Rightwords... Prudent Conservatism

The General Will


The concept of The General Will is at the heart of Rousseau's political philosophy. Thus, if it is a useful concept, then the Social Contract itself is useful. In America, we are used to this concept, since it is embedded in our Constitution, but not in the way Rousseau defined it. He proposed that the General Will is the sum of the Particular Wills of the people, but, since he knew that particular wills would be "all over the map", he supposed a synthesis of the particular wills of citizens that is common to all, which is always to be applied in a general manner.

How this synthesis is derived is dealt with rather briefly. The Legislator is to design the General will, and is to be the source for drafting any changes that might arise. This Legislator must be an exceptional man, highly intelligent, understanding of human nature, and able to articulate the general sense of propositions in clear language. Then the citizens in assembly must unanimously approve the first set of Laws representing the General Will. Subsequent changes must be voted upon by the citizens in assembly as well.

This is a form of the direct democracy that was practiced in early Greek City-States, as opposed to the representative democracy that we have now in the US. Rousseau insisted that citizens act on their own, independent counsel in voting and not to form factions to support one or another proposition.

A key provision of the Social Contract is that the losers in a vote on a proposition must accept their loss, not only stoically, but also accept that they were in error for going against the will of the majority, and that they must mend their ways. Else, they will be forced to accept the will of the majority, according to Rousseau, "in order to be free!".

Critique of the General Will

In the first place, before the citizens vote for the formulation of the laws and the general will, one must inquire as to the nature and background of the prospective citizens. The range of man is great: rich, poor; intelligent, stupid; young, old; married, single; educated, ignorant; worldly, naive; aggressive, passive; Unafraid, afraid; and so on... Any complete set of laws must take into account its general applicability over the full range of the conditions and states of man and woman.

To do this, as we know in the case of the US, is to have not only a written Constitution but also a written body of law and precedent that has grown voluminously through over 250 years of jurisprudence in multiple levels of the court system. Under the initiation of Rousseau's ideas, the citizen's assembly will be in session for a very long time to reach this level of agreement on even a minimally complete and comprehensive set of laws.

In my view, this task would never reach full acceptance; certainly not for a large and diverse population, and certainly not in an existing and modern society. While the notion of such an ideal Will is appealing to some, it is not only impractical, it is contrary to human nature, unless, of course, one molds each individual into a uniform citizen with a uniform outlook and intelligence level. Ant-like!

But even supposing the citizens do accept the initial General Will and laws, at the first instance of conflicting views, there will be an instant tendency to take sides and form factions to build support for one view or another, at which point this utopian ideal is shattered. Then too, if the majority attempts to impose its will on a strong minority by force, I believe the reaction would be: "There goes freedom!" The minority would become the slave of the majority, which sooner or later would sunder the society.

It is the genius of our forefathers that they organized a state which has lasted for 250 years or more, and has avoided the pitfalls of Rousseauian philosophy.

# posted by Mannning @ 6:53 PM