Nozick's Proviso: Misunderstood and Misappropriated

Joachim Wuendisch ()
Additional contact information
Joachim Wuendisch: Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet Duesseldorf

Rationality, Markets and Morals, 2013, vol. 4, issue 79

Abstract: After almost forty years, Robert Nozick’s seminal right-libertarian classic Anarchy, State, and Utopia continues to stand at the center of much of the discussion regarding prop- erty and its initial acquisition. Nozick’s most important contribution to that discussion is the formulation of his entitlement theory. Although the theory has received nearly unparalleled attention, its interpreters have misunderstood and misappropriated its most essential part: Nozick’s proviso. This paper presents a brief selection of the most representative interpretations of Nozick’s proviso, criticizes them, offers a textually well founded alternative reading of the proviso, and discusses its implications for Nozick’s entitlement theory as well as right-libertarian theories of property more generally

Keywords: Robert Nozick; Entitlement Theory; Principle of Justice in Acquisition; Lockean Proviso; New Baseline Interpretation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.rmm-journal.de/downloads/Article_Wuendisch.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rmm:journl:v:4:y:2013:i:79

Access Statistics for this article

Rationality, Markets and Morals is currently edited by Bernd Lahno

More articles in Rationality, Markets and Morals from Frankfurt School Verlag, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Friederike Pförtner ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).