Rousseau’s idea of the General Will emerges from his broader concern with how freedom can be preserved in a political community. For Rousseau, individuals are born free, yet everywhere they live under constraints that seem to compromise this natural liberty. The challenge is to create a form of political association in which individuals obey only themselves while still being part of a collective order. Rousseau proposes the Social Contract as the basis of legitimate political authority, and the concept of the General Will becomes central to this framework. The General Will is not simply the sum of individual desires, nor is it equivalent to majority opinion. Instead, it represents the collective interest aimed at the common good. It is a moral and political principle that expresses what people ought to will