The social contract ideas of Rousseau and Plato are incredibly different. With the thought of a man being different. One believes that the real power is in the people, while the others believe that power lies in the government that governs the people in this world. Therefore believing that a just man is the only one that obeys the government.
Rousseau argues that the idea of the people’s general will be the idea governing force of the state. This idea is the destruction of each building the Sovereign to the whole community. The collective body governs in the common interest, acting without individual prejudice or selfish concern, to decide the laws to be followed by the sovereign. This concept, however, because it requires people to put the communities needs above their own. Rousseau misrepresents essential human nature by making assumptions of people who value the common good over their interest. Like how he says. “ whatever country you may come from, whatever your opinions may be, listen: here is your history as I believe it to read, not in the book of your fellow men, which are liars, but which never lies in nature. Everything that comes from nature is true; nothing is false apart from what has involuntarily put in of its own”.(Second Discourse 103-104).Civic politics would ideally be the most important thing for every citizen, but in reality, a unanimous decision without the influence of self – interest is almost impossible. The general will has good intentions, but it would be better to realize its spirit utilizing more-achievable Democracy concept. In order to preserve freedom, Rousseau forms the social contract.
Even though self-government by eliminating individual self-interest, basing his theory on the positive assertion that society will voluntarily follow the general will of man, self-interest is the matter of progress, and for the state to advance and prosper there must be a government, such as the modern form of democracy. The fundamental problem facing humanity today, according to Rousseau “Others have spoken of the natural right that everyone has to preserve what belongs to him, without explaining what he or she meant by belonging.” His freedom only shown when each man is independent and is not to be ruled by the private interests of any individual group.
The most fundamental difference between these two thinkers is that Rousseau believes that man is almost the exact opposite, that society is a construction that seen as a lesser of two evils. In some other ways, Plato focuses on the question of how we can have such a similar description of societies, the interactions within them, and yet have such different opinions about how people see the world. Let's think how this would work? As discussed before, the best way to describe is to discuss further how these visions of freedom work, to examine the nature of man systematically. Even if we first discuss Plato and his conceptions of political philosophy, we must understand who speaks throughout the dialogues.
That Socrates in the book The Republic can vary significantly in opinion from but the Athenian stranger discovered in the legislation, so a single interlocutor is essential that any discussion can take place. In such ways that one can predict Plato himself believes that the true nature of man. Although we do not have a thought hypothetical discussion of the " state of nature "; that we often find in modernity, there are some useful resources that we can use to simulate and detect the nature of humankind concerning each other like in Book three in Plato's way of engaging the Athenian stranger and discusses how to take elements from his society. Now we can all tell that Plato's point of view on society is very upper class and gives off the intentions of how some people do not have a choice in having there own state of mind and their assumptions of what is right and wrong. In a way, he states in his book with the argument with Socrates and his brother Polemarchus making a point of what a just person can be. That Socrates states that “Well, then, can just people use justice to make people unjust? In a word, can good people use their virtue or goodness to make people bad?”. So After describing this feeling of neutrality and goodwill towards other men in this primitive society, there is an amount of how cities form. That in some cases different cites have different family structures and tribal structures.
Now, before you spend time talking about Rousseau, it is essential to discuss how the light changed the way people began to look at political society. However, in his notion of a man without a city or protection.
It brings unique lighting that Rousseau feels that there isn't a better understanding that Rousseau gives when he discusses his unique conception of the “state of nature.” To a social contrast that is the transition that Rousseau gives when he discusses the how and the why man makes the transition to unstable society from the seemingly perfect “State of Nature,” It gives an insight on how much Rousseau starts with the hypothetical “State of Nature.” In some different suggestions tied to it. For this reason, the state of nature is depicted in a way that thought experiment from which we can determine certain fundamentals aspects of human nature in Rousse's unique way of his conception of human nature.
As we can all see, the theory of social contract with the state of nature believes that individuals or political obligations can depend on the contract or agreement between them to form a society in which we all live. Just like Socrates uses a social contract argument to explain to his brother that we have to stay in prison and accept the death penalty. Although the theory of social contracts is rightly linked to modern moral and political theory, it gives defiance its explosion.
When its all said and done they both have the same insight on how social contract can make both thinkers go into a sabbatical creation of what is now called freedom. Now it may take place in what they both believe, but believe that we all have a say so in life to chose to make right desitions and to put them in a state of what one or another may think. It is ok because we were put on this earth to think for ourselves, not others. How it sated in the book The Republic that Socrates stated to his brother is that “ For it is not the function of heat to cool things down, I imagine, but that of its opposite.”
That in conclusion by Plato’s way with the thoughts of whats equal not only to describe the tides between the two introduces the notion of freedom and free will. That by taking the moral way of the natural state of mind and examine the role it plays among these two giants in political philosophy, it shows that moral, social contract and the state of nature can consider one of the most important factors to explain the gap not only between Plato and Rousseau in their writings but also between ancient and modern philosophy, if not the most important. That this is a way to understand the freedom that is distributed into every aspect of political philosophy is so It is essential that it can not simply be discredited, but affirmed as a notion to be taken into account when we look at these two differences in political philosophy.