Robert Nozick

Short description: American political philosopher (1938–2002)

Robert Nozick

Nozick in 1977

Born| (1938-11-16)November 16, 1938

New York City, U.S.

Died| January 23, 2002(2002-01-23) (aged 63)

Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.

Education| Columbia University (BA)
Princeton University (PhD)
Oxford University
Era| 20th-century philosophy
Region| Western philosophy
School| Analytic philosophy
Libertarianism
Doctoral advisors| Carl Gustav Hempel

Main interests

| Political philosophy, ethics, epistemology

Notable ideas

| Utility monster, experience machine, entitlement theory of justice, night-watchman state, Nozick's Lockean proviso,[1] Wilt Chamberlain argument, paradox of deontology,[2] deductive closure, Nozick's four conditions on knowledge, rejection of the principle of epistemic closure

Robert Nozick (/ˈnoʊzɪk/; November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher. He held the Joseph Pellegrino University Professorship at Harvard University,[3] 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. His later work Philosophical Explanations (1981) advanced notable epistemological claims, namely his counterfactual theory of knowledge. It won Phi Beta Kappa society's Ralph Waldo Emerson Award the following year.

Nozick's other work involved ethics, decision theory, philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. His final work before his death, Invariances (2001), introduced his theory of evolutionary cosmology, by which he argues invariances, and hence objectivity itself, emerged through evolution across possible worlds.[4]

Template:Liberalism US

## Contents

* 1 Personal life
* 2 Career and works
* 2.1 Political philosophy
* 2.2 Thought experiments regarding utilitarianism
* 2.3 Epistemology
* 2.4 Later works
* 2.5 Later reflections on libertarianism
* 2.6 Philosophical method
* 3 Bibliography
* 4 See also
* 5 Notes
* 6 References
* 7 Further reading
* 8 External links

## Personal life

Nozick was born in Brooklyn to a family of Jewish descent. His mother was born Sophie Cohen; his father, also born with the name Cohen, came from a Russian shtetl and ran a small business.[5]

Nozick attended the public schools in Brooklyn. He was then educated at Columbia University (A.B. 1959, summa cum laude), where he studied with Sidney Morgenbesser; Princeton University (PhD 1963) under Carl Hempel; and at Oxford University as a Fulbright Scholar (1963–1964). He was a visiting fellow at St Catherine's College, Oxford in 1997.

At one point, Nozick joined the Young People's Socialist League, and at Columbia University he founded the local chapter of the Student League for Industrial Democracy. He began to move away from socialist ideals when exposed to Friedrich Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty, claiming he "was pulled into libertarianism reluctantly" when he found himself unable to form satisfactory responses to libertarian arguments.[6] Nozick was initiated into the Alpha-Tau chapter of the Kappa Sigma fraternity while at Columbia in 1956.

After receiving his undergraduate degree in 1959, he married Barbara Fierer. They had two children, Emily and David. The Nozicks eventually divorced; Nozick later married the poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg.

Nozick died in 2002 after a prolonged struggle with stomach cancer.[7] He was interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

## Career and works

### Political philosophy

Template:Libertarianism US Nozick's first book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), argues that only a minimal state limited to the functions of protection against "force, fraud, theft, and administering courts of law" can be justified, as any more extensive state would violate people's individual rights.[8]

Nozick believed that a distribution of goods is just when brought about by free exchange among consenting adults, trading from a baseline position where the principles of entitlement theory are upheld. In one example, Nozick uses the example of basketball player Wilt Chamberlain to show that even when large inequalities subsequently emerge from the processes of free transfer (i.e. paying extra money just to watch Wilt Chamberlain play), the resulting distributions are just so long as all consenting parties have freely consented to such exchanges.

Anarchy, State, and Utopia is often contrasted to John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in popular academic discourse, as it challenged the partial conclusion of Rawls's difference principle, that "social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are to be of greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society".

