Robert Nozick Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Robert Nozick (1938–2002) was a twentieth-century American political philosopher who worked at Harvard University. He is most well-known for his 1974 book Anarchy, State and Utopia, in which he defends the libertarian ideal of the minimal state against utilitarianism, egalitarian, and socialist redistributive politics.

He famously questioned the utilitarian position of pleasure seeking and pain avoidance, or the priority of happiness, in human motivation, and so also of the principle of utility in ethics and politics. He asked if given the choice, would humans trade life in the real world for life in an “experience machine” that could flawlessly reproduce any conditions or experiences that resulted in happiness? His intuitive answer was that few if any persons would choose the unlimited happiness in the machine over the uncertain happiness of the real world. Life, then, must be about more than seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.

Nozick’s main focus, however, was the redistributive politics of egalitarian liberalism and socialism, particularly that of his Harvard colleague, John Rawls. According to Rawls, the principles of equality and social justice require substantial redistribution of wealth. Nozick calls such a scheme a “patterned” theory of justice, since the just distribution matches some prior principle. Nozick preferred a historical view of justice and presented his entitlement account of a just distribution: So long as a current distribution and holding of goods is just, then whatever distribution results from personal exchange is also just, and political interference with that distribution (as in a patterned theory) is unjust. In identifying justice in initial acquisition, Nozick adopts British philosopher John Locke’s proviso of “enough and as good,” meaning anyone appropriating unowned resources or property would have to ensure the appropriation showed no prejudice to any other person. Nozick also borrowed Locke’s principle of self-ownership, through which rights are extended to resources through labor.

He believed that once justice in initial holdings is established, the distribution resulting from the free exchange of individual holdings will be just, and redistribution in this new situation will be unjust—persons are entitled to their holdings resulting from exchanges in a just initial system. To explain the fairness of distribution resulting from free exchange, Nozick developed his famous “Wilt Chamberlain argument.” When persons voluntarily give some portion of their just holdings to Wilt Chamberlain to watch him play basketball, Nozick argued that Chamberlain is entitled to this income. On the other hand, taxation for functions beyond those necessary to maintain the system of free exchange (security) is illegitimate, since individuals are entitled to their justly acquired holdings. Therefore, taxation amounts to forced labor. Individual rights are thus “side-constraints” on the range of the legitimate functions of the state.

Nozick’s libertarianism is unique in the sense that it is based on the egalitarian foundation of equal moral worth and the inviolability of persons, which gives rise to the political demand of equal respect for individual interests. He shared this foundation with Rawls, although Nozick drew extremely different conclusions as to its implications for the demands of social justice.

Bibliography:

Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State and Utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974.
Schmidtz, David, ed. Robert Nozick. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Wolff, Jonathan. Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991.

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