ABSTRACT
In the course of the philosophical reflections which constitute the Prolegomena to his De Iure Belli ac Pacis, Grotius singled out two figures of antiquity for particular attack. One was Aristotle, and the anti-Aristotelian character of his work was well-known to contemporaries and has been obvious to most subsequent commentators. Like Grotius, Hobbes accepted the force of the sceptical case: human societies do exhibit radically different moral beliefs and practices, and for most of the moral beliefs the only justification which people can give for holding them is that they are the beliefs current in their own society. Moreover there is indeed a terrifying degree of self-interest in human affairs. Grotius's paraphrase of Carneades, that "Nature prompts all Men, and in general all Animals, to seek their own Particular Advantage" could also be an accurate paraphrase of one of Hobbes's most famous assumptions.
