David Gauthier

David Gauthier (* 1932 in Toronto ) is a Canadian-American philosopher . He is known for his contract theory of morals , which he wrote after Hobbes and which he describes in his main work Morals by Agreement .

Life

Gauthier was born in Toronto in 1932 . He studied at the University of Toronto (BA Hons., 1954), Harvard University (AM, 1955) and the University of Oxford (B. Phil., 1957; D. Phil., 1961). Since 1979 he has been an elected member of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC).

From 1958 to 1980 he was a member of the Philosophical Institute at the University of Toronto , of which he was director from 1974 to 1979. In 1980 he moved to the Philosophical Institute at the University of Pittsburgh , where he is now Professor Emeritus . From 1983 to 1987 he acted as its managing director. He held the post of Senior Research Fellow at the Center for the Philosophy of Science there. As a guest lecturer he taught a. a. at UCLA, UC Berkeley, Princeton and the University of Waterloo. Gauthier is the author of numerous articles. A compilation of important essays can be found in the essay collection Moral Dealing . As a book author he published in addition to Morals by Agreement a . a. also Practical Reasoning , The Logic of Leviathan and Rousseau: The Social and the Solitary .

In addition to his systematic interest in general moral theory, he is historically interested primarily in the development of political philosophy , and especially in the work of Hobbes and Rousseau . He is also working on a theory of practical rationality , whereby here less the classical Aristotelian or Kantian approaches than economic considerations form the starting point of his thinking.

As a young man, he applied for a seat in the Canadian Parliament to no avail . He wrote columns for various newspapers from time to time and worked as a freelance writer.

Some of Gauthier's students in America and Canada are also considered great philosophers. You research mainly in the reports of moral and legal philosophy as well as political philosophy.

The asteroid (15911) Davidgauthier is named after him.

Contribution to political philosophy and ethics

In value theory , Gauthier takes a subjectivist approach based on the economic preferences of individuals. In doing so, he argues that moral restrictions on an individual's behavior geared to maximum benefit can always be justified by considerations of prudence (in this context he sometimes recurs on the model of the negotiation problem from game theory in order to then formulate his own variant of the solution). So it is wiser to limit your own preferences and to work with other subjects with similar preferences instead of trying your luck as a lone warrior. Moral restrictions are justified insofar as they are ultimately more advantageous for the majority of all parties involved in satisfying individual needs. In this way, Gauthier identifies, similar to utilitarianism, moral thinking as an elaborate and more subtle variant of a pure end-means consideration. Overall, this moral philosophy, which is based on aspects of game theory and the rational choice paradigm and is characterized by the narrowing of self-interest and morality, is often understood as a political-theoretical approach in the spirit of Thomas Hobbes, which, however, also has elements of the philosophical work of John Locke includes.

bibliography

Works by Gauthier

• David Gauthier, Practical Reasoning: The Structure and Foundations of Prudential and Moral Arguments and Their Exemplification in Discourse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963).
• David Gauthier, The Logic of Leviathan: The Moral and Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969).
• David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986)
• David Gauthier, Moral Dealing: Contract, Ethics, and Reason (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1990).
• David Gauthier, Rousseau: The Sentiment of Existence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Selected secondary literature

• Raffael Iturrizaga: David Gauthiers moral contractualism , ontos 2007, ISBN 978-3-938793-60-2
• EF Paul, FD Miller, Jr. and J. Paul (Eds), The New Social Contract: Essays on Gauthier (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988).
• Peter Vallentyne (ed.), Contractarianism and Rational Choice: Essays on David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.)
• David Gauthier and Robert Sugden (Eds.), Rationality, Justice and the Social Contract: Themes from Morals by Agreement (Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993).
• Christopher W. Morris and Arthur Ripstein (Eds.), Practical Rationality and Preference: Essays for David Gauthier (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001)