ABSTRACT
Thomas Hobbes – who died almost half a century before Immanuel Kant was born – is generally regarded as the founder of English moral and political philosophy. Hobbes' main legacy is his justification of the need for moral codes, derived primarily from his view about human nature. The most important premise in Hobbesian morality is that, in a 'state of nature', the result of individuals' conflicting beliefs and interests would be a condition of 'war of every man against every man'. The situation of 'war of every man against every man' is usually characterised in the form of Prisoner's Dilemma – contractarianism's most used example. A contrast is made between morality and prudence, where only the latter is associated with being rational. Thus, David Gauthier asserts 'the rationally prudent man is incapable of moral behaviour'. The 'state of war' is merely conjectural.
