1
Nozick's Introduction and Preface

1. Why Read a Book about a Book?

Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (hereafter ASU)1 created a sensation when it appeared in 1974. It won the National Book Award in 1975 and in 2008 was listed by the Times Literary Supplement as one of the hundred most influential books since World War II. It is certainly, and by far, one of the most influential philosophical books of the twentieth century, having had a strong impact, not merely on the tiny world of academic philosophy, but on many people in the great world outside the academy as well. And yet Nozick once described this book as "an accident."2

As he told the story years later, he began writing it in the academic year of 1971-1972, which he spent at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences near Stanford University. The original purpose for his stay there was to write on the problem of free will. Unfortunately, having come to California without having already worked out his views on the subject of fee will, he found himself spinning his wheels for several months. In early December, he was invited to give a talk to a student group at Stanford. In his talk he explained how he thought a state could arise out of conditions of anarchy. He then wrote these thoughts out. At about this time, his Harvard colleague John Rawls sent him a copy of his new book, A Theory of Justice.3 Nozick had read an earlier draft of the book and discussed it in detail with the author. Finding that the published version was quite different from the draft he had seen, he read it and was moved to set down his reflections on why he still disagreed with Rawls' view. At the same time, he sketched out his own ideas on the subject of Rawls' book: the problem traditionally known as that of "distributive justice." By this time the original project on free will must have seemed to be receding into the impossibly far distance. However, he noticed that the two pieces he had written that year seemed to fit rather nicely with a paper he had produced for a 1969 session of the American Philosophical Association in which he presented a new conception of utopia. If he just elaborated these writings and added some connecting material he would have a book - and something to show for his year at the Center. So he set to work and by the time his stay there was over in July he had hammered out a draft.4 He then rewrote the whole work in the summer of 1973 (xv).

Nozick's book is often compared and contrasted - mainly contrasted - with the one he received in the mail that January, A Theory of Justice. Rawls' book does indeed have a very different history, and is a very different sort of book from Nozick's, despite their overlapping subject matter. Nozick's book came into existence rather suddenly and almost as an afterthought. In fact, it was only a few years earlier that he had first come to hold the radical point of view he defends there. On the other hand, Rawls' work on the ideas presented in his 1971 book goes back at least as far as his 1951 paper, "Outline of a Decision Procedure in Ethics."5 These ideas were subjected to a long and laborious process of working and reworking. Several drafts of Rawls' book circulated widely in the philosophical community and were much commented upon. The book itself (the 1971 edition) is 607 pages long. In it, Rawls tries to forestall every misinterpretation of his views that he can think of, in addition to answering every sensible objection that comes to mind. (Notwithstanding all this work, people managed to disagree with it and even misunderstand it anyway.) Rawls' aim in writing his book was, clearly, to establish something.

Readers of Nozick's book soon realize that it is written with a sharply different end in view. It is not intended to present a closed system, nor to present irrefutable proofs that compel the reader's assent at every turn - very far from it. Instead of the rigorous proofs that we expect from an analytic philosopher, what we often find are jokes, paradoxes, outlandish examples, and curious digressions. Though the author does have strong - some would say extreme - views on many of the subjects he discusses, and though he does argue brilliantly for them, his ultimate purpose is to indicate lines of further fruitful research and to stimulate the reader to further reflection. The fundamental impression on the reader is that thinking about these issues on a high level of sophistication is interesting and fun, and that we ought to come along and think with him. Where the great virtue of Rawls' book is thoroughness, that of Nozick's is brilliance. Where one strives for completeness, the other seeks to dazzle and amaze, even to amuse.

As we will see, Nozick's book has the shortcomings of one that was written in this accidental way: There are many loose ends, abrupt transitions, digressions vaguely or poorly integrated into the whole, and (for those who insist that this is a shortcoming) plenty of unfinished business. However, it is also clearly a work of genius and, as such, it has virtues that only an "accidental" book can have: an air of genuine freshness and spontaneity. Among the writings of philosophers, that is something one usually only finds in published notebooks, or in the works of philosophers who write aphorisms, such as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. It is very hard to think of another book by an Anglophone analytic philosopher (with the possible exception of other books by the same author, of course) in which this feeling of openness and fresh air can be found at all.

I think a book on ASU must take a different approach to its subject matter from the one that would be appropriate if the subject were A Theory of Justice. Since Rawls is trying to establish something once and for all, the commentator's aim should be to say what it is that he is trying to establish, how he attempts to do so, and how close he comes to succeeding.

With Nozick, who is not trying to establish something once and for all, the approach must be different. My aim here is to support the further reflection Nozick is trying to stimulate, without (I hope!) completely euthanizing the sense of fun he instills. I will try to accomplish this by carrying out two broadly different functions. One is a matter of interpretation and explanation. ASU is at many points a rather difficult book to penetrate. Sometimes this is because of the complexity and profundity of the thoughts it expresses. At other times it is because the presentation of those thoughts is confusing, due, perhaps, to the rather hurried way in which it was written. In these cases I will do my best to straighten out the text and remove any difficulties that do not belong to the ideas themselves.

The other function I will be trying to carry out will be to engage critically with the text. We don't read a book like ASU for its literary beauties - though it is generally well and often brilliantly written. We read such a book to see if it can help us to get closer to the truth on the great issues with which it deals. In what follows, I will point out what I see as the strengths and weaknesses of Nozick's argument. I will indicate where the theory has explanatory power, where it is implausible, and where there are loose ends with further work to be done. I will also indicate ends that are not loose - that is, places where ideas are actually connected, sometimes in surprising ways, with ideas in other parts of the book. These connections often either explain or strengthen his argument. Sometimes I will suggest friendly amendments, so to speak: additions to a theory or argument that would make it stronger. Ultimately, my purpose will be neither to defend Nozick nor to attack him, but to try to indicate the wealth of things that can be learned by thinking about what he is saying.

Finally, I should say a word about the point of view from which I am writing this. In the first part of the book, Nozick attempts to show that a state can be both just and desirable. In the second, he presents reasons for thinking that no state more extensive than a "minimal state" is justified, in that such a state would necessarily violate individual rights. The third part, which is based on the paper on utopia, gives a reason why we should not mind the fact that, as he sees it, no more extensive state than a minimal one is justified. Rather, we should welcome it gladly. I think Nozick's justification of the state is a failure, though an extremely interesting and instructive one. As to the conception of distributive justice presented in Part II, I think that, though it stands in need of amendment and correction, the needed changes are more or less in the spirit of his enterprise and that the amended doctrine would have very similar political implications. Further, I think that Part III, which is almost ignored in the secondary literature, is one of the most interesting parts of the book. The interest here may be more political than purely philosophical, but it is no less substantial for that. He succeeds in making a strong case that the seemingly austere state that he seeks to justify can appeal to the idealistic side of human nature.

2. The Preface

Though Nozick's elegantly written preface needs no interpreting or straightening out, it might be useful to underscore some things he says there. He begins by straightforwardly revealing the...