ABSTRACT
The sociological view of morality is that morality is nothing more than whichever rules happen to be adopted by a particular society. This chapter introduces normativity or evaluation into the picture by insisting that morality is not any old construction of rules but rather those rules that would be constructed by human beings participating in a special kind of agreement. Thomas Hobbes's theory envisages morality arising out of a kind of contract in which individuals who had been in a lonely and vulnerable pre-social state agree to abide by certain rules in return for the benefits of social cooperation. The gene theory gives readers a deeper explanation of why human beings have such a strong motivation to keep themselves alive, but why they also show a motivation sometimes to sacrifice themselves when that is necessary for the survival of their children.
