Thomas Hobbes, the famous author of "Leviathan", (1651), was a theorist on the law, the state of nature and the concept of social contract, and as such, one of the founders of modern political philosophy. He argued that both the law of nature and social contract provided the basis of sovereignty. Traditionally, Hobbes is seen as a defender of absolute monarchy, a government system where the power is held in the hands of one man, the Monarch.
Rousseau was a contributor to the Encyclopedia and a major philosopher of the French Enlightenment. His thought encompasses various fields (social criticism, political theory, ethics, theology) and is expressed in many literary genres such as speeches, novels.The complex freedom of man's original state of nature is the main focus of Rousseau's Social Contract upon which political freedom is based. Rousseau's Social Contract's purpose is always to uncover freedom and to fight against what denies its existence and prevents understanding of it. Rousseau showed the close link between equality and freedom. It is by his keen sensitivity, a precursor of romanticism that he could be able to achieve his demonstration. He is also an outstanding theoretician of the republic. .
Having taken the opposite philosophy of Hobbes, he can still return to the original and not a reflection on the continued functioning of a democratic society based on the Social Contract (1762) in which the sovereign people organize collective life. Furthermore, by reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau, we are able to is understand that he is a strong defender of modern democracy. Nevertheless, certain ambiguities continue to exist, or at least several paradoxes. Indeed, very often in their books, one finds two clearly distinct thoughts, although the authors did not have this in mind when they were writing their respective masterpieces.
