236 A Positive Century (1815–1914)that the general principle of pacta sunt servanda is itself the product of agree-
ment by states, that is, that its status as a fundamental principle of law derives
from its own inherent value and is not conferred by some outside agent.
Th e Voluntarist Variant
Th e essence of the voluntarist version of positivism was its central stress
on the will of the state as the source of law. Hence the selection of the label,
from the Latin voluntas, meaning will. By will was meant, in this case, the
will of individual states, autonomously formed. Th e empirical and the
common-will schools, in contrast, emphasized the collective wills of states,
expressed in customary form in the one case and in treaty form in the
other. Of the three approaches, this one will be the least familiar to modern
observers— at least outside of Germany, where it chiefl y fl ourished.
Some care must be taken to appreciate that what was meant by the will of
a state was the will of the state as such, and not the will of the government or
rulers of that state at any given time. Th ere was therefore a fi rm insistence
on states as real persons in the eyes of the law. A notable precursor of the
theory of the real personality of the state was Hobbes, who had insisted that
the sovereign as the sole authority who embodied the will of any given state.
More recent, and relevant, was the writing of the eighteenth- century French
literary fi gure, po liti cal writer, and all- around controversialist Jean- Jacques
Rousseau. He advanced the concept of a General Will animating society— a
will that was pointedly regarded as distinct from the individual wills of the
members of the state. “Th e body politic,” he pronounced, “is... a corporate
being possessed of a will.” Th e true task of the members of society, in
Rousseau’s theory, was not to pursue their own individual self- interests, but
instead to discern the content of the General Will of the society itself and to
promote that.
Similar ideas were advanced by the renowned German phi los o pher Georg
Friedrich Hegel. Originally from Stuttgart, in the Duchy of Württemberg,
Hegel fi rst studied theology but then taught philosophy, fi rst at the Universi-
ties of Jena and Heidelberg and then, from 1818, at the University of Berlin,
where he achieved wide renown. Th e relevant part of Hegel’s philosophy, for
present purposes, was the belief that the only way that a person can live the
most fulfi lling kind of life is as a member of a po liti cal society— with the