In the 1962 Canadian federal election, Gauthier ran as a candidate for the New Democratic Party in the riding of Eglinton, in Toronto, placing third.
In addition to systematic work in moral theory, Gauthier was also interested in the history of political philosophy, especially Hobbes and Rousseau.
Gauthier understood value as a matter of individuals' subjective preferences, and argued that moral constraints on straightforward utility-maximizing are prudentially justified.
According to Gauthier's contractarian ethics,[6] moral constraints are justified because they make us all better off, in terms of our preferences (whatever they may be).
A consequence is that good moral thinking is just an elevated and subtly strategic version of means–end reasoning.