ON NOZICK’S DEFERENCE TO COSMOPOLITANISM —“The completeness of Nozick’s compos

ON NOZICK’S DEFERENCE TO COSMOPOLITANISM

—“The completeness of Nozick’s composition is remarkable: he touches somewhere in the book, however lightly, almost every note of American decadence. Gandhi is there. The necessary deference to feminism is there. The necessary reproof to “racism” is there. Carlos Castaneda is there, referred to as though he were a thinker, which he is not… . Drugs of course are there, and in no unfavorable light: drugs may have their place, Nozick thinks, in “the treatment for philosophical parochialism.” Has he left anything out? Is there anyone in post-Vietnam America who needs to be placated, whom he has not placated? This was obviously a worry, and there is a nervous catch-all reference to “children’s rights, the treatment of animals, domination and ecological awareness.””—-

–“Nozick looked forward to a new version of philosophy that would replace arguments with a kinder, gentler alternative—explanations—because arguments, after all, attempt “to get someone to believe something, whether he wants to believe it or not.”—

From David Stove