''Socratic Puzzles'' is a 1997 collection of essays by the philosopher Robert Nozick.

Summary

Nozick disclaims the title "political philosopher" and characterizes his ''

Anarchy, State, and Utopia ''Anarchy, State, and Utopia'' is a 1974 book by the American political philosopher Robert Nozick. It won the 1975 US National Book Award in category Philosophy and Religion, has been translated into 11 languages, and was named one of the "100 m ...

'' (1974) as "an accident" that came about because he was "getting nowhere" working on the problem of free will. He discusses his reverence for

Socrates Socrates (; ; –399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no te ...

, and his intellectual debts to

Sidney Morgenbesser Sidney Morgenbesser (September 22, 1921 – August 1, 2004) was a Jewish American philosopher and professor at Columbia University. He wrote little but is remembered by many for his philosophical witticisms. Life and career Sidney Morgenbesser ...

and Carl Hempel. At "the most consequential party I ever attended," someone told him about a problem posed by a physicist in California, William Newcomb. Nozick brought this problem into the literature of

decision theory Decision theory (or the theory of choice; not to be confused with choice theory) is a branch of applied probability theory concerned with the theory of making decisions based on assigning probabilities to various factors and assigning numerical ...

("rational choice theory"). He describes the influence of decision theory on ''Anarchy, State, and Utopias derivation of the state from individuals' actions, and its game-theoretic analysis of utopia; and especially in '' The Nature of Rationality'' (1993), where he proposed a "decision value" alternative to maximizing expected utility and also extended decision theory to issues about rational belief. He concludes the introduction by talking about philosophy as a way of life. Although "being philosophical" in the ordinary sense wasn't his motivation for entering philosophy, he found himself being philosophical when diagnosed with stomach cancer and informed about the dire statistics, adding parenthetically an anecdote about the operation in which much of his stomach was removed,

I maintain it was not a complaint when the first words I said to the surgeons upon coming up from anaesthesia after seven hours were, "I hope we don't have to do this again. I don't have the stomach for it."

Nietzsche's demand, that you should lead a life you would be willing to repeat infinitely often, seems "a bit stringent", but philosophy constitutes a way of life worth continuing to its end. Nozick did exactly that, according to his friend

Alan Dershowitz Alan Morton Dershowitz ( ; born September 1, 1938) is an American lawyer and former law professor known for his work in U.S. constitutional law and American criminal law. From 1964 to 2013, he taught at Harvard Law School, where he was appoin ...

References

{{reflist 1997 non-fiction books American essay collections Books by Robert Nozick English-language books Harvard University Press books Libertarian books