General will

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The general will (volonté générale), first enunciated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is a concept in political philosophy referring to the desire or interest of a people as a whole. It is most often associated with socialist traditions in politics.

Rousseau characterized the general will with four characteristics - it is inalienable, infallible, indivisible and absolute. Rousseau's doctrine of the general will was criticized by Israeli historian Jacob Talmon as a Totalitarian Democracy because the state subjected its citizens to the supposedly infallible will of the tyranny of the majority.

Quotations:

"As long as several men in assembly regard themselves as a single body they have only a single will which is concerned with their preservation. If the assembly needs new laws the first man to propose them merely says what all have already felt and everyone has already decided to do. This General Will is constant, unalterable, and pure. It is the best advise." [1]

When minorities begin to exercise an influence over the majority, the General Will ceases to be the will of all. The General Will then becomes subordinated to other wills. Contradictory views and debates arise and the best advice is not taken without question. (The Social Contract; Jean-Jacques Rousseau Translated by G.D.H Cole/ Publisher: Barnes & Noble Books New York 2005 pg. 114-115)

[edit] Criticism

Liberal thinkers, for example Isaiah Berlin, have criticized the concept of General Will from a variety of angles:

  • The idea that there is one path which benefits everyone is itself contested. Under the pluralist tradition, the common good is considered to be an aggregate of private interests, which needs balancing, rather than one over-arching, quasi-metaphysical concept.
  • Even if there was one path which benefited everyone, it is a mistake to say that it is then their will. There is a difference between interest and desire. Thus the imposition of the General Will is not consistent with autonomy or freedom.
  • The concept depends on a distinction between a person's "empirical" (i.e. conscious) self and his "true" self, of which he is unaware. This idea is essentially dogmatic and mystical, and is incapable of logical or empirical verification or even discussion.
  • Rousseau offers no mechanism for the articulation of the General Will. He suggests that under some conditions it may not actually be expressed by the majority. But who is in a position to rule on what the General Will is? Thus the concept could be manipulated by totalitarian regimes, who compel people against their actual will.

These criticisms, however, are submitted from the view of today's world; when the society became so complex that the generality of it cannot be almost thought. But it should be kept in mind that the system of a society in the age of Rousseau was more simple in terms of the classes (the King, the bourgeosie, and the citizen), which means that there wasn't a plurality as we say nowadays. The background let Rousseau argue the notion, therefore without the historical context the General Will is regarded as a metaphysical concept (like the Plato's Idea as Auguste Comte argued), and the criticism tend to become irrelevant of what Rousseau proposed at the time.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ On the Social Contract, Book IV, Chapter 1, Paragraph 1