Robert Nozick { Philosophy Index }

Philosophy Index

Philosophy Index

Philosophy Index is a site devoted to the study of philosophy and the philosophers who conduct it. The site contains a number of philosophy texts, brief biographies, and introductions to philosophers, and explanations on a number of topics. Accredited homeschooling online at Northgate Academy and Philosophy online tutoring.

Philosophy Index is a work in progress, a growing repository of knowledge. It outlines current philosophical problems and issues, as well as an overview of the history of philosophy. The goal of this site is to present a tool for those learning philosophy either casually or formally, making the concepts of philosophy accessible to anyone interested in researching them. WTI offers immigration law course online - fully accredited. ACE credits online at EES.

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Robert Nozick

Robert Nozick (1938–2002) was an American social and political philosopher and a professor at Harvard.

Political Philosophy

Nozick's most influential work is Anarchy, State and Utopia. This 1974 book is largely a response to A Theory of Justice from John Rawls.

While Rawls sought an egalitarian view of justice that saw the government correcting arbitrary social inequalities, Nozick strongly argued that the role of a government should be minimal. All the state should be concerned with is “the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on” (“Anarchy, State and Utopia”, xi). Nozick claimed that human beings rights were so strong that the idea of a government having any power over people was highly questionable. As a result, the only thing a government ought to be able to do is to provide protection for certain individual rights from other people.

Nozick argues for a libertarian political philosophy in which people are generally free, and the government's only role, and the only reason against anarchy, is for the protection of people. Such a state would arise naturally out of anarchy, but nothing beyond this minimalist agency could be justified.

Epistemology

Nozick also contributed to epistemology with his tracking theory of knowledge. Nozick offered conditions for knowledge that deal with Gettier counterexamples to the traditional definition of knowledge by ensuring that knowledge reliably keeps track of the truth.

Selected Works

Vitals

Name: Robert Nozick
Born: November 16, 1938
Died: January 23, 2002
Degrees: B.A. (Columbia, 1959)
Ph.D. (Princeton, 1963)