Robert Nozick (1938–2003) US academic and political philosopher. Nozick’s major work, Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974) is widely seen as one of the most important modern works of political philosophy, and has had a profound influence upon New Right theories and beliefs.
Nozick’s work is often interpreted as a response to the ideas of John Rawls and is seen, more broadly, as part of a right-wing backlash against the post-1945 growth in state power. He developed a form of libertarianism that draws upon the ideas of Locke and was influenced by nineteenth-century US individualists such as Spooner (1808–87) and Tucker (1854–1939). At its core is an entitlement theory of justice that takes certain rights to be inviolable, and rejects the notion that social justice requires that a society’s income and wealth be distributed according to a particular pattern. In particular, Nozick argued that property rights should be strictly upheld, provided that wealth has been justly acquired in the first place or has been justly transferred from one person to another. In short, ‘whatever arises from a just situation by just steps is itself just’. On this basis, he rejected all forms of welfare and redistribution as theft. Nozick nevertheless supported a ‘minimal state’, which he believed would inevitably develop from a hypothetical state of nature. Some of the conclusions of Anarchy, State and Utopia were moderated in The Examined Life (1989).
Post a Comment