[Conza88]

Originally Posted by Imperial

I haven't looked up enough about Nozick yet to have a full opinion on him. He was good for making libertarianism more academically mainstream though. (He is one of the few to actually fully critique Ayn Rand's books from a philosophical viewpoint rather than outright refusal and derision.)

There is a reason why the academic mainstream made him the "premiere" Libertarian philosopher. Here is Hans Hermann-Hoppe's introduction to Ethics of Liberty. (pdf) (pg 18-23)

Naturally, Rothbard's anarchism appeared threatening to all statists, and his right-wing-that is, private-property-anarchism in particular could not but offend socialists of all stripes. However, his anarchistic conclusions were not sufficient to explain the neglect of The Ethics of Liberty by academia. Rothbard's first handicap was compounded by an even weightier one. Not only had he come to unorthodox conclusions, worse, he had reached them by pre-modern intellectual means. Instead of suggesting, hypothesizing, pondering, or puzzling, Rothbard had offered axiomatic- deductive arguments and proofs. In the age of democratic egalitarianism and ethical relativism, this constituted the ultimate academic sin: intellectual absolutism, extremism, and intolerance.

The importance of this second methodological factor can be illustrated by contrasting the reception accorded to Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty on the one hand and Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopid2 on the other. Nozick's book appeared in 1974, three years after the publication of Rawls's A Theory of Justice. Almost overnight Nozick was internationally famous, and to this day, in the field of political philosophy Anarchy, State, and Utopia ranks probably second only to Rawls's book in terms of academic recognition. Yet, while Rawls was a socialist, Nozick was a libertarian. In fact, Nozick was heavily influenced by Rothbard.

He had read Rothbard's earlier Man, Economy, and State, Power and Market, and For A New Liberty,13 and in the acknowledgments to his book he noted that "it was a long conversation about six years ago with Murray Rothbard that stimulated my interest in individualist anarchist theory." To be sure, the conclusions arrived at by Nozick were less radical than those proposed by Rothbard. Rather than reaching anarchistic conclusions, Nozick's

main conclusions about the state are that the minimal state, limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified; that any more extensive state will violate persons' rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right.14

Nonetheless, in claiming "that the state may not use its coercive apparatus for the purpose of getting some citizens to aid others, or in order to prohibit activities to people for their own good or protection,"15 even Nozick's conclusions placed him far outside the political-philosophical mainstream. Why, then, in distinct contrast to the long-lasting neglect of Rothbard's libertarian The Ethics of Liberty, the stupendous academic success of Nozick's libertarian Anarchy, State, and Utopia? The answer is method and style.

Rothbard was above all a systematic thinker. He set out from the most elementary human situation and problem-Crusoe-ethics-and then proceeded painstakingly, justifying and proving each step and argument along the way to increasingly more complex and complicated situations and problems. Moreover, his prose was characterized by unrivaled clarity. In distinct contrast, Nozick was a modern unsystematic, associationist, or even impressionistic thinker, and his prose was difficult and unclear. Nozick was explicit about his own method. His writing, he stated,

was in the mode of much contemporary philosophical work in epistemology and metaphysics: there are elaborate arguments, claims rebutted by unlikely counterexamples, surprising theses, puzzles, abstract structural conditions, challenges to find another theory which fits a specified range of cases, startling conclusions, and so on. . . . One view about how to write a philosophy book holds that an author should think through all of the details of the view he presents, and its problems, polishing and refining his view to present to the world a finished, complete, and elegant whole. This is not my view. At
any rate, I believe that there also is a place and a function in our ongoing intellectual life for a less complete work, containing unfinished presentations, conjectures, open questions and problems, leads, side connections, as well as a main line of argument. There is room for words on subjects other than last words.16

Methodologically then, Nozick and Rothbard were poles apart. But why would Nozick's unsystematic ethical "explorations" find so much more resonance in academia than Rothbard's systematic ethical treatise, especially when their conclusions appeared to be largely congruent? Nozick touched upon the answer when he expressed the hope that his method "makes for intellectual interest and excitement."'But this was at best half of the answer, for Rothbard's 'The Ethics of Liberty', was an eminently interesting and exciting book, full of examples, cases, and scenarios from the full range of everyday experiences to extreme life-
boat-situations, spiced with many surprising conclusions, and above
all solutions instead of merely suggestions to problems and puzzles.

