundamental interests?

In answer to the first question: What is the general will the will of ?: it is the will all citizens have as members of the political society of the social compact. It is a will distinct from the private will each also has as a particular person (SC, 1:7.7).

To answer the second question: what does the general will will?: we say that, as members of the political society, citizens share a conception of their common good (SC, 4:1.1). That they share such a conception is itself public knowledge between them. We might say: when all citizens conduct themselves in their thought and action reasonably and rationally as the social compact requires, the general will of each citizen wills the common good, as specified by their shared conception of that common good.

Let’s note that the general will is not, certainly, the will of an entity that in some way transcends the members of society. It is not, say, the will of the society as a whole as such (SC, 1:7.5; 2:4.1). It is individual citizens who have a general will: that is, each has a capacity for deliberative reason which, on appropriate occasions, leads them to decide what to do—how to vote, say—on the basis of what they each think will best advance their common interest in what is necessary for their common preservation and general welfare, i.e. the common good (SC, 1:7.7). In other words, the general will is a form of deliberative reason that each citizen shares with all other citizens in virtue of their sharing a conception of their common good.

What citizens think best advances this common good identifies what they view as good reasons for their political decisions. Every form of deliberative reason and will must have its own way of identifying valid reasons. Thus, as members of the assembly, as citizens, we are not to vote our par-

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ticular, private interests as we might like to, but to express our opinion as to which of the general measures presented as alternatives best advances the common good (SC, 4:1.6; 4:2.8).

This brings us to the third question: What makes the common good possible? As stated, the general will wills the common good, but the common good is specified by our common interest. Here the common good is social conditions that make possible, or assist, citizens’ attaining their common interests. Thus, without common interests, there would be no common good, and so, no general will. Consider SC, 2:1.1: “The first and most important consequence of the principles established above is that the general will alone can guide the forces of the State according to the end for which it was instituted, which is the common good. For if the opposition of private interests made the establishment of societies necessary, it is the agreement of these same interests that made it possible. It is what these different interests have in common that forms the social bond, and if there were not some point at which all the interests are in agreement, no society could exist. Now it is uniquely on the basis of this common interest that society ought to be governed.”

Note that it is our common interests that yield the social bond and make possible our general will. This confirms what we said above: namely, that the general will is not the will of an entity that transcends citizens as individuals. For the general will ceases or dies when citizens’ interests change so that they no longer have fundamental interests in common. The general will depends on such interests.

The fourth question is: What makes possible the common interests that specify the common good? The answer to this is our fundamental interests as we have described them under our initial assumptions; for example, the first assumption where we grouped them under amour de soi and amour-propre. There are also fundamental interests given our common and enduring social situation: for example, the fact that our situation is one of social interdependence, and that mutually advantageous social cooperation is both necessary and possible.

This brings us to the fifth question: What determines our (common) fundamental interests? To this the answer is Rousseau’s conception of human nature and of the fundamental interests and capacities essential and appropriate to it. Or we could say: it is his conception of the person regarded in its most essential aspects. This conception is, I believe, a norma-

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tive conception and from it the enumeration of our fundamental interests is derived. As stated earlier, Rousseau doesn’t look to people as they actually are in a society marked by extremes of inequality between rich and poor, powerful and weak, with the resulting evil of domination and subjection. He is looking to human beings as they are by nature, understood in the light of his conception thereof. That nature determines our fundamental interests.

Notice here what is common to social contract doctrines, namely, a normalization of interests attributed to the parties to the contracts. In Hobbes, it is our fundamental interests in self-preservation, conjugal affections, and “riches and the means of commodious living.” In Locke it is lives, liberties, and estates. In Rousseau it is the fundamental interests we have surveyed. Everyone is assumed to have these interests in roughly the same form, and, as reasonable and rational, to order them in the same way.

4. Perhaps this interpretation of Rousseau’s thought is borne out by what he says about the general will in SC, 2:3:

2:3.1. The general will is always right and always tends to the public good.

