General Will and Popular Opinion
JJR defines General Will as the general interest of all people comprising the sovereign, collectively, not additively. This idea of General Will is one that we had trouble defining or understanding in class…and so I will take a shot at my view of what JJR means.
First, JJR uses the idea of the will of all to contrast General Will. He describes the difference between them by saying that the will of all is the combination of all private interests, whereas the General Will is the absolute value of these interests (155). Curiously, this sounds a great deal like statistics. When calculating the mean of a group of numbers, namely values representing an aspect of a population, a statistician must provide a standard deviation along with his average value to show just how widely spread the whole of the opinions are. This makes it possible for a person to determine whether the average presented is just the average, or in fact, the predominant value. Procedure for acquiring this standard deviation is quite simple – you find the average, then you find how much each individual data point varies from the group average, and then you use the absolute value of these differences to find how much the population differs from the average, thus showing how widely spread the population really is with respect to the “average” value. He reiterates this standard deviation assessment with regards to the spectrum of individuality of the population: when everyone thinks for themselves, the standard deviation of the population is very small, thus General Will; when there are small groups representing thought, the standard deviation is medium; and when there is only one association with one thought, private opinion dominates.
I think it is unfortunate that the term Public Opinion has come to mean roughly “the private opinion of the population” and not the general will. From all that JJR says in reference to the General Will, as long as it is truly the opinion of the public (as a mass of individuals thinking for the public) and not of smaller groups built of the public, the Public Opinion would BE the General Will. A cultural difference now, a change in the meaning of the word, but at root, I think they are the same thing. Given idyllic polling, I think JJR would have enjoyed a full systematic and objective assessment of the General Will compiled the way that, ideally, public opinion would be derived now.
First, JJR uses the idea of the will of all to contrast General Will. He describes the difference between them by saying that the will of all is the combination of all private interests, whereas the General Will is the absolute value of these interests (155). Curiously, this sounds a great deal like statistics. When calculating the mean of a group of numbers, namely values representing an aspect of a population, a statistician must provide a standard deviation along with his average value to show just how widely spread the whole of the opinions are. This makes it possible for a person to determine whether the average presented is just the average, or in fact, the predominant value. Procedure for acquiring this standard deviation is quite simple – you find the average, then you find how much each individual data point varies from the group average, and then you use the absolute value of these differences to find how much the population differs from the average, thus showing how widely spread the population really is with respect to the “average” value. He reiterates this standard deviation assessment with regards to the spectrum of individuality of the population: when everyone thinks for themselves, the standard deviation of the population is very small, thus General Will; when there are small groups representing thought, the standard deviation is medium; and when there is only one association with one thought, private opinion dominates.
I think it is unfortunate that the term Public Opinion has come to mean roughly “the private opinion of the population” and not the general will. From all that JJR says in reference to the General Will, as long as it is truly the opinion of the public (as a mass of individuals thinking for the public) and not of smaller groups built of the public, the Public Opinion would BE the General Will. A cultural difference now, a change in the meaning of the word, but at root, I think they are the same thing. Given idyllic polling, I think JJR would have enjoyed a full systematic and objective assessment of the General Will compiled the way that, ideally, public opinion would be derived now.
posted by Rebecca at 2:00 PM
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