The General Will

Not what each person wants, but what all people together would want if they were thinking clearly. Rousseau built a theory of democratic freedom on this distinction.

Rousseau distinguished the will of all, which is just the sum of private interests, from the general will, which is what citizens would choose if each was reasoning about the common good. The general will is always right because it aims at the public interest. But it can be betrayed: by factions, by private power, by leaders who confuse their own wishes for the people's. Rousseau's theory inspired the French Revolution and haunted it. Every authoritarian who claimed to know what the people really wanted was, in some sense, invoking his concept.