Nozick's philosophy also claims to heritage from John Locke's Second Treatise on Government and seeks to ground Locke's state of nature, but breaks distinctly with Locke on the question of self-ownership by attempting to secularize his doctrine of natural law without accepting it.[9] Instead, Nozick appealed to the second formulation of Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative: that people should be treated as an end in themselves, not merely as a means to an end. Nozick terms this the 'separateness of persons', saying that "there is no social entity...there are only individual people", and that we ought to "respect and take account of the fact that [each individual] is a separate person".[10]

Most controversially, Nozick argued that consistent application of libertarian self-ownership would allow for consensual, non-coercive enslavement contracts between adults.[11] He rejected the notion of inalienable rights advanced by Locke and most contemporary capitalist-oriented libertarian academics, writing in Anarchy, State, and Utopia that the typical notion of a "free system" would allow individuals to voluntarily enter into non-coercive slave contracts.[12][13][14][15]

Anarchy, State, and Utopia received a National Book Award in the category of Philosophy and Religion in the year following its original publication.[16]

### Thought experiments regarding utilitarianism

Early sections of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, akin to the introduction of A Theory of Justice, see Nozick implicitly join Rawls's attempts to discredit utilitarianism. Nozick's case differs somewhat in that it mainly targets hedonism and relies on a variety of thought experiments, although both works draw from Kantian principles.

Most famously, Nozick introduced the experience machine in an attempt to show that ethical hedonism is not truly what individuals desire, nor what we ought to desire:

> There are also substantial puzzles when we ask what matters other than how people's experiences feel "from the inside." Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life's experiences?[17]

Nozick claims that life in an experience machine would have no value, and provides several explanations as to why this might be, including (but not limited to): the want to do certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them; the want to actually become a certain sort of person; and that plugging into an experience machine limits us to a man-made reality.

Another thought experiment Nozick proposes is the utility monster, designed to show that average utilitarianism could lead to a situation where the needs of the vast majority were sacrificed for one individual. In his exploration of deontological ethics and animal rights, Nozick coins the phrase "utilitarianism for animals, Kantianism for people", wherein the separateness of individual humans is acknowledged but the only moral metric assigned to animals is that of maximizing pleasure:

> [Utilitarianism for animals, Kantianism for people] says: (1) maximize the total happiness of all living beings; (2) place stringent side constraints on what one may do to human beings.[18]

Before introducing the utility monster, Nozick raises a hypothetical scenario where someone might, "by some strange causal connection", kill 10,000 unowned cows painlessly by snapping their fingers, asking whether it would be morally wrong to do so.[19] On the calculus of pleasure that "utilitarianism for animals, Kantianism for people" uses, assuming the death of these cows could be used to provide pleasure for humans in some way, then the (painless) deaths of the cows would be morally permissible as it has no negative impact upon the utilitarian equation.

Nozick later explicitly raises the example of utility monsters to "embarrass [utilitarian theory]": since humans benefit from the mass sacrifice and consumption of animals, and also possess the ability to kill them painlessly (i.e., without any negative effect on the utilitarian calculation of net pleasure), it is permissible to humans to maximize their consumption of meat so long as they derive pleasure from it. Nozick takes issue with this as it makes animals "too subordinate" to humans, counter to his view that animals ought to "count for something".[20]a

### Epistemology

In Philosophical Explanations (1981), Nozick provided 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 the Gettier problem and those posed by skepticism. This highly influential argument eschewed justification as a necessary requirement for knowledge.[21]: ch. 7

Nozick gives four conditions for S's knowing that P (S=Subject / P=Proposition):

1. P is true
2. S believes that P
3. If it were the case that (not-P), S would not believe that P
4. If it were the case that P, S would believe that P

Nozick's third and fourth conditions are counterfactuals. He called this the "tracking theory" of knowledge. Nozick believed the counterfactual conditionals bring out an important aspect of our intuitive grasp of knowledge: For any given fact, the believer's method (M) must reliably track the truth despite varying relevant conditions. In this way, Nozick's theory is similar to reliabilism. Due to certain counterexamples that could otherwise be raised against these counterfactual conditions, Nozick specified that:

3. If P weren't the case and S were to use M to arrive at a belief whether or not P, then S wouldn't believe, via M, that P.
4. If P were the case and S were to use M to arrive at a belief whether or not P, then S would believe, via M, that P.
[22]

A major feature of Nozick's theory of knowledge is his rejection of the principle of deductive closure. This principle states that if S knows X and S knows that X implies Y, then S knows Y. Nozick's truth tracking conditions do not allow for the principle of deductive closure.

