Difference between revisions of "Robert Nozick" - New World Encyclopedia

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'''Robert Nozick''' (November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American [[philosopher]] and [[Joseph Pellegrino University Professor|Pellegrino University Professor]] at [[Harvard University]]. Nozick, schooled at [[Columbia University|Columbia]], [[Oxford University|Oxford]] and [[Princeton University|Princeton]], was a prominent American political philosopher in the 1970s and 1980s.  He did additional but less influential work in such subjects as [[decision theory]] and [[epistemology]]. His ''[[Anarchy, State, and Utopia]]'' (1974) was a [[libertarian]] answer to [[John Rawls]]' ''[[A Theory of Justice]]'', published in 1971. He was born in Brooklyn, the son of a [[Jewish]] entrepreneur from [[Russia]]. He was married to the American poet [[Gjertrud Schnackenberg]]. Nozick died in 2002 after a prolonged struggle with [[cancer]]. His remains are interred at [[Mount Auburn Cemetery]] in [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]].
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'''Robert Nozick''' (November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher and Joseph Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University. Nozick was schooled at Columbia University, Oxford University in England, and Princeton University. He was a prominent American political philosopher in the 1970s and 1980s.  He did additional but less influential work in such subjects as decision theory and epistemology. His ''[[Anarchy, State, and Utopia]]'' (1974) was a libertarian answer to his Harvard colleague [[John Rawls]]' ''[[A Theory of Justice]]'', published in 1971.  
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==Life==
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Nozick was born in Brooklyn, the son of a Jewish entrepreneur from Russia. He was married to the American poet [[Gjertrud Schnackenberg]]. Nozick died in 2002 after a prolonged struggle with cancer. His remains are interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Robert Nozick was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1938, and he taught at Harvard University until his death in January 2002. He was a thinker of the prodigious sort who gains a reputation for brilliance within his chosen field while still in graduate school, in his case at the Princeton of the early 1960's, where he wrote his dissertation on decision theory under the supervision of Carl Hempel. He was also, like so many young intellectuals of that period, drawn initially to the politics of the New Left and to the socialism that was its philosophical inspiration. But encountering the works of such defenders of capitalism as F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Ayn Rand eventually led him to renounce those views, and to shift his philosophical focus away from the technical issues then dominating analytic philosophy and toward political theory. The result was his first and most famous book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), an ingenious defense of libertarianism that immediately took on canonical status as the major right-wing philosophical counterpoint to his Harvard colleague John Rawls's influential defense of social-democratic liberalism, A Theory of Justice (1971).
  
 
==Philosophical achievements==
 
==Philosophical achievements==
  
Nozick's ''[[Anarchy, State, and Utopia]]'', which garnered a [[National Book Award]] the following year, argues among other things, that a distribution of goods is just, so long as the distribution was brought about by free exchanges by consenting adults and was made from a just starting position, even if large inequalities emerge from the process. Nozick appealed to the [[Immanuel Kant|Kantian]] idea that people should be treated as ends (what he termed 'separateness of persons'), not merely as a means. For example, forced redistribution of income treated people as if they were merely sources of money. Nozick here challenges [[John Rawls]]'s arguments in ''A Theory of Justice'' that conclude that just inequalities in distribution must benefit the least well off. Nozick himself recanted the libertarian views he had earlier expressed in ''Anarchy, State, and Utopia'' in one of his later books, ''The Examined Life'', calling those views "seriously inadequate." In a 2001 interview, however, he clarified his position: "What I was really saying in ''The Examined Life'' was that I was no longer as hardcore a libertarian as I had been before. But the rumors of my deviation (or apostasy!) from libertarianism were much exaggerated." [http://www.juliansanchez.com/nozick.html]
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Nozick's ''[[Anarchy, State, and Utopia]]'', which garnered a [[National Book Award]] the following year after its publication, argues among other things, that a distribution of goods is just, so long as the distribution was brought about by free exchanges by consenting adults and was made from a just starting position, even if large inequalities emerge from the process. Nozick appealed to the [[Immanuel Kant|Kantian]] idea that people should be treated as ends (what he termed 'separateness of persons'), not merely as a means. For example, forced redistribution of income treated people as if they were merely sources of money. Nozick here challenges [[John Rawls]]'s arguments in ''A Theory of Justice'' that conclude that just inequalities in distribution must benefit the least well off. Nozick himself recanted the libertarian views he had earlier expressed in ''Anarchy, State, and Utopia'' in one of his later books, ''The Examined Life'', calling those views "seriously inadequate." In a 2001 interview, however, he clarified his position: "What I was really saying in ''The Examined Life'' was that I was no longer as hardcore a libertarian as I had been before. But the rumors of my deviation (or apostasy!) from libertarianism were much exaggerated." [http://www.juliansanchez.com/nozick.html]
  
 
In ''[[Philosophical explanations|Philosophical Explanations]]'' (1981), which received the Phi Beta Kappa Society's [http://www.pbk.org/scholarships/emersonwinners.htm|Ralph Waldo Emerson Award], Nozick provides novel accounts of [[knowledge]], [[free will]], [[personal identity]], the nature of [[Value (personal and cultural)|value]], and the meaning of life. He also put forward an epistemological system which attempted to deal with both Edmund Gettier-style problems and those posed by scepticism. This highly influential argument eschewed justification as a necessary requirement for knowledge.
 
