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Robert Nozick

File:Robert_Nozick_1977_Libertarian_Review_cover_(4x5_cropped).jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

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Robert Nozick

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Also known as Robert Edwin Nozick

American political philosopher (1938–2002)

OverviewAI-generated

Robert Nozick (1938–2002) was an American philosopher, political scientist, and university teacher. Born in Brooklyn, New York City, he was educated at Princeton University and Columbia University. He served as a faculty member at Harvard University and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Nozick’s notable works include *Anarchy, State, and Utopia*, *The Nature of Rationality*, *The Examined Life*, and *Names and Nature in Plato's Cratylus*.

He received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Book Award, and a Fulbright Scholarship. Nozick was an agnostic who spoke English. He died of stomach cancer in Cambridge in 2002 and is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Synthesized by Vinony from 38 facts across 7 sources: Wikidata, Open Library, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, Crossref, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born
16 November 1938
Died
23 January 2002
Works
15

Top works

  • The Nature of Rationality
  • The Examined Life
  • Names and Nature in Plato's Cratylus
  • Anarchy, State, and Utopia
  • The Emergence of Logical Empiricism : From 1900 to the Vienna Circle (Science and Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Basic Works of Logical Empiricism)

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person
Gender
Male
Origin
Germany
Active from
1810-06-08
Active to
1856-07-29
classicalcomposergermanromanticromantic classicalto clean up

Discography

DiscogsStream

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
19
Total plays
32

Robert Nozick (November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice (1971). His other work involved decision theory and epistemology. <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Robert+Nozick">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Robert Nozick

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

  1. Development of the Colle-Salvetti correlation-energy formula into a functional of the electron density

    · 1988 · cited 95,805x

  2. Hallmarks of Cancer: The Next Generation

    · 2011 · cited 56,572x

  3. Research electronic data capture (REDCap)—A metadata-driven methodology and workflow process for providing translational research informatics support

    · 2009 · cited 46,854x

  4. Regression Shrinkage and Selection Via the Lasso

    · 1996 · cited 39,814x

  5. The PHQ-9

    · 2001 · cited 39,527x

via Crossref · CC0

Quotes

  • “When I was 15 years old, or 16, I carried around on the streets of Brooklyn a paperback copy of Plato's Republic, front cover facing outward. I had read only some of it and understood less, but I was excited by it and knew it was something wonderful.”
  • “Whatever the practical origins of aesthetic discernment may have been, it has been used to create great works of art. When the very loftiest human creations are seen to derive from humble origins and functions, what needs revision is not our esteem for these creations but our notion of nobility.”
  • “Our principles fix what our life stands for, our aims create the light our life is bathed in, and our rationality, both individual and coordinate, defines and symbolizes the distance we have come from mere animality. It is by these means that our lives come to more than what they instrumentally yield. And by meaning more, our lives yield more.”
  • “Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?”
  • “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.”
  • “Some anarchists have claimed not merely that we would be better off without a state, but that any state necessarily violates people's moral rights and hence is intrinsically immoral. Our starting point then, though nonpolitical, is by intention far from nonmoral. Moral philosophy sets the background for, and boundaries of, political philosophy. What persons may and may not do to one another limits what they may do through the apparatus of a state, or do to establish such an apparatus.”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

~23 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Robert Nozick (/ˈnoʊzɪk/; November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher. He held the Joseph Pellegrino University Professorship at Harvard University, and was president of the American Philosophical Association. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice (1971), in which Nozick proposes his minimal state as the only justifiable form of government. His later work Philosophical Explanations (1981) advanced notable epistemological claims, namely his counterfactual theory of knowledge. It won Phi Beta Kappa society's Ralph Waldo Emerson Award the following year.

Nozick's other work involved ethics, decision theory, philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. His final work before his death, Invariances (2001), introduced his theory of evolutionary cosmology, by which he argues invariances, and hence objectivity itself, emerged through evolution across possible worlds.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Robert Nozick” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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via Wikidata sitelinks · CC0