### Later works

The Examined Life (1989), aimed towards a more general audience, explores themes of love, the impact of death, questions of faith, the nature of reality, and the meaning of life. The book takes its name from the quote by Socrates, that "the unexamined life is not worth living". In it, Nozick attempts to find meaning in everyday experiences, and considers how we might come to feel "more real".[23] In this pursuit, Nozick discusses the death of his father, reappraises the experience machine, and proposes "the matrix of reality" as a means of understanding how individuals might better connect with reality in their own lives.[24]

The Nature of Rationality (1993) presents a theory of practical reason that attempts to embellish classical decision theory. In this work, Nozick grapples with Newcomb's problem and the Prisoner's Dilemma, and introduces the concept of symbolic utility to explain how actions might symbolize certain ideas, rather than being carried out to maximize expected utility in the future.

Socratic Puzzles (1997) is a collection of Nozick's previous papers alongside some new essays. While the discussions are quite disparate, the essays generally draw from Nozick's previous interests in both politics and philosophy. Notably, this includes Nozick's 1983 review of The Case for Animal Rights by Tom Regan, where he says animal rights activists are often considered "cranks" and appears to go back on the vegetarian position he previously maintained in Anarchy, State and Utopia.[25][26]

Nozick's final work, Invariances (2001), applies insights from physics and biology to questions of objectivity in such areas as the nature of necessity and moral value. Nozick introduces his theory of truth, in which he leans towards a deflationary theory of truth, but argues that objectivity arises through being invariant under various transformations. For example, space-time is a significant objective fact because an interval involving both temporal and spatial separation is invariant, whereas no simpler interval involving only temporal or only spatial separation is invariant under Lorentz transformations. Nozick argues that invariances, and hence objectivity itself, emerged through a theory of evolutionary cosmology across possible worlds.[27]

### Later reflections on libertarianism

Nozick pronounced some misgivings about libertarianism – specifically his own work Anarchy, State and Utopia – in his later publications. Some later editions of The Examined Life advertise this fact explicitly in the blurb, saying Nozick "refutes his earlier claims of libertarianism" in one of the book's essays, "The Zigzag of Politics". In the introduction of The Examined Life, Nozick says his earlier works on political philosophy "now [seem] seriously inadequate", and later repeats this claim in the first chapter of The Nature of Rationality.[28][29]

In these works, Nozick also praised political ideals which ran contrary to the arguments canvassed in Anarchy, State and Utopia. In The Examined Life, Nozick proposes wealth redistribution via an inheritance tax and upholds the value of liberal democracy.[30] In The Nature of Rationality, Nozick calls truth a primary good, explicitly appropriating Rawls' A Theory of Justice.[31] In the same work, however, Nozick implies that minimum wage laws are unjust,b and later denigrates Marxism before vindicating capitalism, making reference to Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations.[32]

Nozick also broke away from libertarian principles in his own personal life, invoking rent control laws against Erich Segal – who was at one point Nozick's landlord – and winning over $30,000 in a settlement. Nozick later claimed to regret doing this, saying he was moved by "intense irritation" with Segal and his legal representatives at the time, and was quoted in an interview saying "sometimes you have to do what you have to do".[33]

Some of Nozick's later works seem to endorse libertarian principles. In Invariances, Nozick advances the "four layers of ethics", which at its core maintains an explicitly libertarian underpinning.[34] In Socratic Puzzles, Nozick republished some of his old essays with a libertarian grounding, such as "Coercion" and "On The Randian Argument", alongside new essays such as "On Austrian Methodology" and "Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?". However, Nozick does allude to some continued reservations about libertarianism in its introduction, saying that "it is disconcerting to be known primarily for an early work".[35]

Scholars and journalists have since debated what Nozick's true political position was before the end of his life.[36] Writing for Slate, Stephen Metcalf notes one of Nozick's core claims in The Examined Life, that actions done through government serve as markers of "our human solidarity". Metcalf then postulates that Nozick felt this was threatened by neoliberal politics.[37] Libertarian journalist Julian Sanchez, who interviewed Nozick shortly before his death, claims that Nozick "always thought of himself as a libertarian in a broad sense, right up to his final days, even as his views became somewhat less 'hardcore'".[38]

