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BOOK REVIEWS 311 Patrick Riley. The General Will beforeRousseau. The Transformation of the Divine into the Civic. Studies in Moral, Political and Legal Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Pp. xvii + 274. $27.5~ In spite of its vital role in his political philosophy, Rousseau did not subject his idea of the 'general will' to a detailed analysis or make any explicit reference to its origins. Likewise, his commentators have for the most part discussed its meaning within the context of his political ideas and paid relatively little attention to its historical provenance . Patrick Riley's book, therefore, can justifiably claim to be the first one devoted to the subject. The book begins by indicating the controversial theological background of a notion that concerned the problem of divine justice: if, as St. Paul states in a letter to Timothy, "God wills that all men be saved," why does he will particularly that some men not be saved? In the seventeenth century the first significant use of the term 'general will" seems to have been in Antoine Arnauld's PremiOreApologiepour M. Jans~nius (1644) and the idea became a subject of dispute between Jansenists and Jesuits. Pascal then made a distinction between general will and absolute will, relating the former to the notion of collective good. Especially important, however, in the subsequent history of the concept was Malebranche, whose work and influence occupy a large part of Patrick Riley's study. Malebranche applied the idea of the general will not only to God but also to the whole of nature, particularism being condemned as a cause of selfish and lawless disorder. After examining the attacks of Bossuet, F~nelon and Bayle upon Malebranche 's ideas, the third chapter returns to his later work and shows how his interest in the general will was gradually displaced by a concern with moral relations, order, occasionalism, and the idea of perfection. The fourth chapter, "The General Will Socialised," deals with Montesquieu's contribution . Conversant with seventeenth-century theological controversies without being sympathetic to them, he often used Malebranchian language and concepts in order to stress the importance of general (as opposed to particular) laws, but, unlike his predecessor , he concentrated on the relations of various social institutions and their physical and moral causes. As a result of Montesquieu's work the general will henceforth belonged to human beings rather than to God. The chapter on Rousseau ("The General Will Completed: Rousseau and the Volont~g~n~raleof the Citizen") examines his use of the general will in works other than the Contrat social. Although he was always impatient of subtle and, in his view, futile arguments about particular grace, Patrick Riley points out that Rousseau had some knowledge of seventeenth-century theology and favored Malebranche's predilection for orderly nature (for example, in the discussion of miracles). Critical of Diderot's use of the general will as a universal principle applicable to humanity as a whole--and equally critical of the universalist Christian ideal--Rousseau insists that reason alone cannot create order and virtue and that the use of the will is essential for the achievement of this aim. Although the book's conclusion may not be very new as far as the interpretation of the general will in the Contrat socialis concerned, it effectively shows how a knowledge 312 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 27:2 APRIL 198 9 of the history of this idea, and especially of Rousseau's acquaintance with the Malebranchian tradition, obviates at least one serious misunderstanding of this fundamental notion: that there is a necessary conflict between the general will and the citizen's individual will. The real conflict is between the general will and the particular will of the individual considered apart from his membership in the political community . There is, and always must be, an inseparable connection between the general will and the citizen's individual will, particularisme--and not individuality--being the enemy of sound political institutions. Since it was Malebranche, even more than Montesquieu, who dealt fully with the question of generality, particularity, individuality and will, Professor Riley affirms that "there is a sense in which he was Rousseau's predecessor." Thanks to...

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