General Will and Rousseau

Rousseau says that general will is both determined by “counting votes” and yet is “unalterable and pure”. Can the two be reconciled? What is the general will?

The Purity of General Will

Introduction

In his The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau introduces his idea of the general will by saying “The constant will of all the members of the State is the general will; by virtue of it they are citizens and free”1 and calls the general will, “unalterable and pure”2. In his notion of the General Will, men assemble together and have only one common will since the “common good makes itself so manifestly evident”3. According to Rousseau, when a law is proposed in such assemblies, the citizens give their votes on whether the general will is in conformity with their opinion and the counting of votes yields a declaration of general will. He stresses on the idea of unanimity in the general will and argues that when a decision contrary to the individual’s idea of general will prevails, it shows that the individual’s belief of the general will was wrong. To this point Rousseau very notoriously puts, “whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the whole body” and he must be “forced to be free”.4 Rousseau throughout The Social Contract is

1 Book IV, The Social Contract, Rousseau, p 153 2 Book IV, The Social Contract, Rousseau, p 150 3 Book IV, The Social Contract, Rousseau, p 149 4 Book I, The Social Contract, Rousseau, p 64

able to express what the general will ought to exclude but is not able to categorically establish what exactly is the general will. 5 Bertand Russell while commenting on Rousseau’s definition of the General Will, says, “Rousseau leaves us in the dark”.6 Through the course of this paper, I will examine the conception of the General Will to determine if the General Will truly is pure and unalterable in nature. I will argue the importance of deliberations in determining the general will and how without such deliberations, the notion of forced unanimity is not particularly pure in nature. Finally I will also argue how the presence of a legislator in the light of counting votes to determine the general will isn't pure.

Deliberations

Rousseau while describing his take on deliberations in Public Assemblies says,“long debates, dissensions and disturbances bespeak the ascendance of particular interests and the decline of the state”7 and adds, “the citizens had no communication one with another, the grand total of the small differences would always give the general will, and the decision would always be good.”. Bosanquet summaries this idea of Rousseau by saying, “Let the citizens all vote as independent units, not organising themselves in groups, without any communication... and he (Rousseau) believes that the general will will assert itself” 8When we start examining this Rousseau’s theory of negligence of political communication, the first issue that arises is that of particular wills. In his work, Histoire des Moeurs, Rousseau says,"it will always be difficult to submit the dearest affections of nature to country and

5 A Possible Explanation of Rousseau's General Will, Riley, p 92

6 Bertrand Russell's Dictionary of Mind, Matter and Morals, Bertand Russell 7 The Social Contract, Book IV, Rousseau, pp 151-154

8 The Reality of the General Will B. Bosanquet International Journal of Ethics Vol. 4, No. 3 (Apr., 1894), pp. 308-321

virtue” and thereby agrees to the difficulty in eliminating particular wills. 9 If the removal of particular wills is so difficult, how can one make sure that the votes casted are not manifested by the same? Rousseau at this point seems particularly weak as he himself introduces the need of public enlightenment as we will see ahead.

It is also to be noted that the negligence of these political deliberations usually causes dissents in the assembly. As noted by Fishkin in his model on deliberative democracy, such public disagreements are extremely important in raising conscientiousness in a democracy and are the best form of information provider to all men in a democratic setup10. So when an individual formulates his opinion on the General Will, the sidelining of these deliberations yield an unweighed view of what the General Will ought to be. Hence the notion which was supposed to be pure in nature, ends up being an individual construct without any comprehensive understanding. As seen throughout history, this gap between having a raw and individual understanding of the common good and voting on the good is usually bridged by public deliberations which leads to a comprehensive understanding of the good. Hence the absence of these deliberations lead to the individual to have views contrary to other people which essentially leads to dissents in voting. Even though a clear ‘majority’11 might be obtained in scenarios where a black and white situation exists but in situations which have more than two possible choices, a condition such as Voting Paradox12* might be obtained and a deadlock might be created without these deliberations and negotiations. For instance, solving a conflict between two incommensurable good and

9 A Possible Explanation of Rousseau's General Will, Riley, p 94

10 Fishkin, J. S., & Luskin, R. C. (2005). Experimenting with a democratic ideal: Deliberative polling and public opinion. Acta Politica, 40(3), 284–298.

11 For this paper: A majority typically is more than half of the members who cast a vote to agree in order for the entire body to make a decision on the measure being voted on.

12 Voting Paradox (Condorcet’s Paradox) means that majority wishes can be in conflict with each other. When this occurs, it is because the conflicting majorities are each made up of different groups of individuals. To know more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_paradox

*Different from Condorcet’s Jury Theorem

which collective decision rules provide the most reasonable balance of deliberativeness and efficacy, or about which goods are necessaries and therefore to be exempted by taxation are all questions which if taken in isolation by the person without reasonable deliberation with opposite views would result in different views for every man. 13 So the absence of deliberations becomes a major issue to unanimity .

Unanimity

Rousseau while talking about the recognition of common good says, “common