Nozick Entitlement Theory, Slides of Political Philosophy

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Nozick’s Entitlement Theory

 Libertarian approach to justice

 Based on a Lockean conception of property

3 Principles

 Principle of Transfer – whatever is justly acquired can be freely transferred.

 Principle of Just Initial Acquisition – an account of how people come initially to own the things that can be transferred in accordance with principle (1)

 Principle of Rectification of Injustice – how to deal with holdings if they were unjustly acquired or transferred.

Ambition vs. Endowment

 Unlike Rawls’s theory, Nozick’s theory is not ‘endowment - sensitive’ but is ‘ambition - sensitive’

 According to Nozick, only the minimalist state is the only morally justified state  Enforcement of contracts  Protection against force and fraud

Intuitive argument for the

entitlement theory

 D1: Just distribution of goods is provided by some rule R

 D2: State which results from the movement from D1 according to principle(s) P.

 If D1 is a just distribution, and the exchange of goods that results in D is not forced, then D2 is just.

Problem with the intuitive

argument

 Nozick stacks the deck by assuming that the rules and principles supporting D1 call for an absolute right to property. It may be that our initial just distribution would look Rawlsian