ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes Hobbes’s implicit position on the properties of goodness and rightness, draws the implications of these analyses for the question of moral knowledge, and comments on the acceptability of the proposed reductions. Certainly Hobbes is explicit that values are subjective, relative to evaluators, and not to be found in objects themselves apart from their effects on evaluating subjects. Each and every moral obligation must reduce to a requirement of prudential rationality, and a necessary condition for that reduction is that every moral obligation must at least coincide with a requirement of self-interest. For Hobbes there was no such distinction. Although he argues for the prudential rationality of obeying the laws of nature, the fundamental set of moral rules, and therefore has been called a rule egoist. Restriction of immoral behavior to such cases can once more be profitable, and the cases would remain numerous enough to defeat the reduction of rightness to rational prudence.
