The General Will The Evolution of a Concept

Although it originated in theological debates, the general will ultimately became one of the most celebrated and denigrated concepts emerging from early modern political thought. Jean-Jacques Rousseau made it the central element of his political theory, and it took on a life of its own during the French Revolution, before being subjected to generations of embrace or opprobrium. James Farr and David Lay Williams have collected for the first time a set of essays that track the evolving history of the general will from its origins to recent times. The General Will: The Evolution of a Concept discusses the general will's theological, political, formal, and substantive dimensions with a careful eye toward the concept's virtues and limitations as understood by its expositors and critics, among them Arnauld, Pascal, Malebranche, Leibniz, Locke, Spinoza, Montesquieu, Kant, Constant, Tocqueville, Adam Smith and John Rawls.

Part I. The General Will before Rousseau: 1. The general will before Rousseau: the contributions of Arnauld, Pascal, Malebranche, Bayle, and Bossuet Patrick Riley; 2. Malebranche's shadow: divine providence and general will in the Leibniz-Arnauld correspondence Steven Nadler; 3. Locke's ideas, Rousseau's principles, and the general will James Farr; 4. Spinoza and the general will David Lay Williams; 5. Freedom, sovereignty, and the general will in Montesquieu Sharon R. Krause; Part II. The Prehistory of the General Will: 6. Rethinking Rousseau's tyranny of orators: Cicero's On Duties and the beauty of true glory Daniel J. Kapust; 7. An American general will?: 'The bond of brotherly affection' in New England Andrew R. Murphy; Part III. The General Will in Rousseau: 8. The substantive elements of Rousseau's general will David Lay Williams; 9. Justice, beneficence, and boundaries: Rousseau and the paradox of generality Richard Boyd; 10. On the general will of humanity: global connections in Rousseau's political thought Sankar Muthu; 11. The general will in Rousseau and after Rousseau Tracy B. Strong; Part IV. The General Will after Rousseau: 12. Kant on the general will Patrick Riley; 13. The general will after Rousseau: Smith and Rousseau on sociability and inequality Shannon Stimson; 14. Benjamin Constant's liberalism and the political theology of the general will Bryan Garsten; 15. The general will after Rousseau: the case of Tocqueville Michael Locke McLendon; 16. Rawls on Rousseau and the general will Christopher Brooke.

James Farr is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Chicago Field Studies Program at Northwestern University. He is the author of numerous essays on Locke and the history of political thought. He is also the editor of, among other volumes, Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (Cambridge University Press, 1989) and Political Science in History (Cambridge University Press, 1995).
David Lay Williams is Associate Professor of Political Science at DePaul University and the author of several essays on the history of political thought, as well as of Rousseau's Platonic Enlightenment (2007) and Rousseau's Social Contract: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2014).