ABSTRACT

There are almost as many views of Rousseau's general will as there are writers on Rousseau. The problem that concerned Rousseau was a moral problem—the problem of demonstrating that political organizations can have a moral foundation. Rousseau understood that some compulsion is necessary, and he was well aware that most states have actually been founded on, and maintained by, force. A number of other writers have detected similarities between Rousseau's general will and the Pareto principle. There certainly are similarities—for instance, both Rousseau and Pareto disallowed improvements for some members of the group unless none is made worse off—but such readings of The Social Contract go astray if they also read Rousseau as a rational-choice theorist. Rousseau was aware that in very large and very heterogenous groups there is no immediately recognizable common good; he seems to have overlooked the fact that in such groups there may actually be no common good at all.