### Philosophical method

Nozick was sometimes admired for the exploratory style of his philosophizing, often content to raise tantalizing philosophical possibilities and then leave judgment to the reader. In his review of The Nature of Rationality, Anthony Gottlieb praised this style, noting its place in Nozick's approach to writing philosophy:

> "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."[39]

Jason Brennan has related this point to Nozick's "surprising amount of humility, at least in his writings". Brennan makes a point of showing how this enabled Nozick to reach surprising conclusions while also drawing attention to one of Nozick's more famous quotes which also made the headline of his obituary in The Economist, that "there is room for words on subjects other than last words".[40][41]

Nozick was also notable for drawing from literature outside of philosophy, namely economics, physics, evolutionary biology, decision theory, anthropology, and computer science, amongst other disciplines.[42]

## Bibliography

* Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) ISBN 063119780X
* Philosophical Explanations (1981) ISBN 0198246722
* The Examined Life (1989) ISBN 0671725017
* The Nature of Rationality (1993/1995) ISBN 0691020965
* Socratic Puzzles (1997) ISBN 0674816536
* Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World (2001/2003) ISBN 0674012453

## See also

* American philosophy
* Classical liberalism
* List of American philosophers
* List of liberal theorists
* Neoclassical liberalism
* A Theory of Justice: The Musical! – in which a fictional Nozick is one of the characters

## Notes

a.^ Nozick's discussion of animal rights pre-dates Peter Singer's more comprehensive Animal Liberation. Singer's utilitarian position on animal rights was known to Nozick at the time, however, and he expresses misgivings about this in Chapter 3 (footnote 11) of Anarchy, State and Utopia.
b.^ From p. 27 of The Nature of Rationality: "On these grounds, one might claim that certain antidrug enforcement measures symbolize reducing the amount of drug use and that minimum wage laws symbolize helping the poor"

