By rendering the
General Will sovereign and individuals as participators in the General Will, Rousseau harmonized authority with liberty as no one ever had done. With a view to be acquainted the way Rousseau accomplished the result, we require to appraise the nature of the General Will.
In the Discourse on Political Economy, where he had originally specified the concept of General Will, Rousseau expresses that “General will tends always to the preservation and welfare of the whole and of every part, and is the source of the laws, constitutes for all the
members of the
state, in relation to one another and to it, the rule of what is just and unjust.” It focuses always at the public well-being and is dissimilar from the latterin that it targets only at the
private interests and is an aggregate of particular wills.
The universality of the will is not to a great extent a matter of numbers but is a matter of inherent quality and excellence. It is more an ethical fact rather than a tentative fact. It is the result of the moral opinion in the souls of citizens to act fairly. It is generated at a time when all individual members of group, relinquishing their private interests, assemble in aiming at some object presumed to be virtuous for the whole group. The general will diverges from all and attach to all and shape the
free rational will of all.
Whatsoever Rousseau realizes that consensus amongst members on general will may be actuated sometimes for even if people may be seeking the good, they might not at all times be accurately conceptualizing it. This occurs especially when factions make it critical to achieve the common good for independent citizen. In such a state Rousseau proposes that if we “. …Take away from the wills the various particular interests which conflict with one another, what remains as the sum of the differences is the general will.” There exists one vital faction here – the outcome will be rendered general will only if and so far as, all the individuals of a group are motivated (also in the pursuit of their private interest) by the reflection of themselves as members of a group.
If the nature of the general way is as prescribed, there is no trouble in abiding by the general will and in the case if someone disobeying it, in Rousseau’s view he will be forced to do so: “This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free,” otherwise the social contract will become an empty formula. In addition such coercion is reasonable because individual has accorded his prior consent for being checked by the state understanding satisfactorily that socially cohesive conduct eventually encourages maximally his own interest.
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