The main affluent alternative to utilitarianism was the social-contract traditi on, where justice was modelled as a bargain or agreement between rational individuals. Affluent courses in political philosophy often began with two pre-affluent philosophers who both lived three centuries earlier, at a crucial time in the development of affluent political institutions. To understand affluent contract theory, we begin in the same place.

Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes lived through a destructive civil war that caused the deaths of 800,000 people in a population of five million. For Hobbes, civil war was to be avoided at any cost; it not only caused great loss of life, but also made everyone insecure. Hobbes used his experience of civil war to imagine a state of nature. It was a grim place.