The twentieth-century philosopher Robert Nozick explicitly rests the whole of his political philosophy on this familiar conception of an individual subjective right. In the much-quoted first sentence of his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia he writes, "Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights)" (p. ix). He then allows that bald statement to lie flapping and gasping for breath like a large, moribund fish on the deck of a trawler, with no further analysis or discussion, and proceeds to draw consequences from it. Presumably the statement actually means "All human individuals have rights, etc.," although that is never specifically stated. The existence of rights that (all) individuals "have" is, he seems to think, to be taken for granted, and requires no further argumentative support. The theory of such rights is the lens through which one must learn to "see the political realm" (p. x) as a whole, and is the foundation both of (normative) political philosophy and of explanatory political theory.
(Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics [Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008], 64 [italics in original; endnote omitted])
Note from KBJ: Geuss's criticism of Nozick is common, but that doesn't make it valid. Nozick's aim in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) was to show that certain types of state are compatible, and others incompatible, with individual rights. It was no part of his aim to show that individuals do, in fact, have rights. As my teacher Joel Feinberg (1926-2004) once said, "Every philosophical paper must begin with an unproved assumption." This has to be the case, since it is impossible to prove everything. Geuss and other critics may not like where Nozick starts, but that doesn't mean there is something wrong with his starting there. His book is already 367 pages long. Was he supposed to make it 500 pages long, or however long it would have taken to do what Geuss thinks he should have done? That's absurd. Geuss's book is 116 pages long. Is it a criticism of his book that he doesn't prove every premise he employs? I'm not aware that Nozick ever addressed this particular criticism of Anarchy. I like to think that he would say exactly what I just said.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 