![]() ![]() Misunderstandings and distortions of Nozick’s theories abound for example, Nozick is commonly described as maintaining that we have no obligations to assist people in need. While establishment intellectuals have granted ASU a spot in the official canon, they have not yet fully come to grips with the ideas it contains. Robert Nozick thus paved the way for succeeding generations of libertarians in academia. Libertarianism was no longer the philosophical equivalent of flat-earth theory it was now a respectable (or at least semi-respectable) position that had to be taken into account. Nozick’s book did not, of course, convert the profession but it secured for libertarianism a place among the standard topics for philosophical discussion, and thereby contributed to a crucial change in the intellectual climate. A National Book Award winner for 1975, ASU has since been translated into 11 languages. 3 Yet even its critics could not deny the book’s philosophical brilliance and disarming wit, and it quickly found its way onto reading lists in courses on political philosophy throughout the English-speaking world. 2Īs a child in his native Brooklyn, so the tale goes, young Nozick had been in the habit of asking street-corner preachers and soapbox orators, concerning whatever point of view they had been confidently expounding, “How do you know that?” One presumes that his question met with a chilly reception if so, he would have been well prepared for the reaction to Anarchy, State, and Utopia (henceforth, ASU), which was often greeted with incredulity and outrage. Hayek and Milton Friedman had not yet won their Nobel prizes (Hayek’s would come later that year, and Friedman’s two years after that), and the reigning political philosopher was Nozick’s own colleague John Rawls, whose monumental treatise, A Theory of Justice, had won widespread acclaim for its argument that individuals should be allowed to benefit from their greater wealth, talent, or effort only so long as they compensate the less fortunate. In 1974 libertarian ideas had virtually no presence within the academic establishment. ![]() Twenty-eight years ago a Harvard philosophy professor named Robert Nozick did something unthinkable in polite intellectual society: he published a book defending libertarianism. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |