Robert Nozick facts for kids
Robert Nozick (born November 16, 1938 – died January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher. He taught at Harvard University and was the president of the American Philosophical Association. He is most famous for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). In this book, he shared his ideas about a "minimal state" and how people could freely choose the rules of their society. He also wrote Philosophical Explanations (1981), which included his ideas about how we know things. Nozick also wrote about ethics (what is right and wrong), decision theory (how we make choices), the philosophy of mind (how our minds work), and metaphysics (the nature of reality). His last book, Invariances (2001), explored how unchanging things and objectivity (seeing things as they truly are) might have developed through evolution.
Quick facts for kids
Robert Nozick
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Nozick in 1977
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| Born | November 16, 1938 |
| Died | January 23, 2002 (aged 63) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
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| Education | Columbia University (AB) Princeton University (PhD) Oxford University (Fulbright Scholar) |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Analytic Libertarianism |
| Doctoral advisors | Carl Gustav Hempel |
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Main interests
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Political philosophy, ethics, epistemology |
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Notable ideas
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Utility monster, experience machine, entitlement theory of justice, Nozick's Lockean proviso, Wilt Chamberlain argument, paradox of deontology, deductive closure, Nozick's four conditions on knowledge, rejection of the principle of epistemic closure |
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Influences
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Contents
About Robert Nozick's Life
Robert Nozick was born in Brooklyn, New York, into a Jewish family. His father ran a small business.
Education and Family
Nozick went to public schools in Brooklyn. He then studied at Columbia University, where he earned his first degree in 1959. He continued his studies at Princeton University, getting his PhD in 1963. He also spent time studying at University of Oxford in England. While at Columbia, he was involved in student groups that discussed big ideas about society.
In 1959, he married Barbara Fierer, and they had two children, Emily and David. They later divorced, and Nozick married the poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg. Robert Nozick passed away in 2002 after a long illness with stomach cancer. He was buried in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Nozick's Important Ideas
Robert Nozick wrote several important books that explored big questions about how society should work and how we gain knowledge.
Ideas on Political Philosophy
One of Nozick's most famous books is Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). For this book, he won a special award called the National Book Award.
In this book, Nozick argued that a government should be very small, or "minimal." Its only jobs should be to protect people from harm, fraud, and theft, and to run courts. He believed that if a government did more than this, it would take away people's rights.
Nozick thought that if people freely traded goods and services, starting from a fair point, then the way things ended up being distributed was fair, even if some people became much richer than others. He disagreed with another famous philosopher, John Rawls, who believed that society should be set up to help the least fortunate.
Nozick was inspired by ideas from John Locke and Immanuel Kant. He believed that people should be treated as valuable individuals, not just as tools to achieve a goal.
Ideas on Knowledge (Epistemology)
In his book Philosophical Explanations (1981), Nozick explored how we know things. He offered new ways to think about knowledge, free will (our ability to make choices), personal identity (who we are), and the meaning of life.
He also tried to solve problems related to skepticism (doubting what we know). Nozick suggested that to truly "know" something, it's not just about having good reasons for believing it. He came up with four conditions for someone (S) to know that something (P) is true:
- P must be true.
- S must believe that P is true.
- If P were not true, S would not believe it.
- If P were true, S would believe it.
Nozick called this his "tracking theory" of knowledge. He believed that for us to truly know something, our way of finding out must reliably "track" the truth, meaning it would lead us to the truth even if conditions changed.
Later Books and Thoughts
Nozick wrote other books that explored different topics:
- The Examined Life (1989): This book was written for a wider audience. It looked at big ideas like love, death, faith, and the meaning of life. In this book, Nozick seemed to question some of his earlier strong beliefs about limited government. He thought that sometimes, people's freedom might be better protected if wealth was shared more, perhaps through taxes. However, he still considered himself a libertarian (someone who believes in maximum individual freedom).
- The Nature of Rationality (1993): This book looked at how we make decisions and how we can be rational.
- Socratic Puzzles (1997): This was a collection of his essays on various topics, from other philosophers to animal rights.
- Invariances (2001): His last book, which connected ideas from physics and biology to questions about objectivity (seeing things as they truly are) and moral value (what is good). He suggested that unchanging truths and objectivity developed over time through evolution.
Thoughts on Utilitarianism
Nozick also created some famous "thought experiments" to challenge other philosophical ideas.
- The "utility monster": This idea showed how a philosophy called utilitarianism (which aims for the greatest good for the greatest number) could go wrong. He imagined a "monster" that got so much happiness from things that its needs would outweigh everyone else's, meaning everyone else's happiness would be sacrificed for this one monster.
- The "experience machine": Nozick asked us to imagine a machine that could give us any pleasurable experience we wanted, making us feel like we were living a wonderful life, even if it wasn't real. He asked if we would choose to plug into this machine. Nozick believed most people would say no, because we want to actually *do* things and *be* someone, not just *feel* like we are. This idea suggested that happiness isn't the only thing that matters in life.
Nozick's Way of Thinking
Nozick was known for his open and exploring way of thinking. He often presented interesting ideas and let the reader decide what they thought. He also used ideas from many different fields, like economics, physics, and evolutionary biology, to help him think about philosophical questions.
See also
- American philosophy
- Liberalism
- List of American philosophers
- List of liberal theorists
- A Theory of Justice: The Musical! – a musical where a fictional Nozick is a character
