In this Aeon article, historian Brad Baranowski highlights two of Robert Nozick's most important contributions to philosophy: first, his libertarianism; and then, his vision for what analytic philosophy could be—not as technical and obscurant. Nozick wrote perhaps his most famous book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, in 1974 as a reply to Rawls' 1971 classic, A Theory of Justice.

On the one hand, what are the merits of a libertarian, small-government way of looking at things? On the other, why did Nozick himself move away from libertarianism as his views on philosophy changed? Surely I am grateful that analytic philosophy is not as obsessed with logic as it used to be, but what are the downsides of this shift?

Read the article here:

https://aeon.co/ideas/how-robert-nozick-put-a-purple-prose-bomb-under-analytical-philosophy