Nozick on Philosophical Explorations: There is Room for Words other than Last Words

Always make sure to read the prefaces and introductions to Nozick’s books. They’re fascinating.

Nozick is smarter than you. If you and he had a live debate about something (anything), he would probably win. (He’d be able to outargue you, even if you were right and he were wrong.) Despite that, Nozick has a surprising amount of humility, at least in his writings. (I don’t know how he was in person.)  He also almost never responded to critics, even though he often could have done so with ease. Nozick would write about something, and then move on to the next topic. His approach to philosophy is different from most other philosophers’.

Like other philosophers, his work has “elaborate arguments, claims rebutted by unlikely counterexamples, surprising theses, puzzles, abstract structural conditions, challenges to find another theory which fits a specified range of cases, startling conclusions, and so on.” (x) Like other philosophers do, he emphasizes cases where his judgments conflict with those of most of his readers, because those cases are the most interesting.

Still, Anarchy, State, and Utopia is not some sort of political tract. It is

a philosophical exploration of issues, many fascinating in their own right, which arise in interconnect reconsider individual rights and the state. The word “exploration” is appropriately chosen. One view about how to write a philosophy book holds that an author should think through all of the details of the view he presents, and its problems, polishing and refining his view presents to the world of finished, complete, and elegant whole. This is not my view. At any rate, I believe that there is also a place and function in ongoing intellectual life for a less complete work, containing unfinished presentations, conjectures, open questions and problems, leagues, site connections, as well as a main line of argument. There is room for words on subjects other than last words. (xii, emphasis mine.)

Nozick is puzzled why other philosophers don’t write the way he does. They write as if they believe themselves to have given the “ absolutely final word on their subject,” though of course they know—and most readily admit in person—than they have not. They write as if they have at last “found the truth and build an impregnable fortress around it,” though of course they know—and most readily admit in person—that they have not. (xii) Yet most philosophers—with the exception of a few cranks—are well aware of the weak spots, uneasy assumptions, loose connections, and failings in their views.

Nozick goes on to say that many times “ philosophical activity feels like pushing and shoving things to fit into some fixed perimeter of specified shape.” (xiii) Philosophers want to construct and defend a viewpoint. But often this means try to squeeze, crush, and manipulate the truth so it will fit the shape of the philosopher’s point of view. Note that Nozick isn’t accusing philosophers of intellectual dishonesty, nor does he think this problem is endemic only to philosophers. As David Schmidtz says in the opening pages of one of his books, theories are like maps. They are like 2-dimensional representations of 3-dimensional domains. All useful theories—like all useful maps—involve some degree of distortion, omission, simplification, and misrepresentation.

Nozick says,

No philosopher says: “ There’s where I started, here’s where I ended up; the major weakness in my work is that it went from there to here; in particular here the most notable distortions, pushings, shovings, maulings, gouging, stretching, and shipping that I committed during the trip; not to mention the things thrown away and ignored, and all those averting his gaze.”

Nozick is unusual in that he does say all these things. Often in the main body of the text, and frequently in the footnotes, Nozick will actively draw your attention to what he considers the weak, uneasy, and difficult points. He’s not out to win—he’s out to do good philosophy. (In a later book, Nozick joked that most other philosophers seem to want to find arguments so compelling, that if a person were to disagree with the conclusion after reading the argument, that person’s head would explode. Nozick calls this model of philosophy “coercive philosophy.”)

Nozick isn’t worried that his work is weaker than others, so that’s not he reason for the caveats:

However, my reason for mentioning these issues here is not that I feel he became more strongly to this work and other philosophical writings. What I see in this book is, I think, correct. This is not my way of taking it back. Rather, I propose to give it all to you: the doubts and worries and uncertainties as well as the beliefs, his convictions, arguments. (xiii- xiv)

He writes this way because he thinks that’s a proper model for philosophy. Make the best case you can for something, but don’t pretend you’ve constructed a stronger edifice than you have. Trust your readers to engage with you in a philosophical way. (Nozick was too trusting, then.)

Most people–including most libertarians–are cartoon ideologues, who have far more confidence in their political beliefs than they evidence and arguments available to them allow, and have far more disdain for others’ beliefs than they should. Nozick, whatever his flaws, was no cartoon ideologue.