Will and General Will

Kant's innovative notion, Pure Practical Reason, is primarily derived from not the preceding Rationalist tradition, e. g. Spinozism, but from Rousseau's concept of 'General Will', which is an expression of an impersonal 'general Good', rather than the product of a consensus of personal preferences. Kant's assimilation of that concept is best illustrated in his ideal collectivity, 'the Kingdom of Ends', which, as potentially supervening on the forces of Nature, can be characterized as 'super-natural', and, even as 'divine, insofar as God is the sovereign of the collective, as Kant occasionally intimates. Kant's divergence from Spinozism in two important respects is plain--Reason is a non-natural power, and Democracy is not the Rational political ideal. Here, 'Will' is the Material Principle of personal experience, and is manifested as Motility and as Exteriorization. Hence, while a collectivity, like any System, entails a Material Principle, the notion of a general 'Will' is inappropriate for Rousseau's and Kant's ambitions, i. e. by analogy it would apply to the deliberate expansive efforts of a political entity, and not to internal legislation. Furthermore, insofar as Will is also a process of self-extending, the extrapolation of it to Kant's super-natural Deity is more problematic than it is to Spinoza's Extension-constituted God.