General Will in Rousseau
The Social Contract Rousseau puts forth the structure of an ideal political society, the legislature and laws of which revolve around a notion he terms the 'general will'. In his view, the general will is the solution to the fundamental problem of politics: that of having citizens equate their wants with what is best for the society as a whole. Therefore, the general will is not the will of all citizens but the ideal will of all citizens who are ideally committed, peaceful and endowed with civic virtue. A public whose passions have been channelled into patriotism and social motivation will theoretically act for the good of the society as a whole even if they are acting only on behalf of themselves. The introduction of a legislating body that actively involves all citizens and acts on the grounds of the general will ensures peace, the protection of the community and effectively ends rule by brute force that is present in pre-political and corrupt society.The general will can only exist in a community that has a common social interest. In order to generate such a society Rousseau lays down certain starting conditions in The Social Contract that he believes will encourage unity and check any emerging social inequality. To begin w
The will of the sovereign leader is not restrained in any way and is simply imposed upon the citizens with the assumption that it is in their best interests. In Hobbes' philosophy, when man enters political society he transfers all private power and will to a single sovereign authority whom he must then serve as an obedient citizen. Citizens should be roughly equal in terms of wealth and possessions. Hobbes endows his sovereign ruler with almost godlike features and simply assumes that the sovereign's will and the community's interest are one and the same. However, Rousseau attempts to merge individual freedom with social obedience and lets the general will grow out of the interests of the people themselves (although he does control this to a certain extent through a basic equality and a state culture) while Hobbes makes no such attempt. These conditions create common interest and common interest allows for the existence of the general will. However, they seek to achieve this goal in very different ways. Sectional interest groups are not allowed to form as Rousseau sees their existence as a breeding ground for dissenters. Unlike Rousseau, Locke bestows on his citizens a virtually unlimited private freedom and allows them to conduct their lives however they see fit (as long as they do not break the laws of nature). ____________________________. Discourse on the origins of Inequality. He doesn't seem to trust the citizens themselves to be capable of the type of divine judgement he endows the sovereign ruler with and this is not surprising if one considers Hobbes' conception of human nature as generally chaotic and destructive. Locke's political philosophy focuses on private freedom and encourages man's appropriation of common property for private gain, viewing the inequality created by this process as a legitimate social expression of the natural differences of intelligence and industrial artifice in men. The general will does not exist from the very first moment the social contract is initiated because it is an ideal, and Rousseau doesn't expect his citizens to have developed enough political experience or to have refined their civic virtue to the extent required for the general will to flow naturally and naturally merge with public will. Such limitations on individual interest obviously pose the question of individual freedom in Rousseau's social contract, yet Rousseau maintains that this is the only way the freedom can co-exist with civil society and if the individual's private interest is coalesced with the common interest then that individual does indeed possess a type of freedom.
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