Robert Nozick was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
political philosopherPolitical philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. He is best known for his book
Anarchy, State, and UtopiaAnarchy, State, and Utopia is a work of political philosophy written by Robert Nozick in 1974. This minarchist book was the winner of the 1975 National Book Award...
(1974), a right-libertarian answer to
John RawlsJohn Bordley Rawls was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard University....
's
A Theory of JusticeA Theory of Justice is a book of political philosophy and ethics by John Rawls. It was originally published in 1971 and revised in both 1975 and 1999. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls attempts to solve the problem of distributive justice by utilising a variant of the familiar device of the social...
(1971). His other work involved
decision theoryDecision theory in economics, psychology, philosophy, mathematics, and statistics is concerned with identifying the values, uncertainties and other issues relevant in a given decision, its rationality, and the resulting optimal decision...
and
epistemology.
Personal life
Nozick was born in
BrooklynBrooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, the son of a Jewish entrepreneur from the Russian
shtetlA shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania...
who had been born with the name of Cohen. Nozick was married to the poet
Gjertrud SchnackenbergGjertrud Schnackenberg is an American poet.-Life:Schnackenberg graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1975. She lectured at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Washington University, and was Writer-in-Residence at Smith College and visiting fellow at St...
. He died in 2002 after a prolonged struggle with stomach
cancerCancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
. He is interred at
Mount Auburn CemeteryMount Auburn Cemetery was founded in 1831 as "America's first garden cemetery", or the first "rural cemetery", with classical monuments set in a rolling landscaped terrain...
in
Cambridge, MassachusettsCambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
.
Career and works
Nozick was educated at
ColumbiaColumbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
(
A.B.A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
1959,
summa cum laude), where he studied with
Sidney MorgenbesserSidney Morgenbesser was a Columbia University philosopher. Born in New York City, he undertook philosophical study at the City College of New York and rabbinical study at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, then pursued graduate study in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, where...
, and later at
PrincetonPrinceton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
(
Ph.D.A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
1963), and Oxford as a Fulbright Scholar.
Nozick's
Anarchy, State, and UtopiaAnarchy, State, and Utopia is a work of political philosophy written by Robert Nozick in 1974. This minarchist book was the winner of the 1975 National Book Award...
(1974), which received a
National Book AwardThe National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
, argues among other things that a distribution of goods is just if brought about by
free exchangeA free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
among consenting adults and from a just starting position, even if large
inequalitiesEconomic inequality comprises all disparities in the distribution of economic assets and income. The term typically refers to inequality among individuals and groups within a society, but can also refer to inequality among countries. The issue of economic inequality is related to the ideas of...
subsequently emerge from the process. Nozick appealed to the
KantianImmanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
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 partial conclusion of John Rawls's Second Principle of Justice of his
A Theory of JusticeA Theory of Justice is a book of political philosophy and ethics by John Rawls. It was originally published in 1971 and revised in both 1975 and 1999. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls attempts to solve the problem of distributive justice by utilising a variant of the familiar device of the social...
, 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."
Anarchy, State and Utopia claims a heritage from
John LockeJohn Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
's
Second Treatise on Government and tries to base itself upon a
natural lawNatural law, or the law of nature , is any system of law which is purportedly determined by nature, and thus universal. Classically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature and deduce binding rules of moral behavior. Natural law is contrasted with the positive law Natural...
doctrine. Locke only relied on natural law as God-given to counteract the King of England's claim to
divine rightThe divine right of kings or divine-right theory of kingship is a political and religious doctrine of royal and political legitimacy. It asserts that a monarch is subject to no earthly authority, deriving his right to rule directly from the will of God...
and thus claim to all the property of England. Nozick suggested, again as a critique of
utilitarianismUtilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
, that the sacrosanctity of life made property rights non-negotiable, as an individual's personal liberty was taken to be more valuable than the state's policies of redistribution. This principle has served as a foundation for many right-libertarian pitches into modern politics. Most controversially, Nozick argued that a consistent upholding of the
non-aggression principleThe non-aggression principle , or NAP for short, is a moral stance which asserts that aggression is inherently illegitimate...
would allow and regard as valid consensual/non-coercive
enslavementSlavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
contracts between adults. He rejected the notion of inalienable rights advanced by most other capitalist-oriented libertarian academics, writing in
Anarchy, State and Utopia that the typical notion of a "free system" would allow adults to voluntarily enter into non-coercive slave contracts.
