General Will Concept
A General Will Concept is a collective political concept that represents the common interest of a political community as distinguished from particular wills of individuals or factions.
- AKA: General Will, Volonté Générale, Common Will, Collective Will, Sovereign Popular Will.
- Context:
- It can typically serve as the legitimating principle for political authority in republican theory.
- It can typically transcend individual preferences to express what is best for the community as a whole.
- It can typically emerge through civic deliberation where citizens consider public good rather than private interest.
- It can often justify laws that bind all citizens equally including those who dissent.
- It can often conflict with majority will when the latter represents factional interests rather than common good.
- It can often require civic virtue and public-spirited citizens to properly manifest.
- It can range from being an Abstract General Will Concept to being a Concrete General Will Concept, depending on its manifestation level.
- It can range from being a Procedural General Will Concept to being a Substantive General Will Concept, depending on its determination method.
- It can range from being a Minimalist General Will Concept to being a Maximalist General Will Concept, depending on its scope extent.
- It can range from being a Static General Will Concept to being an Evolving General Will Concept, depending on its temporal character.
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- Examples:
- Theoretical General Will Formulations, such as:
- Rousseau's General Will (1762) in The Social Contract.
- Kant's General Will linking to categorical imperative.
- Hegel's General Will manifesting in ethical state.
- Constitutional Invocations, such as:
- Declaration of Rights of Man (1789) stating "law is the expression of the general will".
- Jacobin General Will during French Revolutionary Terror.
- American Founding invoking "We the People" as collective sovereign.
- Modern Interpretations, such as:
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- Theoretical General Will Formulations, such as:
- Counter-Examples:
- Individual Will, which expresses personal preferences without regard to collective welfare.
- Particular Will, which serves group interests at expense of common good.
- Aggregated Preferences, which merely sum individual choices without transformative deliberation.
- See: Collective Political Concept, Social Contract Model, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Popular Sovereignty Principle, Republican Political Theory, Particular Will Concept, Majority Will Concept, Democratic Deliberation, Constitutional Theory, Political Legitimacy.