| ashu |
Posted
on 24-Jan-02 12:17 AM
Dear all,
Robert Nozick was one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived.
Intellectually combative, verbally sharp and with a somewhat caustic sense of humor, Nozick fiercely challenged a generation of Harvard students to think
better and to argue better and to write better.
I will never forget how, in a public debate with an Oxford philosopher Joseph Raz at a Kennedy School forum, Nozick pounced on Raz's ideas and tore them apart with such force, logic and relish that his was a display of both stunning showmanship and first-rate, rare intellect.
As a student interested in taking too many courses but unable to make up my mind as to what I should REALLY study (like one other Nepali friend now a grad student at MIT, I always felt like a five-year-old in a candy shop, whenever I saw the thick Harvard course catalog!) , I had the good fortune to take two of Nozick's
courses.
One was called, "Thinking about thinking", which he co-caught with law professor Alan Dersowitz. The other was: "Socrates, Christ and Buddha". Needless to say, as I look back, both of those courses remain among the best courses I ever
took -- these courses have shaped my views, shattered my previously fluffy ideas, and have intellectually enriched my life and given me the basic tools to continue enjoy learning for learning's sake.
I say all this NOT to boast but to underscore that the reach of an excellent teacher such as Nozick extends much deeper into one's life, long after the
exams are finished and long after you've graduated and moved on to relatively more mundane concerns such as having a career and all that jazz.
I am deeply sad to hear about Nozick's death.
He was a great teacher, a fine human being, who cared about his students and ideas. His originalty, his debating style, his fearlessness to challenge established ideas are among the qualities worth emulating.
May his soul rest in peace.
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/01.17/99-nozick.html
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
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| ashu |
Posted
on 24-Jan-02 04:27 AM
Robert Nozick, Harvard Political Philosopher, Dies at 63
January 24, 2002
By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT
Robert Nozick, the intellectually nimble Harvard
philosopher whose critique of America's social welfare
system 25 years ago continues to define the debate between
conservatives and liberals, died yesterday in Cambridge,
Mass. He was 63.
He died of complications from stomach cancer, the
university said.
In his first book, "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" (Basic
Books, 1974), Professor Nozick starkly and vigorously
attacked the forms of paternalistic government that "forbid
capitalistic acts between consenting adults."
Writing in a chatty style that was praised for its
accessibility to a wide readership - his work won a
National Book Award - Professor Nozick took off after the
liberal orthodoxy that had created and nourished the modern
welfare state. The state, he wrote, is fine, as long as it
is minimal, as long as it does not coerce the individual or
usurp his rights, something he argued that American
government did on unexamined assumptions.
He began by defending the "night watchman" state of
classical 19th century theory, or the state in which
government does no more than protect its members from
violence, theft and breach of contract. He undertook to do
this by showing how such a state could be "evolved," as he
put it, from a theoretical state of nature without anyone's
natural rights being violated.
He argued that no more than the minimal state could be
justified, asserting that no one who has legitimately
acquired what he termed "holdings" can be under any
enforced obligation to give them away.
In this he was providing a pointed conservative response to
a liberal colleague at Harvard, John Rawls, the author of
"A Theory of Justice," and like-minded advocates of so-
called redistributive justice, the obligation of a state to
improve the lot of its less advantaged by taking from the
advantaged.
Mr. Nozick asserted that Mr. Rawls's quest for equality
involved the imposition of inequality.
The implications of "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" are
strongly libertarian and proved comforting to the right,
which was grateful for what it embraced as philosophical
justification.
But even liberal philosophers found Mr. Nozick's logic
compelling. Peter Singer, the Australian social philosopher
and bioethicist, wrote in The New York Review of Books that
the book "is a major event in contemporary political
philosophy." Henceforth, he said, assumptions like the
right of the state to bring about redistribution through
such "coercive means" as progressive taxation "will need to
be defended and argued for instead of being taken for
granted."
The book was filled with playful ramifications and
diverting detours, like Professor Nozick's modest proposal
for redistributing sex appeal by means of plastic surgery.
He went on to Columbia College, where he founded the local
chapter of the Student League for Industrial Democracy,
which in 1962 changed its name to Students for a Democratic
Society.
Mr. Nozick entered graduate school at Princeton University,
where he earned an M.A. in 1961 and a Ph.D. in 1963, while
serving as an instructor in philosophy.
It was at Princeton that he first encountered arguments in
defense of capitalism.
"At first, I thought: `No, those arguments aren't good
ones,"' he told an interviewer from Forbes Magazine in
1975. "The more I explored the arguments, the more
convincing they looked. For a while I thought: `Well, yes,
the arguments are right, capitalism is the best system, but
only bad people would think so.' Then, at some point, my
mind and heart were in unison."
Throughout his career, his interests as a teacher ranged
widely. Over the years, he taught courses jointly with
members of the government, psychology and economics
departments, and at the divinity and law schools.
Professor Nozick was chairman of the Harvard philosophy
department from 1981 to 1984, and in 1998 he was named
University Professor, Harvard's most distinguished
professorial position. Only 17 others held the title at the
time.
Despite the reputation as a right- wing philosopher that
"Anarchy, State, and Utopia" left him with, Professor
Nozick was as intellectually diverse in his writing as he
was in his teaching. In "Philosophical Explanations"
(1981), he explored the nature of knowledge, the self, free
will and ethics. (The book won the Ralph Waldo Emerson
Award of Phi Beta Kappa.) "The Examined Life: Philosophical
Meditations" (1989) contained 27 essays on subjects like
love, happiness and creativity, as well as evil and the
Holocaust.
In some of his works, Professor Nozick seemed to pull back
from the extreme positions of "Anarchy, State, and Utopia."
If his positions zigzagged, he appeared to see this as a
necessary pattern, even in on the scale of national
politics.
"The electorate wants the zigzag," he wrote. "Sensible
folk, they realize that no political position will
adequately include all of the values and goals one wants
pursued in the political realm, so these will have to take
turns. The electorate as a whole behaves in this sensible
fashion, even if significant numbers of people stay
committed to their previous goals and favorite programs,
come what may."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/24/obituaries/24NOZI.html?ex=1012863568&ei=1&en=a1c83a2f4b2b4cbd
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| ashu |
Posted
on 25-Jan-02 01:12 AM
Hi BP,
I myself accidentally stumbled upon a few philosophy courses because philosophy courses seemed all about challenging the basic assumptions -- behind, say, political
science, economics, the sciences and even the arts -- and building up and demolishing arguments.
Unlike in some other disciplines, it's hard to get away in a philosophy class writing fluff: you have to develop solid arguments, support your conclusions with a chain of deductive (verbal) reasonings, and make everything hang together really tight.
I guess, when you do that kind of thing for a long time, one result becomes obvious: you can argue for and against all sides of a given problem with equal conviction, and that training can come in quite handy. I mean, like your math-major-turned-philosophy-major, one can use that training to pursue just about anything you want: from pursuing a career in law or business or public policy or even go to medical school (at least in the US!) and so on and on.
On another note, I also found out some of the smartest and the liveliest fellow students were often philosophy majors -- most of whom knew that they were
NOT going to be professional philosophers per se but wanted the training to
make use of it in various ways.
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
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