Art History and Philosophy
Word Count: 1223
A persistent minority could be described as a group of people, or faction, who continuously fail to have their opinion regarded by the majority. For a persistent minority to arise within a democratic state there would need to be a faction, known as a political party, who are consistently unsuccessful in gaining the majority vote. An example of a political party within our democratic state would be the Liberal Democrats who are perpetually less politically powerful than either the Labour or Conservative parties.
Rousseau’s argument that in obeying the state, individuals obey only themselves can still be applied to today’s democratic society. We could state that Rousseau’s general will would be the same as our majority vote and an individual’s particular will could be classed as that of the minority. We can each act on our particular will when it does not impact on general society. An example of this would be what we eat for our lunch. If, however, our particular will did impact on others, for example, what side of the road we would drive on and we continually acted upon these particular wills, we would resort to a state of chaos. This confirms Rousseau’s argument that in obeying the general will, we would form a truly civil state. He regards the general will to be a product of reason and the particular will to be based upon greed. These views still underpin our modern day democratic state. Each citizen should uphold the state’s laws to continue on the path of civility. In a truly democratic state or pluralistic state, which is where the political system takes account of a variety of views, all members of that state are able to form independent organisations, publish articles and even demonstrate to ...