What's Left of Philosophy
patreon
92 | What is Liberalism? Part V. Robert Nozick's Libertarian Reveries
🕑 Added 2024-07-01 10:00:10 +0000 UTCIn this episode, we discuss Robert Nozick’s libertarian political philosophy as presented in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. We consider his challenges to leftist thought, especially the sort of left liberalism championed by the likes of John Rawls. We take seriously his demand for an argument for egalitarianism and his critique of patterned accounts of distributive justice. But we also give him a hard time for some of his more absurd arguments, from those about swimming pools to those concerning wealthy basketball players and the all-important human need to feel like a very special boy. When it comes to libertarianism, this is in fact them sending their best.
leftofphilosophy.com | @leftofphil
References:
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
Katrina Forrester, In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).
Music:
“Vintage Memories” by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com
“My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN
Comments
Joshua XVX
Comrades, I need a cw if you’re going to be this hilarious. That or I can no longer listen to ya’ll while lifting weights, because that intro had me laughing so hard mid rep that I almost dropped a few hundred pounds on my head 😂 Great work as always
Sam Schick
Engaging with the argument that we wouldn’t want to alleviate poverty because no one would feel special is falling for the bait, we don’t want to end poverty because we would have no population who will sell their labor for undervalued price. Listing banal infrastructure projects or other basic functions of a functioning society as reasons for resentment of taxation is also playing into nozick’s baby brained arguments, the US accounts 40% of the global total of arms spending, we maintain a military apparatus that has never been seen before, we have 750 foreign military bases and installations-most countries have none-we’re in perpetual war and as citizens, we’ve been completely alienated from having meaningful discussion, much less any control of how these facts are ruining our country and wasting the precious little productive time in our lives.
Nathan Adams
Re: raw-dogging thinking. One of my (analytical Phil) grad school profs told me about a colloquium Nozick gave that was one of the worst things he’d ever heard because Nozick clearly hadn’t done any research or planned the talk, just kind of thought out loud off the top of his head. People were appalled