## References

1. ↑ Mack, Eric (May 30, 2019). "Robert Nozick's Political Philosophy". in Zalta, Edward N.. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/nozick-political/. Retrieved May 30, 2019.
2. ↑ "How can a concern for the non-violation of C [i.e. some deontological constraint] lead to refusal to violate C even when this would prevent other more extensive violations of C?": Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, Basic Books (1974), p. 30 as quoted by Ulrike Heuer, "Paradox of Deontology, Revisited", in: Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics. Oxford University Press (2011).
3. ↑ "Robert Nozick, 1938–2002". Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, November 2002: 76(2).
4. ↑ Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, Vol. 1, edited by John R. Shook, Thoemmes Press, 2005, p. 1838
5. ↑ "Professor Robert Nozick" (in en-GB). Daily Telegraph. 2002. ISSN 0307-1235. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1382871/Professor-Robert-Nozick.html.
6. ↑ Albert Zlabinger (December 1, 1977). "An Interview with Robert Nozick". CATO Institute. https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/interview-robert-nozick.
7. ↑ For biographies, memorials, and obituaries see:
* Feser, Edward (May 4, 2005). "Robert Nozick (1938–2002)". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/nozick/. Retrieved January 2, 2012.
* "Obituary:Professor Robert Nozick". Daily Telegraph. January 28, 2002. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1382871/Professor-Robert-Nozick.html.
* Ryan, Alan (April 12, 2014). "Obituary: Professor Robert Nozick". The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor-robert-nozick-9255897.html.
* Schaefer, David Lewis. "Robert Nozick and the Coast of Utopia". http://www.nysun.com/arts/robert-nozick-and-the-coast-of-utopia/75572/.
* O'Grady, Jane (February 1, 2007). "Robert Nozick: Leftwing political philosopher whose rightward shift set the tone for the Reagan-Thatcher era". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/jan/26/guardianobituaries.socialsciences. "correction from original of 26 January 2002"
* Philosopher Nozick dies at 63 From the Harvard Gazette
* Robert Nozick Memorial minute
8. ↑ Feser, Edward. "Robert Nozick (1938—2002)". https://www.iep.utm.edu/nozick/.
9. ↑ Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York, NY: Basic Books. Chapter 1. p. 9: Only when some divergence between our conception and Locke's is relevant to political philosophy, to our argument about the state, will it be mentioned. The completely accurate statement of the moral background, including the precise statement of the moral cheory and its underlying basis, would require a full-scale presentation and is a task for another time. (A lifetime?) That task is so crucial, the gap left without its accomplishment so yawning, that it is only a minor comfort to note that we here are following the respectable tradition of Locke, who does not provide anything remotely resembling a satisfactory explanation of the status and basis of the law of nature in his Second Treatise.
10. ↑ Nozick, Robert (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Basic Books. pp. 32–33.
11. ↑ Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York, NY: Basic Books. Chapter 10. p. 331.
12. ↑ Ellerman, David (September 2005). "Translatio versus Concessio: Retrieving the Debate about Contracts of Alienation with an Application to Today's Employment Contract". Politics & Society (Sage Publications) 35 (3): 449–80. doi:10.1177/0032329205278463. http://ellerman.org/Davids-Stuff/Econ&Pol-Econ;/translatio-v-concessio-P-and-S-final.pdf. Retrieved April 17, 2017.
13. ↑ A summary of the political philosophy of Robert Nozick by R. N. Johnson
14. ↑ Jonathan Wolff (October 25, 2007). "Robert Nozick, Libertarianism, And Utopia"
15. ↑ Nozick on Newcomb's Problem and Prisoners' Dilemma by S. L. Hurley
16. ↑ "National Book Awards – 1975 National Book Foundation. Retrieved March 8, 2012. .
17. ↑ Nozick, Robert (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Basic Books. pp. 42–43.
18. ↑ Nozick, Robert (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Basic Books. p. 39.
19. ↑ Nozick, Robert (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Basic Books. p. 36.
20. ↑ Nozick, Robert (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Basic Books. pp. 35–42.
21. ↑ Schmidtz, David (2002). Robert Nozick. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521006716.
22. ↑ Keith Derose, Solving the Skeptical Problem
23. ↑ Nozick, Robert (1989). The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations, pp. 7–8, 15. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0671725013
24. ↑ Nozick, Robert (1989). The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations, pp. 182–183. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0671725013
25. ↑ Nozick, Robert (1989). Socratic Puzzles, pp. 280–285. Harvard University Press.
26. ↑ "Animal Rights". The New York Times. 18 December 1983. https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/18/books/l-animal-rights-098012.html.
27. ↑ Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, Vol. 1, edited by John R. Shook, A&C Black, 2005, p. 1838
28. ↑ Nozick, Robert (1989). The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations, p. 17. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0671725013
29. ↑ Nozick, Robert (1989). The Nature of Rationality, p. 32. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691020965
30. ↑ Nozick, Robert (1989). The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations, pp. 28–32. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0671725013
31. ↑ Nozick, Robert (1989). The Nature of Rationality, p. 68. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691020965
32. ↑ Nozick, Robert (1989). The Nature of Rationality, p. 27, 130–131. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691020965
33. ↑ Sanchez, Julian (April 8, 2003). "Nozick's Apartment". https://www.juliansanchez.com/2003/04/08/nozicks-apartment/.
34. ↑ Nozick, Robert (2001). Invariances, pp. 280–282. Harvard University Press
35. ↑ Nozick, Robert (1989). Socratic Puzzles, p. 17. Harvard University Press.
36. ↑ Herbjørnsrud, Dag (2002). Leaving Libertarianism: Social Ties in Robert Nozick's New Philosophy. Oslo, Norway: University of Oslo. https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/25070. Retrieved October 12, 2015.
37. ↑ Metcalf, Stephen (June 24, 2011). "The Liberty Scam: Why even Robert Nozick, the philosophical father of libertarianism, gave up on the movement he inspired". http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_dilettante/2011/06/the_liberty_scam.html.
38. ↑ Julian Sanchez, "Nozick, Libertarianism, and Thought Experiments" .
39. ↑ Gottlieb, Anthony (August 22, 1993). "Why Do You Do the Things You Do?" (in en-US). The New York Review of Books. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/22/books/why-do-you-do-the-things-you-do.html.
40. ↑ Brennan, Jason (June 29, 2011). "Nozick on Philosophical Explorations: There is Room for Words other than Last Words" (in en-US). Bleeding Heart Libertarians. https://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2011/06/nozick-on-philosophical-explorations-there-is-room-for-words-other-than-last-words/.
41. ↑ "Not all words need be last words" (in en-US). The Economist. https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2002/01/31/not-all-words-need-be-last-words.
42. ↑ Williams, Bernard. "Cosmic Philosopher" (in en-US). The New York Review of Books. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1982/02/18/cosmic-philosopher/.

