Customer Reviews

Robert Nozick (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus)

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The first thing you should realize about this book is that it is not a systematic introduction or explanation of Nozick - it is merely a collection of about 8 articles interpreting and criticizing fairly narrow areas of Nozick's thought.

The introduction or first chatper (don't remember which) provides a pretty good five page summary of Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia but the rest of the book is pretty worthless, pretty much like the journal articles you might expect to find if you searched for Nozick articles on JSTOR or EbscoHost or another online journal program.

If you can read the first chapter in a bookstore go for it, otherwise you are probably wasting your time and money.

You need not know Nozick's work to get something out of this book. The keywords are Honest and Sincere Musings on issues as Nozick proclaimed of himself. Most of the various authors in this anthology do the same: give genuine and sincere thoughts rather than formal analytic theory. Whether or not they are doing so to follow Nozick's example or whether or not they are musing on Nozick or his ideas or instead musing on their own ideas, these authors mostly come up with insights free of artifice. In redoing my review here (July 2006) I decided the book should only have 3 stars though. Put into context of more profound readings I have been doing, 3 stars is where this book ranks. Still, you can't go wrong buying this book if you're in the mood for a more relaxed, but still philosophical, bout of reading. For more profundity go elsewhere. If you like, use the Amazon feature to see all my reviews.