Overview
Papers of American philosopher and Harvard professor Robert Nozick.
Dates
- Creation: circa 1950-2002
Conditions Governing Access
The bulk of this collection is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. Retrieval requires advance notice. Readers should check with Houghton Public Services staff to determine what material is offsite and retrieval policies and times.
Extent
25 linear feet (20 boxes)Collection includes biographical material, Nozick's published and unpublished works, teaching and research material, correspondence, and eulogies and obituaries written at his death.
Biographical / Historical
Robert Nozick (November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher. Nozick was born in Brooklyn to a family of Jewish descent. After receiving his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1959, he married Barbara Fierer. They had two children, Emily and David. The Nozicks eventually divorced; Nozick later married the poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg.
Nozick held the Joseph Pellegrino University Professorship at Harvard University and was president of the American Philosophical Association. He is best known for his books Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice (1971), in which Nozick also presented his own theory of utopia as one in which people can freely choose the rules of the society they enter into, and Philosophical Explanations (1981), which included his counterfactual theory of knowledge.
Arrangement
Arranged in series as received.
Physical Location
Harvard Depository
Immediate Source of Acquisition
2002M-62. For status of collection ownership, consult curator.
- Title
- Nozick, Robert. Robert Nozick papers, circa 1950-2002 (2002M-62): Guide
- Status
- completed
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard University.
- Date
- 2023 October 18
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- eng
- EAD ID
- hou03602
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
Harvard Yard
Harvard University
Cambridge MA 02138 USA
(617) 495-2440
Houghton_Library@harvard.edu