David Gauthier is one of the most outstanding and influential philoso- phers working in moral theory today, and his book Morals by Agreement (1986) has established him as a preeminent defender of contractarian moral theory. This volume brings together a selection of his best essays on con- tractarianism, many of which have become difficult to find.

In five historical essays, which make up the first section of the book, Gauthier examines the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers whose ideas he considers direct antecedents of contractarian thought. His interpreta- tions of Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Locke, and Rousseau are all revisionary, and presented together for the first time here, they constitute a provoca- tive challenge to standard readings of some of the most important philoso- phers in the Western tradition. The nine nonhistorical essays, making up the book's other three sections, are united by Gauthier's arguments for a bargaining account of justice and for a maximizing conception of practical rationality, a reconciliation that he believes Rawls has failed to achieve.

In this coherent collection of major articles, Gauthier demonstrates that he is one of his own (and contractarianism's own) best critics. Within an overall defense of the contractarian approach to moral and political thought, he recognizes and discusses limitations and implications that may be found unpalatable. His book should provoke many readers to rethink the nature of the contractarian approach to ethics.