Chapter One

From Theology to Politics: The Evolution of the Concept of General Will

Whenever the tterm “general will” appears in scholarly literature we can be almost certain that the name of Jean-Jacques Rousseau will immediately follow. This category has become so inextricably entangled with the Social Contract and its author in the public awareness that it is practically impossible to examine them separately today. Most contemporary works devoted to political philosophy rightly speak of the concept of volonté générale as Rousseau’s most important contribution to political theory and philosophy. Of course, Rousseau was neither the first nor the last to have developed this concept. The emerging question about the uniqueness of his approach can be answered in a number of ways. Compared to his predecessors (there were quite a few, after all), Rousseau effected a total secularisation of the general will (a distinctly theological concept before him), attaching it permanently to the theory of democratic government. Although the first step brought him the recognition of contemporary thinkers, his radical democratism - which the eighteenth century treated as a utopian anachronism undeserving of political or philosophical attention - gained him the affection of future generations. None of his successors were able to build a more intriguing political construct based on this concept. It is true that the German idealists employed it, in particular Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. But they did not relate it directly to political issues or make it their main concern. It is therefore hardly surprising that the British idealists, although doctrinally closer to classical German thought, built their own vision of the general will upon a critique of the work of Rousseau.

This chapter will present the history of the development of the idea of the general will. The subtitle of Patrick Riley’s work on the subject - The General Will before Rousseau: The Transformation of the Divine into the Civic - reflects the nature of these changes perfectly. The scholar with an interest in the history of the general will must become closely familiar with the theological controversies of the early Christian era, in particular the debate about predestination, and trace the gradual application of the concept, still strictly theological, to individual and social life in order to, finally, analysing the thought of the French Enlightenment, reach the end of this transformation and so the writings of Rousseau.

1.1. From St. Paul to Denis Diderot

Controversies surrounding the idea of general will, which at the time was not yet called by this name, appeared as early as the writings of St. Paul. Seldom has a single suggestion fostered a debate stretching for over a millennium.[3] It is equally rare for it to be treated as the cause of subsequent political revolutions. But this is exactly what happened in the case of the concept discussed here. The connection between certain fragments of the letters of St. Paul and the writings and actions of Maximilien Robespierre (by which I mean the French Revolution) is of course not direct. It leads through the ideas of St. Augustine, the debate between the Jansenists and the Jesuits, the works of Blaise Pascal, Nicolas Malebranche, Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, François Fénelon, Pierre Bayle and finally Montesquieu and Denis Diderot, all the way to Rousseau, whose writings are sometimes viewed as the direct inspiration for Jacobin terror. From the mere tone of the suggestion, contained notably in St. Paul’s Letter to Timothy, it is difficult to infer any of its momentous political consequences: “[f]or this is good and acceptable in the eyes of God our Saviour; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”[4] The object of the debate is this: the universality or particularity of God’s will to save. Will all of us be saved, or only a few? “Is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also of the Gentiles?”,[5] or perhaps “many are called, but few are chosen”?[6]

Controversies surrounding this issue later became an addendum to the debate about Divine grace and predestination. This debate was initiated by the teachings of Pelagius, a British monk who lived in the fifth century, credited with the view that good deeds done of free will are sufficient for salvation, which does not require Divine grace. The conformity of this view with Catholic doctrine was questioned at the sixteenth synod in Carthage (418), whose final canons (especially 3-7) emphasised the importance of grace. Despite the condemnation of Pelagianism, its central tenets were to be revived on several occasions. They remained present in the writings of the Semipelagians, including Faustus of Riez, St. John Cassian, the Marseillans and the Molinists.

On the opposite side of this dispute were the predestinarians, who held to the view that salvation depends entirely on grace. No personal effort can alter the Divine will, which destines some for salvation and sentences others to damnation. Proponents of this view are usually thought to include St. Augustine (whose opinions in this respect were, however, subject to change), the monk Gottschalk, Johannes Scotus Eriugena (on account of the unorthodox nature of his De divina praedestinatione), Hincmar, archbishop of Reims (who with a number of other bishops signed a four-point memorial at Quierzy-sur-Oise (853) proclaiming that God wills the salvation of all men and that His grace is essential to salvation), John Wycliffe and Jan Hus, Martin Luther, Jean Calvin, Michel du Bay and - drawing inspiration from the works of the latter - Cornelius Jansen and other Jansenists such as Antoine Arnauld, Pasqiuer Quesnel and Pascal.

Both of these positions were firmly rejected by subsequent synods and councils of the Catholic Church. Following the Synod of Carthage, councils were held at Arles and Lyon (473), and at Orange (529), meant primarily to answer the Semipelagianism of Faustus of Riez and provide support to a moderate reading of St. Augustine. Numerous fragments of Scripture[7] were cited in the canons at the Council of Orange in order to prove the necessity of grace for salvation. Pelagian teachings were then condemned at Valence (855), where the theses ascribed to Eriugena and Hincmar were rejected, and at Sens (1140/1141); at the general council in Constance (1414-1418), where the views of Wycliffe and Hus were condemned (“All things happen from absolute necessity”, and “The prayer of someone foreknown as damned profits nobody”[8]); while the sixth session of the Council of Trent (1547), which produced the Decree on Justification, also rejected the views of Luther. According to the Decree, all will not be saved, but only those who respond to the grace bestowed upon them by working towards their salvation. “But, though He died for all [2 Cor. 5:15], yet do not all receive the benefit of His death, but those only unto whom the merit of His passion is communicated.”[9] The main theses of the Jansenists were also condemned by Innocent X (Cum occasione), who found them to contain five statements incompatible with Church teaching (including: “[s]ome of God’s precepts are impossible to the just, who wish and strive to keep them, according to the present powers which they have; the grace, by which they are made possible, is also wanting”, “[i]n the state of fallen nature one never resists interior grace”, “[i]t is Semipelagian to say that Christ died or shed His blood for all men without exception”[10]), Alexander VII (Ad sacram beati Petri sedem), Clemens XI (Unigenitus) and Pius VI (Auctorem fidei).

We must content ourselves here with this abbreviated account of the debate. We lack the room to discuss efficacious, sufficient, prevenient, actuating and helping grace, the connections between them and their consequences for the freedom of the human will. We need only note that it is in a work by one of the most loyal disciples and fervent defenders of Jansenius - the Première Apologie pour M. Jansénius (1644) by Arnauld (considered by some the most influential theologian of the seventeenth century) - and precisely in the context of the debate on predestination, that the term volonté générale first appeared. The author defined it as the Divine desire to save all people. Like Augustine and Michel du Bay, Arnauld himself took a specific position in the debate, arguing that God, initially intending to save everyone, changed his general will into a particular one after the fall of Adam and Eve, abandoning the salvation of all in favour of saving a small group of chosen individuals. Arnauld used the term volonté générale on many occasions in his later works, for instance in Des vraies et des fausses idées[11] or in his commentary on Malebranche’s Traité de la nature et de la grâce,[12] sometimes employing it in a sense characteristic of this thinker, namely that of the unchanging laws governing the world. But before we move on to Malebranche, we must first discuss another thinker whose Jansenist leanings can be read within the context of the debate on the general will.

1.1.1. Blaise Pascal

Since the general will was turned into a weapon in the dispute between the Jansenists and Jesuits, it is hardly surprising that its next noteworthy mention should be found in the writings of Pascal, who after all remained a supporter of Port-Royal for most of his life. The concept of general will appears in two of his works: the popular, collected and posthumously published Pensées, as well as the Écrits sur la grâce (1656). In the latter, an opposition is made between two categories - volonté absolue and volonté générale. Pascal defines the first as the Divine will to save a few arbitrarily chosen people, attributing this view to the Calvinists. By general will, on the other hand, he means God’s will to save all, regarding St. Augustine as the most prominent exponent of this view. The author of the Pensées agrees with St. Augustine’s claim that God initially wanted to save everyone, but changed his plan after the fall of man.

A pre-eminently political context, though not bereft of theological reference,[13] was lent to the general will by Pascal in the Pensées: “If the feet and the hands had a will of their own [volonté particulière - J.G.], they could only be in their order in submitting this particular will to the primary will [volonté première - J.G.] which governs the whole body. Apart from that, they are in disorder and mischief; but in willing only the good of the body, they accomplish their own good”;[14] “To make the members happy, they must have one will and submit it to the body.”[15] It is easy to see parallels to the words of St. Paul here: “but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked, that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care one for another.”[16] Generality and particularism are both valorised and strongly opposed to each other. Riley is therefore correct to discern here a distinct similarity to the later conceptions of Rousseau.[17] Such associations spring particularly to mind when we read:

We must consider the general good; and the propensity to self is the beginning of all disorder, in war, in politics, in economy, and in the particular body of man. The will is therefore depraved.

If the members of natural and civil communities tend towards the weal of the body, the communities themselves ought to look to another more general body of which they are members. We ought therefore to look to the whole.[18]

Is it hard to see in this a foreshadowing of Rousseau’s later apology of the general will, seeing in its rule the foundation of political order? Similar associations arise on a strictly ethical level: “Self-will will never be satisfied, though it should have command of all it would.”[19] Pascal - like Rousseau after him - pointed to the vicious circle of particular desires, impossible ever to satisfy since always turning to new objects. Even if they should all be realised, the individual - alienated from the harmony of the community - will remain empty and unhappy.

The importance of the above statements for the later fate of the idea of the general will is clear to see. With Pascal (a thinker as apolitical as Arnauld and Malebranche), this concept was implanted in the social and political spheres. Pascal equates particular will with self-will, which has no regard for the needs of the community and therefore acts to its detriment. Its antithesis, the general will, tends towards the welfare of the social whole. In order to achieve its aim, it must subjugate the wills of individuals and state institutions.

1.1.2. Nicolas Malebranche

Although the notion of volonté générale appeared as early as Arnauld, while Pascal was the first to use it in a socio-political context, it was only Malebranche who appreciated it enough to make it one of the chief categories of his Traité de la nature et de la grâce. The concept of general will expounded therein sparked commentaries and criticisms from the greatest minds of the time. It was commented upon by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, John Locke and Rousseau, praised by Bayle, and criticised by Fénelon, Arnauld, Bossuet, Pierre Jurieu and Bernard Fontenelle - even though Malebranche had presented his views on the matter much earlier, in De la recherche de la vérité (1674-1675), and in particular in the Éclaircissements[20] added to it in 1678. Let us recall that Malebranche, next to Arnold Geulincx (1624-1669), Johannes Clauberg (1622-1665) and Louis de La Forge (1605-1679), was one of the most prominent representatives of occasionalism - the philosophical doctrine denying both raison d’être (“Now, it is the will of God which gives existence to bodies and to all created things, the existence of which, certainly, is not necessary. As this will which has created them abides for ever, they too abide”[21]) and causative power to anything or anyone other than God. All that happens in the world happens on account of Divine will. Dieu fait tout. The existence and all the actions and workings of objects and people are dependent on His wish: “The Creator alone can be the mover, only He who gives being to bodies can put them in the places which they occupy.”[22] It is a mistake to take credit for what are supposedly our actions, since it is inappropriate even to infer anything about them from the fact that our thoughts, wills and actions succeed one another. The occasionalists explain the concurrence of spiritual and bodily movements by the activity of the Creator - for it is He, whose command over the spiritual - as it were - occasions His command over the bodily. For example: “God has willed that my arm shall be set in motion at the instant that I will it myself (given the necessary conditions). His will is efficacious, His will is immutable, it alone is the source of my power and faculties. He has willed that I should experience certain feelings, certain emotions, whenever there are present in my brain certain traces, or whenever a certain disturbance takes place therein. In a word, He has willed - He wills incessantly - that the modifications of the mind and those of the body shall be reciprocal.”[23]

In the works of Malebranche, we find a number of arguments in support of the thesis that neither the mind influences the body, nor the body the mind. Man is not an actor in the theatre of the world, but a puppet, used by God like a mere thing for the realisation of His plan. Firstly, the true cause of events must know their nature, have an in-depth understanding of how reality operates, and not - as man does - infer causal connections from the simple succession of events. Malebranche anticipated Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature in stating that we credit ourselves with knowledge that man cannot possibly fathom. From the fact that we want to do something it does not necessarily follow that we can do it or have done it.[24] Secondly, this ignorance of the processes that take place inside our body makes us powerless to control the latter, and thus equally powerless to control objects through it. Is it not true that in order to do something we must know how to do it? Finally, it is unlikely for thought to be able to control bodies, since it is so dissimilar to them. The philosophical origin of occasionalism in this respect is the Cartesian view on the nature of souls and bodies. The first - unextended - can have nothing in common with the second- extended and material. The idea of a soul controlling a body is just as absurd as that of a body controlling a soul.

Malebranche’s argumentation, proclaiming Divine omnipotence and human powerlessness, went hand in hand with the belief that this order, created and continuously sustained by the Divine will, was the best match for the Divine attributes of perfection and its consequence, simplicity of action. Would a world in which everything had its own part in the shaping of reality not be much more complicated and less perfect than one in which the Creator was at the helm of all things? Let us imagine an order, where in the absence of universal laws every element did whatever it wanted to. Would it still be an order, or would we have to call it anarchy? Would it not contradict the idea of Divine wisdom? After all, “A God who is infinitely wise cannot will anything which is, so to speak, unworthy of being willed; He cannot love anything which is not lovable.”[25]

This view had a direct impact on the issue of general will. Since God created and continues to sustain the world according to the simplest and immutable laws, then even though He desires to save all people, He will not do so.[26] The world is all too often the scene of suffering, temptation of every kind and the moral downfall of man - presaging his eternal damnation. And although God could intervene whenever His commandments are violated and bring sinners back onto the path of righteousness to shield them from damnation, He will not do so because “God loves mankind [...] but God loves his wisdom infinitely more.”[27] This wisdom finds its fullest reflection in the simple and universal laws that the world is subject to. It is they that constitute the Divine volontés générales.

God being obliged to act always in a way worthy of him, through simple, general, constant, and uniform means - in a word means conformed to the idea that we have of a general cause whose wisdom has no limits - he had to establish certain laws in the order of grace, as I have proved him to have done in the order of nature. Now these laws, because of their simplicity, necessarily have unhappy consequences with respect to us: but these consequences do not make it necessary for God to change these laws into more complicated ones. For these laws have a greater proportion of wisdom and of fruitfulness to the work that they produce, than all those which he could establish for the same plan, since he always acts in the wisest and most perfect way. It is true that God could remedy these unhappy consequences through an infinite number of particular wills: but order will not have it so. The effect which would be produced by each of his particular wills would not be worth the action which would produce it. And in consequence God is not to be blamed for not disturbing the order and the simplicity of his laws by miracles which would be quite convenient to our needs, but quite opposed to the wisdom of God, whom it is not permitted to tempt.[28]

God “must act by general wills, and so settle a constant and regular order, by which He foresees, through the infinite comprehension of His wisdom, that a work so admirable as His must needs be formed”.[29] General wills, the unchanging laws of nature, are binding for all of God’s creatures - man, animals and things. They include the law of gravitation as well as the law of life and death, which all living beings are subject to. God has given distinct ways of feeding and reproducing themselves to different species; their behaviour follows suitable psychological and physiological laws. “I say that God acts by general wills, when he acts in consequence of general laws which he has established. For example, I say that God acts in me by general wills when he makes me feel pain at the time I am pricked.”[30] Is there a universal way of telling when we are dealing with a general, and when with a particular, will? When do we witness a universal law, and when an intervention that violates it? How are we to treat events that leave us uncertain as to the universal or particular nature of their causality? In such cases, writes Malebranche, “we must judge that an effect is produced by a general will, when it is obvious that the cause has proposed no particular end to himself.”[31] When rain falls onto a single meadow, we have grounds to suppose that God wants to help its owner through His particular will. But when it also rains on all the surrounding meadows, then we may be sure that the general will is speaking through the unchanging laws of nature.

The volontés particulières are thus Divine interventions in the established order, perturbing the ordinary course of events and ignoring the laws that govern them; they are the miracles that protect people from suffering, both temporal and eternal - born of their moral downfall.[32] Believing firmly in the wisdom and omnipotence of God, Malebranche could not conceive that God uses miracles to violate his own laws. Hence he rejected even the mere idea of Divine intervention. What should we then think of the miracles described in the Bible? Are we to pass over them in silence, pretending that they never happened, thereby discrediting the authority of Scripture? No, was Malebranche’s answer. It is simply that what to us appears a miracle, a violation of the laws governing the world, an exceptional intervention by God, correcting the imperfections in the order of the world, is no such thing. It of course looks like that from our perspective, but we should have the humility to admit that since we do not have perfect knowledge of the laws governing creation, we cannot accurately tell the difference between their operation and their suspension.[33]

This was the bone of contention between Malebranche and Arnauld (as expounded by the latter in Neuf lettres de M. Arnauld contre R.P. Malebranche and Réflexions philosophiques et théologiques sur le nouveau système de la nature et de la grâce). Their differing opinions on the generality/particularity of will and Divine laws found an outlet in the debate on grace and miracles. On the first issue, Arnauld maintained that if God had wanted to save only the elect, He would have to use His particular will to do so, since people cannot be differentiated when subjected to a universal, simple and inflexible law of salvation. Malebranche on the other hand saw such a possibility, arguing that the same universal grace accorded to all can permanently transform some into men of virtue, while having no such effect on others. For it also falls upon hearts that are corrupt beyond moral repair.[34]

On the second issue - the possibility of Divine intervention - Arnauld accuses his adversary of a dual offence.[35] Firstly, that Malebranche has questioned events confirmed by the Holy Scripture, which in itself merits condemnation. Secondly, that he has attempted an illegitimate redefinition of the concept of God, replacing the merciful Father with a soulless tormentor, in love with himself rather than his children, who would sooner observe the suffering and death of multitudes than admit that his laws do not make the world the best of all possible places. Malebranche’s cardinal error, and the source of all his subsequent sins, was the unjustified equation of universal laws with the general will. Having established the former, why should God not desire to act in the particular? Why should He refuse Himself the right to intervene in the established order? The generality of God’s will may both signify its general conformity with universal laws and its direction towards particular objects.[36]

Summing up, it should be noted that in the Traité de la nature et de la grâce, the subject of the general will appears within a novel context where it is no longer related to the posthumous fate of people. Malebranche understands it not as the goal, but as the nature of Divine action. It is no longer the salvation of all versus the salvation of a few that provides the measure of generality, but the means God employs to carry out His intent. In this way, as Riley correctly pointed out, the theological concept is placed within a legal context.[37] God acts through universal laws, thereby expressing His wisdom and omnipotence. From here, there is but a single step to the political postulate of limiting the number of positive rights. It follows that a wise ruler, similar to God, will contribute more effectively to the good of his subjects with one good law than with hundreds of interventions aiming to redress the damage caused by a bad one.[38]

1.1.3. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, François Fénelon, Pierre Bayle

Malebranche’s conception of the general will met with violent resistance from the most eminent minds of seventeenth-century Europe. Bossuet criticised it both in his Oraison funèbre de Marie-Thérèse d’Autriche (1683) and later in his introduction to Fénelon’s Réfutation du système du Père Malebranche sur la nature et la grâce. This question had already preoccupied him earlier, when still a supporter of Jansenism and a defender of its main theses - sometimes in ways virtually indistinguishable from the later conceptions of Rousseau. But it was only in his famous funeral speech, written and delivered on the death of Maria Theresa, that he chose the subject as one of his main themes. Referring directly to Malebranche, he clamoured: “How I despise those philosophers who, making their own intelligence the measure of God’s purposes, would regard Him merely as the creator of a certain general order which He then left to develop as best it might. As if, like ours, God’s aims were vague and confused generalities, as if His sovereign intelligence were powerless to include in its scheme those individual existences which alone, strictly speaking, can be said to live.”[39] There is no greater mistake than to think that God acts solely through universal laws. Has He not appointed specific families to rule in specific countries, of which He gives proof in the Holy Scripture?[40] Was it not God who brought Maria Theresa and Louis XIV before the altar, so that she could become queen of the French? Is this not evidence of grace bestowed on those most worthy of it? For by all accounts, grace is nothing but an exception from universal laws, rewarding a specific person or group. A similar tone was employed by Bossuet in a letter to the Marquis d’Allemans, where he stated that by his Traité de la nature et de la grâce Malebranche had completely depreciated grace, praising nature in its place.[41]

Bossuet particularly disparaged the Cartesian cast of Malebranche’s apotheosis of general laws. For that matter, Malebranche openly voiced his sympathy for the author of the Discourse on Method. For is the Cartesian system not more helpful in elucidating God’s intentions than a jumble of Moses’ words from the Book of Genesis?[42] The allegedly “scientific” analysis of Scripture, made possible by Cartesianism, could not be reconciled with the orthodox outlook of Bossuet the convert. Why reach for philosophical novelties, instead of relying on the authority of the Bible? Is this not how the main heresies were born? Pulchra, nova, falsa - these are the words Bossuet added in the margins of his copy of Traité de la nature et de la grâce.

But it is not solely in his critical works that Bossuet expresses his views on the nature of Divine will. His whole Discours sur l’histoire universelle is an apology of Providence particulière. It contains many fragments which clearly suggest that it is “particular Providence (Providence particulière) with which he governs human things”.[43] Embarking on a history of the chosen people, Bossuet remarks that “Surely, Sir, nothing can be conceived more worthy of God, than to have, first of all, chosen to himself a people, who should be a palpable instance of his eternal providence; a people, whose good or ill fortune should depend upon their piety, and whose condition should bear testimony to the wisdom and justice of Him who governed them.”[44] In the subsequent chapters, Bossuet summed up the fate of nations in the following way: “Who would not here admire the divine providence, so manifestly declared upon the Jews and Chaldeans, upon Jerusalem and Babylon? God means to punish both; and that they may not be ignorant, that it is he alone who does it, he is pleased to declare it by an hundred prophecies.”[45]

A similar position was taken by Bossuet’s disciple, Fénelon. Encouraged by his master to confront Malebranche, in the Réfutation du système du Père Malebranche, written expressly for this purpose, he reproved the latter for depreciating God’s particular will. In light of his inspiration, it is hardly surprising that Fénelon’s critique so greatly resembles that of Bossuet. For he wrote that, since the world is full of imperfections, then having made the assumption that God cannot intervene to ensure people’s good, one would have to deny Him the attribute of mercy. On the other hand, if He were to intervene too often, He would be neither omniscient nor omnipotent. He would simply have chosen the wrong laws to impose on the world, which might have been made to work more effectively. Malebranche’s Cartesianism inevitably leads him to the antipodes of Catholic orthodoxy, if not beyond the pale of Catholicism as such.

Despite their contribution to the development of the idea of volonté générale, neither the writings of Bossuet nor those of Fénelon served directly to inspire subsequent secular interpretations of the concept. No straight line can therefore be traced connecting their theories with the conceptions of Montesquieu or Rousseau. Riley saw the link between the theist tradition and the later secular and political one as residing in the writings of Bayle, who both popularised and continued the thought of Malebranche.

Bayle - today remembered mainly for his work on the Dictionnaire historique et critique as well as his staunch defence of religious tolerance -saw Descartes and Malebranche as the greatest minds of the seventeenth century. On more than one occasion, he engaged in a fervent defence of the latter’s views. He rebutted charges against Malebranche’s understanding of the nature of bodies and, in numerous articles and letters, defended his position in the controversy against Arnauld and Fontenelle. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to infer that he was an uncritical disciple. The evolution of Bayle’s views on Malebranche’s philosophy can be discerned particularly when we consider his early writings and those published posthumously.

The young Bayle was a zealous champion of occasionalism. On this particular point the convergence of his views with those of Malebranche had a direct impact on the debate concerning the general will. It was precisely in this early period of his work that Bayle wrote the Pensées diverses sur la comète (1683). In this book, published as a contribution to the debate about the meaning of the comets that appeared in December 1680, he argued - against the supporters of Bossuet - that Divine wisdom presupposes the necessity of keeping to universal laws, established once and for all, and has no need for interventions whose only effect is to preserve superstitions (for what else can we call predictions on future misfortunes based on a falling comet?). “God, as being the disposer of events, and the distributer of good and bad success on earth, has submitted virtue and innocency to general laws, no less than health and riches.”[46] In the Pensées diverses, quite in the spirit of Malebranche, the author claimed that man,

[w]retched and frail creature that he is, he can persuade himself that he could not die without troubling the whole of nature and without obliging heaven to put itself to the expense of illuminating his funeral procession. Stupid and ridiculous vanity! [...] We would say with the one who had the most sublime thoughts of all the philosophers of ancient Rome, that in truth the concerns of Providence extend as far as us and that we for our part share in it but that its end is indeed considerably different from our preservation and that while the movements of the heavens bring us things of great utility, this is nevertheless not to say that these vast bodies are moved by love of the earth.[47]

God does not intervene in the order of the world to satisfy man’s sense of justice or his curiosity of future events. Even were He to intervene, His action would doubtless not be so unclear as to occasion a debate on whether it is one or not. After all, wanting to convey His message to humanity, he had sent Christ, whose divinity was indisputable, although He could have sent hundreds of comets or other equally easily interpreted signs. Let us therefore not overestimate the meaning of God’s particular will, of whose operation in nature we have so little proof. Nor should we question’s God’s authority as lawgiver, since we are apt to mock and scorn even earthly rulers, who too frequently issue commands in order to reverse the damage accomplished by earlier unjust edicts, and ridicule the gravity of their office. Would God, intervening by means of falling comets, not merit even greater disdain - He to whom we ascribe omniscience and omnipotence?

It is easy to detect a repetition of Malebranche’s theses in the above argument. Still, as we noted earlier, Bayle was not entirely uncritical of the teachings of his master. He had difficulty in accepting Malebranche’s soulless vision of the world - with no place for either human freedom or Divine mercy. On the first issue, Bayle was aware that the freedom, which the heart instinctively demands, cannot withstand rational argumentation. The freedom of Luther, Calvin and the Jansenists, founded on the thesis of predestination, is backed by metaphysical deductions and the postulates of reason. Both ethics and theology require freedom based on spontaneous action, the autonomy and liberty of trial and error. If the accountability for human deeds rests not with man but with God, commanding man as He sees fit, then how can one explain the existence of evil? Is it not then inevitably imputable to God, the sole cause of all things?

This argument appears in Bayle’s unfinished, posthumously published Entretiens de Maxime et de Thémiste. Recognising God as the cause of all things, we must then burden Him with responsibility for suffering. However, such a step gives rise to a number of doubts. Why would He bring misfortune upon people who are merely passive executors of His will? How can He judge and condemn only some, since all are His puppets? If blind adherence to universal laws can lead to evil, which might be avoided if the Creator were to make even the most minute intervention, then why does He not do it? Does Scripture not give examples of greater miracles, though perhaps less spectacular than the one which might have kept Adam and Eve from sin? The fall of the first people, but also the sins of those who followed, show that God has more appreciation for the aesthetic value of a world operating according to fixed laws than for its moral value. Does this not contradict our image of a merciful God? Can such an attribute be ascribed to a God who cherishes the iron steadfastness of His actions above man? Seemingly not.

1.1.4. Montesquieu

The works of Montesquieu are the first example of a systematic consideration of generality and particularity as political categories. This reflection can be said to take two tracks. On the one hand, it exalts the Divine wisdom underlying the eternal, unchanging laws governing the world, and in this it is distinctly Malebranchian. Like the author of the Traité de la nature et de la grâce, Montesquieu did not apply this reasoning solely to theological matters, but also to issues relating to state governance. On the other hand, the dichotomy between generality and particularity manifests itself with full force in an issue directly linked to the art of government, although not fully dependent on it, namely the influence that geopolitical conditions (in particular geographical location) have on specific nations.

Montesquieu’s use of the concept of volonté générale, and especially the marked influence of Malebranche on his understanding of it, are hardly surprising given his education and his immediate circle of friends. Montesquieu was educated by the Oratorians at the Collège de Juilly, while his friends included figures such as Father Nicolas Demolets, the Oratorians’ librarian and editor of some of the thoughts of Pascal, Cardinal Melchior de Polignac, the author of Anti-Lucrèce, a work imbued with the ideas of Malebranche, as well as Fontenelle’s close associate, Dortous de Mairan.[48] It is therefore highly probable that Montesquieu was not only familiar with Malebranche’s works, but also that they significantly shaped his own views. It is hardly difficult to find traces of this influence in his writing. They are present both in the early Persian Letters (1721), in the only fragmentarily preserved Traité des devoirs (1748), as well as the late Spirit of the Laws (1748). In this last work, Montesquieu writes:

God is related to the universe, as Creator and Preserver; the laws by which He created all things are those by which He preserves them. He acts according to these rules, because He knows them; He knows them, because He made them; and He made them, because they are in relation to His wisdom and power. Since we observe that the world, though formed by the motion of matter, and void of understanding, subsists through so long a succession of ages, its motions must certainly be directed by invariable laws.[49]

Here, Montesquieu is of course referring to Malebranche’s thesis regarding the generality and immutability of Divine laws. For their mutability would make the perspicacity of the the Creator’s judgments questionable. It is therefore not surprising that in the following fragment of The Spirit of the Laws its author effects a positive valorisation of the permanence of the laws of nature: “particular intelligent beings are of a finite nature, and consequently liable to error”,[50] “[m]an, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws. As an intelligent being, he incessantly transgresses the laws established by God, and changes those of his own instituting.”[51] Montesquieu clearly contrasts Divine wisdom and human pride here. For this is the only term with which to designate the belief that the power of human reason can equal the omnipotence and omniscience of the Creator. One can easily discern an analogy here with the later thought of Rousseau. For although the latter was clearly hostile to Montesquieu’s works (especially his magnum opus), he nevertheless made the dichotomy between generality and particularity the centre of his political philosophy, criticising particularism and praising the general in a manner reminiscent of Montesquieu.

This dialectic between generality and particularity also manifests itself in the Persian Letters.[52] But the fragment of Montesquieu’s writing considered by scholars to contain the most evident proof of the politicisation of the category of volonté générale is chapter six of his famous eleventh book of The Spirit of the Laws. It is here, describing the dismal state of liberty in the Italian republics, that he writes: “In what a situation must the poor subject be in those republics! The same body of magistrates are possessed, as executors of the laws, of the whole power they have given themselves in quality of legislators. They may plunder the state by their general determinations; and as they have likewise the judiciary power in their hands, every private citizen may be ruined by their particular decisions.”[53] The author’s intention here is to show that an institutional separation of powers is necessary. In contrast to his earlier theological remarks, in which he voiced his unmistakable disapproval for particularisms, the political dimension of the opposition générale - particulière does not incite him to such categorical judgments. Generality and particularity must coexist within the same administrative body - this is a deplorable fact - but it is also what makes it so important for this body not to possess both the power to create and to enforce laws. Montesquieu approached this dichotomy in a more critical, Rousseauian fashion in Mes Pensées, giving advice both on how princes should act and on the general order within a community. Regarding the first, he stated that princes should only succumb to the lure of great things, and never to the affections particulières tied to particular phenomena (people, events, opinions).[54] As for the second, he emphasised - practically in the style of the Social Contract - the necessity of the reign of the general spirit (esprit général) in republics, and so the restriction of particularisms. One of the means to this end was to be the limitation of luxury, so that citizens would be ready to pursue the common good even at the expense of personal material losses.

Montesquieu’s remarks were in a similar tone in the Traité des devoirs (1725). Unfortunately, this work has not survived to our day and we can only deduce information about it from the works of his contemporaries or from his own references to it in the Pensées, as well as Book I of The Spirit of the Laws. We know that in it Montesquieu referred to Cicero’s De Officiis and Pufendorf’s De Officio hominis et civilis, using them to counter Thomas Hobbes’ positivism. We also know that he came across as a fervent advocate of the theory of natural law, whether in its ancient or modern form. Finally, we know that he wrote about justice as firmly established in the very essence of the coexistence of individuals, and not as dependent on individual opinions. Thus, there is nothing surprising that the nature of his considerations on the general will and the laws of nature was a forerunner of the later thought of Diderot. Montesquieu affirmed that whenever we encounter a conflict between our particular duties (devoirs particuliers), deriving from our civic responsibilities, and our responsibilities towards the human race, we should always act to fulfil the latter.

The second context of those mentioned above, in which Montesquieu employed the general-particular dichotomy, is the geopolitical one. Long before Friedrich Ratzel - who founded geopolitics as an academic discipline - and his followers such as Johan Rudolf Kjellén, Montesquieu noted that “[m]ankind are influenced by various causes: by the climate, by the religion, by the laws, by the maxims of government, by precedents, morals and customs; whence is formed a general spirit of nations.”[55] Laws “should be in relation to the climate of each country, to the quality of its soil, to its situation and extent, to the principal occupation of the natives”.[56] Ample thought has been devoted to this issue in the relevant literature, so we can permit ourselves only a summary presentation of it. Montesquieu’s postulate of the particularism of laws is the result of the valorisation of the character of the specific community they are to serve. The latter is determined in part by the views of the inhabitants, their number, and the geographical and historical context of their existence. Hence, although they are common for the citizens of a given state, they cannot be said to have universal applicability. This is why the author of The Spirit of the Laws is sometimes thought to be an opponent of the theory of natural law. Our next thinker, Diderot, placed his considerations on the general will within an entirely different and, as suggested earlier, universalist and jusnaturalistic context.

1.1.5. Denis Diderot

The sincere and lively friendship Diderot and Rousseau initially enjoyed can only be measured against the hatred and contempt they had for each other subsequently. It is therefore just as likely that Rousseau heard the main idea of his prize-winning Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, the source of his fame, which determined his further philosophical development, from the lips of Diderot, at that time a prisoner at the Vincennes fortress, as it is that the latter invented the story to spite his later enemy. A similar shadow of doubt casts itself on the question of the potential influence of the author of the Letter on the Blind on Rousseau insofar as the issue of the general will is concerned. It is known that, during the period of their friendship, both published articles concerning volonté générale in the same fifth volume of the Encyclopédie - Rousseau his Discourse on Political Economy, and Diderot his entry on Droit naturel. Charles Edwin Vaughan even considered the possibility that it was Diderot who inspired the Rousseauian idea of the general will, although he himself, as with many of his other ideas, did not develop it any further.[57] The reference[58] made by the author of the Discourse on Political Economy, Rousseau’s first work touching on the problem of the general will, to Diderot’s article may be evidence of this.

Nonetheless, the possibility that Rousseau may have drawn his inspiration from Diderot does not alter the fact that, although their conceptions of the general will converge on certain points, they remain irreconcilable. For what precisely did Diderot write in his article? He examined the case of a man explaining his readiness to harm others by the natural desire for his own happiness. “If my happiness demands that I destroy the lives of all those who disturb me, it is also necessary for an individual, whomever he may be, to be able to destroy mine if he is similarly disturbed; reason requires this, and I subscribe to it.”[59] We must reject the views of this “violent reasoner”, as Diderot calls him. No one may try to resolve issues of natural law, and therefore also of unchanging human needs and the ways in which they can be satisfied, based solely on their own desires. The precepts of nature cannot be discovered by way of introspection, as Rousseau maintained. In that case “where shall we place this great question? Where? Before the entire human race; for only they may decide the issue, since the good of all is the only passion they have, Particular wills are suspect; they can be good or evil, but the general will is always good: it is never wrong, it never will be wrong.”[60] The general will is thus an attribute of the entire human race. Diderot did not ascribe it to the political community, as Rousseau later did, or to the legislative power, as Montesquieu did. Humankind is the residuum of precepts that are “always good”. “It is to the general will that the individual must address himself to know up to what point he must be a man, a citizen, a subject, a father, a child, and when it is suitable to live or to die. The general will determines the limits of all duties.”[61] No individual suppositions or even positive rights determine what is right. This power belongs to all of humanity. “You have the most sacred natural rights in everything that is not contested by the entire species.”[62] Where then should we look for an indication of which actions are permissible by this final instance insofar as morality is concerned? “In the principles of law written by all civilised nations; in the social practices of savage and barbaric peoples; in the tacit conventions between enemies of mankind among themselves; and even in the feelings of indignation and resentment, these two passions which nature seems to have placed even in animals to compensate for the deficiency of laws in society and the blemish of public vengeance.”[63]

All human communities have hitherto governed themselves according to the precepts of the general will. Not only people, but also other animals (Diderot considered humans as such) follow its prescriptions, although due to a lack of capacity for reasoning it manifests itself in them as instinct. Diderot closes his reflections with a synthetic comparison of eight conclusions regarding the role of the volonté générale in the life of political communities and all of mankind: 1) “that the man who listens only to his particular will is the enemy of the human race; 2) [...] the general will in each individual is a pure act of understanding that reasons in the silence of the passions about what man can demand of his fellow man and about what his fellow man can rightfully demand of him”;[64] 3) that its rules apply equally to relations between individuals and between societies; 4) “the submission to the general will is the bond of all societies”;[65] 5) laws must be general in their object; 6) the goal of legislators should be to put the precepts of the general will into law; 7) the general will, like natural law, remains constant; 8) there is only natural justice, while that which contradicts it is always unjust.

