Animals, State, and Utopia

My third book, which is forthcoming with Oxford University Press, is provisionally called Animals, State, and Utopia: Robert Nozick’s Animal Ethics. I hope to publish the book in 2025.

Robert Nozick (1938-2002) was an American philosopher who worked across a wide range of topics. He is, however, best remembered for his 1974 book Anarchy, State and Utopia, a work of political philosophy defending right libertarianism.

Nozick was a vegetarian, and explored questions about animals repeatedly across his published works. This has received little attention from animal ethicists or scholars of Nozick’s work, and no one has systematically explored his claims about animals. It is my belief that it is time for this to change. But, what is more, not only is it worth setting out Nozick’s animal ethics, but we should explore the prospect of Nozickian animal ethics, using the resources found in Nozick’s work but stepping beyond his own conclusions.

The book contributes to at least three current conversations in animal ethics.

  1. Intellectual history: it is my belief that Nozick’s place in the history and development of animal ethics needs to be recognized. Nozick’s arguments for vegetarianism in Anarchy, State and Utopia, for instance, were published before Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, which marks a watershed moment in the development of animal ethics.
  2. The political turn in animal ethics: if we follow the lead of (for example) Tibor Machan, Jan Narveson, and Loren Lomasky, we might assume that libertarian political theory and animal rights are at odds. It’s my claim that they need not be. While Nozick himself stopped short of offering (to invoke the work of Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka) ‘the libertarian zoopolis’, there is no reason that the idea is a contradiction in terms.
  3. ‘Hierarchical’, or inegalitarian, animal ethics. Nozick believed that while animals matter a great deal, they don’t matter as much as you or I. Though there are exceptions, ideas like this have not been popular in animal ethics, where egalitarian views inspired by Peter Singer have become (to paraphrase Shelly Kagan, one critic) almost a consensus.

Here is a provisional chapter list for the book:

  • Introduction
  • Part 1: Nozick’s animal ethics
    • 1: Utility
    • 2: Side constraints
    • 3: Value
    • 4: The meaning of life
    • 5: Species
  • Part 2: Nozickian animal ethics
    • 6: From Nozick’s animal ethics to Nozickian animal ethics
    • 7: Applied Nozickian animal ethics
    • 8: Nozickian animal rights: Conservative foundations
    • 9: Nozickian animal rights: Radical potential
  • Conclusion

I am due to hold a book workshop at Loughborough University in July 2024. Details will follow.