Nozick's method rather made for interest and excitement of a particular kind. Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty consisted essentially of one successively and systematically drawn out and elaborated argument, and thus required the long sustained attention of its reader. However, a reader of Rothbard's book could possibly get so excited that he would not want to put it down until he had finished it. The excitement caused by Anarchy, State, and Utopia was of a very different kind. The book was a series of dozens of disparate or loosely jointed arguments, conjectures, puzzles, counterexamples, experiments, paradoxes, surprising turns, startling twists, intellectual flashes, and philosophical razzle-dazzle, and thus required only short and intermittent attention of its reader. At the same time, few if any readers of Nozick's book likely will have felt the urge to read it straight through. Instead, reading Nozick was characteristically done unsystematically and intermittently, in bits and pieces. The excitement stirred by Nozick was intense, short, and fleeting; and the success of Anarchy, State, and Utopia was due to the fact that at all times, and especially under democratic conditions, there are far more high time-preference intellectuals-intellectual thrill seekers-than patient and disciplined thinkers.18

Despite his politically incorrect conclusions, Nozick's libertarianism was deemed respectable by the academic masses and elicited countless comments and replies, because it was methodologically non-committal; that is, Nozick did not claim that his libertarian conclusions proved anything. Even though one would think that ethics is-and must be-an eminently practical intellectual subject, Nozick did not claim that his ethical "explorations" had any practical implications. They were meant to be nothing more than fascinating, entertaining, or suggestive intellectual play.

As such, libertarianism posed no threat to the predominantly social-democratic intellectual class. On account of his unsystematic method-his philosophical pluralism-Nozick was "tolerant" vis-d-vis the intellectual establishment (his anti-establishment conclusions notwithstanding). He did not insist that his libertarian conclusions were correct and, for instance, socialist conclusions were false and accordingly demand their instant practical implementation (that is, the immediate abolition of the socialdemocratic welfare state, including all of public tax-funded education and research). Rather, Nozick's libertarianism was, and claimed to be, no more than just an interesting thought. He did not mean to do any real harm to the ideas of his socialist opponents. He only wanted to throw an interesting idea into the democratic open-ended intellectual debate, while everything real, tangible, and physical could remain unchanged and everyone could go on with his life and thoughts as before.

Following the publication of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Nozick took even further steps to establish his reputation as "tolerant." He never replied to the countless comments and criticisms of his book, including Rothbard's, which forms chapter 29 of this book. This confirmed that he took his non-committal method seriously. for why indeed, should anyone reply to his critics, if he were not committed to the correctness of his own views in the first place? Moreover, in his subsequent book, Philosophical Explanations, Nozick removed all remaining doubts as to his supposed non-extremist tolerance. He went further than merely restating his commitment to the methodological non-committal:

So don't look here for a knockdown argument that there is something wrong with knockdown arguments, for the knockdown argument to end all knockdown arguing. It will not do to argue you into the conclusion, even in order to reduce the total amount of presentation of argument. Nor may I hint that I possess the knockdown argument yet will not present it.19

Further, in a truly startling twist, Nozick went on to say that the use of knockdown arguments even constituted coercion and was hence morally offensive:

The terminology of philosophical art is coercive: arguments are powerful and best when they are knockdown, arguments force you to a conclusion, if you believe the premises you have to or must believe the conclusion, some arguments do not carry much punch, and so forth. A philosophical argument is an attempt to get someone to believe something, whether he wants to believe it or not. A successful philosophical argument, a strong argument, forces someone to a belief. . . . Why are philosophers intent on forcing others to believe things? Is that a nice way to behave toward someone? I think we cannot improve people that way. . . . Philosophical argument, trying to get someone to believe something whether he wants to believe it or not, is not, I have held, a nice way to behave toward someone; also, it does not fit the original motivation for studying or entering philosophy. That motivation is puzzlement, curiosity, a desire to understand, not a desire to produce uniformity of belief. Most people do not want to become thought-police. The philosophical goal of explanation rather than proof not only is morally better, it is more in accord with one's philosophical motivation. Also it changes how one proceeds philosophically; at the macro-level . . . it leads away from constructing the philosophical tower; at the micro-level, it alters which philosophical "moves" are legitimate at various points.20

