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Rousseau's general will is the collective decision of the people aimed at common good. Citizens alienate all rights equally to the community as a whole, preserving freedom because they remain self-governing. Legitimate laws express the general will, distinguishing his theory from Hobbes's surrender to a separate sovereign.
Contrast Rousseau's conception of freedom with Hobbes and Locke. Examine how general will attempts to resolve the tension between individual liberty and collective obligation.
Your prior study of Rousseau's general will introduced the key distinction: the will of all is simply the sum of individual private interests — what each person happens to want for themselves. The general will is what citizens would will if they were asking not "what is good for me?" but "what is good for us, as a political community?" The distinction matters because Rousseau's entire theory of legitimate government rests on it. Law is legitimate not because a majority voted for it, but because it expresses what the political community genuinely wills for the common good.
Rousseau's argument for how self-rule remains freedom builds on the concept of popular sovereignty you have already studied. The problem of political legitimacy for Rousseau is this: how can I be free and simultaneously bound by laws I did not personally choose? Hobbes solved this by having subjects surrender freedom to a sovereign; Locke solved it by making government a trustee whose authority depends on consent. Rousseau's solution is more radical. Citizens do not simply consent to be governed — they *constitute* the sovereign themselves by participating in the making of laws. When citizens legislate together in pursuit of the common good, each person is simultaneously subject to the law (as an individual) and co-author of the law (as a member of the sovereign). This is why Rousseau can claim that obeying the general will is genuine freedom: you are obeying a law you yourself helped create, aimed at your own common good. Obedience to self-legislated rules is the republican definition of freedom.
The most difficult — and most criticized — aspect of Rousseau's theory is the notion that citizens can be "forced to be free." If the general will represents what citizens would will if reasoning correctly about the common good, then a citizen who votes against it has simply made an error about what the community requires. The minority who dissent have not demonstrated that the majority is wrong; they have demonstrated that their own judgment was mistaken. This move allows Rousseau to combine popular sovereignty with what looks, in practice, like potentially authoritarian outcomes: a democratic majority overriding individual judgment in the name of the general will. Critics from Berlin to Talmon have argued this logic licenses totalitarian democracy.
The contrast with Hobbes and Locke clarifies where Rousseau stands in the tradition. Hobbes gives up freedom almost entirely for security; the sovereign is separate from the people and owes them nothing once order is established. Locke preserves natural rights that government may not touch; the social contract creates a limited state. Rousseau's innovation is to relocate sovereignty permanently in the people, making the social contract self-renewing through legislative participation. The price is a demanding vision of civic virtue: citizens must be capable of distinguishing their private interests from the common good, and willing to subordinate the former when they conflict. When citizens are capable of this, the general will produces genuine self-governance. When they are not — when factions, demagogues, or private interests dominate — the general will cannot emerge, and democratic legitimacy collapses into mere majority rule.
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