GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

5O2
POLITICS
private or sectional interests. But he also says (ii) that
the General Will only emerges when each person votes not
for what he personally happens to want, but for what he
thinks that the common interest demands; that is, for
the course of action which he happens to think embodies
the General Will. Now statement (ii) is clearly inconsistent
with statement (i).
Statement (i) taken alone would suggest that the General
Will is merely the nifchanirrfrl resultant of the conflicting
pulls of a number of different wills. If, for example, A, B
and C are members of a committee and A wills X, B, Y
and C, Z, then the course of action eventually decided
upon may be neither X, nor Y nor Z, but M, M being a
in accordance with the
compromise reached by acting
highest common factor of the three conflicting wills. In the
same way, if three mechanical pulls are brought to bear
upon an object O, the direction in which O actually moves
will not be the direction ofany one of the pulling forces, but
will be the. mechanical resultant of all three of them. Now
there is no reason why the course of action represented
by M, when M is the compromise reached by a committee
on which A, B and C are each willing differently, should
be the course best calculated to promote the common good.
Moreover, M, by hypothesis, is not the course of action
which any single member wills. Rousseau's second account
(ii) must, therefore, be preferred to his first (i). It is only
on the basis of this second account that it is possible to
conclude that, when people are trying to will what they
believe to be the common good, the General Will has a
chance of being affirmed. If, however, proceeding on the
basis of this second account, we do draw this conclusion,
we encounter the difficulty that the individual has no means
of knowing what the common interest actually is. On such
a question he can only have opinion; he can never have
knowledge. What is more, his opinion may be diametrically
opposed to that of his neighbour. Two persons may,
therefore, be both willing disinterestedly and yet be in
opposition, It is not clear, then, by what method the General