Anarchy, State, and Utopia review by Josh

Name: Anarchy, State, and Utopia review by Josh
Item: Anarchy, State, and Utopia
Rating: 80
Author: Josh

Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick

Review by Josh80/100Read April 1, 2007

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Nozick is wrong about almost everything, but he’s wrong in interesting and sometimes illuminating ways.

About the book

Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a 1974 book by the American political philosopher Robert Nozick. It won the 1975 US National Book Award in category Philosophy and Religion, has been translated into 11 languages, and was named one of the "100 most influential books since the war" (1945–1995) by the UK Times Literary Supplement. In opposition to A Theory of Justice (1971) by John Rawls, and in debate with Michael Walzer,[3] Nozick argues in favor of a minimal state, "limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on." When a state takes…

Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick, and books like it

Books like Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Rocannon's World
Ursula K. Le Guin
Book 1 in the Hainish Cycle series · about 2 hours to read
Published the same year, it imagines an anarchist society and tests its ideals against real life. It shares Anarchy, State, and Utopia's interest in what a just society might look like, through fiction rather than argument.
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Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes
about 8 hours to read
The original social-contract argument for a strong state, against which Nozick's minimal state is often measured. Like Nozick, Hobbes builds a whole political order from first principles and makes you follow every step.
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Equality and Partiality
Thomas Nagel
about 3 hours to read
Nagel examines how impartial moral reasoning sits against personal obligations. Like Nozick, he writes with clarity and philosophical care about the limits of the state and our duties to others.
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Spheres of Justice
Michael Walzer
about 6 hours to read
Walzer's account of how different goods should be distributed by different principles answers the kind of entitlement questions Nozick raises. Readers of Anarchy, State, and Utopia often find it a thoughtful, lucid next step.
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