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Jan 24, 2002 · Robert Nozick, the intellectually nimble Harvard philosopher whose critique of America's social welfare system 25 years ago continues to define the debate between conservatives and liberals, died...
- Overview
- Early life and career
- Anarchy, State, and Utopia
- Justification of the minimal state
Robert Nozick (born Nov. 16, 1938, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.—died Jan. 23, 2002, Cambridge, Mass.) American philosopher, best known for his rigorous defense of libertarianism in his first major work, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). A wide-ranging thinker, Nozick also made important contributions to epistemology, the problem of personal identity, and ...
Nozick was the only child of Max Nozick, a Russian immigrant and businessman, and Sophie Cohen Nozick. After attending public school in Brooklyn, Nozick enrolled at Columbia College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1959. He received a Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton University in 1963, having written a dissertation on decision...
During his high school and college years, Nozick was a member of the student New Left and an enthusiastic socialist. At Columbia he helped to found a campus branch of the League for Industrial Democracy, a precursor of the Students for a Democratic Society. While in graduate school he read works by libertarian thinkers such as F.A. Hayek and Ludwig...
The main purpose of Anarchy, State, and Utopia is to show that the minimal state, and only the minimal state, is morally justified. By a minimal state Nozick means a state that functions essentially as a “night watchman,” with powers limited to those necessary to protect citizens against violence, theft, and fraud. By arguing that the minimal state is justified, Nozick seeks to refute anarchism, which opposes any state whatsoever; by arguing that no more than the minimal state is justified, Nozick seeks to refute modern forms of liberalism, as well as socialism and other leftist ideologies, which contend that, in addition to its powers as a night watchman, the state should have the powers to regulate the economic activities of citizens, to redistribute wealth in the direction of greater equality, and to provide social services such as education and health care.
Against anarchism, Nozick claims that a minimal state is justified because it (or something very much like it) would arise spontaneously among people living in a hypothetical “state of nature” through transactions that would not involve the violation of anyone’s natural rights. Following the 17th-century English philosopher John Locke, Nozick assumes that everyone possesses the natural rights to life, liberty, and property, including the right to claim as property the fruits or products of one’s labour and the right to dispose of one’s property as one sees fit (provided that in doing so one does not violate the rights of anyone else). Everyone also has the natural right to punish those who violate or attempt to violate one’s own natural rights. Because defending one’s natural rights in a state of nature would be difficult for anyone to do on his own, individuals would band together to form “protection associations,” in which members would work together to defend each other’s rights and to punish rights violators. Eventually, some of these associations would develop into private businesses offering protection and punishment services for a fee. The great importance that individuals would attach to such services would give the largest protection firms a natural competitive advantage, and eventually only one firm, or a confederation of firms, would control all the protection and punishment business in the community. Because this firm (or confederation of firms) would have a monopoly of force in the territory of the community and because it would protect the rights of everyone living there, it would constitute a minimal state in the libertarian sense. And because the minimal state would come about without violating anyone’s natural rights, a state with at least its powers is justified.
Against liberalism and ideologies farther left, Nozick claims that no more than the minimal state is justified, because any state with more extensive powers would violate the natural rights of its citizens. Thus the state should not have the power to control prices or to set a minimum wage, because doing so would violate the natural right of citizens to dispose of their property, including their labour, as they see fit. For similar reasons, the state should not have the power to establish public education or health care through taxes imposed on citizens who may wish to spend their money on private services instead. Indeed, according to Nozick, any mandatory taxation used to fund services or benefits other than those constitutive of the minimal state is unjust, because such taxation amounts to a kind of “forced labour” for the state by those who must pay the tax.
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Mar 24, 2024 · This year marks another anniversary: 50 years ago, the philosopher Robert Nozick foresaw the themes of The Matrix – and much more about contemporary life – by proposing an intriguing thought...
Robert Nozick (1938-2002) was not averse to controversy. Five years after arriving at Harvard, he published Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). A response to John Rawls, who had just published the monumental A Theory of Justice (1971), Nozick outlined the libertarian case for limited government.
May 21, 2018 · The American philosopher Robert Nozick (born 1938) established his reputation as a polemical advocate of radical libertarianism, a position arguing for maximum individual rights and a minimal government. He went on to investigate classical issues in philosophy that have often been neglected or dismissed by modern analytic philosophers.
Words such as ‘charismatic’, ‘sharp’, ‘enthusiastic’ may best describe Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick who died of stomach cancer at the age of 63 on 23 January 2002. Born on 16 November 1938 in Brooklyn to the Russian immigrants Max Nozick and Sophie Cohen Nozick, he developed an interest in philosophy while still at school.
Jun 22, 2014 · Robert Nozick (1938–2002) was a renowned American philosopher who first came to be widely known through his 1974 book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), which won the National Book Award for Philosophy and Religion in 1975.
