Rousseau's Arguments Against The General Will

For Rousseau, the General Will presents itself as a way to recover a natural freedom that men lost throughout History. By giving up remaining liberties for civil liberties granted by the general will, society becomes coordinated and unified : “What generalizes the will is less the number of voices than the common interest that unites them” (Book I-2). For Rousseau's view of a will guiding the people to occur, individual will must be subordinated and filtered through the general will. In such a perfect society, harmony reigns as individuals accept that their liberty and equality grounds on their subordination to the will of all. In this optic, one cannot disagree with the collective will because by its definition it is always fair and based
Each man is represented by equal votes in a legislature as for majority rule but every vote and not the opinion with the greatest voters is taken into account. Thus the legislative cannot indicate privileged citizens and each citizen must abide by the same law. Majority rule is against this very foundation of Rousseau's theory and only happens in the worst case scenario. Individual would disconnect themselves from the will of all and act as factions. QUOTE. The general will is not applicable to an actual society as it is and without compromises but nevertheless it seems that if the general will was applied in a rational society, there would be an over-expression of the collective will. Through each round of vote a majority would emerge and would eventually lead to a domination in the said representative government which Rousseau tries to avoid. Not to mention that at the time being, Rousseau only considered countries with a limited size such as his cherished Geneva which leaves room for a lot of misinterpretation. It can be taken as an uncertainty or immaturity of his own theories as he does not seem eager to transpose his ideal of democracy to a lager state (though he later wrote drafts of