## Further reading

* Borradori, Giovanna (2008). The American Philosopher : Conversations with Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Nozick, Danto, Rorty, Cavell, MacIntyre, Kuhn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226066493.
* Cohen, G. A. (1995). "Robert Nozick and Wilt Chamberlain: How Patterns Preserve Liberty". Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 19–37. ISBN 978-0521471749. OCLC 612482692.
* Dilman, Ilham (2011). Philosophy as criticism : essays on Dennett, Searle, Foot, Davidson, Nozick. New York: Continuum. ISBN 9786613271846.
* Frankel Paul, Ellen; Fred D. Miller, Jr. and Jeffrey Paul (eds.), (2004) Natural Rights Liberalism from Locke to Nozick, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521615143
* Frankel Paul, Ellen (2008). "Nozick, Robert (1938–2002)". in Hamowy, Ronald. The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Cato Institute. pp. 360–62. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n220. ISBN 978-1412965804. OCLC 750831024. https://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
* Mack, Eric (2014) Robert Nozick's Political Philosophy , Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, June 22, 2014.
* Robinson, Dave & Groves, Judy (2003). Introducing Political Philosophy. Icon Books. ISBN 184046450X.
* Schaefer, David Lewis (2008) Robert Nozick and the Coast of Utopia , The New York Sun, April 30, 2008.
* Wolff, Jonathan (1991), Robert Nozick: Property, Justice, and the Minimal State. Polity Press. ISBN 978-0745680453
* Kymlicka, Will (2002). Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chapter 4 Libertarianism. ISBN 0198782748.
* Papaioannou, Theo (2010). Robert Nozick's Moral and Political Theory : A Philosophical Critique of Libertarianism. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 9780773436541.

## External links

* Robert Nozick: Political Philosophy – overview of Nozick in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
* Robert Nozick at Find a Grave

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(Right-libertarianism)|

* Anarcho-capitalism
* Autarchism
* Christian libertarianism
* Conservative libertarianism
* Consequentialist libertarianism
* Fusionism
* Libertarian transhumanism
* Minarchism
* Natural-rights libertarianism
* Paleolibertarianism
* Propertarianism
* Voluntaryism

Concepts|

* Anti-authoritarianism
* Anti-capitalism
* Antimilitarism
* Anti-statism
* Argumentation ethics
* Class struggle
* Communes
* Counter-economics
* Crypto-anarchism
* Decentralization
* Direct action
* Economic democracy
* Economic freedom
* Egalitarianism
* Expropriative anarchism
* Federalism (anarchist)
* Free association (Marxism and anarchism)
* Free love
* Free market
* Free-market environmentalism
* Free migration
* Free society
* Free trade
* Freedom of association
* Freedom of contract
* Global Justice Movement
* Gift economy
* Homestead principle
* Illegalism
* Individualism
* Individual reclamation
* Liberty
* Localism
* Natural and legal rights
* Night-watchman state
* Non-aggression principle
* Non-voting
* Participatory economics
* Polycentric law
* Private defense agency
* Propaganda of the deed
* Property is theft
* Really Really Free Market
* Refusal of work
* Restorative justice
* Self-governance
* Self-ownership
* Single tax
* Social ecology
* Spontaneous order
* Squatting
* Stateless society
* Tax resistance
* Title-transfer theory of contract
* Voluntary society
* Workers' councils
* Workers' self-management

