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free will
Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Jul 28, 2023 • Article History

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free will, in philosophy and science, the supposed power or capacity of humans to make decisions
or perform actions independently of any prior event or state of the universe. Arguments for free
will have been based on the subjective experience of freedom, on sentiments of guilt, on revealed
religion, and on the common assumption of individual moral responsibility that underlies the
concepts of law, reward, punishment, and incentive. In theology, the existence of free will must be
reconciled with God’s omniscience and benevolence and with divine grace, which allegedly is
necessary for any meritorious act. A prominent feature of existentialism is the concept of a radical,
perpetual, and frequently agonizing freedom of choice. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80), for example,
spoke of the individual “condemned to be free.”

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G.E. Moore
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Category: History & Society

Key People: Erasmus • Søren Kierkegaard • William James • Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling • Cornelius Otto Jansen

Related Topics: autonomy • determinism • voluntarism • compatibilism • choice

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The existence of free will is denied by some proponents of determinism, the thesis that every event
in the universe is causally inevitable. Determinism entails that, in a situation in which people make
a certain decision or perform a certain action, it is impossible that they could have made any other
decision or performed any other action. In other words, it is never true that people could have
decided or acted otherwise than they actually did. Philosophers and scientists who believe that
determinism in this sense is incompatible with free will are known as “hard” determinists.

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philosophy of mind: Free will

In contrast, so-called “soft” determinists, also called compatibilists, believe that determinism and
free will are compatible after all. In most cases, soft determinists attempt to achieve this
reconciliation by subtly revising or weakening the commonsense notion of free will. Contemporary
soft determinists have included the English philosopher G.E. Moore (1873–1958), who held that
acting freely means only that one would have acted otherwise had one decided to do so (even if, in
fact, one could not have decided to do so), and the American philosopher Harry Frankfurt (born
1929), who has argued that acting freely amounts to identifying with or approving of one’s own
desires (even if those desires are such that one cannot help but act on them).

The extreme alternative to determinism is indeterminism, the view that at least some events have
no deterministic cause but occur randomly, or by chance. Indeterminism is supported to some
extent by research in quantum mechanics, which suggests that some events at the quantum level
are in principle unpredictable (and therefore random). Philosophers and scientists who believe
that the universe is indeterministic and that humans possess free will are known as “libertarians”
(libertarianism in this sense is not to be confused with the school of political
philosophy called libertarianism). Although it is possible to hold that the universe is
indeterministic and that human actions are nevertheless determined, few contemporary
philosophers defend this view.

Libertarianism is vulnerable to what is called the “intelligibility” objection, which points out that
people can have no more control over a purely random action than they have over an action that is
deterministically inevitable; in neither case does free will enter the picture. Hence, if human
actions are indeterministic, free will does not exist. See also free will and moral responsibility.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

This article was most recently revised and updated by Brian Duignan.
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general will
philosophy of Rousseau
Also known as: volonté générale
Written by André Munro
Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Article History

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general will, in political theory, a collectively held will that aims at the common good or common
interest. The general will is central to the political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and an
important concept in modern republican thought. Rousseau distinguished the general will from the
particular and often contradictory wills of individuals and groups. In Du Contrat social (1762; The
Social Contract), Rousseau argued that freedom and authority are not contradictory, since
legitimate laws are founded on the general will of the citizens. In obeying the law, the individual
citizen is thus only obeying himself as a member of the political community.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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Key People: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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The notion of the general will precedes Rousseau and has its roots in Christian theology. In the
second half of the 17th century, Nicolas Malebranche attributed the general will to God. God,
Malebranche argued, mostly acts in the world through a set of “general laws” instituted at the
creation of the world. These laws correspond to God’s general will, in contradistinction to
particular expressions of God’s will: miracles and other occasional acts of divine intervention. For
Malebranche, it is because God’s will expresses itself mainly through general laws that one can
make sense of the apparent contradiction between God’s will to save all of humankind and the fact
that most souls will not actually be saved. Rousseau’s own understanding of the general will
emerged from a critique of Denis Diderot, who transformed Malebranche’s understanding of the
general will into a secular concept but who echoed Malebranche by defining it in universalistic
terms. In his article “Droit naturel” (“Natural Right”) published in 1755 in the Encyclopédie, Diderot
argued that morality is based on the general will of humankind to improve its own happiness.
Individuals can access this moral ideal by reflecting on their interests as members of the human
race. The general will, Diderot believed, is necessarily directed at the good since its object is the
betterment of all.

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constitution: Rousseau and the general will

For Rousseau, however, the general will is not an abstract ideal. It is instead the will actually held
by the people in their capacity as citizens. Rousseau’s conception is thus political and differs from
the more universal conception of the general will held by Diderot. To partake in the general will
means, for Rousseau, to reflect upon and to vote on the basis of one’s sense of justice. Individuals
become conscious of their interests as citizens, according to Rousseau, and thus of the interest of
the republic as a whole, not through spirited discussions but, on the contrary, by following their
personal conscience in the “silence of the passions.” In this sense, the public assembly does not
debate so much as disclose the general will of the people. Rousseau argued that the general will is
intrinsically right, but he also criticized in some works (mainly in his Discours sur les sciences et les
arts (1750; Discourse on the Sciences and Arts) the rationalist elevation of reason above feelings.
This has provoked scholarly debate about the rational and affective dimensions of the general will.
On the one hand, the general will reflects the rational interest of the individual (as citizen) as well
as that of the people as a whole. On the other hand, the general will is not purely rational because it
emerges out of an attachment and even a love for one’s political community.

Rousseau assumed that all people are capable of taking the moral standpoint of aiming at the
common good and that, if they did so, they would reach a unanimous decision. Thus, in an ideal
state, laws express the general will. While citizens may be wrong and deceived, according to
Rousseau, they will aim at justice as long as they pursue the interest of the people rather than
follow their interests as individuals or as members of different groups. Seen from this perspective,
the individual who breaches the law is acting not only against the instituted government but also
against that individual’s higher interest as a member of the political community. In a famous
passage of The Social Contract, Rousseau argued that requiring such an individual to abide by the
law is thus nothing else than “forcing him to be free.” On this basis, critics including Benjamin
Constant and Jacob Talmon have accused Rousseau of being an authoritarian thinker and, in the
second case, a forefather of totalitarian politics. Talmon’s indictment has, however, been largely
discredited.

While scholars differ on the meaning of the aforementioned passage, there is wide agreement that
Rousseau was concerned with preserving civil liberty and autonomy, not with giving free reign to
government. In fact, the concept of the general will also implies a proscription against despotism.
For Rousseau, government is legitimate only insofar as it is subordinated to popular sovereignty or,
in other words, follows the general will of the people. Government loses all legitimacy the moment
it places itself above the law to pursue its own interest as a separate political body.

The concept of the general will has had a deep and lasting influence on modern republican
thought, particularly in the French tradition. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
of 1789 (article 6), a founding document of the current French Constitution, defined law as the
expression of the general will.

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André Munro

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