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Nozick almost single-handedly made libertarian political philosophy respectable within mainstream academia with the 1974 publication of his now-classic Anarchy, State, and Utopia, which garnered a National Book Award the following year. Anarchy, State, and Utopia argues, among other things, that a distribution of goods is just, so long as the distribution was brought about by free exchanges by consenting adults, even if large inequalities emerge from the process. Nozick appealed to the Kantian idea that people should be treated as rational beings, not merely as a means. For example, forced redistribution of income treated people as if they were sources of money (means). Nozick here challenges John Rawls's arguments in A Theory of Justice that conclude that inequalities must at least make the worst off better off in order to be morally justified.

Nozick, among the leading figures in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, made significant contributions to almost every major area of philosophy. In Philosophical Explanations, Nozick provides novel accounts of knowledge, free willFree will is the philosophical doctrine that our choices are, ultimately, "up to us. Consequently, an unfree action must be somehow "up to" something else. The phrase "up to us" is vague, and, just like free will itself, admits of a variety of interpretat, and the nature of valueValue is a term that expresses the concept of worth in general, and it is thought to be connected to reasons for certain practices, policies or actions. The Science of Value is an enterprise which embeds value into a scientific context). The concept can b. The Examined Life, pitched to a broader public, explores love, death, faith, and the meaning of life. The Nature of Rationality presents a theory of practical reasonIn philosophy, practical reason is the application of reason to deciding what to do (reason involved in decision-making or action), as opposed to, for example, deciding whether Isaac Newton's physics is superior to the Continental vortex physics; that wou that attempts to embellish notoriously spartan classical decision theoryDecision theory is an interdisciplinary area of study, related to and of interest to practitioners in mathematics, statistics, economics, philosophy, management and psychology. It is concerned with the optimal decisions to be taken under particular circum. Socratic Puzzles is a collection of papers that range from Ayn Randpostage stamp honoring Rand. Ayn Rand ( February 2, 1905 March 6, 1982; first name rhymes with "mine"), born Alissa "Alice" Zinovievna Rosenbaum was a controversial American novelist and philosopher, most famous for her philosophy of Objectivism, and her and Austrian economics to animal rightsAnimal rights is the viewpoint that animals have rights and are worthy of ethical consideration in how humans interact with them. Overview Animal rights is the concept that all or some animals are entitled to possess their own lives, and that animals are, while his last production, Invariances applies insights from physicsPhysics (from the Greek, physikos , "natural", and physis , "Nature") is the science of Nature in the broadest sense. Physicists study the behavior and properties of matter in a wide variety of contexts, ranging from the sub-microscopic particles from whi and biology to questions of objectivity in such areas as the nature of necessity and moral value.

Nozick was notable for his curious, exploratory style and methodological ecumenism. Often content to raise tantalizing philosophical possibilities and then leave judgment to the reader, Nozick was also notable for inventively drawing from literature outside of philosophy (e.g., economics, physics, evolutionary biology) to infuse his work with freshness and relevance.

Nozick died in 2002 after a prolonged struggle with cancer.