The anthropological basis of general will in Rousseau

Author(s)

Marisa Alves Vento

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2013-09-23

Examining board members

José Oscar de Almeida Marques; Jacira de Freitas; Helena Esser dos Reis; Genildo Ferreira da Silva; Renato Moscateli

• Advisor: José Oscar de Almeida Marques

Abstract

The present research comprises Rousseau's anthropology, ranging from investigations about man and his original nature to an idealization, in the political field, of a society founded on the legitimate will of every citizen who composes it. The goal proposed is based on the assumption that the anthropological principles established by Rousseau in his Second Discourse guided his political thought. Thus, we seek to demonstrate that the crucial notion to his politics, the notion of general will, is based on the anthropological principle of amour de soi. However, in order to derive the general will from this love by interpreting it as the will that the individual has towards the whole because he feels it as himself, it is important to understand how Rousseau justifies and relates the existence and prevalence of this feeling of preference for itself to the extreme ethical requirement expressed by the particular conformation of the will of the individual to the general will of the State. Understanding this primary componentof the nature of the individual requires a deep look into the concept of the individual and the specific role that the principle of amour de soi plays in the structuring of individual identity. This will permit to consider the relevance, on the one hand, of pointing the amour de soi as the vector of development of the individual, and on the other, of admitting the possibility that it constitutes the social bond of the legitimate political order. Because of the primacy of this principle, the notion of interest appears as the core of Rousseau's thought, because it presents itself as the only possible object of desire. I intended to show how the topic of interest follows the developments of the amour de soi and amour-propre notion's and how Rousseau covers this notion requalifying and redirecting it according to its own logic, the logic of immanence. In this perspective, the notion of interest, that Rousseau sees as the good of the being who desires, becomes a relationship which gains its strength in the being of the individual who, from his relationship with himself, establishes a relationship with others and with the world. In this way, by articulating the notions of individual, amour de soi (interest) and general will, I intended to account for the possible unity of interest of the body political with the private interest of every individual, which forms the corollary of general wil (AU)