Editing Robert Nozick (section)

===Political philosophy===
Nozick's first book, ''[[Anarchy, State, and Utopia]]'' (1974), argues that only a [[Minarchism|minimal]] state limited to the functions of protection against "force, fraud, theft, and administering courts of law" can be justified, as any more extensive state would violate people's individual rights.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.iep.utm.edu/nozick/|title=Robert Nozick (1938—2002)|last=Feser|first=Edward|website=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy|access-date=March 13, 2017|archive-date=February 26, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170226230306/http://www.iep.utm.edu/nozick/|url-status=live}}</ref>

Nozick believed that a distribution of goods is just when brought about by [[Free market|free exchange]] among consenting adults, trading from a baseline position where the principles of [[entitlement theory]] are upheld. In one example, Nozick uses the example of basketball player [[Wilt Chamberlain#Star status|Wilt Chamberlain]] to show that even when large [[Economic inequality|inequalities]] subsequently emerge from the processes of free transfer (i.e. paying extra money just to watch Wilt Chamberlain play), the resulting distributions are just so long as all consenting parties have freely consented to such exchanges.

''Anarchy, State, and Utopia'' is often contrasted to [[John Rawls]]'s ''[[A Theory of Justice]]'' in popular academic discourse, as it challenged the partial conclusion of Rawls's [[difference principle]], that "social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are to be of greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society".

Nozick's philosophy also claims to heritage from [[John Locke]]'s ''[[Two Treatises of Government#Second Treatise|Second Treatise on Government]]'' and seeks to ground Locke's state of nature, but breaks distinctly with Locke on the question of self-ownership by attempting to [[secularize]] his doctrine of [[natural law]] without accepting it.<ref>Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York, NY: Basic Books. Chapter1. pp.9： Only when some divergence between our conception and Locke's is relevant to political philosophy, to our argument about the state, will it be mentioned. The completely accurate statement of the moral background, including the precise statement of the moral cheory and its underlying basis, would require a full-scale presentation and is a task for another time. (A lifetime?) That task is so crucial, the gap left without its accomplishment so yawning, that it is only a minor comfort to note that we here are following the respectable tradition of Locke, who does not provide anything remotely resembling a satisfactory explanation of the status and basis of the law of nature in his Second Treatise.</ref> Instead, Nozick appealed to the second formulation of [[Immanuel Kant]]'s [[categorical imperative]]: that people should be treated as an end in themselves, not merely as a means to an end. Nozick terms this the 'separateness of persons', saying that "there is no social entity...there are only individual people", and that we ought to "respect and take account of the fact that [each individual] is a separate person".<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Nozick|first1=Robert|title=Anarchy, State, and Utopia|pages=32–33|year=1974|publisher=Basic Books}}</ref>

Most controversially, Nozick argued that consistent application of libertarian self-ownership would allow for consensual, non-coercive [[enslavement]] contracts between adults.<ref>Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York, NY: Basic Books. Chapter10. pp.331.</ref> He rejected the notion of [[inalienable rights]] advanced by Locke and most contemporary capitalist-oriented libertarian academics, writing in ''Anarchy, State, and Utopia'' that the typical notion of a "free system" would allow individuals to voluntarily enter into non-coercive [[voluntary slavery|slave contracts]].<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Ellerman|first1=David|title=''Translatio'' versus ''Concessio'': Retrieving the Debate about Contracts of Alienation with an Application to Today's Employment Contract|journal=Politics & Society|date=September 2005|volume=35|issue=3|pages=449–80|doi=10.1177/0032329205278463|url=http://ellerman.org/Davids-Stuff/Econ%26Pol-Econ/translatio-v-concessio-P-and-S-final.pdf|access-date=April 17, 2017|publisher=Sage Publications|s2cid=158624143|archive-date=April 7, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200407033223/http://ellerman.org/Davids-Stuff/Econ%26Pol-Econ/translatio-v-concessio-P-and-S-final.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>[http://www.missouri.edu/~philrnj/nozick.html A summary of the political philosophy of Robert Nozick] by R. N. Johnson {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020204113921/http://www.missouri.edu/~philrnj/nozick.html |date=February 4, 2002 }}</ref><ref>Jonathan Wolff (October 25, 2007). [http://world.std.com/~mhuben/wolff_2.html "Robert Nozick, Libertarianism, And Utopia"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191006100631/http://world.std.com/~mhuben/wolff_2.html |date=October 6, 2019 }}</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20060202010501/http://www.warwick.ac.uk/staff/S.L.Hurley/papers/antnpdd.pdf Nozick on Newcomb's Problem and Prisoners' Dilemma] by S. L. Hurley {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050301231331/http://warwick.ac.uk/staff/S.L.Hurley/papers/antnpdd.pdf |date=March 1, 2005 }}</ref>

''Anarchy, State, and Utopia'' received a [[National Book Award]] in the [[List of winners of the National Book Award#Science, Philosophy and Religion|category of Philosophy and Religion]] in the year following its original publication.<ref name=nba1975>
[http://www.nationalbook.org/nba1975.html "National Book Awards – 1975 {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110909065656/http://www.nationalbook.org/nba1975.html |date=September 9, 2011 }}. [[National Book Foundation]]. Retrieved March 8, 2012.</ref>