Robert Nozick was an American philosopher best known for his libertarian political philosophy. Nozick’s Anarchy, State, And Utopia (1974) can be seen as a response to the redistributionist liberalism espoused by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice (1971). In it, he advanced an argument for a minimal state, which would be limited to the protection of individuals from aggression, theft, fraud and coercion. Based on natural law, the Kantian view that people are “ends in themselves” and the non-aggression principle, Nozick argued against any forceful redistribution of property as being a violation of inviolable individual rights. For Nozick, a distribution of goods is just where ownership was acquired legitimately or through free exchange.
Although other libertarians have been critical of aspects of Nozick’s thought (anarcho-capitalists, such as Murray Rothbard, have challenged the idea that even an ultra-minimal state is necessary, for instance) he remains a strong influence to this day. Outside of political philosophy, Nozick made important contributions to decision theory, epistemology and ethics. He died of stomach cancer aged 63 in 2002.
[All quotes from Anarchy, State, And Utopia]
1) Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited, to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified, but any more extensive state will violate persons’ rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right.
Preface, p. ix
2) 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?
Ch. 2 : The State of Nature; Protective Associations, p. 14
3) There is no social entity with a good that undergoes some sacrifice for its own good. There are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives. Using one of these people for the benefit of others, uses him and benefits the others. Nothing more.
Ch. 3 : Moral Constraints and the State; Why Side Constraints?, p. 32
4) Whoever makes something having bought or contracted for all other held resources used in the process (transferring some of his holdings for these cooperating factors), is entitled to it. The situation is not one of something’s getting made, and there being an open question of who is to get it. Things come into the world already attached to people having entitlements over them.
Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, Patterning, p. 160
5) From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen.
Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, Patterning, p. 160
6) Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone’s labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities.
Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, Redistribution and Property Rights, p. 169
7) Marxian exploitation is the exploitation of people’s lack of understanding of economics.
Ch. 8: Equality, Envy, Exploitation, Etc.; Marxian Exploitation, p. 262
8) There will not be one kind of community existing and one kind of life led in utopia. Utopia will consist of utopias, of many different and divergent communities in which people lead different kinds of lives under different institutions. Some kinds of communities will be more attractive to most than others; communities will wax and wane. People will leave some for others or spend their whole lives in one. Utopia is a framework for utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own utopian vision upon others.
Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework, p. 311
9) Though the framework is libertarian and laissez-faire,individual communities within it need not be, and perhaps no community within it will choose to be so. Thus, the characteristics of the framework need not pervade the individual communities. In this laissez-faire system it could turn out that though they are permitted, there are no actually functioning “capitalist” institutions; or that some communities have them and others don’t or some communities have some of them, or what you will.
Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework as Utopian Common Ground, p. 320
10) Is not the minimal state, the framework for utopia, an inspiring vision?
The minimal state treats us as inviolate individuals, who may not be used in certain ways by others as means or tools or instruments or resources; it treats us as persons having individual right with the dignity this constitutes. Treating us with respect by respecting our rights, it allows us, individually or with whom we please, to choose our life and to realize our ends and our conception of ourselves, insofar as we can, aided by the voluntary cooperation of other individuals possessing the same dignity.
How dare any state or group of individuals do more? Or less?
Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; Utopia and the Minimal State, p. 333