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Philosophical Haiku

Robert Nozick (1938-2002)

by Terence Green

Modern slavery –
The state become oppressor.
To be just, do right.

Provoked by John Rawls’s quest for social justice, in 1974 his Harvard colleague Robert Nozick published Anarchy, State, and Utopia. In it, he argued that the state ought to do no more than ensure the peace is kept and that contracts are enforced. This is the classic libertarian position, restated for the modern era.

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