Many of Diderot’s theses were later repeated by Rousseau in his work. A comparative analysis of their distinct approaches is not our aim here, but one is tempted to give a general idea of a number of particularly striking similarities and differences. In terms of the former, our attention is drawn to statements by Diderot such as: “what veneration we owe the august mortals whose particular wills reunite both the authority and the infallibility of the general will”, or his critique of those who follow only their particular will at the expense of the general good. These statements bring to mind not only Rousseau’s glorification of the volonté générale, but also the works of Pascal or Montesquieu already cited here. Yet while the similarities between both visions of the general will can be ascribed to a mere stylistic convergence, the differences concern fundamental issues. It is not the human race - Rousseau shall later say - but specific communities that dispose of general wills, and therefore the volonté générale does not exist in the natural state, but only within society. For that matter, Rousseau’s “noble savage” was only noble because he lacked reason. Meanwhile, Diderot suggested that he too could be credited with “a pure act of understanding [...] in the silence of the passions”. And since, according to Rousseau, there is no such thing as a natural general will that determines what is just, there is also no such thing as natural justice.

It is in this manner that a concept whose initial meaning was strictly theological became entirely secularised. Whereas Montesquieu, in a manner practically indistinguishable from the occasionalism of Malebranche, still used it to refer to the general, divinely-established laws governing the world, Diderot used it solely within the context of laws serving to preserve the human race. This understanding was also decidedly closer to that of Rousseau, though he tied it more closely with Montesquieu’s contextualism. And although the notion of the general will can be read within a number of other philosophical contexts, while its specific incarnations can be found in the pantheism of Baruch Spinoza, Leibniz’s theodicy, not to mention defenders of Malebranche such as Voltaire,[66] the last pre-nineteenth-century thinker to be discussed in this chapter will be the figure who permanently transplanted the subject of the general will into the political arena - Rousseau.

1.2. The general will in the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

For a long time - in fact until the beginning of the twentieth century[67] - Rousseau’s thought was considered inconsistent, frequently treating the same problems in ways so dissimilar as to make it impossible to extract a single interpretative key allowing the reader to grasp it as a whole, or even an unquestionable leading idea that could be used to class the subjects touched upon by this thinker by order of their importance. An echo of this approach can be found in the theories of the most important contemporary scholars of Rousseauian thought. Some would like to perceive him only[68] as a rationalist, or even a protoplast of Kantianism,[69] assigning the key role in the creation of the ideal personality and social order to reason, and totally depreciating or at least diminishing the part played by emotions. Others focus on the religious dimension of his philosophy, studying the influence on his thought of the Calvinism of his native Geneva, or the place occupied by religious issues in the totality of his output. Others yet emphasise the sentimental quality of his work or explain his entire legacy in the light of his life or psychosomatic condition.

Differences in the appraisal of Rousseau’s work are particularly visible in the analysis of his philosophical and political themes. Was he an apostle of the Revolution, his writings offering a theoretical justification of all of its atrocities, an unfavourably interpreted democrat seeking the source of the legitimacy of power in the consent of the people, a methodological individualist, a precursor of conservatism, socialism and Marxism, or is it perhaps that his thought lends itself to each of these interpretations? Scholars have given various answers to these questions, sometimes proposing differing interpretations of the same fragments of Rousseau’s writing. In their analyses, some have only considered the Social Contract and its project for the constitution of a state governed by the precepts of the general will. Others, taking into account only Rousseau’s practical projects - On the Government of Poland and the Constitutional Project for Corsica - saw their author as the initiator of the concept of the imperative mandate, entirely disregarding the explicit critique of the institutions of representative democracy in his other works. Some, accepting the claim of the irreducible complexity of Rousseau’s work, deliberately ignored in their analyses the writings they considered as straying from what they saw as the leading ideas of the philosopher’s world view.[70]

Rousseau’s legacy has been interpreted in nearly all of its aspects. At the same time, the specific nature of his thought has frequently constituted an obstacle to attempts to treat its various elements independently. Rousseau himself is not without fault here. Regardless of whether he can be called a systemic thinker, he certainly cannot be called a systematic one. His own usage of the key concepts of his thought was never precise. Their definition often changed with subsequent works, and sometimes even with subsequent pages of the same work (of which the category of the general will is the best example). From the perspective of a scholar of Rousseau’s thought this has both a positive and negative aspect. The former includes the possibility of a constant reinterpretation of his writings. This applies both to new perspectives on the links between their basic categories as well as the emphasis of different aspects of Rousseau’s thought. The analytical treatment of the legacy of this thinker provides us with a perfect example of a “hermeneutic circle”. This susceptibility to interpretative innovations is also one of the main reasons underlying the interest Rousseau’s works sparked among representatives of deconstructionism, with Jacques Derrida[71] and Paul de Man[72] at the forefront. And yet the main advantage of this lack of systematicity also turns out to be one of its greatest flaws. The diversity of potential references and approaches precludes the use of a single interpretative key, the plurality and diversity of the ideas present in Rousseau’s work prevent the formulation of a definitive description of their interrelationships, binding for later generations of scholars. And although many of the canonical works by experts in Rousseauian thought have laid foundations for the creation of distinctive schools of interpretation, it is impossible to speak of any dominant reading of his philosophy among them.

1.2.1. The general will. Definition and interpretations

It is fitting to begin the definition of the notion of the general will, both so crucial to Rousseau’s thought and so enigmatic, with the remark that the author never explicitly gives one. Which is doubtless why opinions similar to that voiced by Bertrand Russell, who called the Rousseauian general will a doctrine “both important and obscure”,[73] have gained such popularity in the relevant literature. The works in which Rousseau indicates the correct understanding of the volonté générale are those written after 1754. It was at that time that he began work on the Discourse on Political Economy, where the term appears for the first time. The political conceptions expounded therein correspond nearly in their entirety to the content of the Social Contract, written eight years later. Hence the second work of key importance to our considerations is the Social Contract itself. This is supplemented, though to a small degree, by a chapter of Emile, or On Education, in which the author presents a general outline of his philosophy of the state.

Several generations of scholars have investigated the nature of the volonté générale, based on the sources mentioned above, defining it in the most varied ways. And so, for instance, Frank Thakurdas writes that “the General Will is a unifying, constructive and integrating principle which alone gives and can give coherency to the body politic in all its diverse aspects”;[74] to Franz Haymann it is a maxim which takes the good of all people as a directive;[75] James MacAdam defines it as “will of that which is in the common interest”;[76] to Guglielmo Ferrero it is a religious absolute that can only be discovered by a mind in the state of grace;[77] while Émile Durkheim calls it “an impersonal form of the forces of nature”.[78] It would be hard to come up with more ambiguous and less congruous definitions. This is hardly surprising, since what their authors attempted was to condense the meaning of a concept, serving so many functions in the thought of Rousseau, and which he himself employed in a variety of contexts, into a single brief formula. These attempts were inevitably bound to produce imprecise definitions or reduce the term to only one of the meanings assigned to it by Rousseau. Let us therefore analyse the designations and functions assigned to the volonté générale in his work so that we may avoid the error of reducing its essence to but one of many possible interpretations.

Since Rousseau does not give a clear definition of the general will, we must look for its attributes wherever the concept appears in his writing:

[E]ach of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.[79]

The body politic, therefore, is also a moral being possessed of a will; and this general will, which 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 their relations to one another and to it, the rule of what is just or unjust.[80]

The body politic, the community, is a “moral being” to which citizens belong like parts to a whole. It has its own will - the general will - deciding what is just and always directed towards the “preservation and welfare of the whole and of every part”. This body is indivisible, and so is not a simple aggregation of individuals, but a moral whole irreducible to the sum of its parts.

[T]he general will is always right and tends to the public advantage.[81]

[E]ach individual, as a man, may have a particular will contrary or dissimilar to the general will which he has as a citizen. His particular interest may speak to him quite differently from the common interest.[82]

The first and most important deduction from the principles we have so far laid down is that the general will alone can direct the State according to the object for which it was instituted, i.e. the common good.[83]

There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will; the latter considers only the common interest, while the former takes private interest into account, and is no more than a sum of particular wills.[84]

The general will - the expression of “public advantage” and “common interest” - has to be differentiated from private will, the expression of particular interest. Although both can coexist in a person, each speaking to him in its own way, as a citizen he will only obey the dictates of the general will.

[T]he general will, to be really such, must be general in its object as well as its essence; [...] it must both come from all and apply to all; [...] it loses its natural rectitude when it is directed to some particular and determinate object, because in such a case we are judging of something foreign to us, and have no true principle of equity to guide us.[85]

[W]hen the whole people makes a statute applying to the whole people, it considers only itself; and if a relation is formed, it is between the whole object seen from one point of view and the whole object seen from another point of view, without any division of the whole. Then the object applying to which the statute is made is general, and the will which makes the statute is also general.[86]

Inasmuch as the essence of sovereignty consists in the general will, it is also hard to see how one can be certain that a particular will always will agree with this general will. One ought rather to presume that the particular will will often be contrary to the general will, for private interest always tends to preferences, and the public interest always tends to equality.[87]

The will is general when it comes from all members of a community, at the same time applying to all. It is not directed to a “particular and determinate object”.

The acts of the sovereign can only be acts of general will - that is, laws.[88]

[W]ill either is, or is not, general; it is the will either of the body of the people, or only of a part of it. In the first case, the will, when declared, is an act of Sovereignty and constitutes law: in the second, it is merely a particular will, or act of magistracy - at the most a decree.[89]

[T]he social compact gives the body politic absolute power over all its members also; and it is this power which, under the direction of the general will, bear, as I have said, the name of Sovereignty.[90]

It is the source of laws. Losing the attribute of generality, directing itself towards a particular object, being merely the will of a part, and so a private will, it is at most the source of government decrees. As an attribute of the whole community and its lawgiver, it transfers full power over citizens to it.

The power of the laws depends still more on their own wisdom than on the severity of their administrators, and the public will derives its greatest weight from the reason which has dictated it.[91]

[W]hoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free.[92]

[F]or the particular will tends, by its very nature, to partiality, while the general will tends to equality.[93]

The general will has its source in reason. Citizens should submit to its products - laws. Life in accordance with them is equivalent to freedom.

Based on the above examples, we can extract the main features of the general will. Thus: 1) it is an attribute of political communities; 2) it is the measure of what is just; 3) it “tends always to the preservation and welfare of the whole and of every part”, being at all times guided by the common interest; 4) it is the source of laws, its declaration is “an act of Sovereignty” and constitutes law; 5) it is the opposite of particular will (volonté particulière) and of the will of all (volonté de tous); 6) it can be equated with free will, i.e. a person who is truly free will follow only the precepts of the general will; 7) it is rational; and 8) it always aims to preserve legal equality between citizens. In light of these attributes, we can distinguish three levels on which the term volonté générale can be understood: the politico-legal, the ethical and the metaphysical.

