Abstract

Contemporary Hobbesian contractarianism began in the wake of John Rawls' revitalization of contractarianism in A Theory of Justice and the subsequent body of critical literature which has grown up around it. Philosophers have been impressed with Rawls' powerful application of a contractarian framework to traditional issues in moral and political philosophy but dismayed at the extensive normative precommitments of his particular contractarian theory. They have thus sought an equally powerful contractarian approach unwed to strong normative precommitments. Of all extant contractarian theories, Thomas Hobbes' theory in Leviathan uniquely constitutes such an approach. Like all contractarians, Hobbes specifies a hypothetical choice problem consisting of a choice environment, a choice problem, and a method of resolution. But Hobbes' choice environment purports to make virtually no substantive normative precommitments. The strength of Hobbesian contractarianism is that it seeks to generate substantive normative conclusions from premises established in a normatively minimalistic theoretical framework, and thus promises not to beg any fundamental normative questions. ;This dissertation considers in detail three comprehensive and game-theoretically sophisticated books which are central to the current corpus of contemporary Hobbesian contractarianism. These are Jean Hampton's Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition, Gregory Kavka's Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory, and David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement. We explain the common denominators and points of divergence among these theories while undertaking an extensive critical investigation of each. Two fundamental themes emerge from these investigations. First, Hobbesian contractarianism tends to run afoul of collective action problems at various levels of its overall argument. Collective actions problems arise when the requirements of individual and collective rationality diverge. Second, the normative minimalism which is heralded as the primary virtue of Hobbesian contractarianism is also revealed as one of its fundamental problems. By minimalizing its normative precommitments, Hobbesian contractarianism undermines its ultimate goal of generating powerful normative conclusions