Epistemology
In
Philosophical ExplanationsPhilosophical Explanations is a wide-ranging metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical treatise written by Robert Nozick and published in 1981.-The Parthenon Model and non-coercive philosophy:...
(1981), which received the
Phi Beta Kappa SocietyThe Phi Beta Kappa Society is an academic honor society. Its mission is to "celebrate and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences"; and induct "the most outstanding students of arts and sciences at America’s leading colleges and universities." Founded at The College of William and...
's
Ralph Waldo Emerson AwardThe Ralph Waldo Emerson award is a non-fiction literary award given by the Phi Beta Kappa society, the nation's oldest academic society, for books that have made the most significant contributions to the humanities. Albert William Levi won the first of these awards, in 1960.-Winners:*1960: Albert...
, Nozick provided novel accounts of
knowledgeKnowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
,
free will"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...
, personal identity, the nature of
valueA personal or cultural value is an absolute or relative ethical value, the assumption of which can be the basis for ethical action. A value system is a set of consistent values and measures. A principle value is a foundation upon which other values and measures of integrity are based...
, and the meaning of life. He also put forward an epistemological system which attempted to deal with both the
Gettier problemA Gettier problem is a problem in modern epistemology issuing from counter-examples to the definition of knowledge as justified true belief . The problem owes its name to a three-page paper published in 1963, by Edmund Gettier, called "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", in which Gettier argues...
and those posed by
skepticismSkepticism has many definitions, but generally refers to any questioning attitude towards knowledge, facts, or opinions/beliefs stated as facts, or doubt regarding claims that are taken for granted elsewhere...
. This highly influential argument eschewed
justificationTheory of justification is a part of epistemology that attempts to understand the justification of propositions and beliefs. Epistemologists are concerned with various epistemic features of belief, which include the ideas of justification, warrant, rationality, and probability...
as a necessary requirement for knowledge.
Nozick's Four Conditions for S's knowing that P were:
- P is true
- S believes that P
- If it were the case that (not-P), S would not believe that P
- If it were the case that P, S would believe that 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
reliabilismReliabilism, a category of theories in the philosophical discipline of epistemology, has been advanced both as a theory of knowledge and of justified belief...
. Due to certain counterexamples that could otherwise be raised against these counterfactual conditions, Nozick specified that:
- 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.
- 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.
Where M stands for the method by which S came to arrive at a belief whether or not P.
Later books
The Examined LifeThe Examined Life is a collection of philosophical meditations written by Robert Nozick and published in 1989. An attempt to "tackle human nature, the personal, 'the holiness of everyday life' and its meaning", it has been described as "disappointingly schmaltzy."In the book, Nozick disavows his...
(1989), pitched to a broader public, explores love, death, faith, reality, and the meaning of life. According to
Stephen MetcalfStephen Metcalf is a critic-at-large and columnist at Slate magazine. He is also the host of the magazine's weekly cultural podcast the Culture Gabfest.-Biography:...
, in the chapter The Zigzag of Politics, Nozick expresses serious misgivings about capitalist
libertarianismLibertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
, going so far as to reject much of the foundations of the theory on the grounds that personal freedom can sometimes only be fully actualized via a collectivist politics and that wealth is at times justly redistributed via taxation to save an overly selfish minority from itself. This statement by Metcalf regarding Nozick's misgivings however is contested, as an interview with Nozick illustrates. To temper this argument, he suggests that citizens opposed to wealth redistribution that fund programs they object to should be able to opt out by supporting alternative government approved charities with an added 5% surcharge.
