Jean Jacques Rousseau

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), the French contractualist, is regarded to have contributed to the concept of sovereignty by formulating his doctrine of General Will. The doctrine of General Will, along with Rousseau’s revolt against reason, romanticized and rediscovered the community in contrast to atomic individualism. The General Will grounded in the community became the basis of popular sovereignty. In his Social Contract (1762), Rousseau put forward his theory of the social contract and General Will.

As in the case of the two contractualists already discussed, in the case of Rousseau as well, the nature and power of sovereignty depended on the terms and requirements of the social contract. Rousseau’s idea of the state of nature was one of romantic primitivism. Individuals led an idyllic, comfortable and social life where he enjoyed freedom and liberty. However, the liberty and freedom enjoyed by the individual, was driven only by instinct and selfish desire. For Rousseau, obeying the call of selfish desires and appetites constituted slavery and not liberty, as borne out by his remark that, ‘obedience to the mere impulse of appetite is slavery’. In the state of nature, then, what man has is ‘actual will’—impulsive and unreflective will, which is based on self-interest and not the well-being of the community. Only ‘real will’ could be the basis of a civil society. ‘Real will’ takes self-interest into account and subordinates it to the common good of community. The need is to establish a society where man could be free and not a slave where the real will would prevail. This should be done ‘in such a way that each individual, when united to his fellows, renders obedience to his own will, and remains as free as he was before.’²⁰

To achieve this end, the social contract of Rousseau was a solution to the problem of finding ‘a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.’ To create such a society the individual decides to enter into a social contract and says, ‘each 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.’²¹As a result of such a social contract, the following would happen:

• A community with a collective personality or body politic (what Rousseau calls moi commun) ‘a common me’ would emerge.
• This moi commun will have General Will or volonté generate. The General Will may be understood as a synthesis of the real will of members and not a mere collection of actual wills.
• The General Will will be the ‘common consciousness of common good’ which is the source of all laws—civic laws as opposed to natural laws. Obedience to this law, which one gives to oneself and which is a reflection of the General Will, is liberty.
• The General Will will possess the rule of the just and the unjust. It will also possess rights, including the right to property.
• The General Will will be characterized by unlimitedness, unity, permanence, inalienability, absoluteness, inseparability, unrepresentability and infallibility (it is always right).
• The General Will can be exercised only collectively and cannot be transferred or represented by governments or representatives.

Rousseau’s conceptualization of General Will gave rise to theory of popular sovereignty where people are sovereign and retains unlimited power. However, given the impersonal nature of the General Will and the particular and personal nature of executive decrees, Rousseau made a distinction between the government and the sovereign people. The people entrust executive power to government and retain sovereign power. Hence, the government is an agent of the General Will. For Rousseau, the form of government does not matter so long as the General Will is sovereign. Rousseau’s concept of sovereignty under the framework of the General Will is a concept of popular sovereignty where moi commun represents the sovereignty and gives rise to conditions where ‘people can be forced to be free’. It cannot be represented but can install the executive as its agent. Rousseau was a vehement critic of the British election system as he felt that elections made the people sovereign only on a periodic basis.

However, as pointed out by Wayper, Rousseau sometimes doubted whether the General Will ‘may be embodied in one man – a Legislator who will show people what is good for them.’²² His concept of absolute sovereignty has provoked writers to liken him as the ‘most terrible ally of despotism in all its forms’. Duguit comments that ‘J. J. Rousseau is the father of Jacobin despotism, of Caesarian dictatorship, and inspirer of the absolutist doctrines of Kant and of Hegel.’