6:00 p.m.: Wine and Hors dOeuvres Reception
7:00 p.m.: Program and Q&A
Free Parking
Map and directions
All tickets include a free copy of the Fall 2024 issue of The Independent Review (list price: $11.95)
Book: Anarchy, State, and Utopia, $10 per copy (50% off)
Reserve Tickets
Official website
Bio on independent.org
Bio on WVU.edu
Join us for a reception and discussion of Robert Nozicks classic book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, first published fifty years ago. Nozicks book refuted social-justice statismbut also rankled many conservatives and libertarians. This event coincides with the publication of the Fall 2024 special issue of The Independent Review, featuring scholars who revisit Nozicks rational, complex, and balanced case for individual liberty and limited government. These scholars not only admire Nozick and deepen our understanding of his seminal work but also honor him with important disagreements and reinterpretations.
The Guardian (U.K.), proclaimed Nozick one of the 20th centurys greatest political theorists. Nozicks longtime colleague and friend, Alan Dershowitz, who will join us live remotely from New York, agrees with this assessmentand will also offer his own thoughts and personal reminiscences on Nozick.
The full set of contributors to the Fall 2024 issue of The Independent Review:
- Gregory Robson, The Business of Liberty and the Liberty of Business: Nozick's Contribution.
- David Schmidtz, My Dinner with Nozick.
- Jason Brennan, Robert Nozick and the Moral High Ground.
- Jessica Flanigan and Chris Freiman, Putting Wilt Chamberlain Back in the Game: Why Liberalism Is Not Compatible with Distributive Egalitarianism.
- Aeon Skoble, Anarchy, State, and Utopia at Fifty: Reassessing Nozick on Pluralism.
- Richard Salsman, Nozick on Taxation: The Necessity of Funding the Legitimate State.
- David Gordon, New Problems in Nozicks Derivation of the Minimal State.
- Eric Mack, Nozick on the Separateness of Persons: A Reconstruction.
- Gregory Robson, symposium editor and essay author of Christianizing Nozick.
First published in response to John Rawls A Theory of Justice, Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia has since become one of the defining texts in classic libertarian thought. Challenging and ultimately rejecting liberal, socialist, and conservative agendas, Nozick boldly asserts that the rights of individuals are violated as a state's responsibilities increaseand the only way to avoid these violations rests in the creation of a minimalist state limited to protection against force, fraud, theft, and the enforcement of contracts.