General Will in Political Philosophy

Janusz Grygienc

Description

This book deals with the role and place of the general will in modern and contemporary political thought. This project is carried out at the crossroads of the history of ideas and political philosophy. It extensively develops historical and philosophical themes, showing modifications to the idea of the general will in the writings of thinkers who sometimes represent very distant epochs. The author tracks down the birth and the development of the idea of the general will in ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary times, devoting most of the book to the thoughts of Jean Jacques Rousseau and nineteenth and twentieth century British idealists.

Sujets

• Politique
• Philosophy of mind
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 27 novembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781845407209
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page
GENERAL WILL IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
Janusz Grygieńć
Translated by Dominika Gajewska



Publisher Information
Copyright © Janusz Grygieńć, 2013
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism and discussion.
Published in the UK by Imprint Academic,
PO Box 200, Exeter EX5 5YX, UK
Digital edition converted and published
by Andrews UK Limited 2013
www.andrewsuk.com
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and US Library of Congress
This translation has been funded by the Foundation for Polish Science



Introduction
The present book is about the role and place ascribed to the general will in modern and contemporary political philosophy. Despite the extensive nature of this subject matter, its aim is to explore three, strictly defined, research areas. The first is the history of how the category of the general will developed, from the eruption of the first controversies surrounding this issue, to the twentieth century and the writings of the last representatives of the British idealist tradition. The second is the nature of the category of volonté générale in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in particular the misconceptions which have accrued around this question, as well as the potential ways of elucidating them, in addition to the implications each may have for the thought of Rousseau as a whole. The third area of research concerns the issues related to the idealist modification of this Rousseauian category and its potential significance for contemporary philosophical and political debates.
The fact that such a prominent place is given here to British thought is justified. The development and modification of the Rousseauian notion of volonté générale has nowhere been as significant as in Great Britain at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Until the publication of the first works of Rousseau, the term “general will” itself was mostly confined to the writings of French authors. After the French Revolution, the disdain in which writers representing nearly all existing world views held the author of the Social Contract led to the abandonment of the general will as a topic. And although there was no lack of authors in the British Isles explicitly, or implicitly, expressing their dissatisfaction with the theoretical constructs of the Citizen of Geneva, it was there that the subject was revived in the 1880s. Within this context, British political philosophy was largely represented by thinkers belonging to the idealist tradition. The potential they had noticed in the Rousseauian thesis on will as the underlying foundation of political communities blended perfectly with their own views on the nature of social and political reality.
The choice of subject matter always requires an appropriate justification. In our case, it is the scholarly importance of the subject as well as the degree to which it has been studied in the relevant literature.
As far as political philosophy and political science are concerned, the importance of reflecting on the category of the general will cannot be stressed enough. Many contemporary concepts refer to it, while an even greater number cannot avoid doing so. The theories of rational choice (K. Arrow, J. Buchanan, D. Gauthier) and public reason (J. Rawls, J. Habermas) developed by English-speaking thinkers and theorists need to be mentioned here. Not forgetting interpretations employing the concept of the general will for analyses in game theory (W.G. Runciman, A.K. Sen). References to the notion are also seemingly unavoidable when discussing topics such as natural law, public opinion, political decision-making, the legitimation of political power or sovereignty. It is difficult to overestimate the influence this Rousseauian concept has had on the theory of democratic government, or the debate on the limits of state interventionism, by supplying the theoretical foundations of social-liberal and socialist conceptions.
In spite of its significance, both for the history of thought and for political science, the concept of general will has not yet received satisfactory treatment from scholars. For can we regard the three works available on this subject, the most recent published nearly thirty years ago, as sufficient? Patrick Riley and Andrew Levine [1] - the authors of two of the works in question - respectively examined: the pre-Rousseauian meanings of the term volonté générale and its doctrinal affinity with communism in its Marxist guise. The oldest work on the subject, Rousseau and the Concept of the General Will by Frank Thakurdas, [2] published in 1976, examined the general will through Bernard Bosanquet’s corrective revision of the concept, also surveying later reactions to this revision.
The political philosophy of British idealism is the next subject area we shall be exploring. The main exponents of this tradition are Francis Herbert Bradley, Thomas Hill Green and Bernard Bosanquet. Their writings - a distinctive mix of liberalism, republicanism, conservatism and socialism - have for years provided inspiration for thinkers representing nearly every political doctrine, and social liberalism in particular. As with Rousseau’s general will, it is equally hard to overestimate the importance of British idealism for political theory and philosophy. There are historical reasons for this fact, namely the impact British thought has had on political theorists and philosophers, but also its role in shaping political practice in the United Kingdom at the turn of the century. Here we are of course talking about the New Liberals (J.A. Hobson, L.T. Hobhouse, W.H. Beveridge, Ch. Masterman, W. Clarke, Ch.P. Scott) - philosophers, economists, journalists and theorists responsible for the social reorientation of liberalism at the beginning of the twentieth century, explicitly appealing to the authority of Green and seeing him as the main firebrand of the “moralisation” of liberal thought. But they were not the only ones to refer to this thinker. There were other theorists and philosophers, sometimes also actively engaged in political affairs. First among them was Arnold Toynbee, the liberal and social activist, promoter of cooperative ideas and founder of the Settlement Movement , who was concerned with the moral and material condition of the British proletariat. Other engagé theorists included Richard Burdon Haldane, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and “Christian socialists” such as Richard Henry Tawney.
A somewhat lesser influence on Britain’s political life was exerted by Bosanquet who never took an active part in politics, and who, on account of his somewhat early retirement from academia, was less influential in shaping the mentality of the British intellectual and political elites. Nevertheless, for several years he was one of the main activists and theorists of the Charity Organisation Society and of the London Ethical Society, charitable institutions aiding the poorest.
Apart from its historical significance, British idealist thought also has significant heuristic value. Combining elements native to many political doctrines, it spawned political concepts running counter to the traditional distinctions ingrained in political theory and philosophy. This is why the writings of the idealists can provide a special inspiration. Especially today, in the context of the ongoing (for nearly 40 years) attack on contemporary liberalism - still largely equated with the thought of Rawls as expounded in A Theory of Justice (and later modified in Political Liberalism ). Certain scholars are right to point out that in the domain of political thought, the idealists managed to escape the perception of justice proper to neo-Kantian liberalism, where it was placed higher than the good, and to link the idea of justice with the ethea of particular communities, thereby avoiding the charge of ethical and political relativism. It is for this reason that idealist thought can today serve as an example of a non-standard approach to liberal theory, having on many occasions been compared in the relevant literature to the conceptions of Michael Oakeshott, Philip Pettit, Joseph Raz, Charles Taylor or Michael Walzer.
The above references and annotations indicate clearly that we will be occupied with a very diverse subject matter. A book devoted to such a broad topic must necessarily aim to fulfil multiple goals. These, I believe, can be divided into two groups. The first is to supply arguments in support of the book’s main theses. These are, first, that in its programme the political philosophy of British idealism combined elements of the individualist and the communitarian position, being a precursor of today’s liberal-communitarian position, and second, that a reading of the Rousseauian conception of the general will must inevitably have a dual nature. The general will can and should be viewed as a strictly ethical concept on the one hand, and as a political and legal one on the other.
Next to proving these theses, the goal of this book is also to serve a more descriptive, rather than argumentative, purpose. Its chief aim is to present the idealist vision of the general will. Furthermore, it narrates the development of the category of the general will prior to Rousseau, and outlines the social and political philosophy of British idealism. All of this is accomplished in four chapters, divided into sections, ordered chronologically, according to the issues raised in them and substantively allowing for a consistent presentation of the argumentation used to justify the two main theses of this work.
Chapter one discusses the history of the category of the general will prior to its transfo