In the politico-legal context, the general will should be understood as the belief shared by the members of a community as to the nature of its good, expressed in an appropriately enacted law. The general will is equated here with the result obtained each time an appropriate legislative procedure is followed. It is general both in its content and object, which means that in order for a law to be recognised as the expression of the volonté générale it must be voted on by all the members of a community, and its content must be abstract, since decrees concerning individuals are, in Rousseau’s view, acts of the executive, not of the legislative power. It is probably this very feature of the volonté générale -its generality - that inspired the famous first two sentences of the Social Contract: “I mean to inquire if, in the civil order, there can be any sure and legitimate rule of administration, men being taken as they are and laws as they might be. In this inquiry I shall endeavour always to unite what right sanctions with what is prescribed by interest, in order that justice and utility may in no case be divided.”[94] Merging the interest of individuals, who see the law as a guarantee of their possessions, with the good of the community can be done precisely by virtue of the general will. It is thanks to this philosophico-political construct that the power of the sovereign, although not subject to any formal limits,[95] encounters an actual obstacle in the interests of citizens. The domination of private interests protects the community from all forms of tyranny on the part of the majority. The natural desire to ensure one’s own welfare can - given an appropriate ordering of political institutions - make individuals, otherwise prepared to sacrifice the good of their fellow citizens, inclined to treat them as equals. For no one will agree to a law favouring a particular group of citizens, since they cannot be sure that they will never find themselves among those disadvantaged by it. Being unable to foresee their futures, citizens taking part in the legislative process will tend to be impartial rather than attempt to ensure their own gain. This is why Harald Höffding[96] and Leo Strauss maintained that the general will is the social equivalent of amour de soi (love of oneself, making the individual desire himself in an unrestrained way[97]) - the second, next to pitié (pity), motive of human action in the state of nature, while “[l]egislation by the all-inclusive citizen body is therefore the conventional substitute for natural compassion.”[98]

The ethical dimension of the general will links it to the categories of the common good and public interest. In light of this interpretation, Rousseau’s concern is not merely to order political institutions in such a way as to make people, guided by egotistical interest, mutually restrain one another in the unbridled pursuit of their desires. The point is not that unrestrained desires should lead to the emergence of a spontaneous order, the optimal and inevitable result of bellum omnium contra omnes. Such a postulate had already been formulated by Bernard Mandeville, who claimed that human flaws contribute to universal welfare.[99] But this was not the task the author of the Social Contract put before legislators when stating that “he who dares to undertake the making of a people’s institutions ought to feel himself capable, so to speak, of changing human nature, of transforming each individual, [...] of altering man’s constitution for the purpose of strengthening it; and of substituting a partial and moral existence for the physical and independent existence nature has conferred on us all.”[100] Rousseau’s guiding light was not that of enlightened egotism, with individuals caring for the common good in spite of their own intentions. He wished to restore them to their natural condition, insofar as this was possible within the limits of social coexistence, and to halt the process of moral depravity wherever it could be.[101] Of course, each nation can establish institutions that impose self-restraint on individuals effectively, but the very idea of organising society in such a manner seems dubious. Would this be sufficient to replace - paraphrasing the title of Jean Starobinski’s book[102] - “obstruction with transparency”? The answer is no; changing the legislative system does not in itself bring about a moral renewal. The dominion of the general will is not accomplished in the sphere of institutions, but within citizens. Its purpose is to put an end to that insupportable and destructive state of the human condition, in which individuals perceive one another solely as the means to their own ends. It is on this point that Rousseau’s conception is regarded as unique - the first modern attempt to reconcile two divergent traditions: the ancient view of community, with its emphasis on cohesion, unity and harmony among fellow citizens, each prepared to make sacrifices for the common good, and the voluntarist tradition, seeking the origins of human conduct in the possibility, or even inevitability, of individual, autonomous choice, and not in factors heteronomous to the individual. The point is for “the generality - non-individualism, or rather pre-individualism - of Antiquity to be legitimized by consent”.[103]

The ethical interpretation of the general will is the most common among scholars of Rousseau’s thought. This fact is hardly surprising, since it is based on the thesis of a theoretical continuity in his writing. Rousseau’s critique of the social life of eighteenth-century Europe (Discourse on the Arts and Sciences) and his subsequent explanation of the genesis of moral downfall (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality) precede the political treatise (the Social Contract) and the educational treatise (Emile) intended as a remedy for ethical ills, in the logical order. Viewed from any other perspective than the ethical, Rousseau’s work cannot be grasped as a whole, and inevitably collapses into social, political, educational, descriptive and normative components. Rousseau’s description of the ideal community does not then fit his analyses of other forms of government, and more so still the path of self-improvement sketched out in Emile.

Analyses of the moral dimension of the general will have often been accompanied by references to the ethical concepts of Immanuel Kant in the relevant literature.[104] In particular, these parallels were drawn by Ernst Cassirer.[105] However, this approach has many opponents, both among those who consider it unjustified to ascribe Kantian inclinations to Rousseau,[106] as well as those holding that the pre-Kantian tendencies were in this case much weaker than the pre-Hegelian ones. The latter camp often tended to interpret the general will in metaphysical terms.

The metaphysical interpretation is presented by scholars who have found the germ of the nineteenth-century concept of objective idealism in Rousseau’s work. According to them, the author of the Social Contract ascribed the attribute of existence (understood as an analogon of human existence) to supra-individual entities like the nation or the state.[107] These scholars attach particular weight to Rousseau’s description of the state governed by the general will as a “moral and collective body” (corps moral et collectif). In the Social Contract, we read: “this act of association creates a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as the assembly contains votes, and receiving from this act its unity, its common identity, its life and its will.”[108]

The act constituting a political community founded on the prescriptions of the general will is equated here with the creation of a new entity, more spiritual than material, of which it can only be said that it has a will (the general will) and a body[109] (composed of political institutions). It is not merely a “mental construct” erected by the citizens, but manifests an existential independence from their opinions.[110] Whether they act in their own interest or in that of the community, the general will remains unalterable. This can be understood in two ways: firstly, that there is always a position which expresses the community’s best interest, even though it is not always shared by the citizens, or, secondly, that the moral subject of which the general will is an attribute exists independently of their views and actions. Scholars adhering to the metaphysical interpretation of the general will usually lean towards this second interpretation. The community understood in this way is not a simple aggregate of individuals - as the precursors and proponents of classical liberalism supposed. Their atomist-mechanicist visions of society are out of place here. The organicist approach - focusing on the interdependence of members of a community and viewing it as a living body - is more appropriate.[111]

The metaphysical understanding of the general will is the most controversial of those cited above, hence only a relatively small number of scholars mention it. The attribution of such unequivocally pre-Hegelian inclinations to Rousseau compels some to perceive him as an advocate of the absolute power of the state over its citizens and to put him in the same basket as Hegel and Bosanquet, both misconstrued at times. Most scholars view such claims as a complete misunderstanding. Robert Derathé rightly noted[112] that Rousseau could not have disposed of the notion of the state as an entity transcending individuals. The concept of the “moral person”, the main argument used by supporters of Rousseau’s Hegelianism, appeared long before the publication of the Social Contract in the works of Hobbes[113] and Samuel Pufendorf,[114] yet without any transcendental connotations[115] and merely as an abstract designation of the community as an aggregation of individuals. There is no convincing proof that the Rousseauian “moral person” was intended to refer to anything other than a group of people assembled as a political community either. However, let us at once make clear that this does not mean ascribing an atomistic vision of inter-human relations to Rousseau. On the contrary, the community remains a living body, whose members (the citizens) cooperate for the welfare of the whole, fulfilling their assigned duties. The metaphysical nature of the general will may at most signify that the community is a group held together by a special type of bond - belief in the existence of a common good, whose realisation overlaps with the particular interests of citizens.

Of the above ways of conceiving the general will, the metaphysical is thus rightly rejected as replicating the error of anachronism. The remaining two, the politico-legal and the ethical, should be considered in unison as moments of the same phenomenon perceived from different angles.[116] Otherwise, the picture of the place occupied by the volonté générale in Rousseau’s thought becomes overly simplistic and hence inadequate. Limited to the politico-legal context, the general will appears either as the outcome of every vote taken by the citizens, if cast within the proper institutional setting, or as a means of enslaving particular wills, moulding them into one within the melting pot of the volonté générale. This happens similarly for the ethical dimension. Perceived solely as an ideal of social coexistence, independent of the role played by political and quasi-political institutions in the life of the community, it can only be applied to analyses of the so-called golden age of humanity - the happiest period in human history, before the positive traits of coexistence were destroyed by the invention of property and specialised production.[117] The later period, following the “second revolution” caused by the discovery of agriculture and metallurgy, is already an endless trail of human suffering. In order to put a term to it, it is indispensable to establish a society governed by the precepts of the general will. This cannot be done without the support of appropriate institutions. “Citizens are made, not born.”[118] Rousseau’s project is therefore above all pedagogical in nature. Its goal is to produce citizens prepared to subordinate their will to the public interest, so that by reconciling themselves with it they may regain their lost peace of mind.

1.2.2. The general will and natural law

For a complete understanding of the role played by the general will in Rousseau’s thought, it is necessary to establish whether it is not merely a modification of previous natural law theories, or - if a novel concept - to determine how it differs from previous accounts of natural law. This matter has already received many interpretations, most of which unfortunately amount to a confusion between the general will and natural law. Appropriate treatment of the question will require us to first analyse the meaning Rousseau assigned to the category of nature. It seems that we can here speak of a dual definition - historical and normative - both of nature as such and of natural law.

The historical understanding of nature has a descriptive character, relating to the hypothetical state of nature, the pre-civil period of human existence. Employed in this context, it carries no deontological content. It describes humanity’s happy period, which has irrevocably passed. Two main elements form this description: a picture of inter-human relations, and - even more importantly - of individuals as such, including their psychological constitution, with a particular focus on their emotional relation to their surroundings. This understanding of nature is especially present throughout the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.

In contrast to the descriptive understanding of nature, the normative one has a strictly deontological function. Rousseau uses it to express the need for a reform of social relations, establishing the most “natural” possible human existence (this understanding is predominant in the Social Contract and the Discourse on Political Economy, but we also encounter it in Emile and the New Heloise) or the appropriate formation of individual personality (Emile). Above all, we should consider as normative those descriptions of human nature which - while characteristic of the state of civil coexistence - do not contain a reference to the state of nature.

Rousseau himself did not give a precise account of the relationship between these two views of nature. They often took quite a complicated form, at times complementing each other - as in the case of Rousseau’s polemics with Grotius, Hobbes, Spinoza or Locke. Criticising the claim that it is admissible to submit voluntarily to slavery, put forward by Grotius and Hobbes, the author of the Social Contract stated that

To renounce liberty [...] is incompatible with man’s nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts. Finally, it is an empty and contradictory convention that sets up, on the one side, absolute authority, and on the other, unlimited obedience.[119]

Our attention is drawn here to the admission that there exists a natural human rationality, precluding transactions in which certain losses exceed presumed gains. An agreement that does not benefit the parties involved is impossible; “the right of slavery is null and void, not only as being illegitimate, but also because it is absurd and meaningless.”[120] Rousseau thus suggests that the precepts of man’s innate rationality (which, however, does not exist in the state of nature) must prevent him from consciously acting to his own detriment. Or, should he do so, nullify the obligations resulting from such acts.

