Justice as Responsibility. A Defence of Robert Nozick

Bobby McPherson

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Master's Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Philosophy - Philosophy of the present, University of Buckingham, language: Eng...

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Master's Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Philosophy - Philosophy of the present, University of Buckingham, language: English, abstract: In this paper, I seek to show that one of the primary counterarguments to Robert Nozick's theory undermines or displaces a necessary conception of individual responsibility, and therefore fails to convince. First, I define and describe the conventional theory of personal responsibility, elaborating particularly in neo-Kantian terms, and give an account of action. Second, I continue to develop a theory of personal responsibility, especially in the legal categories of mens rea and actus reus, and explain how it relates to justice, continuing to do so in a neo-Kantian line of thought and give a detailed account of intention. Finally, I elaborate on Robert Nozick's political theory, and the objections to it, concluding that they fail to successfully refute the concept of personal responsibility entailed by his theory that justice requires. I conclude this is due to the uniquely human nature of moral accountability, and therefore, the uniquely human nature of justice. What does it mean to blame, or to impute an injustice? It means to hold responsible. But what does it mean to hold a situation responsible? Surely it is true that an unjust situation can exist, but only as a derivative of an unjust action of a person. Situations are not responsible to you and I, they cannot and do not give an account. They cannot make excuses. Thus, justice is what it means to exist in a multi-person human framework, of a you-to-me and me-to-you nature. Barry's account of responsibility, Cohen's account of justice, and Scanlon's account of blame fail to uphold the central idea that justice is a distinctly human way of relating. In so far as Nozick does, Nozick's theory of justice is justified.