The General Will: The Evolution of a Concept

Although it originated in theological debates, the general will ultimately became one of the most celebrated and denigrated concepts emerging from early modern political thought. Jean-Jacques Rousseau made it the central element of his political theory, and it took on a life of its own during the French Revolution, before being subjected to generations of embrace or opprobrium. James Farr and David Lay Williams have collected for the first time a set of essays that track the evolving history of the general will from its origins to recent times. The General Will: The Evolution of a Concept discusses the general will's theological, political, formal, and substantive dimensions with a careful eye toward the concept's virtues and limitations as understood by its expositors and critics, among them Arnauld, Pascal, Malebranche, Leibniz, Locke, Spinoza, Montesquieu, Kant, Constant, Tocqueville, Adam Smith, and John Rawls.

James Farr is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Chicago Field Studies Program at Northwestern University. He is the author of numerous essays on Locke and the history of political thought. He is also the editor of, among other volumes, Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (Cambridge University Press, 1989) and Political Science in History (Cambridge University Press, 1995).

David Lay Williams is Associate Professor of Political Science at DePaul University and the author of several essays on the history of political thought, as well as of Rousseau's Platonic Enlightenment (2007) and Rousseau's Social Contract: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2014).