Philosophy 4: Second paper (Prompt No. 2)Rousseau believes that even when you vote in a minority, you can obey the law while being free. But “how can the opposing minority be both free and subject to laws to which it has not consented? » (Rousseau, p. 153) Rousseau's response is that citizens must consent to all laws because “to inhabit the territory is to submit to the sovereign. » (Rousseau, p. 153) In accordance with the social contract, when a citizen votes they should completely abandon their personal interests and vote for what they believe to be the general will. The general will of each individual is considered to be their real will in matters of social policy. The majority vote will represent the general will, and the minority will show citizens who are wrong about the true nature of the general will. (Rousseau, p.153) So, even if you voted with the minority and ended up being wrong about your real wishes, you remained true to your own reasons and deliberated freely. In the end, what you wanted was the general will and it is by voting that you will find out what that is. I do not believe that Rousseau's reasoning succeeds because he does not provide an adequate explanation of how voters are supposed to identify what the general will is. To live in a particular state, a citizen must agree to live according to the rules of that state. declare or prepare to possibly be punished for not consenting. Rousseau believes that men came together to avoid extinction by combining forces and implementing a set of laws and incentives in order to establish more power. The social contract offers a way to combine efforts aimed at creating links between society, without sacrificing individual freedom. To achieve this, each individual ...... middle of paper ...... have people vote according to what they think is best for the general good, this would perhaps be to get an idea of the interest of each member of society and use the sum of their results to determine what would be the best way to achieve the general will. There are several other options that can be considered and which, upon further study, may prove to be more reasonable than Rousseau's view on the subject. Work cited Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The social contract. Harmondsworth (Middx.): Penguin, 1971. 49-154. Web. .