Volonté générale

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Significantly coined the term volonté générale : Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The volonté général French volonté générale is a term for a will directed towards the common good of a political body . The expression is translated into German as 'general will' or 'Gemeinwille', while 'general will' is used in English-language literature. It is a key concept of democratic theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau , which he also owes its present meaning. Rousseau differentiates this common will from the volonté de tous , the sum of individual interests, and the volonté de la majorite , the will of the majority.

Rousseau introduced the term in its usual meaning in 1755 in his article on political economy for the Encyclopédie and discussed it in Du contrat social . He played a central role in the ideal preparation of the French Revolution on the basis of the ideas of the Enlightenment .

Conceptual history up to Rousseau

In the doctrine of grace

Volonté générale appears for the first time in Antoine Arnauld (1616–1698) and Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), where it is in the context of Catholic grace and refers to God as a subject. Volonté générale here describes the counter-concept to the Jansenist - Calvinist idea (represented by Arnauld and Pascal) of an "absolute will" of God ( volonté absolue ), which not only determines people in general , but absolutely and gives them no freedom of choice, and therefore also not choice between good and bad leaves; on the other hand, the volonté générale, in the sense of the gratia cooperans , prescribes the existence of people as necessary, but leaves them open to the possibility and the decision to do good or bad.

Painting industry

The expression undergoes a paradigm shift with Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715), who understands volonté générale to be the fundamental, morally indifferent movement of human will. It is therefore an essential metaphysical attribute of being human, which, however, experiences an essential ethical extension through specific human freedom , which is religiously and morally decisive. Denis Diderot essentially adopted this meaning of the volonté générale in his Encyclopédie .

At Rousseau

Rousseau gives the expression a fundamentally different content. For him, in a self-governing ( republican and democratic ) society without class differences, there is a fundamental tension between the natural self-interests of the individual, the interests of the majority and the common good . The volonté générale is an ideal that is intended to determine the self-government of a society by aligning the content of the legislation with the preservation and well-being of society as a political body. In Rousseau's mind, it is also the 'obstinacy' of political unity. The volonté de tous (“will of all”), on the other hand, is only the sum of the individual private interests ( volonté particulière ). Since according to Rousseau within a republican state z. If, for example, through common interests, family or economic ties, smaller societies are formed that initially strive for the well-being and self-preservation of their unity, volonté générale and volonté de tous can only coincide if the individual agrees with the common will, the volonté générale, for the larger one gives priority to political unity. Difficulties arise because, according to Rousseau, the spontaneous will energy of the individual is directed more towards the smaller communities. It requires a specific vertu or virtue to think of the common good of the whole. This warning can also be used against political parties if they are engaged in clientele politics.

According to Rousseau, the idea of ​​a volonté générale with the whole of humanity as a political body or moral being remains an unattainable ideal because of a lack of a sense of common existence and different languages. This finds a natural limit in the republican nation-state . The distinction between volonté générale and volonté de la majorite results, according to Rousseau, in a right of resistance to laws passed by the majority that run counter to the common good and the preservation of the political body. At the same time Rousseau suggested a patriotic civic education to get through this the vertu strengthening of citizens.

Terminological problem

According to Bernhard HF Taureck , volonté générale is to be understood as a metaphor , since a general will that actually determined the respective individual wills can neither be represented objectively nor empirically proven. Your term does not mean a lost identity of individual wills in the natural state , but rather refers to a possible pragmatic "anthropological unity of interests of people [...] which must be freed from their previous political deformations in the long term".

swell

  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Œuvres complètes , ed. Bernard Gangnebin et Marcel Raymond, Paris, Gallimard 1963, vol. 3

literature

  • Iring Fetscher : Volonté générale; Volonté de tous , in: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Basel: Schwabe 1971–2007, Vol. 11, Sp. 1141 ff.
  • Patrick Riley: The general will: Rousseau's debt to the theological controversies of the preceding century , in: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 69 (1987), pp. 241–268.
  • ders .: The General Will before Rousseau , Princeton: Princeton University Press 1988.
  • Bernhard HF Taureck : Rousseau , Reinbek: Rowohlt 2009.

Web links

Wiktionary: Common will  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Both contained in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Œuvres complètes , ed. Bernard Gangnebin et Marcel Raymond, Paris, Gallimard 1963, vol. 3
  2. ↑ See Première Apologie pour M. Jansénius (1644), in: Oeuvres , Vol. 16, Paris 1778 (ND Brussels 1967), p. 185.
  3. ↑ Cf. Ecrits sur la grâce , Oeuvres , Vol. 11, Paris 1914, pp. 135 ff.
  4. ↑ See De la recherche de la vérité (1674/1675), I 1, § 2, in: Oeuvres , Paris 1958–1970, vol. 1, p. 46 f.
  5. ↑ See Droit Naturel (Morale) , in: Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des arts et des métiers , Vol. 5, Paris 1775 (ND 1966), p. 116 f.
  6. ^ Iring Fetscher, Volonté générale; volonté de tous in: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy Vol. 11, Sp. 1141–1143.
  7. ^ Iring Fetscher, Volonté générale; volonté de tous in: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy Vol. 11, Sp. 1141–1143.
  8. ^ Iring Fetscher, Volonté générale; volonté de tous in: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy Vol. 11, Sp. 1141–1143.
  9. ↑ See Taureck, p. 107.
  10. ↑ See Taureck, p. 108.