People|

* Stephen Pearl Andrews
* Mikhail Bakunin
* Frédéric Bastiat
* Walter Block
* Murray Bookchin
* Jason Brennan
* Bryan Caplan
* Kevin Carson
* Frank Chodorov
* Noam Chomsky
* Grover Cleveland
* Calvin Coolidge
* Voltairine de Cleyre
* Joseph Déjacque
* Ralph Waldo Emerson
* David D. Friedman
* Milton Friedman
* Mahatma Gandhi
* Henry George
* William Godwin
* Emma Goldman
* Barry Goldwater
* David Graeber
* William Batchelder Greene
* Daniel Hannan
* Friedrich Hayek
* Auberon Herbert
* Karl Hess
* Thomas Hodgskin
* Hans-Hermann Hoppe
* Michael Huemer
* Penn Jillette
* Gary Johnson
* Samuel Edward Konkin III
* Janusz Korwin-Mikke
* Étienne de La Boétie
* Rose Wilder Lane
* David Leyonhjelm
* Roderick T. Long
* Lord Acton
* Tibor Machan
* Wendy McElroy
* Ludwig von Mises
* Gustave de Molinari
* Albert Jay Nock
* Robert Nozick
* Isabel Paterson
* Ron Paul
* Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
* Ralph Raico
* Ayn Rand
* Leonard Read
* Murray Rothbard
* Joseph Schumpeter
* Julian Simon
* Herbert Spencer
* Lysander Spooner
* Max Stirner
* John Stossel
* Thomas Szasz
* Henry David Thoreau
* Leo Tolstoy
* Benjamin Tucker
* Josiah Warren

Issues|

* Anarcho-capitalism and minarchism
* Criticism
* Intellectual property
* Internal debates
* LGBT rights
* Objectivism
* Political parties
* Theories of law

Books|

* Anarchy, State, and Utopia
* Atlas Shrugged
* For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto
* Free to Choose
* Law, Legislation and Liberty
* The Market for Liberty

Related|

* Anti-collectivism
* Anti-communism
* Anti-fascism
* Anti-socialism
* Austro-libertarianism
* Center for Libertarian Studies
* Civil libertarianism
* Constitutionalism
* Economic liberalism
* Fusionism
* Green libertarianism
* Libertarian conservatism
* Libertarian socialism
* Libertarian Democrat
* Libertarian Republican
* Libertarian science fiction
* Libertarianism in South Africa
* Libertarianism in the United Kingdom
* Libertarianism in the United States
* Objectivism
* Public choice theory
* Small government
* Technolibertarianism

* Libertarianism portal
* Outline of libertarianism

* v
* t
* e

Political philosophy

Terms|

* Authority
* Citizenship‎
* Duty
* Elite
* Emancipation
* Freedom
* Government
* Hegemony
* Hierarchy
* Justice
* Law
* Legitimacy
* Liberty
* Monopoly
* Nation
* Obedience
* Peace
* People
* Pluralism
* Power
* Progress
* Propaganda
* Property
* Regime
* Revolution
* Rights
* Ruling class
* Society
* Sovereignty‎
* State
* Utopia
* War

Government|

* Aristocracy
* Oligarchy
* Autocracy
* Bureaucracy
* Dictatorship
* Democracy
* Ochlocracy
* Gerontocracy
* Meritocracy
* Monarchy
* Tyranny
* Plutocracy
* Republic
* Technocracy
* Theocracy

Ideologies|

* Agrarianism
* Anarchism
* Capitalism
* Christian democracy
* Colonialism
* Communism
* Communitarianism
* Confucianism
* Conservatism
* Corporatism
* Distributism
* Environmentalism
* Fascism
* Feminism
* Feudalism
* Hindutva
* Imperialism
* Islamism
* Liberalism
* Libertarianism
* Localism
* Marxism
* Monarchism
* Multiculturalism
* Nationalism
* Nazism
* Populism
* Republicanism
* Social Darwinism
* Social democracy
* Socialism
* Third Way

Concepts|

* Balance of power
* Bellum omnium contra omnes
* Body politic
* Clash of civilizations
* Common good
* Consent of the governed
* Divine right of kings
* Family as a model for the state
* Monopoly on violence
* Natural law
* Negative and positive rights
* Night-watchman state
* Noble lie
* Noblesse oblige
* Open society
* Ordered liberty
* Original position
* Overton window
* Separation of powers
* Social contract
* State of nature
* Statolatry
* Supermajority
* Tyranny of the majority

