Robert Nozick

Robert Nozick
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Analytic · Political

Robert Nozick (November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher and Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University. Schooled at Columbia, Princeton, and Oxford, he was a prominent American political philosopher in the 1970s and 1980s. He did additional but less influential work in such subjects as decision theory and epistemology. His Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) was a libertarian answer to John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, published in 1971. He was born in Brooklyn, the son of a Jewish entrepreneur from Russia, and married the American poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg. Nozick died in 2002 after a prolonged struggle with cancer. His remains are interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Philosophical achievements

Politics

Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), which received a National Book Award, argues among other things that a distribution of goods is just if brought about by free exchange among consenting adults and from a just starting position, even if large inequalities subsequently emerge from the process. Nozick appealed to the Kantian idea that people should be treated as ends (what he termed 'separateness of persons'), not merely as a means to some other end. Nozick here challenges the basis of John Rawls's conclusion, in A Theory of Justice, that just inequalities in distribution must benefit the least well off.

Anarchy, State and Utopia built on Lockean natural rights theory, primarily sourced from Second Treatise of Government, and sought to make Locke relevant in the 20th century. Nozick handled Locke's theory better than perhaps any other modern philosopher and suggested, again as a critique of utilitarianism, that the sacrosanctity of life made property rights non-negotiable. This principle has served as a foundation for many libertarian pitches in to modern politics, but also remains an unresolved issue for libertarians who claim to base their principles on utilitarianism.

Nozick retreated from some of the views he expressed in Anarchy, State, and Utopia in one of his later books, The Examined Life, calling those views "seriously inadequate." In a 2001 interview, however, he clarified his position: "What I was really saying in The Examined Life was that I was no longer as hardcore a libertarian as I had been before. But the rumors of my deviation from libertarianism were much exaggerated."

Epistemology

In Philosophical Explanations (1981), which received the Phi Beta Kappa Society's Waldo Emerson Award, Nozick provides novel accounts of knowledge, free will, personal identity, the nature of value, and the meaning of life. He also put forward an epistemological system which attempted to deal with both Edmund Gettier-style problems and those posed by skepticism. This highly influential argument eschewed justification as a necessary requirement for knowledge.

Nozick's Four Conditions for S's knowing of p were:

(1) p is true

(2) S believes p using method M

(3) If it were the case that not-p, then S would not, using M, believe p

(4) If it were the case that p, then S would, using M, believe p

Nozick's third and fourth conditions are Counterfactuals. Nozick calls his theory the 'tracking theory' of knowledge. Nozick believes that the counterfactual conditionals bring out an important aspect of our intuitive grasp of knowledge: For any given fact, the believer's method must reliably track the truth despite varying relevant conditions. In this way, Nozick's theory is similar to reliabilism.

The Examined Life

The Examined Life (1989), pitched to a broader public, explores love, death, faith, reality, and the meaning of life. The Nature of Rationality (1993) presents a theory of practical reason that attempts to embellish notoriously spartan classical decision theory. Socratic Puzzles (1997) is a collection of papers that range in topic from Ayn Rand and Austrian economics to animal rights, while his last production, Invariances (2001) applies insights from physics and biology to questions of objectivity in such areas as the nature of necessity and moral value.

Criticisms of Utilitarianism

He created the thought experiment of the Utility monster in order to show that average utilitarianism could lead to a situation where the needs of the vast majority were sacrificed for one individual.

Unusual method

Nozick was notable for his curious, exploratory style and methodological ecumenism. Often content to raise tantalizing philosophical possibilities and then leave judgment to the reader, Nozick was also notable for inventively drawing from literature outside of philosophy (e.g., economics, physics, evolutionary biology) to infuse his work with freshness and relevance.

Writings

• Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World (2001/2003) ISBN 0-674-01245-3
• Socratic Puzzles (1997) ISBN 0-674-81653-6
• The Nature of Rationality (1993/1995) ISBN 0-691-02096-5
• The Examined Life (1989) ISBN 0-671-72501-7
• Philosophical Explanations (1981) ISBN 0-19-824672-2
• Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) ISBN 0-631-19780-X

See also

• Liberalism
• Contributions to liberal theory
• Libertarianism
• Minarchism

References

• G.A. Cohen (1995), Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, Oxford UP. A widely-cited criticism of Nozick.
• Robinson, Dave & Groves, Judy (2003). Introducing Political Philosophy. Icon Books. ISBN 1-84046-450-X.
• Wolff, Jonathan (1991), Robert Nozick: Property, Justice, and the Minimal State. Polity Press.
• David Lewis Schaefer, Robert Nozick and the Coast of Utopia, The New York Sun, April 30, 2008.

External links

• Obituary by The Daily Telegraph
• Obituary by The Guardian
• Obituary by The Independent
• Philosopher Nozick dies at 63 From the Harvard Gazette
• Robert Nozick Memorial minute
• Robert Nozick (1938-2002) by Edward Feser
• A summary of the political philosophy of Robert Nozick by R. N. Johnson
• Robert Nozick, Libertarianism, And Utopia by Jonathan Wolff
• Nozick on Newcomb's Problem and Prisoners' Dilemma by S. L. Hurley
• Robert Nozick: Against Distributive Justice by R.J. Kilcullen
• Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism? by Robert Nozick
• Open Directory Project - Robert Nozick directory category
• Robert Nozick, Philosopher of Liberty by Roderick T. Long