ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that a useful sense may be given to the "General Will" and the "Common Good" by reference to the theory of non-zero-sum non-cooperative games. It suggests some possible implications of this for the notion of social justice. Take, for example, zero-sum social games—games, that is, where the gain of one person or group must be the loss of another. The initial difficulty in-fitting the notion of a ''game of fair division" even to limited sense of the general will is that there are occasions when such games as formally defined by game theory are manifestly unfair. If justice is interpreted in Rawls's sense—and a case could perhaps be made for thus interpreting Rousseau's "true principle of equity"—then justice corresponds to such solutions to zero-sum games as accord with principles to which the players, had they met before the game under conditions of primordial equality, would have jointly agreed to.