With this surprising redefinition of systematic axiomatic-deductive reasoning as "coercion," Nozick had pulled the last tooth from his libertarianism. If even the attempt of proving (or demonstrating) the ethical impermissibility and injustice of democratic socialism constituted "bad" behavior, libertarianism had been essentially disarmed and the existing order and its academic bodyguards rendered intellectually invincible. How could one not be nice to someone as nice as Nozick? It is no wonder that the anti-libertarian intellectual establishment took kindly to a libertarianism as gentle and kind as his, and elevated Nozick to the rank of the premier philosopher of libertarianism.

18. In his subsequent book, Philosophical Explanations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), Nozick further confirmed this judgment. There he wrote, I, too, seek an unreadable book: urgent thoughts to grapple with in agitation and excitement, revelations to be transformed by or to transform, a book incapable of being read straight through, a book, even, to bring reading to stop. I have not found that book, or attempted it. Still, I wrote and thought in awareness of it, in the hope that this book would bask in its light. . . . At no point is [the reader] forced to accept anything. He moves along gently, exploring his own and the author's thoughts. He explores together with the author, moving only where he is ready to; then he stops. Perhaps, at a later time mulling it over or in a second reading, he will move further. . . . I place no extreme obligation of attentiveness on my readers; I hope instead for those who read as I do, seeking what they can learn from, make use of, transform for their own purposes. . . . This book puts forward its explanations in a very tentative spirit; not only do I not ask you to believe they are correct, I do not think it important for me to believe them correct, either. Still, I do believe, and hope you will find it so, that these proposed explanations are illuminating and worth considering, that they are worth surpassing; also, that the process of seeking and elaborating explanations, being open to new possibilities, the new wanderings and wanderings, the free exploration, is itself a delight. Can any pleasure compare to that of a new idea, a new question? There is sexual experience, of course, not dissimilar, with its own playfulness and possibilities, its focused freedom, its depth, its sharp pleasures and its gentle ones, its ecstacies. What is the mind's excitement and sensuality? What is orgasm? Whatever, it unfortunately will frighten and offend the puritans of the mind (do the two puritanisms share a common root?) even as it expands others and brings them joy" (pp. 1,7,8,24).

21. In accordance with this non-methodical mindset, Nozick's philosophical interests continued to drift from one subject to another. Already in his Philosophical Explanations, he had confessed "I have found (and not only in sequence) many different philosophies alluring and appealing, cogent and impressive, tempting and wonderful." (p.20) Libertarianism-ethics-carried no particular or even unique weight within Nozick's philosophy. It was one exciting subject among innumerous others, to be taken up for "exploration" or dropped as one's curiosity demanded. It was not entirely surprising then when, only a few years after the publication of the very book that had made him famous, it became increasingly obvious that Nozick had all but abandoned even his kind and gentle libertarianism. And when he at last acknowledged openly (in The Examined Life, a book of neo-Buddhist musings on the meaning of life) that he was no longer a libertarian and had converted to communitarian social democracy, he still felt under no obligation to give reasons for his change of mind and explain why his previous ethical views had been false. Interestingly this development seems to have had little effect on the status of Anarchy, State, and Utopia as prime libertarian philosophizing.

Oh no I would agree. I was just pointing out it appears he was more statist than what most people in America perceive him to be. But I would rather have a mindful dissenter than a thoughtless supporter. But it doesn't really change anything. I would probably be more statist like Paine, but I still despise the state for what it implies.

Well good, radical language and rhetoric about the government and State is what is needed. Focusing primarily on what the State needs to stop doing, and not the "other" (Paine? Welfare?) factors. Which I will have to see for myself, should get the guy to quote from Rights of Man. And as long as you don't attack / denouce non-archy / anarcho-capitalism for being too radical, we should get along just fine.