Banishing the Particular

Abstract

I begin with a dilemma: how to combine political rule, which rests ultimately on a moment of coercion, withfreedom-freedom from subjection to the arbitrary and particular will of an other. In this formulation, political rule threatens freedom with (1) the possibility of subjection to an arbitrary will, that is, a will that is either inconstant, uncertain, and ungrounded, or that simply rests on a particular and arbitrary ground, and (2) the possibility of subjection to an external other. This fundamental modernist dilemma makes an appearance in Locke, receives its most famous formulation in Rousseau's Contrat social, is moralized by Kant, and is a central animating force of Hegel's political philosophy.' Of course, a powerful strand of liberalism concluded that the dilemma is essentially unresolvable and rested its hopes not on a reconciliation of political rule and freedom but on freedom despite political rule, via a protected private sphere. In this article, I examine what is perhaps the most uncompromising attempt at resolution. I argue that in his efforts to reconcile political rule and freedom, Rousseau is led to ground the volonte generale in the silent and introspective disclosure of the solitary citizen's inner conscience, which now, through a sentimentalist transformation of Descartes's category of bon sens, is recast as an eminently public sentiment. When the strategy fails, Rousseau turns to republican virtue and the