ROBERT NOZICK (1938–2002)


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Department of Philosophy, Harvard University, where Nozick was Joseph Pellegrino University Professor.

My Ph.D. dissertation – read it online here – is about Nozick's theory of individual freedom in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). The work was funded by The Ethics Programme, The Research Council of Norway, and was supervised by Professor Thomas Pogge, Department of Philosophy, Yale University, USA.

See also my article «Nozick's libertarian extremism and post libertarianism», 2005; in Norwegian only: «Nozicks libertarianske ekstremisme og post-libertarianisme» in Norsk filosofisk tidsskrift [Norwegian Journal of Philosophy].

I had the pleasure of meeting and discussing with Nozick in Oslo, Norway, at an early stage of my work (in 1993), and on this occasion I also met his wife, poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg.

Obituary in

Professor Robert Nozick
By Alan Ryan

Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) is one of the classics of political philosophy of the 20th Century and the book for which he became famous.

His interests in philosophy were however wide indeed and most of what he wrote is to be found in other areas of philosophy. Nozick was born in Brooklyn, New York. He died of stomach cancer at the age of 63 and describes his experience of having a life-threatening disease, which he knew was likely to kill him, in the Introduction of his book Socratic Puzzles.

Assisted Suicide: The Philosophers' Brief (joint amicus brief to the US Supreme Court on assisted suicide, by Ronald Dworkin, Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick, John Rawls, T.M. Scanlon, Judith Jarvis Thomson), in Volume 44, Number 5, March 27, 1997 of

Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism? January/February 1998, Vol. 20 No. 1.

Books about Nozick