Robert Nozick Essay

Words: 402
Pages: 2

Born in Brooklyn in 1938, Robert Nozick was an American Philosopher. He was the president of the American Philosophical Association and held the Joseph Pellegrino University Professorship at Harvard University. Nozick’s notable works include the publication of his books
Philosophical Explanations (1981), which included his counterfactual theory of knowledge, and
Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice
(1971). He is also known for his decision theory and epistemology.
In this article, we shall be focussing essentially on the following heading:
 Framework for Utopia
 Personal Identity, Self-Ownership and Individual Rights
While dealing with these topics from his two best sellers – Philosophical
…show more content…
Nozick’s framework for Utopia

Considered as one of the great classics of 20th century analytic political philosophy, Anarchy,
State, and Utopia revived the discipline of political philosophy within the analytical school.
Libertarianism is a political philosophy holding that the role of the state in society ought to be severely limited. It should be confined essentially to administration of courts of law and national defence with all other tasks like education and welfare taken care by modern government.
Nozick says that the toughest reason to support a libertarian society is simply that such support follows a serious respect for individual rights. According to him, utopia would not be a single society, but a collection of many societies, where all people could begin or join the society they most prefer. In other words, Nozick’s utopia would be more like a meta-utopia which contains a

network of many different community experiments in which anyone could attempt to create their own version of their preferred society, and other people could join it, or any other society that they favoured. It hence allows a way for the people even from radically opposed viewpoints