2:3.2. There is often a great difference between the will of all and the general will.

2:3.2. The general will considers only the common interest, while the will of all considers private interest, and is but the sum of private wills.

2:3.2. The general will is what remains after taking away from private wills the pluses and minuses that cancel each other out and taking the sum of these wills as modified by those subtractions.

2:3.3. The great number of small differences will converge on the general will and the decision will always be good, provided that the people are properly informed and have no communication among themselves.

2:3.3. When one group dominates in society, there is no longer a general will.

2:3.4. For the general will to be well expressed, there should be no sectional associations in the state and each citizen should decide for himself.

2:3.4. If sectional associations exist, then to enlighten the general will it is necessary to multiply their number and to prevent inequality among them.

These statements can be interpreted in various ways. I read them as saying that our particular interests are likely to bias our vote, and this is so

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even when, with the best intentions, we try to ignore them and to vote our opinion as to what best advances the common good. This is a very different conception of voting than the one we are perhaps more familiar with: that we can always vote our particular interests. But accepting Rousseau’s view, particular interests are obstacles to conscientious voting; they get in the way of a reasoned view of the common good, for this good is specified as meeting the fundamental interests which all citizens share.

Hence we see why Rousseau says such things as these: The general will considers only the common interest. The general will is what remains after taking away from the private wills the pluses and minuses that cancel each other out. These pluses and minuses I read as the various private and particular interests that cause the biases that incline us this way or that. Even when we are conscientious and intend to vote our opinion as to what best advances the common good, we may miss the mark swayed by particular interests in ways unnoticed by us.

Rousseau says the great number of small differences, that is, the great number of small biases, will most likely converge on the general will. So if the people are properly informed and vote their own opinion, the overall vote will most likely be correct. What he may have in mind here is that each informed and conscientious vote can be seen as a sample of the truth with a considerably greater than 50/50 chance of being correct. Therefore, as the number of such samples increases (as more well-informed citizens vote conscientiously) the probability increases that the outcome of the vote converges on what really does advance the common good.5

5. To briefly recap the answers to the five questions:

(1)The general will is a form of deliberative reason shared and exercised by each citizen as a member of the corporate body, or the public person (the body politic), that comes into being with the social compact (SC, 1:6.10);

(2)The general will wills the common good, understood as the social conditions that make it possible for citizens to realize their common interests;

5. Of course, for this interpretation to work, it must be assumed that the samples are independent of one another. Otherwise the Bernoulli law of large numbers will not apply. Perhaps this is why Rousseau says that there should be no communication among citizens. But in any case, the analogy seems rather far-fetched. It is discussed by K. J. Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 85f.

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(3)What makes the common good possible is our common interests;

(4)What makes our common interests possible is our shared fundamental interests;

(5)What determines our fundamental interests is our common human nature (as Rousseau conceives of it) and the fundamental interests and capacities appropriate to it; or alternatively, Rousseau’s conception of the person as a normative idea.

Once we have answered this fifth question, we have pushed the formal account of the general will and what makes it possible as far as we can. By formal account, I mean that the account concerns the general will’s relation to such formal ideas as the common good, common interests, fundamental interests, and a conception of human nature.6

Next time I shall go over five other questions concerning the general will. Being able to answer these is a good test of whether we understand the idea of the general will. While some references to the general will in the Social Contract are obscure, I believe the idea itself can be made clear, and the main things Rousseau says about it are consistent and make good sense.

6. By way of comment, I have no objection to calling our human nature with its fundamental interests appropriate to it “the essence of human nature.” This is objectionable only when we think that by saying it, we are giving some further grounding, or some deeper (or metaphysical) justification of what we have already said. I would say instead that if Rousseau’s view covers all that we think on clear reflection we may reasonably judge and can claim, then it stands by itself. That is all that one can do. Not of course that his view actually does that.

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