Rousseau's General WIll

Rousseau's concept of "the general will" (la volonté générale) has been generally misunderstood. It has been criticized on the one hand as a form of vacuous idealism, and on the other hand as nothing more than another name for majority rule. But the concept is, in fact, neither of these. Rousseau constructs a sophisticated and meaningful picture of the general will that manages to avoid both of these extreme positions. Situated between those …

…Jean Jacques. On the Social Contract, trans. and ed. Donald A. Cress, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Basic Political Writings. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987. Shklar, Judith. "Rousseau's Images of Authority," Hobbes and Rousseau: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Maurice Cranston and Richard S. Peters. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972. 333-365. Shklar, Judith. Men and Citizens: a Study of Rousseau's Social Theory. Cambridge: University Press, 1969. Weirich, Paul "Rousseau on Proportional Majority Rule," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 47 Summer 1986: 111-126.