Robert Nozick
People have rights that no one may override for the common good, so the only just state is a minimal one that protects them.
Placement
Anarchy, State, and Utopia: libertarianism, the minimal state – and the experience machine.
Key ideas
- Minimal state
- Experience machine
- Entitlement theory
Teachers: Carl Gustav Hempel
Influence
Influenced by 3
John Locke
influenced by
Nozick started from Locke’s state of nature and natural rights and reworked his proviso on just acquisition for an entitlement theory of justice (Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 1974). R. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974); J. Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1689); SEP “Libertarianism”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
John Locke › 1632–1704
Immanuel Kant
influenced by
Nozick grounded his side constraints in Kant’s principle that individuals are ends and not merely means, ruling out sacrificing some for others (Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 1974). R. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974); SEP “Libertarianism”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Immanuel Kant › 1724–1804
Carl Gustav Hempel studied with
studied with
Nozick wrote his Princeton dissertation, The Normative Theory of Individual Choice (1963), under Hempel’s supervision; it was printed in 1990. R. Nozick, The Normative Theory of Individual Choice (diss. Princeton 1963; printed 1990)
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Carl Gustav Hempel › 1905–1997
Criticism
Criticized by 2
Alasdair MacIntyre
criticised by
MacIntyre argued that Nozick’s entitlement theory, like Rawls’s, leaves out desert, and that their rival premises cannot be rationally settled in our culture (After Virtue, 1981, ch. 17). A. MacIntyre, After Virtue (1981), ch. 17 “Justice as a Virtue: Changing Conceptions”
Evidence: AI draft
Alasdair MacIntyre › 1929–2025
Charles Taylor
criticised by
Taylor argued against Nozick’s primacy of rights that ascribing rights presupposes an obligation to sustain the society in which the capacities they protect can develop (‘Atomism’, 1979). C. Taylor, “Atomism”, in A. Kontos (ed.), Powers, Possessions and Freedom (1979), repr. in Philosophical Papers 2 (1985)
Evidence: AI draft
Charles Taylor › b. 1931
Criticizes 1
John Rawls
criticised
Nozick objected that Rawls’s patterned principles can be upheld only by continual interference with free transactions, as the Wilt Chamberlain case shows (Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 1974). R. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), ch. 7
Evidence: AI draft
John Rawls › 1921–2002
Works
The minimal state – and Wilt Chamberlain against Rawls.
Position
Anarchy, State, and Utopia answered Rawls from a libertarian standpoint. Individuals have rights, Nozick argued, that set strict limits on what others and the state may do to them. Only a minimal state, limited to protection against force, theft and fraud, is justified; any more extensive state violates rights, for example by redistributing through taxation. A distribution is just not because it matches a pattern, but if it arose from just acquisition and voluntary transfer – the “entitlement theory.” His Wilt Chamberlain example was meant to show that liberty upsets patterns. In the same book he devised the “experience machine” to argue that we care about more than pleasant experiences. Nozick later distanced himself from parts of his libertarianism.
Life & context
Nozick was born in Brooklyn in 1938 to a family of Russian Jewish immigrants. He studied at Columbia and Princeton and from 1969 taught at Harvard, where he was a colleague of John Rawls. His wide-ranging interests extended from political philosophy to epistemology, decision theory and the meaning of life. He died in 2002.
Further main works
- Philosophical Explanations (1981)
- The Examined Life (1989)
- The Nature of Rationality (1993)
Appears in
- Journey ‘What Is Just?’ · Stop 8 of 10
- Debate ‘Justice and Equality’
- Debate ‘A Right to Die? Assisted Dying’
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