Abstract

In Part I of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick undertakes to demonstrate, on the basis of what would ordinarily be considered libertarian anarchist moral and metaphysical assumptions, that a de jure legitimate state could come into existence by a sequence of steps, no one of which violated any person's rights; that such a state would satisfy a plausible definition of the state of the sort Max Weber enunciated; that it could function as a state without violating anyone's rights; and that such a state would be a genuine minimal, or nightwatchman, state. In Part II, Nozick goes on to argue that a state so conceived could be no more than a minimal state without violating someone's rights.

In this Article, I propose to subject the argument of Part I of Anarchy, State, and Utopia to examination and criticism. After a brief summary of Nozick's argument, intended to bring into view the elements of it which are especially important for my analysis, I shall develop my critique in three stages, beginning with purely internal considerations of the consistency of Nozick's argument, given his premises, and proceeding to more and more "external" considerations. My conclusions will be that Nozick's argument is internally unsuccessful; that a number of the background assumptions of his argument are wrong, in ways which vitiate his theory; that his entire mode, or style, of doing political philosophy is inappropriate to its subject matter; and finally, that the peculiar tone of Anarchy, State, and Utopia serves as a clue to what is awry with it philosophically, as a piece of political theory.

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