Tentative Answer: Submitting to the General Will

For me, one of the practical criticisms that comes to mind when reading Rousseau is the enigmatic, ungrounded quality of the "General Will" that he so frequently deploys as an arbiter of unity or cooperation. He writes, "There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will. The latter considers only the general interest, whereas the former considers private interests and is merely the sum of private wills" (172).

In more recent centuries, social theorists have adopted this model of describing behavior and thought—i.e. totality is more than the sum of individual parts. However, statements like these are usually justified with applicable evidence, something that Rousseau lacks. It is difficult to fathom this General Will as a substantial moral or epistemological body, which begs us to question: Is the General Will something that exists? And if so, can it even be known, identified, and acted upon?

It becomes simple to see why applications of the General Will lead to tyranny: because in reality, it is something open to a gamut of interpretations. This fact makes the General Will manipulable by tyrants, powerful groups, or even systems of knowledge and behavior that condition our everyday lives. This speaks to Claire's discussion post earlier about "communist" (note, in abstraction, but not in practice: it is an incorrect assumption to attribute communism to faulty models like the Soviet Union or China) societies that falter because of the misguided nature of the people attempting to execute the will of all.

This makes us question the nature of governments that claim values of representation and inclusion—the United States is no exception. Apart from insights into the processes of other countries, Rousseau provides avenues for critical inquiry in our own state: are things like the Constitution really encompassing the lived realities of everyone in our country? Why do we place so much importance on the document, and why is it relentlessly deployed to reinforce ideals of nationalism and identity formation?