Rousseau’s general will as a tool of

democracy
COHEN SAUNDERS

Abstract
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s idea of the general will, the governing force in his political system, has led
some to label him as an authoritarian. Herein I will analyse his writings in The Social Contract, and
argue against this conception of the text, instead showing that this work supports the characterisation
of Rousseau as a democrat. I will do this by building on Sreenivasan’s interpretation of the general will,
which shows that Rousseau developed a system of deliberation to accord the common interest of the
people with their democratic vote. I will argue that this deliberative mechanism, along with Rousseau’s
conflation of the general will with the people’s vote supports the idea that Rousseau upheld a substantive
form of democracy.

Introduction
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a polarising figure in political philosophy, not least because he has been
widely depicted as both an authoritarian and a democrat. Rousseau’s concept of the ‘general will’
prompts much of this discussion. This seemingly ambiguous concept is fundamental to his core
argument that, outside of the state of nature, everybody should rule and be a subject at the same time.
Rousseau says that the general will dictates the laws of a sovereign nation, but each individual obeys
only themselves in following these laws. Here I will focus on the issue of how the general will is derived,
a controversial topic which has sparked arguments for and against Rousseau’s democratic credentials.
I will argue that the idea of the general will better supports the view of Rousseau as a democrat, rather
than an authoritarian, because he explicitly links the general will with the majority vote of the people,
specifying constraints on voting and deliberation that aim to make the general will truly representative
of the people’s common interest.
I will draw almost all of the textual evidence for this paper from The Social Contract, as this text
contains Rousseau’s most complete and detailed account of the general will (Bertram 2017). Since the
focus of the paper is on the interpretation of this key idea, it is reasonable to focus on the text that
contains Rousseau’s most thorough treatment of it; however, my conclusions are certainly open to
criticism on a more complete analysis of Rousseau’s work. I will first outline the argument
characterising the general will as fundamentally authoritarian. This idea relies on what Bertram calls
the ‘transcendent conception’, which ‘conceives of the general will as a transcendent fact about the
society which may or may not be reflected in actual legislative decisions’ (Bertram 2012, 403). Since
such a transcendent fact could not possibly be realised through democratic means, a system that follows
this conception of the general will is vulnerable to capture by authoritarian leaders posturing as knowers
of the general will. I will then argue against this conception and outline the view of Rousseau as a
democrat in line Bertram’s ‘democratic conception’ of the general will, which ‘identifies the general
will with the decisions of the sovereign people as they legislate together’ (Bertram 2012, 403). I will
argue that this conception of the general will is better supported by The Social Contract, despite
Rousseau’s failure to properly recognise the difficulties of deriving the ‘common interest’ of the people
from their democratic vote. Though his political system is not practicable, Rousseau can be upheld as
a democrat.
Before I move on, I think it is necessary to note that the authoritarian–democrat dichotomy is not
perfect. To avoid confusion, I will define authoritarianism as a system of government in which power
is concentrated in the hands of a few people who are not accountable to those who they rule. I will use
 Rousseau’s general will as a tool of democracy

two definitions of democracy which are derived from Rawls’ idea of procedural and substantive justice
(Rawls 1999, as cited in Miller 2021). The procedural definition defines democracy broadly as a
political system in which the people have the ability to hold the government to account through free
and fair elections, and the second, more substantive definition adds that a democratic system will realise
the common interest of the people governed by it (Miller 2021). I will also intermittently refer to
Rousseau’s idea of the social contract, which is the agreement between people that allows the general
will to rule, and which all people must become signatories to in order to join civil society.

