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.