Anarchy, State, and Utopia: An Advanced Guide

Front Cover
John Wiley & Sons, Apr 8, 2015 - Philosophy - 240 pages
Anarchy, State, and Utopia: An Advanced Guide presents a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the ideas expressed in Robert Nozick’s highly influential 1974 work on free-market libertarianism—considered one of the most important and influential works of political philosophy published in the latter half of the 20th-century.

  • Makes accessible all the major ideas and arguments presented in Nozick’s complex masterpiece
  • Explains, as well as critiques, Robert Nozick’s theory of free market libertarianism
  • Enables a new generation of readers to draw their own conclusions about the wealth of timely ideas on individualism and libertarian philosophy
  • Indicates where Nozick’s theory has explanatory power, where it is implausible, and where there are loose ends with further work to be done
 

Contents

Cover
Ethical Bearings
The Experience Machine
Why State of Nature Theory?
The Invisible Hand and the Justification of the State
What Is the Argument so far Supposed to Show?
General Outlines of the Argument
Dividing the Benefits of Exchange
The Monopoly of Force
Protecting Everyone
Defining the State
How the State Functions
Is the DPAs Failure to Claim Legitimacy a Deficiency?
Distributive Justice 1 Some Terminology and Basic Concepts
The Entitlement View
A Taxonomy of Principles

Fear and Victim Compensation
The Risk Argument
Preemptive Attack
Procedural Rights
The Principle of Compensation
Unproductive Exchange and Explaining Why Blackmail Is Wrong
Assessing the Unproductive Exchange Argument
Conclusion
Has the Dominant Protective Association Become a State? 1 What Does the Argument Prove if Successful?
The Adventures of Wilt Chamberlain
Assessing Nozicks Arguments
The Problem
A Possible Solution
The Proviso
Where is the Baseline?
Why this Proviso?
The Search for Utopia
Index

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About the author (2015)

Lester H. Hunt is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of Nietzsche and the Origins of Virtue (1991) and Character and Culture (1997).

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