Robert Nozick

Lore & Background

Nozick was born in Brooklyn to a family of Jewish descent. He studied at Columbia University (A.B. 1959, summa cum laude) under Sidney Morgenbesser, at Princeton University (PhD 1963) under Carl Hempel, and at Oxford as a Fulbright Scholar. He was initiated into the Kappa Sigma fraternity and joined the Young People's Socialist League, later moving away from socialism after reading Friedrich Hayek's *The Constitution of Liberty*. He married Barbara Fierer, with whom he had two children, and later married poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg. He died after a prolonged struggle with stomach cancer and was interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Reader's Guide

Nozick's significance lies primarily in his libertarian response to John Rawls' *A Theory of Justice*. In *Anarchy, State, and Utopia*, he argued that only a minimal state limited to protection against force, fraud, theft, and administering courts is justifiable, as any more extensive state violates individual rights. He introduced the Wilt Chamberlain example to argue that just distributions arise from free exchange among consenting adults. His thought experiments, such as the experience machine and the utility monster, challenged utilitarianism and hedonism. In epistemology, his counterfactual theory of knowledge in *Philosophical Explanations* addressed the Gettier problem and skepticism. His final work, *Invariances*, proposed an evolutionary cosmology. Nozick's work remains central to debates in political philosophy and epistemology.

Did You Know?

• Nozick's *Anarchy, State, and Utopia* won a National Book Award in Philosophy and Religion.
• He founded the local chapter of the Student League for Industrial Democracy at Columbia University.
• Nozick argued that consistent libertarian self-ownership could allow for consensual enslavement contracts between adults.
• His counterfactual theory of knowledge eschewed justification as a necessary condition for knowledge.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Robert Nozick (16 November 1938 – 23 January 2002) was an American libertarian philosopher and Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University." — Robert Nozick "Is there really someone who, searching for a group of wise and sensitive persons to regulate him for his own good, would choose that group of people that constitute the membership of both houses of Congress?" — Robert Nozick "A distribution is just if it arises from another just distribution by legitimate means." — Robert Nozick "Whatever arises from a just situation by just steps is itself just." — Robert Nozick