Rousseau and Representative Democracy Reconsidered: Rehabilitating the General Will

The purpose of this discussion paper is to promote a reconsideration of the political theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He has long been out of favour among responsible political philosophers, theorists and the very select politicians who know or care anything at all about traditional political philosophy and political theory. He has been accused of being the fountainhead of every evil ideology and dastardly deed from the eighteenth-century regicide in France to twentieth-century totalitarianisms of the left (e.g., Maoism and Stalinism) and the right (e.g., Fascism and Nazism). His phrase, the "General Will," has come under special criticism as interpreted by scholars who see it as a kind of abstract Platonic idea which subsumes the individual in the state, eliminates personal liberty and choice, and sets the stage for imminent authoritarian dystopias. I hope that the comments set down here may lead to a more fruitful conversation among people who chose to see innovation as a process not about changes for the sake of efficiency and improved service quality (or, worse, merely for the sake of change), but as practical initiatives that are normatively infused with ideas of liberty, equality and solidarity among citizens and nations.