general will

British

noun

(in the philosophy of Rousseau) the source of legitimate authority residing in the collective will as contrasted with individual interests

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

To highlight the contrast, Mr. Turley recounts France’s descent into madness, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s theory of democratic government carrying out the people’s “general will,” to the Terror of Robespierre and Saint-Just, until the revolution eventually devoured its own children.

From The Wall Street Journal

“We believe the Attorney General will find that emergency responders did the best they could under unprecedented and extreme conditions,” county officials said in a joint statement.

From Los Angeles Times

The new director general will come in at a crucial time for the BBC in other ways, too.

From BBC

Liverpool fans - and the world of football in general - will be waiting to find out the next installment with bated breath.

From BBC

Instead of finding practical compromises through negotiation, politics became a matter of discerning what Jean-Jacques Rousseau called the general will of the people and then implementing it.

From The Wall Street Journal

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023