Rousseau as an authoritarian
Rousseau’s dissenters argue that his writings in The Social Contract better support the transcendent
conception of the general will rather than the democratic conception. This is the idea that the general
will is a fact that exists independently of deliberation, supposedly manifesting in policy that represents
the common interest of the people. Under this conception the general will is not dissimilar to the word
of a transcendent, godlike being, who is believed to hold only people’s true interests at heart. A few
important moments in the text support this view. Rousseau clearly differentiates the democratic vote of
the people from the general will when he states that there is often ‘a great deal of difference between
the will of all and the general will’ (Rousseau 1987, 155). Further, he creates no ambiguity over whose
guidance he believes to be superior, saying that‘ the general will is always right and always tends toward
the public utility [but] it does not follow that the deliberations of the people always have the same
rectitude’ (Rousseau 1987, 155). It is not hard to see how these moments could support the argument
that Rousseau places no importance on the democratic vote of the people, and instead believes that the
general will exists independently of deliberation. The question then arises: who shall interpret the
general will?
For Rousseau, the state is led by ‘the legislator’, who is the original organiser of the political state as
people leave the state of nature, and who must have ‘superior intelligence that [beholds] all the passions
of men without feeling any of them’ (Rousseau 1987, 162). Rousseau is clear that the legislator is not
a ruler in the sense that they dictate the law—that is the job of the general will—but he does place
emphasis on the need for the legislator to be persuasive, and use these powers to convince the public
that they can rule themselves through the general will (Rousseau 1987, 162–65). Paired with a
transcendent conception of the general will it seems practically unlikely that the legislator will not be
able to abuse their power, because, if the general will cannot be realised through democratic vote then
it must be interpreted by some other apparatus or person, presumably the legislator. To add to this
problem, Rousseau does not specify any particular mechanism for the separation of powers in
government, since he believes that there should be only one supreme power: the general will. While
Rousseau is critical of leaders with too much power, writing that ‘when one has force at hand, there is
no art to making everyone tremble and not even very much to winning over people’s hearts’ (Rousseau
1987, 118), his political system seems vulnerable to capture by an authoritarian leader.
Perhaps Rousseau’s most controversial idea in The Social Contract is that individuals who neglect to
follow the general will must be forced to do so, or as Rousseau puts it, be ‘forced to be free’ (Rousseau
1987, 150). Freedom is not usually conceived as a state that can be forced upon someone, and so
Rousseau’s statement here can feasibly be interpreted as overly authoritarian, particularly by those with
a republican conception of freedom: freedom as the absence of a power that can arbitrarily control
individuals. I believe that Rousseau’s idea of freedom can be partially reconciled with republican
freedom, though only in terms of interpersonal relationships, not an individual’s relationship to the
state. The kind of freedom that Rousseau believes the state must, at times, force upon people is the
freedom that is upheld by the general will: the freedom from depending on any other individual for the
provision of one’s needs. This is a decidedly republican view of freedom, but to achieve it, each
individual is required to give ‘all his rights to the entire community’ (Rousseau 1987, 148) and therefore
be entirely unfree from arbitrary interference by the state. In regards to the state’s relationship with
individuals, Rousseau prefers a positive conception of freedom: freedom as one’s ability to realise their
true interests. Embedded deep in the general will is a notion that all citizens should be favoured equally,
and that people should be prevented from pursuing their own interests if this detracts from the common

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interest. This entails a degree of state intervention in the economic and social lives of people that easily
surpasses the practices of any modern democratic government, and is intuitively unjust for many people
living in such societies. This argument against Rousseau’s conception of freedom and the previous
argument that the general will is a transcendent fact both contribute to a conception of Rousseau as an
authoritarian philosopher, a conception which I will now refute.

