This is the Cato Daily podcast for Friday, November 1st, 2024.

I'm Caleb Brown.

This week marks 50 years since the groundbreaking anarchy, state, and utopia by Robert Nozick.

I recently sat down with Tulane University Professor Emeritus Eric Mack on the reception Nozick's book received,

its arguments, and its legacy 50 years on.

We are talking in reference to the 50th anniversary of a fairly important book of libertarian philosophy by Robert Nozick. Why is that book notable?

Can you describe sort of the philosophical milieu in which this book arrived?

The book is part of a reaction against the domination of utilitarian philosophy within political thought,

which had lasted for at least many decades. Roles, who's the other philosopher, I'll mention

now, said that it was the, that utilitarianism indeed had dominated for centuries.

He may have said that partially because he gets credit for ending its domination,

and it's better to end the domination of something for centuries than for just some decades.

So Rawls' book, A Theory of Justice, is published in 1971.

It is the beginning or about in the middle of this shift, where instead of political philosophers

invoking utilitarian sort of arguments, and I might say something about what those are in a minute,

they much more make arguments in terms of and reach conclusions in terms of theories

of justice or theories of rights.

Rawls's book is titled The Theory of Justice, and so it proposes substituting his type of theory

of justice for utilitarian doctrines.

Nozik's book comes along and proposes substituting certain type of theory of rights for

utilitarian doctrines.

Nozik's book is also a extremely powerful critique of roles.

...