Robert Nozick's theory of the state and justice

The book of ?Anarchy, State and Utopia? published in 1974 by Robert Nozick is one of a series of theoretical texts successively written in such a period that the tradition of normative political theory -a theory which had been declining ever since the Logical-Positivist doctrin?s critique in the early 20th century- revitalized with the publication of ?A Theory of Justice? by John Rawls (1971). Given the anarchy-state dichotomy, Nozick was opposed to the anarchist thesis in terms of internalizing a minimal statist-minarchist argument that a state is justified if it emerged by a series of invisible-hand processes having no step violating any individual?s rights he has seen as absolute, while, by his entitlement theory of justice, was opposite to, particularly, the Rawlsian theory and, generally, the egalitarian, communitarian and Marxian approaches, which are apt to evaluate the individual within a collevtive matrix, and context. The research object of this dissertation is Robert Nozick?s theory of the state and justice. The scope of this dissertation, therefore, can be epitomized as follows: (i) It has been aimed to describe, evaluate, and critize the Nozickean morally justified, or legitimate, state first emerging from the traditional starting-point, the state of nature, or anarchy, as the different protective associations, then to the ultra-minimal state, and finally to the minimal state by an invisible hand, or spontaneous, process by which there was no need to violate any individual rights. (ii) It has been aimed to describe and evaluate or critize an unpatterned or a historcial entitlement principles of justice based-on the thesis that a an expensive state-than-minimal is not justified, including its deontological, intutional and philosophical premises and conclusions. Paralled to this scope of the present study, Nozick?s theoretical text has been examined as a central resource to the research. In addition to this, what has been written about Nozick?s philosphy since 1974 which is likely to have formed a corps has been selected carefully as much as possible, in an analytical and critical manner. The reason why it was only reffered to the non-Turkish references is to provide an introductory working about the Nozickean minimal state model and the entitlement theory of justice with the Turkish literature, which is very limited. That Nozick has failed for justification of the state versus the individual anarchist?s known claim, and that the theory of justice he has elaborated versus the re-distributionist theories of justice in his famous book was not one he wished to see applied in practice is the hypothesis of the present dissertation. Key Words: the nature of state, minimal state, justice, entitlement.