Understanding the General Will

EW CONCEPTS in the history of political thought have proved so troublesome as Rousseau's notion of the general will. Rousseau must bear much of the blame for this, of course, for the discussion of the general will in his Social Contract is uncharacteristically terse and abstract. Troublesome as it has been, though, there is reason to believe that we are now approaching an adequate understanding of the general will. I say this because there seems to be growing agreement among Rousseau's commentators that the general will not only can be understood, but that it can best be understood in rationalistic terms.' Indeed, where explications once were couched in terms of "real" and "higher" wills, one is now more likely to find the general will explained in terms of the prisoners' dilemma and Paretooptimality.2 While I do not accept all of these rationalistic readings of the general will, I do share the general conviction that we can make sense of Rousseau's concept, and his argument, without resorting to metaphysics or psychology. What I shall offer here, accordingly, is in some respects only a variation on a theme now well known to students of Rousseau's political philosophy. It is an important variation nonetheless, for it enables us to reconcile passages in the Social Contract which otherwise appear to be contradictory. That, at least, is what I shall argue in this essay. I proceed in the following manner. First I set out a general account of what Rousseau means by "the general will" an account which resembles in its main lines, if not all its details, Brian Barry's analysis of the general will.3 This account is defended in the second part of the essay, where I show how it helps us to understand two of the more controversial aspects of Rousseau's argument in the Social Contract. In part three I extend this account (and provide the variation mentioned in the last paragraph) by drawing a distinction, implicit and almost unmarked in Rousseau's writings, between the general will and a general will. With the aid of this distinction, I argue, we can make sense of Rousseau's baffling and apparently contradictory remarks about voting. Once this is demonstrated, I conclude by raising some questions about the utility of the concept of the general will.