Despite such an imprecise definition of nature, it seems that at least one of the claims regarding its relationship to the general will finds sufficient support in the works of Rousseau. According to this thesis, it is impossible to extrapolate a normative concept of the institutional structure of a state and society from a hypothetical/historical state of nature: “when we have defined a law of nature, we shall be no nearer the definition of a law of the State.”[121] The way people lived in the pre-civil period of peace and innocence does not define how societies should be organised today.[122] It is true that some fragments of Rousseau’s writing seem to allow for such an extrapolation, although for a long time most scholars denied it. A change of position on this issue was initiated by the now classical work of Derathé, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la science politique de son temps.[123] He maintained that it is possible to perceive continuity between the presumed state of nature and the state of society. On what grounds, since l’homme naturel differed so vastly from civil man? It is in fact the same natural law, initially regulating human action through instincts, which now takes the form of the laws of reason in society.[124] Derathé backed this thesis with citations from the works of Rousseau,[125] including, in particular, Réponse à une Lettre Anonyme dont le contenu se trouve en Caractère Italique dans cette Réponse,[126] in which, to the question of whether he admits an authority superior to that of the sovereign in the state, Rousseau replies: “I allow only three of them. First, the authority of God, and then that of the natural law that derives from the constitution of man, and then that of honour.”[127]

But citations are often one thing (and those corroborating a contrary claim are hardly lacking in Rousseau’s work[128]), while cohesive argumentation is another. In order to meet the requirements of the latter, Derathé also cites Rousseau’s view of how the social contract was made. The argumentation is simple: Rousseau writes of the constitutive act of the community as an obligation undertaken by all and observed by all, on pain of death for those who would break it. Derathé therefore asks why individuals should feel obliged to obey these rules. For in order for this to be so, prior to entering into the agreement, they would first have to conclude another, in which they would agree to obey the pacta sunt servanda principle. Yet does this reasoning not inevitably lead to a reductio ad infinitum? An earlier agreement laying the foundation for the next one would always be needed. It is therefore logical that the pacta sunt servanda principle should function prior to any other agreements. This is how we arrive at a principle which is universally binding, although no one has expressly agreed to it, which all agree on, although they never pledged to obey it. The necessity of honouring it has to result directly from human nature. This is what makes it tangible proof of the existence of natural laws; the theory of the social contract cannot be reconciled with the negation of natural law, since the latter is the foundation of all agreements.[129] Social coexistence is not only compatible with the theory of natural law - it is hardly even conceivable that it should not be founded upon it; “natural law, in its rational form, can only appear at the same time as social life and the development of reason which results from it”,[130] “natural law” or “law of reason” cannot be perceived as anterior to civil laws, yet this does not preclude its being superior to them.[131] “In other words, there are two types of natural law; the first, secundum motus sensualitis, is ‘natural law in the proper sense’ and corresponds to the state of nature. The other, secundus motus rationis, or ‘rational law of nature’, does not appear until after the establishment of civil societies.”[132]

But does the admission of the existence of natural laws (understood in the sense of Derathé) really add anything to the debate on the general will? Even if we accept their validity in the social state, what does this change on the deontological level of public order as postulated by Rousseau? Can the law of nature, as a law of reason, legitimate positive legislation, and if so, in what sense? Can natural law justify political revolutions? Can the legislation of nature be reconciled with the legislation of the general will? At least to this last question, a positive answer can be given. This is also Derathé’s position. Although one of Rousseau’s theses is that an appropriately enacted law always expresses the general will, it is impossible to deduce from this that all of the latter’s precepts are purely a matter of convention and have nothing to do with the immutable law of nature. This law of nature may find its raison d’être as a force delimiting the scope of civil laws that can be enacted. The fact is, there are some regulations that individuals in their right mind will never agree to. For instance, the previously mentioned renouncement of freedom. Rousseau considers such a step inadmissible, since it contradicts rational human nature. One cannot give away all one possesses in exchange for nothing, or the promise of an uncertain future gain: “[t]o say that a man gives himself gratuitously, is to say what is absurd and inconceivable; such an act is null and illegitimate, from the mere fact that he who does it is out of his mind. To say the same of a whole people is to suppose a people of madmen; and madness creates no right.”[133] Derathé argues that, through this, Rousseau unites the positivist thought of Hobbes, who ascribed unlimited power to the sovereign, with the jusnaturalism of Jurieu and Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, who believed that absolute power does not mean unrestrained self-will, being bound by the precepts of nature and God.[134]

Yet there also is no shortage of scholars opposed to this view of the relationship between volonté générale and natural law. These include Strauss.[135] The divergence between the views of Derathé and Strauss on this matter is significant. Whereas the first assumes that the precepts of natural law take precedence over the general will, the second recognises no instance superior to it. Strauss considers the general will of the community as the foundation of the Rousseauian political order. Meanwhile, Derathé’s position implies the grounding of this order on a foundation independent of it. Where is the source of such differences in interpretation? It lies in Rousseau’s relatively carefree mixing of the two meanings of nature - historical and normative. And so the following question emerges: since both positions are equally justified in light of Rousseau’s writings, is it possible to reconcile them? Based on previous analyses, the following thesis may be ventured. In the case of a democratic system, natural law (understood in the sense of Derathé) cannot justify a change of the political status quo. Being both a necessary condition of the functioning of democracy (since it is ultimately based on an agreement made by the people, and this in turn requires honouring the pacta sunt servanda principle) and delimiting the scope of acceptable laws that are compatible with human nature, the postulates of natural law are always reflected in legislation. It can be said that natural law gives no additional power to civil laws. Since the volonté générale, reflected in legislation, will never be irrational, it will never be opposed to natural law (a law of reason). In this way, the recognition of the omnipotence of the volonté générale is not at odds with the recognition of the primacy, or even superiority, of the precepts of natural law.

Yet we should not confuse the above thesis on the compatibility of natural law (understood in such a particular way) with the general will, with the claim denied here. Namely, that it is possible to project the order, proper to the state of nature, onto modern societies (and so mix the historical and normative understanding of nature). The analogies Rousseau made at various points between the state of the first people and the later state of society should not in fact be treated as such. Even advocates of Rousseau’s jusnaturalism, like Derathé and Alfred Cobban,[136] reject the possibility of translating the laws applicable in the state of nature into the rational laws of socialised man. The reason why these two orders should be differentiated is simple: Rousseau doubts the permanence of human nature. The two forms of existence - the pre-civil and the civil - have little to do with each other.[137] The fact that man possessed certain traits in the first does not imply that he also possesses them today. Nor, for that matter, that he will possess them in the future. Natural man was characterised by sentiments proper only to himself: amour de soi and pitié.[138] In the social world, these have degenerated, their restoration is impossible. And since there has been a change in inter-human relations, it is not even clear what it would have to consist in. Rousseau presents the differences separating the two states in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, where he notes that in the state of natural happiness, pity prompted men to follow the maxim: “[d]o good to yourself with as little evil as possible to others”, while within society, reason ordains: “[d]o to others as you would have them do unto you.”[139] The first exhorts us to love ourselves while also taking into account the well-being of others. It provides an outlet for both instincts: love of self and pity. The second is the result of mistrust and caution in the calculation of potential gains.[140] It is thereby also an effect of the action of amour propre, self-love, a form of amour de soi[141] degenerated by reason.

The question of the establishment of natural equalities and freedoms, postulated by Rousseau, is similar. None of them can be brought back in their original form, and so their fulfilment cannot come through a “return to nature”, but through the creation of a real community and citizenship: “[t]here can be no patriotism without liberty, no liberty without virtue, no virtue without citizens.”[142] “If we ask in what precisely consists the greatest good of all, which should be the end of every system of legislation, we shall find it reduce itself to two main objects, liberty and equality - liberty, because all particular dependence means so much force taken from the body of the State, and equality, because liberty cannot exist without it.”[143]

There is another reason Rousseau cannot be seen as an advocate of the supremacy of natural laws reformulated as political postulates: he does not recognise the existence of universal sources of morality and legislation. The only rightful legislator is the sovereign, guided by the precepts of the general will.[144] The latter, as an expression of the common good, is necessarily contingent, dependent on the existential context of communities. Hence, Strauss writes that “the source of the positive law, and of nothing but the positive law, is the general will; a will inherent or immanent in properly constituted society takes the place of the transcendent natural law”,[145] it “constitutes for all the members of the State, in their relations to one another and to it, the rule of what is just or unjust”,[146] “because, according to the fundamental compact, only the general will can bind the individuals”.[147]

This is also why there is no such thing as a general will of mankind. For is there such a thing as a pan-human community with its own volonté générale, directed to the attainment of its good? Rousseau at times suggests that since the general will of one nation is bound to be seen as particular by another, then this is possible only thanks to the existence of some kind of higher volonté générale, a natural law applicable to the “great city of the world”.[148] In the Geneva manuscript of the Social Contract, however, he notes that this cosmopolitanism springs from an error of hypostasis, projecting the local understanding of common interest onto humanity.[149] The image of a global community rallying together to pursue a universal common interest is quite beautiful, albeit totally unrealistic.

1.2.3. The general will and the will of all

In order to define the role attributed to the general will by Rousseau, it is not enough to merely list its positive definitions. The nature of the distinction Rousseau makes between volonté générale and volonté de tous is also of fundamental importance. The relevant literature is plagued with doubts as to the nature of this opposition. The very possibility of maintaining it consequently is even sometimes questioned. The matter is crucial to Rousseau’s thought, since - as we shall see in the following subsections - adopting one of the possible definitions of this relationship implies the recognition of one of two fundamentally different views of the nature of socio-political relations.

1.2.3.1 The will of all

The reader of Rousseau’s works will have no major difficulty in defining the will of all. Whereas defining the general will required a multifaceted investigation, there is no need for such extensive and thorough analyses in this case. Yet even here we must begin by citing the positive designations of the volonté de tous. From a reading of Rousseau’s works it follows that:

[i]n fact, each individual, as a man, may have a particular will contrary or dissimilar to the general will which he has as a citizen. His particular interest may speak to him quite differently from the common interest: his absolute and naturally independent existence may make him look upon what he owes to the common cause as a gratuitous contribution, the loss of which will do less harm to others than the payment of it is burdensome to himself.[150]

In reality, if it is not impossible for a particular will to agree on some point with the general will, it is at least impossible [Ital. - J.G.] for the agreement to be lasting and constant; for the particular will tends, by its very nature, to partiality, while the general will tends to equality. It is even more impossible to have any guarantee of this agreement; for even if it should always exist, it would be the effect not of art, but of chance.[151]

Rousseau defines the particular will/will of all negatively by contrasting it with the general will. The first is oriented towards the pursuit of personal interest, and characterises the individual not as a citizen, but simply as a person, an “absolute and naturally independent” being. And although “it is not impossible for a particular will to agree on some point with the general will”, they are separated by a chasm, since the first always tends towards privileges enabling the realisation of personal interest, while the second always articulates the requirements of the common good.

[S]uch assessment, in order to be lawful, must be voluntary; it must depend, not indeed on a particular will, as if it were necessary to have the consent of each individual, and that he should give no more than just what he pleased, but on a general will.[152]

[W]ill either is, or is not, general; it is the will either of the body of the people, or only of a part of it. In the first case, the will, when declared, is an act of Sovereignty and constitutes law: in the second, it is merely a particular will, or act of magistracy - at the most a decree.[153]

The influence of all these tacit or formal associations causes, by the influence of their will, as many different modifications of the public will. The will of these particular societies has always two relations; for the members of the association, it is a general will; for the great society, it is a particular will.[154]

Private will amounts to self-will. The sense of duty, of being dedicated to something other than its own “I want”, is alien to it. It belongs to all associations as a will of all/public will. It is not a desirable source of law, since it lacks a general object. At most, it creates custom, a set of beliefs devoid of rational justification. The general will, on the other hand, is rational, an effect of self-restraint finding its outlet in laws.

The following designations can therefore be attached to the concept of particular will/will of all: 1) it tends to the realisation of personal interest; 2) it may characterise both individuals (this is when we call it particular) and groups (will of all); 3) it is arbitrary and has no foundation except in the subjective judgment of individuals; 4) it characterises people as “absolute and naturally independent” beings, not as citizens; 5) it tends to privilege, regarding the state of equality (also legal) as undesirable; 6) it may occasionally overlap with the general will, to which it is, however, opposed by nature; 7) it does not belong to the sovereign, but to the executive power; it is the causa sui of executive acts; 8) it creates custom, not laws.

1.2.3.2 The general will versus the will of all

Four differences can be shown between the general will and the will of all/particular will defined in this manner:

1. Quantitative difference. The general will is one,[155] since it represents the best understanding of the common good. By contrast, the will of all is the sum of the wills of particular individuals pursuing their personal interests.

2. Qualitative difference. The general will can be deemed rational and just, and individuals guided by its precepts can be deemed free. This is not the case with the particular will/will of all, which is irrational and unjust, while those who execute its precepts are slaves to their own passions.

3. Difference in source. The particular will springs from the subjective desires of individuals. The general, from the requirements of the common good, independently of anyone’s opinion.

4. Difference in aim. The general will is oriented towards the establishment and maintenance of equality between individuals; the particular tends towards privilege and self-advancement. While the first desires the common good, the second aims for personal good. Both may have an identical effect - political postulates motivated by personal interest can coincide with the interest of the community. But this does not mean they are identical. For this would require unity of motive, not of effects.

