Nozick on Utopia

Nozick on Utopia

Author: Talking Politics April 13, 2021 Duration: 45:58

Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974) was designed as a rebuttal to Rawls but it was so much more than that. It offered a defence of the minimal state that appealed to the writers of The Sopranos and a vision of utopia that appealed to the founders of Silicon Valley. David explores what Nozick wanted to achieve and identifies the surprising radicalism behind his political minimalism.


Recommended version to buy


Going Deeper:


Robert Nozick, The Examined Life (1989)

Jonathan Wolff, Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State (1991)

Stephen Metcalf, ‘The Liberty Scam’, Slate (2011)

[Video] Shelly Kagan, 'Hedonism and Nozick's Experience Machine' (from Open Yale Courses)


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A new series of talks by David Runciman, in which he explores some of the most important thinkers and prominent ideas lying behind modern politics – from Hobbes to Gandhi, from democracy to patriarchy, from revolution to lock down. Plus, he talks about the crises – revolutions, wars, depressions, pandemics – that generated these new ways of political thinking. From the team that brought you Talking Politics: a history of ideas to help make sense of what’s happening today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 27

Talking Politics: HISTORY OF IDEAS
Podcast Episodes
Marx and Engels on Revolution [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:45
The Communist Manifesto (1848) remains the most famous revolutionary text of all. But what was the problem with politics that only a revolution could solve? And why were the working class the only people who could solve…
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Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835/40) can claim to be the best book ever written about democracy and the best book ever written about America. David discusses what Tocqueville was expecting when he went…
Constant on Liberty [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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Benjamin Constant’s ‘The Liberty of the Ancients Compared to the Liberty of the Moderns’ (1819) examines what it means to be free in the modern world. Are we at liberty to follow our hearts? Do we have an obligation to t…
Wollstonecraft on Sexual Politics [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:49
Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is one of the most remarkable books in the history of ideas. A classic of early feminism, it uses what’s wrong with the relationship between men and women…
Hobbes on the State [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 59:44
Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) reimagined how we could do politics. It redefined many of the ideas that continue to shape modern politics: representation, sovereignty, the state. But in Leviathan these ideas have a str…
Talking Politics: HISTORY OF IDEAS [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:12
A short trailer to introduce a new series of talks by David Runciman. In a series of twelve podcasts, he explores some of the most important thinkers and prominent ideas lying behind modern politics – from Hobbes to Gand…