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A CRITIQUE
OF ROBERT NOZICK'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Robert
Nozick (1938-2002) was an American philosopher, best known for his rigorous
defense of libertarianism in his first major work, Anarchy, State, and Utopia
(1974). During his high school and college years, Nozick was a member of the
student new left and an enthusiastic socialist. At Columbia, he helped to found
a campus branch of the league for industrial democracy. While in graduate
school, he read works by libertarian thinkers such as F. A. Hayek and Ludwig
Von Mises, and his political views began to change. His conversion to
libertarianism culminated in 1974 with the publication of Anarchy, State, and
Utopia, a closely argued and highly original defense of the libertarian
“minimal state” and a critique of the social-democratic liberalism of John
Rowls.
The main
body of this work falls into four parts; introduction, Nozick on moral right
Nozick’s minimal state and appraisal of Robert Nozick political philosophy.
1.1 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Nozick’s
natural rights – particularly the right of self-ownership and the consequent
right to the fruit’s of one’s labour present an obvious problems if we desire
any state at all, no matter how minimal.
1.2 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The
objective of this work is to look at moral rights and side constraints, state
of nature rights, foundation of rights, the attenuation of rights, the minimal
state versus individualist anarchy, the minimal state, the challenge of
individual anarchism, response to the anarchist challenges, justice holdings,
the historical entitlement doctrine about justice in holding, the critique of
end state and patterned principle, Nozick’s Lockean Proviso, the rectification
of historical is justice and utopia.
1.3 JUSTIFICATION OF THE STUDY
Nozick’s
political philosophy is researchable because of the problem that usually
surround the issue of right. In most case, some government try to intervene
with individual right. A good example could be seen in Nigeria, where
individual rights to religion, life, speech etc is often been constrained by
state coercive power. Based on this, Nozick’s political philosophy is
researchable on the ground that individuals have rights, and there are thing no
person or group may do without violating this rights.
1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
Anarchy,
state, and utopia, these works essentially revived the discipline of political
philosophy within the analytic school, whose practitioners had, until Nozick
came along, largely neglected it. Nozick’s also revived interest in the notion
of rights as being central to political theory, and it did so in the service of
another idea that had been long neglected within academic political thoughts,
namely libertinism.
1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
It is
important to point out that although we are working in Robert Nozick’s
political philosophy, we are however working specifically at Nozick’s natural
rights as well as to criticize some view made by Nozick in anarchism, state and
utopia.
1.6 OVERVIEW OF NOZICK’S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
The main
purpose of Anarchy, State and Utopia is to show that the minimal state, is
morally justified. By a minimal state Nozick means a state that function
essentially as a “Night Watchman”, with powers limited to those necessary to
protect citizen against violence, theft, and fraud. By arguing that the minimal
is justified, Nozick seeks to refute anarchism which opposes any state
whatever, by arguing that no more than the minimal state is justified Nozick seek
to refute modern forms of liberalism as well as socialism and others leftist
ideologies which contend that, in addition to its power, as a night watchman,
the state should have the powers to regulate the economic activities of
citizens to regulate the economic activities of citizens to redistribute wealth
in the direction of greater equality, and to provide social services such as
education and health care.
Against
anarchism, Nozick claims that a minimal state is justified because it (or
something very much like it) would arise spontaneously among people living in a
hypothetical “state of nature” through transactions that would not involve the
violation of anyone’s natural rights following the 17th century English
philosopher John Locke. Nozick assumes that everyone possesses the natural
rights to life, liberty, and property including the right to claim as property
the fruits or products of one’s labour
and the right to dispose of one’s property as one sees fit (provided that in
doing so one does not violate the rights of any one’s else). Everyone also has
the natural right to punish those who violate one’s own natural rights. Because
defending one’s natural right in a state of nature would be difficult for anyone to do on his own. Individual would
band together to form “protection association”, in which members would work
together to defend each other’s rights and to punish rights violator.
Eventually,
some of these associations would developed into private business offering
protection and punishment services for a fee. The great importance that
individuals would attach to such services would give the largest protection
firms a natural competitive advantage, and eventually only one firm, or a
confederation of firms) would have a monopoly of force in the territory of the
community and because it would protect the rights of everyone living there, it
would constitute a minimal state in the libertarian sense. And because the
minimal state would come about without violating anyone’s natural rights, a
state with at least its powers is justified.
Against
liberalism and other leftist ideologies, (modern form of liberalism) Nozick
claims that no more than the minimal state is justified, because any state with
more extensive powers would violate the natural rights of its citizens. Thus
the state should not have the power to control prices or to set a minimal wage
because doing so would violate the natural right of citizens to dispose of
their labour as they see fit. For similar reasons, the state should not have the
power to establish public education or health care through taxes imposed on
citizen who may wish to spend their money on private services instead. Indeed,
according to Nozick any mandatory taxation used to fund services or benefits
other than those constitutive of the minimal state in unjust, because such
taxation amount to a kind of “force labour” for the state by those who must pay
the tax.
1.7 AIM OF THE STUDY
The aim of
the work is to critically examines Robert Nozick’s political philosophy which
is contains his book Anarchy, State and Utopia. According to Nozick is to show
that the minimal state is morally justified. By a minimal state Nozick means a
state that function essentially as a “night watchman” with powers limited to
those necessary to protect – citizens against violence, theft and fraud. Nozick
adopts and defends what he calls “The Entitlement Theory”. By way of explaining
the entitlement theory of justice Althan (10) maintains that Nozick’s vision of
legitimate state power thus contrasts remarkably with that of Rawls argues that
the state should have whatever powers are necessary to ensure that those
citizens who are least well-off are as well off as they can be (though these
powers must be consistent with a variety of basic rights and freedom). This
viewpoint is derived from Rawls’ theory of justice one principle of which is
that an unequal distribution of wealth and income is acceptable only if those
at the button are better off than they would be under any other distribution.
According to Althan (11) Nozick’s response to such argument is to claim that
they rest on the false conception of distributive justice; they wrongly define
a just distribution in terms of the pattern it exhibits at a given time
(example, an equal distribution or a distribution that unequal to a certain
extent) or in terms of the historical circumstances surrounding its development
(example those who worked the hardest have more) rather than in terms of the
nature of the transactions through which distribution came about. For Nozick,
any distribution of “holdings,” as he calls them, no matter how unequal, is
just if (and only if) it arises from a just distribution through legitimate
means. One legitimate means is the appropriation of something that is owned in
circumstance where the acquisition would not disadvantage others. A second
means is the voluntary transfer of ownership of holdings to someone else. A
third means is the rectification of past injustices in the acquisition or
transfer of holdings. According to Nozick, anyone who acquire what he has
through these means is morally entitled to it. Thus, the entitlement theory of
justice state that the distribution of holdings in a society is just if (and
only if) everyone in that society. Thus the aim of this work is to show that
Nozick’s moral justification for the state is far from compelling on the ground
that the independent (few individual) where force to pay for the services they
initially do not want may be they do not
have money to pay for security but the dominant protection force them to pay,
as such Holmes (40) is of the opinion that since the minimal state has
considerable power, it is not different from a state with all powers usually
associated with it. The paper is of the view that at time it is not only
necessary but desirable to redistribute wealth and resources so as to help
those in need. Moreso, possession of wealth by individuals might be a product
of chance rather than talent and ability. We should at this point look at
Nozick’s on moral rights in order to have clear idea of state of nature right.
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