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Robert Nozick was an American philosopher. He held the Joseph Pellegrino University Professorship at Harvard University, and was president of the American Philosophical Association. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice (1971), in which Nozick proposes his minimal state as the only justifiable form of government. Hi…
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culture · American political philosopher (1938–2002) · philosopher · university teacher · political scientist · also Robert Nozick, Robert Edwin Nozick, Nozick
Born 16 November 1938 · Died 23 January 2002 · Q205927
17 published statements · 0 followers
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From Mr. Nozick you always expect fireworks, even if some of them go off in their box...Start pondering a sentence and you will find yourself led away prematurely by a parenthetical question; think about the question and you will be dragged into a discursive footnote...Yet it is worth the effort – certainly for regular readers of philosophy, and often for others.
now [seem] seriously inadequate
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“From Mr. Nozick you always expect fireworks, even if some of them go off in their box...Start pondering a sentence and you will find yourself led away prematurely by a parenthetical question; think about the question and you will be dragged into a discursive footnote...Yet it is worth the effort – certainly for regular readers of philosophy, and often for others.”
“now [seem] seriously inadequate”
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New Republic: Robert Nozick, Wilt Chamberlin, And the Reality Of Inequality
openDemocracy: Robert Nozick, anarcho-capitalist
The Guardian: Robert Nozick
Died 2002-01-23.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
After a prolonged struggle with stomach cancer
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“When I was 15 years old, or 16, I carried around on the streets of Brooklyn a paperback copy of Plato's Republic, front cover facing outward. I had read only some of it and understood less, but I was excited by it and knew it was something wonderful.”
“Our principles fix what our life stands for, our aims create the light our life is bathed in, and our rationality, both individual and coordinate, defines and symbolizes the distance we have come from mere animality. It is by these means that our lives come to more than what they instrumentally yield. And by meaning more, our lives yield more.”
“Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?”
“Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited, to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified, but any more extensive state will violate persons' rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right.”
Nozick died in 2002 after a prolonged struggle with stomach cancer.
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Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship (1996).
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“Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?”
Awarded Ralph Waldo Emerson Award (1982).
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Awarded National Book Award (1975).
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Born 1938-11-16.
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