Rousseau's General WIll

Rousseau's concept of "the general will" (la volonté générale) has been generally misunderstood. It has been criticized on the one hand as a form of vacuous idealism, and on the other hand as nothing more than another name for majority rule. But the concept is, in fact, neither of these. Rousseau constructs a sophisticated and meaningful picture of the general will that manages to avoid both of these extreme positions. Situated between those …showed first 75 words of 6456 total…

…showed last 75 words of 6456 total…Jean Jacques. On the Social Contract, trans. and ed. Donald A. Cress, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Basic Political Writings. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987. Shklar, Judith. "Rousseau's Images of Authority," Hobbes and Rousseau: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Maurice Cranston and Richard S. Peters. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972. 333-365. Shklar, Judith. Men and Citizens: a Study of Rousseau's Social Theory. Cambridge: University Press, 1969. Weirich, Paul "Rousseau on Proportional Majority Rule," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 47 Summer 1986: 111-126.