Where the general will reigns, the particular is necessarily lacking. And conversely, in a morally corrupt society, where everyone seeks to fulfil their own interest, or that of the group they belong to, there can be no representation of the general will. But does this arrangement really have to resemble a zero-sum game, with a larger number of particular interests translating into a reduced representation of the general will? It seems that there are at least two types of relation that can be distinguished in the opposition volonté générale-volonté de tous: a variant of exclusion and a variant of coexistence. In the first case, both wills inevitably limit one another. The more there is of the general will, the less of the particular, and vice versa. The rule of the volonté générale means identifying personal interest with that of the community, thus a complete renunciation of private interest. This variant is a consequence of the acceptance of an ethical interpretation of the general will. Otherwise, a specific sphere of influence is assigned to each will, in which it does not limit the other in any respect. This occurs when we confine the action of the general will to the political sphere, while that of the particular, to the private and economic domain. This means that while we may be egotists, prepared to sacrifice the good of others for the sake of our own goals in our private and economic lives, whenever we vote on a law, our egotism also forces us to establish legal guarantees for equality and the realisation of the common interest. This manner of understanding the volonté générale requires recognition of the supremacy of its politico-legal interpretation.

1.2.4. Two visions of community

This dual interpretation of the relationship between the general will and the will of all relates to the issue of Rousseau’s alleged utilitarianism. Our concern here, however, is not to find similarities with the thought of Helvetius, since these would doubtless be few. The problem consists rather in Rousseau’s inconsequent mixing of two orders. The first is the already mentioned Mandevillian image of community, in which egotistical acts ultimately bring about the good of society. Citizens need not be made virtuous for the social body to improve its condition. If the public sphere is ordered appropriately, private interest can support the common good, and the particular will, the general. The public good is to everyone’s advantage, and so everyone, wishing to attain their particular goals, will incidentally be inclined to pursue the common interest as a means of achieving private ends: “[e]ach man, in detaching his interest from the common interest, sees clearly that he cannot entirely separate them; but his share in the public mishaps seems to him negligible beside the exclusive good he aims at making his own. Apart from this particular good, he wills the general good in his own interest, as strongly as anyone else.”[156]

A similar view can be found in the later writings of Kant, who describes the functioning of a “race of devils”,[157] and in Johan Gottlieb Fichte.[158] Echoes of it are also present in Montesquieu and Locke, in their postulates on the division and balance of powers, which in their natural desire for dominion over each other mutually limit their temptations. Was this type of reasoning shared by Rousseau? There is doubtless reason to think so. Rousseau did admit the possibility of harnessing human passions to form a lawful society. This solution was dictated to him by a lack of belief in the possibility of moral reform of his contemporaries. Virtue will never vanquish the egotism ruling supremely over the nations of eighteent-century Europe. After all, Rousseau begins his Social Contract with the statement: “I mean to inquire if, in the civil order, there can be any sure and legitimate rule of administration, men being taken as they are and laws as they might be. In this inquiry I shall endeavour always to unite what right sanctions with what is prescribed by interest, in order that justice and utility may in no case be divided.”[159] It is not merely this scepticism that suggests seeing here the signs of the concept of “directing vice to the good”.

Similar conclusions can also be drawn from some of the elements of the meticulously crafted edifice of the state in the Social Contract. Take, for example, the plus/minus principle: “[t]here is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will; the latter considers only the common interest, while the former takes private interest into account, and is no more than a sum of particular wills: but take away from these same wills the pluses and minuses that cancel one another, and the general will remains as the sum of the differences.”[160] What exactly is this principle, interpreted in ways that have obscured rather than illuminated its essence? From the fragment cited, it follows that it is an infallible way of discovering the verdicts of the general will, indicating the views that advance the public interest. To the potential legislator, Rousseau seems to say: eliminate associations, for they have wills that are particular from the point of view of society, and then the personal wills of individuals will cancel one another out, while the remaining votes will express the general will.

Nonetheless, at least two charges can be brought against this interpretation. Firstly, its practical uselessness, and this for two reasons. 1) Voting usually consists less in expressing one’s own view than in taking a positive or negative stance on the content of the proposed law. This is also how Rousseau himself understood it, stating in the Social Contract that the role of the citizens is not to propose laws, but to vote on them.[161] In such a case, one can only speak of the percentage of voices “for” to those “against”, and not of the cancelling out of extreme opinions. 2) Even presupposing a plurality of opinions, from which those compatible with the general will must be extracted, establishing equivalence between votes cancelling one another out would require a criterion, according to which individual votes would be valorised, making it possible to make any comparisons. Rousseau’s work is silent on the question of such a criterion.

The second charge pertains to the annihilation of the ethical component of the general will. For if we admit that indicating its desiderata requires the extraction of a “golden mean” from among the available opinions by rejecting extreme postulates, then the very purpose of cultivating a civil ethics is put into question. The ethical dimension of the general will becomes redundant the moment the moral reform of citizens becomes unnecessary for the discovery of the content of its prescriptions.

Apart from concepts suggesting the necessity of constituting a community based on an institutional dam, transforming the Hobbesian state of bellum omnium contra omnes into voluntary cooperation within the framework of a democratic legal order, there is yet another tendency to be found in Rousseau’s writings. This is expressed in the image of the perfect community, in which the citizens equate their private interest with the public one. An example of this is the community of Clarens in the New Heloise. It boasts no public institutions in the strict sense, which are unnecessary because good people do not squabble over prerogatives and do not desire to increase their freedom at the expense of others. Since they are without egotisms, it is not necessary for these to cancel one another out. Everyone fulfils their duties towards the common good, perceiving no coercion in this, and without feeling that their own liberty has been curbed. In such a community, the general will is devoid of the institutional component and limited to the purely ethical dimension.

That such a reading of Rousseau’s political legacy is correct is proven for example by his conception of the legislator, who is to educate citizens sensu proprio, spontaneously equating their own good with that of the community. Had Rousseau’s only intention been to order political relations within the state so as to oblige everyone who desires to follow the promptings of their will to support similar pursuits in others, incidentally providing for the good of the community, the legislator would be redundant. Similarly with civil religion, intended to bind individuals emotionally to the community. If skilful use of egotisms enriched with a rational calculation of profits and losses were sufficient for the establishment of a government of the general will, why would Rousseau introduce an emotional component? Besides, even if the citizens failed to note that the welfare of the community is in their interest, the plus/minus principle would permit the extraction of the precepts of the general will.

There are thus ample grounds to believe that Rousseau presents two ways of realising the precepts of the general will: arranging political institutions so as to ensure “that justice and utility may in no case be divided”, as well as shaping citizens in such a way that they internalise the precepts of the general will, equating the common interest with their own. Scholars of Rousseau’s thought who tend to focus too much on the first of these points, usually perceiving Rousseau as the spiritual father of modern democracy, inevitably disregard his postulates on moral reform, so important within the context of the whole of this thinker’s legacy. On the other hand, those who place an excessive emphasis on the acceptance of the ethical solution have a tendency to view Rousseau as a sentimental recluse concerned with the condition of “noble souls” lost in modernity, rather than a political pragmatist and visionary.

3 This is why Patrick Riley describes the whole tradition of employing and interpreting the idea of the general will as “mere gloss on a passing phrase in a letter of St. Paul” (P. Riley, General Will Before Rousseau, p. 9).

4 1 Tim. 2:3-4.

5 Rom. 3:29.

6 Matt. 22:14.

7 Including: Isa. 65:1; Rom. 10:20; Prov. 8:35; Phil. 2:13; Phil. 1:6; Phil. 1:29; Eph. 2:8; 1 Cor. 4:7; 1 Cor. 7:25; 1 Cor. 15:10; Gal. 2:21.

8 http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum16.htm http://www.thecounciloftrent.com/ch6.html

9 http://www.thecounciloftrent.com/ch6.html

10 http://www.romancatholicism.org/jansenism/jansenism-condemnations. htm

11 A. Arnauld, Des vraies et des fausses idées, in: idem, Śuvres philosophiques de Antoine Arnauld, ed. J. Simon, Paris 1813, p. 163.

12 A. Arnauld, Réponse du Pčre Malebranche au livre Des vraies et des fausses idées, in: idem, Śuvres philosophiques de Antoine, pp. 293-294.

13 “God having made the heavens and the earth, which do not feel the happiness of their being, He has willed to make beings who should know it, and who should compose a body of thinking members. [...] But for this they would need to have intelligence to know it, and good-will to consent to that of the universal soul” (B. Pascal, Thoughts, transl. W.F. Trotter, ed. Ch.W. Eliot, New York, 1910, p. 162 [482]).

14 Ibid., p. 160 [475].

15 Ibid., p. 161 [480].

16 1 Cor. 12:24-25.

17 P. Riley, The General Will Before Rousseau, p. 17.

18 B. Pascal, Thoughts, pp. 160-161 [477].

19 Ibid., p. 159 [472].

20 P. Riley, Introduction, in: N. Malebranche, Treatise on Nature and Grace, transl. P. Riley, Oxford 1992, p. 15.

21 N. Malebranche, Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion, transl. M. Ginsberg, London 1923, p. 185.

22 Ibid., p. 190.

23 Ibid., p. 136.

24 S. Nadler, Malebranche on Causation, in: Cambridge Companion to Malebranche, ed. S. Nadler, New York 2000, p. 117.

25 Ibid., p. 187.

26 P. Riley, The General Will Before Rousseau, p. 28.

27 N. Malebranche, Traité de la nature et de la grace, Eclaircissements, III, XXIII, in: N. Malebranche, Oeuvres complètes de Malebranche, Vol. 2, Paris 1837, p. 356.

28 N. Malebranche, Treatise on Nature and Grace, transl. P. Riley, Oxford 1992, I, XLIII, pp. 128-129.

29 Ibid., I, XXXVIII, p. 27.

30 Ibid., Illustration I, p. 195.

31 Ibid., VI, p. 198.

32 Cf. S. Brown, The Critical Reception of Malebranche, in: Cambridge Companion to Malebranche, pp. 270-272.

33 N. Malebranche, Treatise of Nature and Grace, I, LVII, p. 137.

34 D. Rutherford, Malebranche’s Theodicy, in: Cambridge Companion to Malebranche, p. 178.

35 See D. Moreau, The Malebranche-Arnauld Debate, in: Cambridge Companion to Malebranche, pp. 100-102.

36 Ibid., p. 101.

37 P. Riley, The General Will Before Rousseau, p. 17.

38 N. Malebranche, Treatise of Nature and Grace, I, XXXVIII, p. 127.

39 Cited after: P. Hazard, The European Mind 1680-1715, transl. J.L. May, Middlesex 1964, p. 248.

40 Ex. 17:6.

41 P. Riley, The General Will Before Rousseau, p. 71.

42 Cf. P. Riley, Introduction, in: J.-B. Bossuet, Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture, transl. P. Riley, Cambridge 1990, p. XXIV.

43 J.-B. Bossuet, An Universal History from the Creation of the World to the Time of Charlemagne, London 1810, p. 181.

44 Ibid., p. 158.

45 Ibid., p. 235.

46 P. Bayle, An Historical and Critical Dictionary Selected and Abridged from the Great Work of Peter Bayle, Vol. III, London 1826, p. 385.

47 P. Bayle, Various Notes on the Occasion of a Comet, transl. Robert C. Bartlett, Albany 2000, p. 104.

48 P. Riley, The General Will Before Rousseau, pp. 139-140.

49 Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, Book I.I, transl. T. Nugent, New York 1899, p. 1.

50 Ibid., I, I, p. 2.

51 Ibid., I, I, p. 3.

52 Montesquieu, The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu, London 1777, Vol. 3, Persian Letters, XXIV.

53 Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, II, XI, p. 153.

54 Montesquieu’s argument keeps to a similar spirit in Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence, in: Montesquieu, Œuvres complètes, ed. D. Oster, Paris 1964, pp. 453, 462.

55 Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, XIX, III, p. 293.

56 Ibid., I, III, pp. 7-8.

57 C.E. Vaughan, Droit Naturel, in: J.J. Rousseau, The Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In Two Volumes, ed. C.E. Vaughan, Vol. 1, Cambridge 1915, pp. 425-427.

58 J.J. Rousseau, Discourse on Political Economy, in: J.J. Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Political Writings, ed. V. Gourevitch, Cambridge 1997, pp. 6-7.

