Ken Hanly wrote:
> Hobbes never made any sense to me except perhaps as some type of rule
> ethical egoist or inconsistent deontologist.
Hobbes was a psychological egoist i.e he thought people always and only act for self-interested reasons. In R.Dawkins' terms everyone is a cheater(egoist) rather than a grudger(reciprocal altruists) or a sucker(altruist). It's a descriptive and not a normative claim. It's not that people should be egoists its that they cannot act otherwise. His central problem is "how is social order possible?" He demonstrates that the invisible hand is false, everyone collectively is worse off if everyone acts always and only from self-interest. Further, the desire to act from self-interest is so strong that one will _always_ defect in a prisoner's dilemma (the PD is Hobbes' model of society.) To solve the prisoners dilemma and hence construct social order, an absolute sovereign is needed to enforce the conract. A contract because it is the only way to get people to obey social norms and respect each other. Absolute sovereign, because people will defect if not. And once one person defects... I think Hobbes was an early socio-biologist. A great writer too with a great imagination.
Sam Pawlett