以下是來自哈佛學報（Harvard Uni. Gazette）的新聞兼訃文：
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/01.17/99-nozick.html
Philosopher Nozick dies at 63
University professor was major intellectual figure of 20th century
By Ken Gewertz
Gazette Staff
Professor Robert Nozick
University Professor Robert Nozick, one of the late 20th century's most
influential thinkers, died on the morning of Jan. 23 at the age of 63. He had
been diagnosed with stomach cancer in 1994.
Nozick, known for his wide-ranging intellect and engaging style as both writer
and teacher, had taught a course on the Russian Revolution during the fall
semester and was planning to teach again in the spring. His last major book,
"Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World," was published by Harvard
University Press in October 2001.
According to Alan Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law and a
longtime friend, Nozick had been talking with colleagues and critiquing their
work until a week before his death.
"His mind remained brilliant and sharp to the very end," Dershowitz said.
He added that Nozick was "constantly probing, always learning new subjects.
He was a University Professor in the best sense of the term. He taught
everybody in every discipline. He was a wonderful teacher, constantly
rethinking his own views and sharing his new ideas with students and
colleagues. His unique philosophy has influenced generations of readers and
will continue to influence people for generations to come."
Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers said of Nozick's passing, "I was deeply
saddened to learn of the death of Robert Nozick. Harvard and the entire world
of ideas have lost a brilliant and provocative scholar, profoundly influential
within his own field of philosophy and well beyond. All of us will greatly
miss his lively mind and spirited presence, but his ideas and example will
continue to enrich us for years to come."
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jeremy R. Knowles said, "Bob Nozick
was a luminous and wide-ranging philosopher who engaged students and colleagues
from across the University and beyond. The loss to philosophy and to Harvard is
grievous."
Philosophy Department Chair Christine Korsgaard described Nozick as "a
brilliant and fearless thinker, very fast on his feet in discussion, and
apparently interested in everything. Both in his teaching and in his writing,
he did not stay within the confines of any traditional field, but rather
followed his interests into many areas of philosophy. His works throw light on
a broad range of philosophical issues, and on their connection with other
disciplines. The courage with which he faced the last years of illness, and the
irrepressible energy with which he continued to work, made a very deep
impression on all of us."
Nozick's controversial and challenging views gained him considerable attention
and influence in the world beyond the academy.
His first book, "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" (1974), transformed him from a
young philosophy professor known only within his profession to the reluctant
theoretician of a national political movement.
He wrote the book as a critique of "Theory of Justice" (1971), by his Harvard
colleague John Rawls, the James Bryant Conant University Professor Emeritus.
Rawls' book provided a philosophical underpinning for the bureaucratic welfare
state, a methodically reasoned argument for why it was right for the state to
redistribute wealth in order to help the poor and disadvantaged.
Nozick's book argued that the rights of the individual are primary and that
nothing more than a minimal state - sufficient to protect against violence and
theft, and to ensure the enforcement of contracts - is justified. "Anarchy,
State, and Utopia" won the National Book Award and was named by The Times
Literary Supplement as one of "The Hundred Most Influential Books Since the
War."
A former member of the radical left who was converted to a libertarian
perspective as a graduate student, largely through his reading of conservative
economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, Nozick was never comfortable
with his putative status as an ideologue of the right.
In a 1978 article in The New York Times Magazine he said that "right-wing
people like the pro-free-market argument, but don't like the arguments for
individual liberty in cases like gay rights - although I view them as an
interconnecting whole. ..."
Whether they agreed or disagreed with the political implication of the book,
critics were nearly unanimous in their appreciation for Nozick's lively,
accessible writing style. In a discipline known for arduous writing, Nozick's
approach was hailed as a breath of fresh air.
He explained his approach in the article cited above: "It is as though what
philosophers want is a way of saying something that will leave the person
they're talking to no escape. Well, why should they be bludgeoning people like
that? It's not a nice way to behave."
Despite the notoriety and influence that his first book brought him, Nozick
moved on to explore very different territory in his second book, "Philosophical
Explanations" (1981). This need to be intellectually on the move at all times
characterized his career. He once told an interviewer, "I didn't want to spend
my life writing 'The Son of Anarchy, State, and Utopia.'"
