Introduction to Political Philosophy

Nozick on Just Holdings

As you read the material for the next class, keep the questions below in mind. To answer these questions you will have to reflect critically on what you have read and possibly re-read important passages. Keep in mind that there are two basic kinds of information that you need to look for in the readings.

  1. What are the main points or conclusions that an author accepts with respect to a particular issue?
  2. What are the reasons or important considerations that lead the author to accept that conclusion?

For our purposes, it is information of the latter sort (2) that will be our primary concern since our most basic task is to evaluate the reasons that are offered to support accepting one possible conclusion about an issue, rather than another. Although I strongly suggest that you write out brief answers to these questions, you do not have to turn in written responses. You do, however, need to be prepared to speak intelligently to these issues in the next class meeting.

Reading:

  • Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 149–164, 167–182 (handout).

Questions:

  1. What are Nozick’s three principles for justice of holdings?
  2. What are “end-state” principles of justice? Why is Nozick’s theory not one of these?
  3. What are “patterned” theories of justice? Why is Nozick’s theory not one of these? How does individual liberty threatened a patterned theory?
  4. How does Nozick justify the claim that taxation is on par with forced labor?
  5. Explain Nozick’s discussion of how labor confers ownership? Why does he discuss Locke’s proviso in this context?
  6. What is the difference between the weak and stringent provisos?
  7. What is the difference (in how the proviso applies) between the cases of (A) the person who appropriates all the drinkable water on earth, (B) the medical researcher who creates/owns all the vaccines for a fatal disease, and (C) the explorer who discovers a previously undiscovered natural research that cures a fatal disease.

 

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