Hobbes: The "Good" is just another name for my Desire

According to Thomas Hobbes, in the state of nature human beings are lawless and therefore without justice. In such a state, “good” and “evil” only refer to personal desires and aversions, pleasures and pains, likes and dislikes. They are names for the things we want or abhor. In his words:
 

Good and evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions, which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men are different: and diverse men differ not only in their judgment, on the sense of what is pleasant and unpleasant to the taste, smell, hearing, touch, and sight; but also of what is conformable or disagreeable to reason, in the actions of common life.

   
What you desire, I abhor. What you seek as pleasant, I reject as painful. In this condition, “private appetite is the measure of good and evil.”

This is cause for disagreement, enmity, and even war. Again, the solution is to seek peace and follow it by agreeing to a social contract enforced by an iron-fisted State.

Sometimes it seems that way. Religious wars may be a good example. In his lifetime, Hobbes saw his share of violent civil wars in England (1642-1651) that influenced to his political theorizing. 

I wonder about the “good” though. Is it really a mere name for our individual appetites and desires? And is lawful peace, enforced by an iron-fisted State, really the only “good” we desire in common? Are all other desires so relative to each individual person that we cannot find greater common good, one worth striving for and cultivating without the need for a Leviathan?

Sometimes the evidence in favor of Hobbes, such as the delight supporters of the current U.S. President express in his anti-immigrant policies and hawkish attitudes, seems overwhelming. They can overlook sexism, misogyny, xenophobia and even share in it. But there is evidence to the contrary; for example, the protests and movements of solidarity in favor of women's rights last Wednesday. These seem to indicate that we can pursue common goods beyond our individual desires. 

My inclinations, in the end, are Thoreauvian: I think there are higher goods, ones to which our moral sense can guide us. They are not, however, goods that are given in advance to us from a transcendent reality. They are not Platonic forms of the Good, real but transcendent. They are goods that must be imagined, essayed, formed, evaluated, and transformed through social effort over the course of history. To develop this idea I will enlist the thought of Charles Peirce and William James a bit later.

For now, I am holding on to hope that in the end the good is not a mere name for our selfish desires. For this, it is good to regard our caring friends and neighbors.