| dc.description.abstract | In what can be considered the seminal work in libertarian political philosophy, Robert Nozick established the notion of a minimally justified state in his Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Working from a deontological framework, Nozick sought to systematically reject the work of fellow Harvard philosopher John Rawls, who operated from an ostensibly disparate framework to establish the notion of justice as fairness in his A Theory of Justice. At a foundational level, these two concepts of justice seem to be incompatible. However, this work will lay out a case for Rawlsian-Nozickian compatibility by arguing that Nozick's view of individual rights and property rights can work in concert with the Rawlsian notion of justice as fairness. | |
