United StatesWho was Robert Nozick?
Robert Nozick was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1938, studied at Columbia and Princeton and joined the Harvard faculty permanently in 1969. His first book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), won the National Book Award and became the most prominent academic defense of libertarianism, written partly in response to his Harvard colleague John Rawls. Nozick later turned to other areas of philosophy in Philosophical Explanations (1981), The Examined Life (1989), The Nature of Rationality (1993) and Invariances (2001). He died of stomach cancer in 2002.
Political views
Argued that the only legitimate state is a minimal one, limited to protecting rights to life, liberty, property and contract.
Source: plato.stanford.eduHeld that the state should not redistribute income, make people moral or protect people from harming themselves.
Source: plato.stanford.eduClaimed that taxation of earnings is on a par with forced labor.
Source: plato.stanford.eduProposed an entitlement theory in which holdings are just if acquired and transferred justly, regardless of the overall pattern of distribution.
Source: plato.stanford.eduArgued that a minimal state could arise from protective associations through an invisible hand process without violating anyone's rights.
Source: plato.stanford.eduDescribed the minimal state as a framework for utopia in which people can form diverse voluntary communities.
Source: iep.utm.eduHeld that the minimal state does not impose taxes to fund its services, though a dominant protective agency may bar clients from using competing agencies.
Source: plato.stanford.edu
Legacy
Anarchy, State, and Utopia forced mainstream philosophy to engage seriously with libertarian ideas and remains a standard counterpoint to Rawls in courses on justice. Admirers value its arguments about rights and the limits of state power. Critics question whether his theory of just acquisition can justify existing property, and anarchists question whether the minimal state is stable or legitimate. Some readers saw his later writings as a retreat from libertarianism, though in 2001 he said he remained within its general framework.
In their words
Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights).