Blackwell Reference Online

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Robert Nozick, a noted Harvard philosopher, emerged as something of an icon for the libertarian right from the 1970s. Perhaps his most renowned work, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) marked a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political social stances of liberals, socialists, and conservatives. In this volume, Nozick advances a sophisticated defense of the rights of the individual in relation to the state. He argues that the legitimacy of the state is only justified when it is severely limited to the narrow function of protecting the citizen against force, theft, and fraud, and the enforcement of contracts. Any more extensive activities by the state, Nozick insists, will inevitably violate individual rights. By offering critiques of John Locke's justification of the governance of citizens founded on the state of nature, as well as what he views as the flawed thesis of John Rawls, Nozick develops a new theory of “distributive justice” and, in doing so, attempts to integrate a system of ethics, legal philosophy, and economic theory. In this regard, Nozick brings his own distinctive model of a utopia which he sees as equivalent to the minimal state. Such a state, Nozick insists, ideally treats its individuals as inviolate individuals, who may not be used in specific ways by others as a means, tool, instrument, or resource. Hence, the state should treat the ... log in or subscribe to read full text