The Nature of RationalityThe Nature of Rationality is an exploration of practical rationality written by Robert Nozick and published in 1993. It views human rationality as an evolutionary adaptation...
(1993) presents a theory of
practical reasonIn philosophy, practical reason is the use of reason to decide how to act. This contrasts with theoretical reason , which is the use of reason to decide what to believe. For example: agents use practical reason to decide whether to build a telescope, but theoretical reason to decide which of two...
that attempts to embellish notoriously spartan classical
decision theoryDecision theory in economics, psychology, philosophy, mathematics, and statistics is concerned with identifying the values, uncertainties and other issues relevant in a given decision, its rationality, and the resulting optimal decision...
.
Socratic PuzzlesSocratic Puzzles is a collection of essays by libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick. It was published in 1997 by Harvard University Press.- Introduction :...
(1997) is a collection of papers that range in topic from
Ayn RandAyn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
and Austrian economics to
animal rightsAnimal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...
, while his last production,
InvariancesInvariances, published in 2001 by Harvard University Press, was Robert Nozick's last book before his death in 2002.- Introduction :In the introduction to his book Nozick assumes "orthodox quantum mechanics" and draws inferences from it about indeterminism and nonlocality...
(2001), applies insights from
physicsPhysics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
and
biologyBiology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
to questions of
objectivityObjectivity is a central philosophical concept which has been variously defined by sources. A proposition is generally considered to be objectively true when its truth conditions are met and are "mind-independent"—that is, not met by the judgment of a conscious entity or subject.- Objectivism...
in such areas as the nature of
necessityIn U.S. criminal law, necessity may be either a possible justification or an exculpation for breaking the law. Defendants seeking to rely on this defense argue that they should not be held liable for their actions as a crime because their conduct was necessary to prevent some greater harm and when...
and moral value.
Utilitarianism
Nozick created the thought experiment of the "
utility monsterThe utility monster is a thought experiment in the study of ethics. It was created by philosopher Robert Nozick in 1974 as a criticism of utilitarianism....
" to show that average utilitarianism could lead to a situation where the needs of the vast majority were sacrificed for one individual. He also devised the thought experiment of
The Experience MachineThe experience machine is a thought experiment put forward by philosopher Robert Nozick in his Anarchy, State, and Utopia. It is one of the best known attempts to refute ethical hedonism, and does so by imagining a choice between everyday reality and an apparently preferable simulated reality.If...
in an attempt to show that ethical hedonism was false. Nozick asked us to imagine that "superduper neuropsychologists" have figured out a way to stimulate a person's brain to induce pleasurable experiences. We would not be able to tell that these experiences were not real. He asks us, if we were given the choice, would we choose a machine-induced experience of a wonderful life over real life? Nozick says no, then asks whether we have reasons not to plug into the machine and concludes that since it does not seem to be rational to plug in, ethical hedonism must be false.
Unusual method
Nozick was notable for the exploratory style of his philosophizing and for his methodological
ecumenismEcumenism or oecumenism mainly refers to initiatives aimed at greater Christian unity or cooperation. It is used predominantly by and with reference to Christian denominations and Christian Churches separated by doctrine, history, and practice...
. Often content to raise tantalizing philosophical possibilities and then leave judgment to the reader, Nozick was also notable for drawing from literature outside of philosophy (e.g.,
economicsEconomics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
,
physicsPhysics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, evolutionary biology).
See also
- American philosophy
American philosophy is the philosophical activity or output of Americans, both within the United States and abroad. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that while American philosophy lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevertheless be seen as both reflecting and...
- Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
- Contributions to liberal theory
Individual contributors to classical liberalism and political liberalism are associated with philosophers of the Enlightenment. Liberalism as a specifically named ideology begins in the late 18th century as a movement towards self-government and away from aristocracy...
- Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
- Right-libertarianism
Right-libertarianism names several related libertarian political philosophies which support capitalism. The term is typically used to differentiate privatist based forms of libertarianism from Left-libertarianism; which generally supports forms of economic democracy and...
- List of American philosophers
External links