In ''[[Philosophical explanations|Philosophical Explanations]]'' (1981), which received the Phi Beta Kappa Society's [http://www.pbk.org/scholarships/emersonwinners.htm|Ralph Waldo Emerson Award], Nozick provides novel accounts of [[knowledge]], [[free will]], [[personal identity]], the nature of [[Value (personal and cultural)|value]], and the meaning of life. He also put forward an epistemological system which attempted to deal with both Edmund Gettier-style problems and those posed by scepticism. This highly influential argument eschewed justification as a necessary requirement for knowledge.

Revision as of 13:55, 20 June 2007


Robert Nozick (November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher and Joseph Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University. Nozick was schooled at Columbia University, Oxford University in England, and Princeton University. He was a prominent American political philosopher in the 1970s and 1980s. He did additional but less influential work in such subjects as decision theory and epistemology. His Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) was a libertarian answer to his Harvard colleague John Rawls' A Theory of Justice, published in 1971.

Life

Nozick was born in Brooklyn, the son of a Jewish entrepreneur from Russia. He was married to the American poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg. Nozick died in 2002 after a prolonged struggle with cancer. His remains are interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Robert Nozick was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1938, and he taught at Harvard University until his death in January 2002. He was a thinker of the prodigious sort who gains a reputation for brilliance within his chosen field while still in graduate school, in his case at the Princeton of the early 1960's, where he wrote his dissertation on decision theory under the supervision of Carl Hempel. He was also, like so many young intellectuals of that period, drawn initially to the politics of the New Left and to the socialism that was its philosophical inspiration. But encountering the works of such defenders of capitalism as F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Ayn Rand eventually led him to renounce those views, and to shift his philosophical focus away from the technical issues then dominating analytic philosophy and toward political theory. The result was his first and most famous book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), an ingenious defense of libertarianism that immediately took on canonical status as the major right-wing philosophical counterpoint to his Harvard colleague John Rawls's influential defense of social-democratic liberalism, A Theory of Justice (1971).

Philosophical achievements

Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia, which garnered a National Book Award the following year after its publication, argues among other things, that a distribution of goods is just, so long as the distribution was brought about by free exchanges by consenting adults and was made from a just starting position, even if large inequalities emerge from the process. Nozick appealed to the Kantian idea that people should be treated as ends (what he termed 'separateness of persons'), not merely as a means. For example, forced redistribution of income treated people as if they were merely sources of money. Nozick here challenges John Rawls's arguments in A Theory of Justice that conclude that just inequalities in distribution must benefit the least well off. Nozick himself recanted the libertarian views he had earlier expressed in Anarchy, State, and Utopia in one of his later books, The Examined Life, calling those views "seriously inadequate." In a 2001 interview, however, he clarified his position: "What I was really saying in The Examined Life was that I was no longer as hardcore a libertarian as I had been before. But the rumors of my deviation (or apostasy!) from libertarianism were much exaggerated." [1]

In Philosophical Explanations (1981), which received the Phi Beta Kappa Society's Waldo Emerson Award, Nozick provides novel accounts of knowledge, free will, personal identity, the nature of value, and the meaning of life. He also put forward an epistemological system which attempted to deal with both Edmund Gettier-style problems and those posed by scepticism. This highly influential argument eschewed justification as a necessary requirement for knowledge. The Examined Life (1989), pitched to a broader public, explores love, death, faith, reality, and the meaning of life. The Nature of Rationality (1993) presents a theory of practical reason that attempts to embellish notoriously spartan classical decision theory. Socratic Puzzles (1997) is a collection of papers that range in topic from Ayn Rand and Austrian economics to animal rights, while his last production, Invariances (2001) applies insights from physics and biology to questions of objectivity in such areas as the nature of necessity and moral value.

Nozick was notable for his curious, exploratory style and methodological ecumenism. Often content to raise tantalizing philosophical possibilities and then leave judgment to the reader, Nozick was also notable for inventively drawing from literature outside of philosophy (e.g., economics, physics, evolutionary biology) to infuse his work with freshness and relevance.

Writings

See also

References
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External links

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