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.
  • ...
• 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:
    • Deliberative Democracy seeking rational consensus.
    • Constitutional Patriotism expressing shared political values.
    • Public Interest Doctrine in administrative law.
  • ...
• 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.

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