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

CRITICISM OF IDEALIST THEORY 737
" unreal " will of which I am ordinarily aware, the alleged
"real" will being defined as a will to carry out every
decision of the majority of the association to which I belong,
when the will of which I am actually conscious expresses
itself in a conviction that the decisions in question are *
wrong. It is, indeed, difficult to escape the conclusion that
the attribution of a "real" will to the individual which is
necessarily and always in accord with the General Will in
which it is presumed to be merged, is little more a device
for giving an appearance of legitimacy to what must
otherwise appear the purely arbitrary and tyrannical acts
of a sovereign State. By means of this device, supporters of
the idealist theory of the State are enabled to conclude that,
whenever a conflict occurs between an individual and the
State, the latter must inevitably be right.
RELEVANCE OF THE THEORY OF GROUPS. At
this point some account must be given of the political
theory of groups. For it is not only the claims of the individual
which must be considered in relation to the State,
but the claims of individuals organized in groups other
than the State, whose members are also members of the
State. For the question inevitably presents itself, if the
State, which is an organization of individuals for certain
purposes, has a being and a will of its own in which the
beings and wills of individual members are merged, and
by which they are transcended, why
organizations of individuals also beings
own, and why are they
have not other
and wills of their
also not entitled to claim that
their corporate being and their General Will transcends the
beings and wills of their individual members? The consideration
ofthese questions introduces the theory of groups.
(II) That if the State owns a Personality, other Associations
also own Personalities
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a number
of writers did in fact put forward the view that all groups
possessed "real personalities". Among these was F. W.
AAM