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"David Gauthier [1932–] is a Canadian-American philosopher best known for his neo-Hobbesian social contract (contractarian) theory of morality, as laid out in his book Morals by Agreement." (from Wikipedia.com)

"Gauthier was born in Toronto in 1932 and educated at the University of Toronto (B.A. Hons., 1954), Harvard University (A.M., 1955), and the University of Oxford (B. Phil., 1957; D. Phil., 1961). In 1979, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (F.R.S.C.).

From 1958 to 1980, he was a member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, serving as Chairman from 1974 to 1979. Since 1980, he has been a member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is now Professor Emeritus. He served as Chairman from 1983 to 1987, and was appointed a Distinquished Service Professor in 1986. He has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science. He has held visiting appointments at UCLA, UC Berkeley, Princeton, and UC Irvine....

...In addition to systematic work in moral theory, Gauthier's main philosophical interests are in the history of political philosophy, with special attention to Hobbes and Rousseau, and in the theory of practical rationality, where he begins from an attempt to understand economic rationality, rather than from Kantian or Aristotelian antecedents.

His principal nonphilosophical interest, arising from his observation of trolley cars while still in his pram, is in what now is called light rail transit. When much younger, he was an unsuccessful candidate for election to the Canadian House of Commons, an occasional newspaper columnist, and a writer on public affairs." Published in "Contractarianism and Rational Choice: Essays on David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement", editor Peter Vallentyne (Cambridge University Press, 1991).

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