Rousseau as a democrat
I believe that those who pin Rousseau as an authoritarian are mistaken in their diagnosis, because his
writings in The Social Contract better support a democratic conception of the general will. Bertram
states that the democratic conception of the general will ‘identifies the general will with the decisions
of the sovereign people as they legislate together’ (Bertram 2012, 403). At first take this idea seems
hard to reconcile with Rousseau’s aforementioned conviction that the general will always works for the
public good and yet the outcome of the people’s deliberation does not. I will argue that this is not a
contradiction, but rather aligns with Rousseau’s ideas that ‘the populace is never corrupted, but it is
often tricked’ (Rousseau 1987, 155), and that the people can overcome this deception by establishing a
constrained form of direct democracy.
Gopal Sreenivasan outlines this point in his paper What Is the General Will? Sreenivasan believes that
the two conceptions of the general will (roughly mapping to the ones that I have outlined) can be
accommodated to form a wholistic view of the general will in which the democratic conception
dominates, and through which Rousseau can be conceived as a democrat (Sreenivasan 2000, 546-47).
Sreenivasan’s argument can be outlined simply as such:
Premise 1: ‘The general will is the constrained deliberative decision of the community’
(Sreenivasan 2000, 554).
Premise 2: ‘The community’s constrained deliberation always promotes the common interest’
(Sreenivasan 2000, 555).
Conclusion: ‘The general will always promotes the common interest’ (Sreenivasan 2000, 556).
The first premise is supported by a handful of key moments in The Social Contract. Rousseau states
that ‘there can never be any assurance that a private will is in conformity with the general will until it
has been submitted to the free vote of the people’ (Rousseau 1987, 164), and he believes that ‘the
general will, to be really such … must derive from all in order to be applied to all’ (Rousseau 1987,
157). Here Rousseau seems to favour a democratic voting process in order to determine the general
will, but we still must reconcile his musings on the difference between the general will and the ‘will of
all’ with these statements. Rousseau thinks that the general will only differs from the majority vote
when the people are deceived, an idea which is related to his view of what people are really being asked
when they vote on issues. He believes that people should not vote with their private interest in mind
(for that would be deception from the realisation of their true interests), but rather prioritise ‘whether
or not [the proposal] conforms to the general will that is theirs’ (Rousseau 1987, 206). If people were
to do this, ‘declaration of the general will [would then be] drawn from the counting of votes’ (Rousseau
1987, 206). This is a highly idealised form of democracy, and one that has never manifested on a state
level. However, this account of how the general will can be derived from a vote of the people seems
enough evidence to argue for premise 1, and even goes some way to showing that Rousseau was at least
a procedural democrat.
This is encouraging, but does nothing to accord the general will with the common interest, and therefore
the social contract with a substantive conception of democracy. Before showing the ways in which
premise 2 could be true, therefore proving the conclusion, I will point out that Rousseau supports the
conclusion directly on at least four occasions in The Social Contract (Sreenivasan 2000, 575), with
variations on the line: ‘the general will is always right and always tends toward the public utility’
(Rousseau 1987, 155). This shows that Rousseau believed that the general will would always promote
the common interest, but it is not this relationship that I am solely interested in. Rather, to align
Rousseau’s thought with substantive democracy, we should also look to the question of how he believes
the deliberation of the community can lead to a general will that promotes the common interest. To

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answer this question, I will follow Sreenivasan in deriving Rousseau’s four practical constraints on
deliberative democracy that accord the people’s vote, and therefore (accepting premise 1) the general
will, with the common interest. These four constraints are that the community’s deliberative decision
expresses the general will only if:
1. The subject of deliberation does not refer to individuals explicitly.
2. The conclusions of the deliberation can apply to all members of the community equally.
3. All members of the community partake in the deliberation.
4.All members of the community think for themselves in the deliberation process (Sreenivasan 2000,
565).
I will now discuss each of these constraints in turn and highlight the textual evidence that supports
Rousseau’s conviction in each of them. Firstly, Rousseau argues that laws made under a system that is
guided by the social contract and the general will will not refer to individuals explicitly (Sreenivasan
2000, 566). Rousseau highlights this need multiple times, saying that the law ‘cannot bestow
[privileges] by name on anyone’ (Rousseau 1987, 161) and that ‘there is no general will concerning a
particular object’ (Rousseau 1987, 161). This constraint instils a deep egalitarianism into the general
will: it serves to make sure that no individual or group is being specially treated, for better or worse, by
any state that adopts the general will as their guiding principle.
Rousseau’s second constraint is highly related to his first, and states that the conclusions of the
community’s deliberation should apply to all members of the community equally (Sreenivasan 2000,
567). He expresses this in saying that ‘every authentic act of the general will … obligates or favours all
citizens equally’ (Rousseau 1987, 158). There are two possible ways of interpreting the equality
requirement here: equality of result and equality before the law (Sreenivasan 2000, 567). To distinguish
between these two conceptions of equality, consider a law stating that four-wheel-drive vehicle owners
must pay extra tax on each four-wheel-drive that they own, to account for the social cost of the extra
pollution that these vehicles emit compared to smaller cars. This law would not be considered
egalitarian under an ‘equality of result’ conception of equality because the subset of the population that
owns four-wheel-drives would have a higher tax obligation than those outside of this subset. The
‘equality before the law’ conception, however, would uphold this tax as egalitarian because every
member of the population may theoretically join this subset if they choose. I believe that Rousseau
refers to the latter definition of equality in establishing this constraint because he explicitly states that
‘the law can perfectly well enact a statute to the effect that there be privileges, but it cannot bestow
them by name on anyone’ (Rousseau 1987, 161). Privileges here can be negative or positive, but
Rousseau believes that they can be justified as long as every member of the population can choose to
enter and exit from the subset of the population that they apply to. Together with the first constraint,
this constraint goes some way toward preventing individuals or groups legislating with their own selfish
interests in mind, because any benefit they gain for themselves in passing favourable legislation will be
passed on to others in similar circumstances.
The third constraint that Rousseau believes must be placed on the community’s deliberation holds that
all members of the community must partake in the deliberation for the outcome to express the general
will (Sreenivasan 2000, 568). This is supported by familiar moments in The Social Contract, where
Rousseau says that the general will must ‘must derive from all in order to be applied to all’ (Rousseau
1987, 157), and that ‘the will is [either] general or it is not. It is the will of either the people as a whole
or of only a part’ (Rousseau 1987, 154). While Rousseau believes that the community can be deceived
as to what their interests actually are, it is hard to argue that the general will will not be closer to
representing the common interest of the people if all of the people that it governs are consulted in
deriving what the general will is (Sreenivasan 2000, 568). Even though the general will aims to
represent what is actually best for people, not what they think is best for them, these two notions will
usually have some positive relationship to each other.
This is especially true when the fourth constraint on the community’s deliberation is obeyed, that being
that all people should think for themselves and vote accordingly (Sreenivasan 2000, 570). This
constraint is derived from Rousseau’s statement that, for the general will to act in the common interest
of the people ‘there should be no partial society in the state and … each citizen [should] make up his

