Anarchy, State and Utopia

Section I: The Entitlement Theory

In Chapter 7, Nozick articulates his thesis that the minimal state is the largest justified state form and that any state exceeding this scope infringes on individual rights. He examines various arguments for a more extensive state but chooses to focus on those related to distributive justice, or the way that a society distributes resources among people.

Nozick analyzes the term “distributive justice” and notes that there is an implicit assumption that there should be a central authority in society responsible for distributing resources. Against this idea, he argues that in a free society, distributions arise from individual actions and voluntary exchanges, not from a central distributive process. Nozick then proposes the term “holdings” rather than “distributions” to emphasize individual entitlement rather than collective distribution. Holdings are any property that an individual owns.

The section then turns to the concept of justice in holdings, and Nozick focuses on three components that he will develop over the following sections:

1. Justice in acquisition, which deals with the initial acquisition of holdings, its nature, and its complications
2. Justice in transfer, which covers the transfer of holdings from one individual to another
3. Rectification of injustice in holdings; this principle is highly historical, as it addresses the past injustices of holdings acquisitions and transfers