Nozick Revisited: The Formation of the Right-Based Dimension of his Political Theory

Abstract

Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia is still influential today among right-wing (neo-)libertarian thinkers. The latter are engaged in the current debate on distributive justice, insistently defending the minimal state and the case against social justice on the grounds of inviolable individual rights. The premises of their defense are explicitly derived from Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Therefore, if one is interested in challenging the right-wing libertarian arguments today, one should be interested in revisiting Nozick, refuting the key elements of his theory. That is what this article does: it re-examines the formation of the moral dimension of Nozick's political theory. It argues that this dimension consists of the idea of absolute individual rights and is formed upon the premises of full self-ownership and the moral inviolability of persons. Both premises are problematical because they are abstracted from any epistemological principle of self-realization.

Human Gene Patents and the Question of Liberal Morality

“…It is not really meaningful to say that it is the specific person who is the individual creator of intangible resources. As has been argued elsewhere 14 , each person lives because scarcity is inescapable and she lives in society because she cannot by herself deal with certain aspects of her scarcity. Knowledge and information as such are important aspects of each person's scarcity.…”

A libertarian perspective on distributive justice and justice as fairness1

“…Coleman, and others. 6 This contrasts with Locke's view that once an individual joins a given liberal society, he or she accepts an a priori consent supported by the majority; a set of pre-existing obligations that the new individual who joins that liberal society must accept and comply with. This, Sandel says, raises the question of the value and sanctity of the self.…”