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own mind’ (Rousseau 1987, 156). This constraint contributes to realising the common interest (and the
truth of premise 2), due to the idea that the common interest will be the aggregate of all interests when
every person accurately represents their true interests. This constraint aims to eliminate the problem of
people being deluded as to their true interests, and almost certainly falls short.
Here we are finally faced with the gaping hole in the general will: if everyone were to think for
themselves, most would still fail to realise their true interests. One’s true interests are so difficult to
determine that it is near impossible to realise them. Even if it were relatively simple to realise one’s
true interest, it would still be near impossible for enough people to do so such that the common interest
of the people was the democratic outcome. Therefore, it is impossible for the general will to be reliably
derived from the majority vote of the people (even under these four constraints) and concurrently
represent the perfect common interest of the people as a whole. Premise 2 is not true. People are simply
too unique for the fourth constraint (i.e. that all people should think for themselves and vote
accordingly) to reliably result in legislation that promotes the common interest. Nevertheless, I do not
believe that this defeats my argument that Rousseau should be conceived as a democrat. Rousseau not
only accorded the general will with the common interest of the people, but even attempted to spell out
exactly how free and fair elections, the most important element of democracy, could reliably lead to a
governmental system which promoted this common interest. Here, he fell short, but I think that it would
be disingenuous not to label Rousseau as a democrat simply because his view underestimated the
difficulties of realising one’s true interests.

Conclusion
The political system of Jean-Jacques Rousseau has understandably been interpreted as one which places
too much power in the hands of a few, and allows these few to govern in their own interest. However,
I do not believe that Rousseau would have thought such a situation to be just. Despite his failure to
recognise the difficulty of deriving the common interest of a group from the vote of the people,
Rousseau intended the general will to promote the common interest and for this general will to be
derived through democratic processes. Rousseau, at a time when no fully formed democracies existed,
crafted an almost perfectly democratic governmental system based on the common good of the people,
a claim that no authoritarian philosopher, to the best of my knowledge, can make.

Bibliography
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Transcendent’. The Review of Politics 74 (1): 403–19. doi.org/10.1017/S0034670512000514
Bertram, Christopher. 2017. ‘Jean Jacques Rousseau’. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by
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Miller, David. 2021. ‘Justice’. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N Zalta.
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