59 D. Diderot, Denis Diderot’s The Encyclopedia: Selections, ed. S.J. Gendzier, New York 1967, pp. 115-116.

60 Ibid., pp. 115-116.

61 Ibid.

62 Ibid.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid.

65 Ibid.

66 Voltaire, Grâce, in: idem, Dictionnaire philosophique portatif, London 1764, pp. 212-215.

67 A pioneering work in this respect was Gustav Lanson’s essay L’Unité de la pensée de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Annales de la société Jean-Jacques Rousseau” 1912, Vol. 8, pp. 1-12. This thesis was later repeated by George Douglas Howard Cole (G.D.H. Cole, Introduction, in: J.J. Rousseau, The Social Contract & Discourses, London 1913, p. XVII), Ernst Cassirer (E. Cassirer, L’Unité dans l’œuvre de J.J. Rousseau, “Bulletin de la société française de philosophie” 1932), Pierre Burgerlin (P. Burgerlin, La philosophie de l’existence de J.J. Rousseau, Paris 1952, pp. 505-507), Jean Starobinski (J. Starobinski, La pensée politique de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. S. Baud-Bovey, Neuchâtel 1962, p. 86).

68 R. Derathé, Le rationalisme de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Geneva 1979.

69 E. Cassirer, Rousseau, Kant, Goethe, New York 1965; P. Burgelin, Kant lecteur de Rousseau, in: Jean-Jacques Rousseau et son œuvre. Problèmes et recherches. Commémoration et Colloque de Paris (16-20 octobre 1962), Paris 1964, pp. 303-315.

70 Raymond Polin considered the Constitutional Project for Corsica to be such a work (R. Polin, La politique de la solitude. Essai sur la philosophie politique de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Paris 1971, p. 132). Similarly so with On the Government of Poland, which instead of direct democracy, constituting the foundation of the government of the general will in the Social Contract, also give raison d’etre to representative organs (cf. O. Krafft, La politique de Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Aspects Méconnus, Paris 1958).

71 See J. Derrida, Of Grammatology, tranls. G.C. Spivak, Baltimore, MD 1997, pp. 97-100.

72 P. de Man, Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke and Proust, New Haven, CT-London 1979.

73 B. Russell, History of Western Philosophy, London 1947, p. 724.

74 F. Thakurdas, Rousseau and the Concept, p. 80.

75 F. Haymann, J.J. Rousseau Sozialphilosophie, Leipzig 1899, p. 80.

76 J. MacAdam, What Rousseau Meant by the General Will, in: Rousseau’s Response to Hobbes, ed. H.R. Cell, J.I. MacAdam, New York 1988, p. 147.

77 G. Ferrero, Pouvoir. Les génies invisibles de la cité, Paris 1943, p. 59.

78 É. Durkheim, Le “Contrat Social” de Rousseau, “Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale” 1918, Vol. 25, p. 23.

79 J.J. Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, transl. G.D.H. Cole, London 1923, I, VII, p. 15.

80 J.J. Rousseau, Political Economy, in: J.J. Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, p. 253.

81 J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract, II, III, p. 25.

82 Ibid., I, VII, pp. 17-18.

83 Ibid., II, I, p. 22.

84 Ibid., II, III, p. 25.

85 Ibid., II, IV, p. 25.

86 J.J. Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, transl. A. Bloom, New York 1979, p. 462.

87 Ibid., pp. 462-463.

88 Ibid., p. 462.

89 J.J. Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, II, II, p. 23.

90 Ibid., II, IV, p. 29.

91 J.J. Rousseau, Political Economy, p. 257.

92 J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract, I, VII, p. 18.

93 Ibid., II, I, p. 23.

94 Ibid., I, p. 5.

95 Ibid., II, IV, p. 29.

96 H. Höffding, Rousseau und seine philosophie, Stuttgart 1897, pp. 135-136.

97 Cf. G. Besse, De Jean-Jacques Rousseau à Hegel: Premices d’une Phénoménologie, “Hegel-Jahrbuch”, 1974, pp. 490-495.

98 Cf. L. Strauss, Natural Right and History, Chicago, IL 1953, p. 285.

99 B. Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, London 1729-1730.

100 J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract etc., II, VII, p. 35.

101 J.J. Rousseau, The Government of Poland, transl. W. Kendall, Indianapolis, IN 1985, p. 12.

102 J. Starobinski, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Transparency and Obstruction, Chicago, IL 1988.

103 P. Riley, A Possible Explanation of Rousseau’s General Will, “The American Political Science Review” 1970, Vol. 64, No. 1, p. 87.

104 See S. Ellenburg, Rousseau and Kant: principles of political right, in: Rousseau after 200 years. Proceedings of the Cambridge Bicentennial Colloquium, ed. R.A. Leigh, Cambridge 1982, pp. 3-36; P. Riley, Will and Political Legitimacy. A Critical Exposition of Social Contract Theory in Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel, Cambridge, MA-London 1982, pp. 125-128.

105 E. Cassirer, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, transl. P. Gay, New York 1956.

106 See J. MacAdam, What Rousseau Meant by the General Will, pp. 149-151.

107 J.P. Plamenatz, Consent, Freedom and Political Obligation, Oxford 1968, p. 31.

108 J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract, I, VI, p. 15.

109 See J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract, III, I, p. 49; cf. J.J. Rousseau, Political Economy, pp. 252-253.

110 J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract, IV, I, p. 91.

111 J.J. Rousseau, Political Economy, p. 252.

112 Frank Thakurdas indicated (F. Thakurdas, Rousseau and the Concept of the General Will, p. 280) that, not long before Derathé, this view was expressed by Otto Friedrich von Gierke in his work devoted to the notion of natural law (O.F. von Gierke, Natural Law and Theory of Society, transl. E. Barker, Vol. 1-2, Cambridge 1934).

113 T. Hobbes, Leviathan or the Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil, London 1887, p. 84.

114 S. Pufendorf, De Iure Naturae et Gentium Libri Octo, Londini Scanorum 1672, VII. 2, 13-14, p. 886: “[p]ersona moralis composita, cuius voluntas, ex plurium pactis implicita & unita, pro voluntate omnium habetur.” Cf. Q. Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, Cambridge 1998, p. 4.

115 R. Derathé, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la science politique de son temps, Paris 1970, pp. 397-410.

116 Two types of general will were also distinguished by Faguet (É. Faguet, Rousseau penseur, pp. 345-236). These he described as general general will (volonté générale générale) and particular general will (volonté générale particulière). The attributes of the first include immutability and being directed towards the common good. The second is that which is embodied in correctly enacted legislation.

117 J.J. Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men, p. 214.

118 J.W. Chapman, Rousseau - Totalitarian or Liberal, New York 1956, p. 60.

119 J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract, I, IV, p. 10.

120 Ibid., I, IV, p. 13.

121 Ibid., II, VI, p. 32; cf. J.J. Rousseau, Political Economy, p. 251.

122 See J.J. Rousseau, Letter to D’Alembert on Theatre, in: J.J. Rousseau, Letter to D’Alembert on Theatre and Writings for the Theatre, eds. A. Bloom, Ch. Butterworth, Ch. Kelly, Lebanon, NH 2004, p. 263. J.J. Rousseau, Lettre de J.-J. Rousseau à M. Philopolis [MS. Neuchâtel, 1836], in: J.J. Rousseau, The Political Writings, Vol. 2, pp. 221-223.

123 R. Derathé, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la science politique, pp. 155-160. Cf. F. Haymann, La loi naturelle dans la philosophie politique de J.J. Rousseau, “Annales” 1943-1945, Vol. 30, pp. 65-109.

124 Which was the reason for attacking the concept of the state of nature expounded by Hobbes, who erroneously based his image of original man on the citizens of seventeenth-century nations (J.J. Rousseau, L’etat de la guerre [MS Neuchâtel, 7856], in: J.J. Rousseau, The Political Writings, Vol. 2, pp. 306-307).

125 J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract, II, IV, p. 26-27; J.J. Rousseau, Emile, p. 289; J.J. Rousseau, Moral Letters, transl. Ch. Kelly in: Rousseau on Philosophy, Morality, and Religion, ed. Ch. Kelly, Lebanon, NH 2007, pp. 93, 96; J.J. Rousseau, The Government of Poland, pp. 28-29; J.J. Rousseau, Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloїse. Lettres de Deux Amants, Paris 1828, pp. 368-369.

126 J.J. Rousseau, Réponse à une Lettre Anonyme dont le contenu se trouve en Caractère Italique dans cette Réponse, in: J.J. Rousseau, Œuvres complètes de J.J. Rousseau avec des notes historiques, Vol. 3, Paris 1835, p. 179.

127 J.J. Rousseau, Letter to D’Alembert and the Writings for the Theatre, Lebanon, NH 2004, p. 379. Cf. R. Derathé, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la science politique, p. 157. Cf. A. Cobban, Rousseau, p. 76. Since the last of these factors plays no essential part in the works of Rousseau, apart from in this sole fragment, interpreters usually focus on the other two: God and nature. The possibility of founding human rights on a belief in God is based on the Creed of a Savoyard Priest, where the author clearly suggests that natural law is linked directly to the action of God and the “eternal truths” established by Him. For although Rousseau decidedly pronounced himself against the pantheism of Spinoza, like him, he believed that we discover God through nature, in which He revealed Himself through the intermediary of His laws. Thus, although the Creator Himself is the foundation of natural laws, the distinction Rousseau makes between Him and His laws is without practical significance for the discussion on the relationship between the general will and natural law. Studying the influence of natural law on man, we study Divine actions at the same time. We can, and should in Rousseau’s view, confront theological problems through the study of natural law.

128 J.J. Rousseau, Lettres écrites de la Montagne, in: J.J. Rousseau, The Political Writings, Vol. 2, p. 219. Cf. J.J. Rousseau, [MS. Neuchâtel, 7840, p. 61], in: J.J. Rousseau, The Political Writings, Vol. 1, p. 311.

129 Cf. R. Derathé, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la science politique, p. 160; cf. ibid., p. 166.

130 Ibid., p. 164.

131 Ibid., p. 165.

132 Ibid., p. 166.

133 J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract, I, IV, p. 10.

134 R. Derathé, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la science politique, pp. 339-341.

135 L. Strauss, Natural Right and History, Chicago, IL 1953, p. 286. A similar view was expressed by George Sabine (G.H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, Hinsdale, IL 1973, p. 587), Vaughan (C.E. Vaughan, First Draft of Contrat Social, in: J.J. Rousseau, The Political Writings, Vol. 1, pp. 426, 440-442).

136 A. Cobban, Rousseau and the Modern State, London 1934, p. 76.

137 J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract, I, VIII, pp. 18-19.

138 J.J. Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin, p. 199; cf. J.J. Rousseau, Moral Letters, p. 582.

139 J.J. Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin, p. 200.

140 Cf. J.J. Rousseau, Political Economy, p 257.

141 J.J. Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin, p. 197-199.

142 Cf. J.J. Rousseau, Political Economy, p. 267.

143 J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract, II, XI, p. 45.

144 Cf. A. Cobban, Rousseau, pp. 63-65.

145 L. Strauss, Three Waves of Modernity, in: Political Philosophy. Six Essays by Leo Strauss, ed. H. Gilden, Indianapolis, IN 1975 p. 91.

146 J.J. Rousseau, Political Economy, p. 253.

147 J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract, II, VII, p. 37; cf. ibid., II, XII, p. 47-48.

148 J.J. Rousseau, Political Economy, p. 253.

149 J.J. Rousseau, Contrat social, first Version, in: J.J. Rousseau, The Political Writings, Vol. 1, pp. 452-453.

150 J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract, I, VII, pp. 17-18.

151 Ibid., II, I, pp. 22-23.

152 J.J. Rousseau, Political Economy, p. 278.

153 J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract, II, II, p. 23

154 J.J. Rousseau, Political Economy, p. 254.

155 J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract, II, IV, pp. 25-26.

156 J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract, IV, I, p. 91.

157 I. Kant, Perpetual Peace, New York 2007, p. 37.

158 J.G. Fichte, The Vocation of Man, transl. W. Smith, Chicago, IL 1931, III, III, pp. 129-131.

159 J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract, I, I, p. 5.

160 J.J. Rousseau, Social Contract, II, III, p. 25.

161 Ibid., II, VII, p. 37; cf. ibid., IV, I, p. 91-92.