Nozick, Robert, 1938–2002, American political philosopher, b. Brooklyn, N.Y.; grad. Columbia Univ. (B.A., 1959), Princeton Univ. (M.A., 1961; Ph.D., 1963). After teaching at Princeton and Rockefeller Univ., he became (1969) a philosophy professor at Harvard, where he was named a university professor in 1998. Once a campus radical, Novick soon veered rightward, becoming a staunchly conservative opponent of the kind of liberalism represented by his Harvard colleague, John Rawls Rawls, John Bordley, 1921–2002, American philosopher and political theorist, b. Baltimore, grad. Princeton (A.B., 1943; Ph.D., 1950). He taught at Princeton (1950–52), Cornell (1953–59), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1960–62)
..... Click the link for more information. . Nozick's first book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974; National Book Award), a critique of Rawls, has became a key work in contemporary political philosophy. Castigating the paternalism of the welfare state, supporting the primacy of the individual, and defending capitalism, he called for the most minimal of governments, one that would protect its members against violence, theft, and breach of contract and do very little more. Nozick also explored a wide range of other philosophical subjects and their connections to various disciplines. Among his other books are Philosophical Explanations (1981), The Examined Life (1989), The Nature of Rationality (1995), and Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World (2001).

Bibliography

See studies by J. Paul, ed. (1981), S. Luper-Foy (1987), J. S. Corlett, ed. (1991), J. Wolff (1991), S. A. Hailwood (1996), A. Pampathy Rao (1998), and A. R. Lacey (2001).

Nozick, Robert

(born Nov. 16, 1938, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.—died Jan. 23, 2002, Cambridge, Mass.) U.S. philosopher. He received a Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton University in 1963 and taught at Harvard University from 1969 until his death. His best-known work, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), is a closely argued and highly original defense of the libertarian “minimal state” (a state whose powers are limited to those necessary to protect citizens against violence, theft, and fraud) and a critique of the social-democratic liberalism of his Harvard colleague John Rawls. Against anarchism, Nozick argued that the minimal state is justified because it would arise in a state of nature through transactions that would not violate anyone's natural rights (see natural law); against liberalism and ideologies farther left, he argued that no more than the minimal state is justified because any state with more extensive powers would violate the natural rights of its citizens. Nozick emphasized that the minimal state as he envisioned it could encompass smaller communities in which the central public authority would have more than minimal powers. Because each such community would be free to realize its own idea of the good society, the minimal state, according to Nozick, constitutes a “framework for utopia.”

Nozick, Robert (1938– ) philosopher; born in New York City. After earning a 1963 doctorate from Princeton, where he taught (1962–65), he held posts at Harvard (1965–67) and Rockefeller University (1967–69) before becoming a professor at Harvard in 1969. His seminal study, Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), which won a National Book Award, stressed the primacy of individual rights, and he was generally associated with a conservative critique of trends in contemporary thought and society.