Rousseau and Revolution

Chapter 6
The General Will between
Conservation and Revolution
Holger Ross Lauritsen
Introduction
Victor Hugo’s famous assertion that the French Revolution was ‘Rousseau’s
fault’ is but one example of the many different views on the relationship
between Rousseau’s philosophy and phenomena such as revolutions and
insurrections. One of the diffi culties in such discussions is that in order to
judge whether Rousseau’s philosophy had an impact on the French Revolution,
let alone later revolutions, it seems that one would fi rst have to determine
more generally the possibility of causal relations between political
philosophy and political practice. It is, however, also possible to discuss
assertions such as Hugo’s without answering this general philosophical
question, namely, by examining to what extent Rousseau’s philosophy or
elements in it can be used to legitimate insurrections or revolutions, without
discussing if this legitimation should be considered as an inspiration or
as an instrumentation. Such is the method used in this article.
The fact is that Rousseau, despite his explicit rejections of the prospect of
a revolution, 1 has been invoked in several revolutionary and insurrectional
situations. Besides the French revolutionary leaders, one could mention
Fidel Castro, who once declared having combated Battista with the Social
Contract in his pocket (Gagnebin, 1964, xvxvi). The intention here is not to
discuss whether such invocations are just, but to examine which are the
concepts or arguments in the works of Rousseau that make them possible.
Without further ado, it should be stated that the most important concept in
this respect is that of the general will. At this point, however, an ambiguity
arises. As Etienne Balibar puts it:
Rousseau’s concept of the general will, such as the revolution disperses it
as a real slogan, never ceases to oscillate between the two poles of the
constitution and the insurrection. You can refer to it in order to legitimate