secure them, can be made 131 . Instead, it is entirely plausible, as Hobbes observed, that a usurper or foreign invader may prosecute the supposed function of the state at least as effectively as a minimal state, if not better 132 . Finally, as Saint- Exupery’s universal monarch expresses, once the liberal claim to human rationality is made, all subsequent claims to the function of a state are reducible to the claim that the state pursues that which is reasonable; it is not basic human rights that are maintained, but reason, since when two individuals’ basic human rights are in conflict, it is reason that the state will use to decide whose basic human rights will not be maintained, and it is reason that causes the constitution of the state in the first instance. This combination of rules of reason and libertarian principles has been examined by John Gray, who finds that intuition and stipulative conditions play a substantial role, and that the synthesis of argu ments such as Nozick’s extend far further than the authors often admit 133 . In this regard, Nozick, and his predecessors in the liberal contractual tradition, were describing hypothetical ideal forms of government, and not practical extant ones. In this way, similar to Plato’s Republic , The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, or that suggested by Nozick’s contemporary and opponent, John Rawls, in The Theory of Justice , the exercise is directed more at the discovery of principles of general applicability that offer insights into the improvement of present governance, with its associated practical 131 Hayek, F. A., The Constitution of Liberty , Routledge Classics, Abingdon, 2006, p. 103 132 Hobbes, T. Leviathan , at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207- h/3207-h.htm, “Not By The Victory, But By The Consent Of The Vanquished.” Retrieved 15/04/2016 at 13:41 p.m. 133 Saint-Exupery, A. de, The Little Prince , Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1963, p. 46, and Gray, J., “Mill’s liberalism and liberalism’s posterity”, The Journal of Ethics , 4 2000. Pp. 137-165
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