Rousseau and Revolution

76 Rousseau and Revolution
not become the grounds of public decisions depends on the individual will
and on this will only. Rousseau recognizes that if some particular interest is
allowed to dominate and consolidate itself into associations capable of driving
the decisions of the whole, this leads to factions. In this case, the general
will reverts to a private opinion and the political union is dissolved.
Thus, Rousseau’s recommendation is that ‘there should be no partial society
in the state’ (Rousseau, 1997e, Book II, chapter 3). In fact, there is nothing
that can prevent difference from acquiring a form of existence and
become the ground of private decisions taken in the name of the whole.
For Hegel the French Revolution is the best proof thereof. Based on this
diagnosis, his solution of the problem is to accommodate that resurging
difference and to fi nd a legitimate place for associations and ‘partial societies’
of private interests not within the state – for here Rousseau is right,
this would only dissolve the political unity – but within ‘civil society’.
Arbitrariness in Hegel’s Civil Society
In the Philosophy of Right Hegel’s solution to the problem of arbitrariness in
the social and political world is articulated in two parts. First, as argued
above, he overturns Rousseau’s position grounding the universality and
freedom of the will in the substantial universality of the institutions of the
state. Granting the distinction between the organic unity of the ‘general
will’ and the aggregate of individuals that is the ‘will of all’, their separation
remains arbitrary if, as in Rousseau, the ultimate decision of becoming
‘general’ (or ‘ethical’) is left to Willkür. Hegel’s starting point by contrast is
the systematic and historical necessity of the political institutions. In order
to have the kind of volitions proper to Rousseau’s general will the state must
be presupposed along with the entire structure and inner articulation of ethical
life. As we have seen, for Hegel the content of the ethical will is not
eth ical because it is willed by a general will. As systematic result of the dialectic
development of objective spirit and as historical product of the development
of the modern world, the ethical content is objectively actual and
necessary independently of the will. It is rather by willing the universal content
and by fulfi lling the ethical duty of being a member of the state that
the will makes itself universal and free.
Second, Hegel construes the dialectical path that allows individuality to
be mediated – formed and educated – to the universality and freedom of
ethical life. Unlike Rousseau, Hegel conceives of objective spirit as a process
in which the will’s individuality and universality do not remain separated by