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SUBJEGTIVIST THEORY OF ETHICS 355
is good. "But whatsoever/ 9
he writes, "is the object of
any man's appetite or desire, that is it which he for his
part callcth 'good'; and the object of his hate and aversion,
'evil 9
; and of his contempt, 'vile' and '
inconsiderable.'
For these words of good, evil, and contemptible, are ever
used with relation to the person that useth them, there
being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common
rule of good and evil, to be taken from the nature of the
objects themselves; but from the person of the man, where
there is no commonwealth, or, in a commonwealth, from
the person that represented! it." In a word, that which
we desire is good; that for which we feel aversion, evil
Or, more shortly, the meaning of good is what we desire,
of evil, that for which we feel aversion.
Hobbes's Account of the Virtues and Vices. The
feelings of appetite and desire which Hobbes describes in
physiological terms as movements within the body, are
pleasures; the feeling of aversion is a pain. When these
feelings arise, not from the presence of objects, but from
their absence, they become respectively joy and grief.
From these simple passions all the more complex ones are
derived. Appetite combined with the expectation of satis-
fying it is hope; aversion with the expectation of being hurt
by its object, fear; aversion, with the hope of avoiding the
hurt by resistance, courage; sudden courage, anger; gdcf,
for the discovery of some failure in our abilities, shame;
and so on. There is throughout this list a persistent
identification between good and pleasant, evil and unpleasant.
Starting from the assumption that I call good
what ministers to my. pleasure, and that by calling a thing
good I mean merely that it is pleasant, we shall expect to
find an analysis of all the so-called altruistic virtues into
their elements of expediency and self-interest. Nor does
Hobbes disappoint us. Altruistic sentiments, he agrees,
appear to suggest that there is a good which exists outside
the agent, but this appearance, he maintains, is delusive,
for they are, in fact, concerned always and only to promote