In "Philosophical Explanations," Nozick took on subjects that many academic
philosophers had dismissed as irrelevant or meaningless, such as free will
versus determinism and the nature of subjective experience, and why there is
something rather than nothing. In dealing with these questions, he rejected the
idea of strict philosophical proof, adopting instead a notion of philosophical
pluralism.
"There are various philosophical views, mutually incompatible, which cannot be
dismissed or simply rejected," he wrote in "Philosophical Explanations."
"Philosophy's output is the basketful of these admissible views, all together."
Nozick suggested that this basketful of views could be ordered according to
criteria of coherence and adequacy and that even second- and third-ranked views
might offer valuable truths and insights.
Nozick continued to develop his theory of philosophical pluralism in his next
book, "The Examined Life" (1989), an exploration of the individual's relation
to reality that, once again, emphasized explanation rather than proof.
In his book, "The Nature of Rationality" (1995), Nozick asked what function
principles serve in our daily life and why we don't simply act on whim or out
of self-interest. "Socratic Puzzles" (1997) was a collection of essays,
articles, and reviews, plus several examples of Nozick's philosophical short
fiction.
His next work, "Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World," (2001)
looks at the nature of truth and objectivity and examines the function of
subjective consciousness in an objective world. It also scrutinizes truth in
ethics and discusses whether truth in general is relative to culture and social
factors.
Nozick's teaching followed the same lively, unorthodox, heterogeneous pattern
as his writing. With one exception, he never taught the same course twice. The
exception was "The Best Things in Life," which he presented in 1982 and '83,
attempting to derive from the class discussion a general theory of values.
The course description called it an exploration of "the nature and value of
those things deemed best, such as friendship, love, intellectual understanding,
sexual pleasure, achievement, adventure, play, luxury, fame, power,
enlightenment, and ice cream."
Speaking without notes, Nozick would pace restlessly back and forth, an
ever-present can of Tab in his hand, drawing his students into a free-ranging
discussion of the topic at hand.
He once defended his "thinking out loud" approach by comparing it with the
more traditional method of giving students finished views of the great
philosophical ideas.
"Presenting a completely polished and worked-out view doesn't give students a
feel for what it's like to do original work in philosophy and to see it happen,
to catch on to doing it."
He also used his teaching as a way of working out his ideas, often leading to
views that he would later present in book form. "If somebody wants to know
what I'm going to do next, what they ought to do is keep an eye on the Harvard
course catalogue," he once told an interviewer.
Nozick, who grew up in Brooklyn and attended public school there, came to
philosophy via a paperback version of Plato's "Republic," which he found
intellectually thrilling. Nozick described the experience in his 1989 book,
"The Examined Life" - "When I was 15 years old, or 16, I carried around on the
streets of Brooklyn a paperback copy of Plato's ‘Republic'; front cover
facing outward. I had read only some of it and understood less, but I was
excited by it and knew it was something wonderful."
Nozick obtained an A.B. degree from Columbia College in 1959, and M.A. and
Ph.D. degrees from Princeton in 1961 and 1963, respectively. After stints at
Princeton and the Rockefeller University, Nozick came to Harvard as a full
professor in 1969, at the age of 30. He became Arthur Kingsley Porter
Professor of Philosophy in 1985 and in 1998 was named the Joseph Pellegrino
University Professor.
Nozick was the recipient of many awards and honors, among them the Presidential
Citation from the American Psychological Association in 1998, which described
him as "one of the most brilliant and original living philosophers."
Nozick was also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member
of the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress, a corresponding fellow
of the British Academy, and a senior fellow of the Society of Fellows at
Harvard. He served as the president of the American Philosophical Association's
Eastern Division from 1997 to 1998, was a Christensen visiting fellow at
St. Catherine's College, Oxford University, 1997, and a cultural adviser to
the U.S. Delegation to the UNESCO Conference on World Cultural Policy in 1982.
In the spring of 1997, he delivered the six John Locke Lectures at Oxford
University. He held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller
Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Center for
Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
He is survived by his wife, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, and his two children,
Emily Sarah Nozick and David Joshua Nozick.
Nozick will be buried in a private ceremony. A memorial service is being
planned for sometime in February
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