Robert Nozick Quotes on Justice
Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) supplied the principal libertarian response to Rawls's Theory of Justice. The entitlement theory of justice in holdings — justice in acquisition, justice in transfer, and justice in rectification — argues that a distribution of goods is just if and only if it has arisen through the proper historical operation of these three principles, regardless of the distributive pattern that results. The Wilt Chamberlain example — that any patterned distribution will be continually disrupted by the voluntary transfers of free agents — supplies the central argument against patterned conceptions of distributive justice. The book also contains the framework's positive contribution: a minimal state limited to protection, enforcement of contracts, and rectification of wrongs, defended against the anarchist alternative through an ingenious invisible-hand justification.
Quotes
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“Whatever arises from a just situation by just steps is itself just.”
Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, The Entitlement Theory, p. 151 -
“The minimal state is the most extensive state that can be justified.”
Preface, p. ix -
“Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor.”
Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, Redistribution and Property Rights, p. 169 -
“Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?”
Preface, p. ix -
“Some anarchists have claimed not merely that we would be better off without a state, but that any state necessarily violates people's moral rights and hence is intrinsically immoral. Our starting point then, though nonpolitical, is by intention far from nonmoral. Moral philosophy sets the background for, and boundaries of, political philosophy . What persons may and may not do to one another limits what they may do through the apparatus of a state, or do to establish such an apparatus.”
Ch. 1 : Why State of Nature Theory?; Political Philosophy, p. 6 -
“Justice in holdings is historical; it depends upon what actually has happened. We shall return to this point later.”
Anarchy, State, and Utopia(1974) | Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, The Entitlement Theory, p. 152 -
“A distribution is just if it arises from another just distribution by legitimate means.”
Anarchy, State, and Utopia(1974) | Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, The Entitlement Theory, p. 151 -
“It goes without saying that any persons may attempt to unite kindred spirits, but, whatever their hopes and longings, none have the right to impose their vision of unity upon the rest.”
Anarchy, State, and Utopia(1974) | Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework as Utopian Common Ground, p. 325