Communication is detrimental to the formation of the general will

• communication is detrimental to the formation of the general will
• Commentary on Rousseau. by [Hiroki Azuma

from The World and Japan 100 years from now How will the Internet change the world?

I think it’s a very interesting sentence, “If people are well informed, and if citizens do not communicate with each other at all, then the general will will always be the result of a large number of special wills coming together, and deliberation will always be good. And deliberation will always be good. This quote is from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s work, social contract theory (e.g. Rousseau’s) (Du Contrat Social), Part 2, Chapter 3. Rousseau states that in situations where citizens have sufficient information and do not influence each other, “the general will (volonté générale)” is formed by the coming together of many individual wills (special will).

original https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Du_contrat_social/Édition_1762/Livre_II/Chapitre_3

Si, quand le peuple suffisamment informé délibére, les Citoyens n’avoient aucune communication entre eux, du grand nombre de petites différences résulteroit toujours la volonté générale, & la délibération seroit toujours bonne. Mais quand il se fait des brigues, des associations partielles aux dépends de la grande, la volonté de chacune de ces associations devient générale par rapport à ses membres, & particuliere par rapport à l’Etat ; on peut dire alors qu’il n’y a plus autant de votans que d’hommes, mais seulement autant que d’associations. Les différences deviennent moins nombreuses & donnent un résultat moins général. Enfin quand une de ces associations est si grande qu’elle l’emporte sur toutes les autres, vous n’avez plus pour résultat une somme de petites différences, mais une différence unique ; alors il n’y a plus de volonté générale, & l’avis qui l’emporte n’est qu’un avis particulier.

• If, when the people are well informed and deliberate, the citizens do not communicate with each other at all, a general will will always emerge from many small differences, and the deliberation will always be correct. But if cliques or partial associations undermine the interests of the whole, the will of each association is general to its members, but special to the state. In such a case, it is no longer each individual voting, but each association voting for itself, the differences are reduced and the result becomes more particular. Eventually, when one of these associations becomes so large that it overwhelms the others, there is no longer a sum of small differences, but only one difference, and the general will is lost and its decisions become only special will.
  • In this section, Rousseau explains the difference between “general will” and “special will”. He states that if citizens have sufficient information and are not influenced by each other, various differences of opinion can come together to form the “general will” and sound decisions can be made. However, when cliques or factions are formed, a will like the general will is created within the association, but from the perspective of the nation as a whole, it becomes a “special will. He warns that as the power of such factions grows, the original general will is lost.

Rousseau actually did not approve of party politics or indirect democracy at all. In Rousseau’s view, it was “bad” for citizens to discuss, get together, and reach some kind of consensus. Rousseau’s “general will” is based on the idea that when everyone is not communicating with each other at all, one throws one’s will into some abstract space, and in that abstract space, each “special will” gathers and the “general will” is generated. In this abstract space, each “special will” gathers and the “general will” is generated. There is no such thing as discursive reason or verbal communication in the Habermas. style of Rousseau.

This part of the text is said to be quite enigmatic, and Kant takes this concept of “general will” as a kind of “goal to strive for a controlling idea”. Hegel], at the end of dialectics, says only, “If you work hard, you may someday be able to reach the general will. In the past, philosophers have interpreted this part as a kind of abstract goal of effort.

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