Philosophers|

| Antiquity|

* Aristotle
* Chanakya
* Cicero
* Confucius
* Han Fei
* Lactantius
* Mencius
* Mozi
* Plato
* political philosophy
* Polybius
* Shang
* Sun Tzu
* Thucydides
* Xenophon

|

Middle Ages|

* Al-Farabi
* Aquinas
* Averroes
* Bruni
* Dante
* Gelasius
* al-Ghazali
* Ibn Khaldun
* Marsilius
* Muhammad
* Nizam al-Mulk
* Ockham
* Plethon
* Wang

Early modern
period|

* Boétie
* Bodin
* Bossuet
* Calvin
* Campanella
* Filmer
* Grotius
* Guicciardini
* Hobbes
* political philosophy
* James
* Leibniz
* Locke
* Luther
* Machiavelli
* Milton
* More
* Müntzer
* Pufendorf
* Spinoza
* Suárez

18th and 19th
centuries|

* Al-Afghani
* Bakunin
* Bastiat
* Beccaria
* Bentham
* Bolingbroke
* Bonald
* Burke
* Carlyle
* Comte
* Condorcet
* Constant
* Cortés
* Engels
* Fichte
* Fourier
* Franklin
* Godwin
* Haller
* Hegel
* Herder
* Hume
* Iqbal
* Jefferson
* Kant
* political philosophy
* Le Bon
* Le Play
* Madison
* Maistre
* Marx
* Mazzini
* Mill
* Montesquieu
* Nietzsche
* Owen
* Paine
* Renan
* Rousseau
* Sade
* Saint-Simon
* Smith
* Spencer
* de Staël
* Stirner
* Taine
* Thoreau
* Tocqueville
* Tucker
* Voltaire

20th and 21st
centuries|

* Agamben
* Ambedkar
* Apo
* Arendt
* Aron
* Badiou
* Bauman
* Benoist
* Berlin
* Bernstein
* Burnham
* Chomsky
* Dmowski
* Du Bois
* Dugin
* Dworkin
* Evola
* Fanon
* Fisher
* Foucault
* Fromm
* Fukuyama
* Gandhi
* Gentile
* Gramsci
* Guénon
* Habermas
* Hayek
* Hoppe
* Huntington
* Kautsky
* Khomeini
* Kirk
* Kropotkin
* Laclau
* Lenin
* Luxemburg
* Mansfield
* Mao
* Marcuse
* Maurras
* Michels
* Mises
* Mosca
* Mouffe
* Negri
* Nozick
* Nursi
* Nussbaum
* Oakeshott
* Ortega
* Pareto
* Popper
* Qutb
* Rand
* Rawls
* Röpke
* Rothbard
* Russell
* Sartre
* Savarkar
* Schmitt
* Scruton
* Shariati
* Sorel
* Spann
* Spengler
* Strauss
* Sun
* Taylor
* Voegelin
* Walzer
* Weber

Works|

* Republic (c.375 BCE)
* Politics (c.350 BCE)
* Analects of Confucius (c.475 BCE-1279 CE)
* On the Republic (51 BCE)
* Siyasatnama (11th century)
* Treatise on Law (c. 1274)
* Monarchy (1313)
* Muqaddimah (1337)
* The Prince (1532)
* Leviathan (1651)
* Two Treatises of Government (1689)
* The Spirit of Law (1748)
* The Social Contract (1762)
* Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
* Rights of Man (1791)
* Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820)
* Democracy in America (1835–1840)
* The Communist Manifesto (1848)
* On Liberty (1859)
* The Revolt of the Masses (1929)
* The Road to Serfdom (1944)
* The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
* The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
* The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
* A Theory of Justice (1971)
* The End of History and the Last Man (1992)

Related|

* Authoritarianism
* Collectivism and individualism
* Conflict theories
* Contractualism
* Critique of political economy
* Egalitarianism
* Elite theory
* Elitism
* History of political thought
* Institutional discrimination
* Jurisprudence
* Justification for the state
* Political ethics
* Political spectrum
* Left-wing politics
* Centrism
* Right-wing politics
* Religion in politics
* Christianity
* Islam
* Judaism
* Secular state
* Separation of church and state
* State atheism
* Political violence
* Separatism
* Social justice
* Statism
* Totalitarianism

* Category:Political philosophy

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