Rousseau and the concept of general will: metaphysical principle or a social pact?
Rousseau. General will. Metaphysical principle. Social pact.
The objective of the present work is to investigate whether the concept of general will, a central idea in the political thought of J.-J Rousseau, is a metaphysical principle or a social pact. To this end, we used as our object of study the complete works of the Genevan thinker. The methodology used was documentary research. The problem from which we start asks about the possibility of the genesis of the Rousseauian general will, whether metaphysically inspired or historically constructed. Starting from this methodological context, we divide the organization of our work into three stages: a genealogy of wills in Rousseauian anthropology that includes the analysis of three works by Rousseau, the Discourse on the origin of inequality (1755), the Discourse on the arts and sciences (1750) and the Essay on the origin of languages (1759); a systematized study of the concept of general will in the entry Political economy (1755), in the Geneva manuscript (1761) and in the Social contract (1762); an examination of the nature of the general will, which in addition to revisiting the research of the aforementioned works, will observe other texts by the Genevan such as the Plan for a constitution for Corsica (1764) and the Considerations on the government of Poland (1770).