...This book is the best piece of sustained analytical argument in political philosophy to have appeared for a very long time. Mind ...complex, sophisticated and ingenious. Economist.

Contemporary scientific advances have placed many traditional philosophical concepts under great stress. In this book, the philosopher Robert Nozick rethinks and transforms the concepts of truth, objectivity, necessity, contingency, consciousness, and ethics.

Comprising essays and philosophical fictions, classics and new work, the author considers the figure of Socrates himself as well as the Socratic method, with many of the essays bringing classic methods to bear on new questions. In a personal introduction, the author also discusses his work.

In this brilliant and widely acclaimed book, winner of the 1975 National Book Award, Robert Nozick challenges the most commonly held political and social positions of our ageliberal, socialist, and conservative.

Offers a theory of rationality, the one characteristic deemed to fix humanity's specialness. This book combines speculations with investigations to portray the nature and status of rationality and the essential role that imagination plays in this singular human aptitude.