ABSTRACT
The chapter is about Rousseau, who is perhaps the most ambiguous author on majority tyranny. Although he is inclined to identify the will of the majority with the “general will,” he also leaves open the possibility that the majority may sometimes err, and thereby become tyrannical. In this case, only an enlightened minority may know better what the general will is; and, as the rest of the chapter argues, d’Argenson relied on a similar distinction when initiating what was perhaps the most momentous shift in the history of political concepts: calling direct democracy a “false” one, and representative government – which had never before been named democracy – the “true” (véritable) one. When after some initial hesitation the French Republic started to call itself a democracy, it was exactly in this double-edged “representative of the general will” sense.
