Abstract

In this article, I offer a new interpretation for Rousseau’s surprisingly spare use of the phrase “general interest” in his works. My starting point is the very notion of interest in his political thought. For Rousseau, interest is not a matter of calculation but of experience; properly speaking, once we are in the state of society, there is nothing like an individual interest because all our interests are shared with somebody else. And our political interest (our sensitivity to society’s general disorders) is shared with all our fellow citizens. In this regard, I bring to light a clear antinomy between the “common interest” in Rousseau’s Social Contract and the “general interest” as conceptualized by the physiocrats a few years later. By “common interest” Rousseau means the material basis for the democratic formation of a general will (that is, a political will) among the citizens, whereas by “general interest” physiocrats mean the normative language in which a non-democratic political decision claims its legitimacy by appealing to reason.