Introduction: analytic philosophy

Nozick is a fox, not a hedgehog, to borrow Isaiah Berlin's colourful way of classifying thinkers. (The reference is to the seventh-century BC Greek poet Archilochus, who wrote: “The fox knows many tricks, the hedgehog only one – but it's a good one”.) By far his most widely known book is Anarchy, State, and Utopia, his first major publication, published in 1974. This has been immensely influential, not only in philosophical circles but in practical politics as well, especially in Great Britain and the United States, where it has offered stimulus and support to the resurgence of free market capitalism that has occupied the closing decades of the twentieth century. But Nozick himself has a different view of it: “Others have identified me as a ‘political philosopher’”, he writes on page 1 of his latest book, Socratic Puzzles (SP), “but I have never thought of myself in those terms. The vast majority of my writing and attention has focused on other subjects”. He goes on (p. 2) to describe his method of work. He doesn't pay close attention to the criticism his work receives, and then reply to it with a succession of revisions and modifications, but gets on with something else instead. This is partly, as he makes clear, because he doesn't want to acquire a defensive attitude to his own ideas, but partly because his natural inclination is towards exploring rather than consolidating. This might suggest a certain flightiness or dilettantism in approach; but such a suggestion would be quite misleading.