Perfectionist liberalism has firm moral foundations. On the one hand, on this conception governments’ function is to protect and promote, within the bounds of their competence, the well-being of people. On the other hand, people prosper through a life of self- definition consisting of free choices among a plurality of incompatible but valuable activities, pursuits and relationships, i.e., a plurality of valuable and incompatible styles and forms of life 138 . Nozick echoes such a plurality 139 . Yet the state, minimal or otherwise, and rights, basic, human or otherwise, are assumed rather than explained. For this reason, it is not clear if any organisation that efficiently prosecutes this plurality and is compatible with an offered epistemology of rights is equally acceptable to Nozick, and if not, why this should be so. Equally, such a pluralistic state is both singular and universal; the rights claimed are claimed for all and the subsequent function of the state, in preserving the manifold variety of the means of human flourishing, is equally universal. Nozick, in contrast to Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, idealises such a universal state 140 . Still, however, it remains unclear how a Marxist utopia, Oakeshott’s “civil association” or any community of an entire species deserves the name “state” in the first instance, and abrogates the moral impetus that led to its 138 Raz, J., Ethics in the Public Domain , Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994, p. 105 139 Nozick, R., Anarchy, State and Utopia , at https://joseywales1965.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/0001_anarchy_state_an d_utopia.pdf, p. 307, retrieved 15/04/2016 at 14:37 p.m. 140 Ibid. and Hobbes, T. “(in which wee see them live in Common - wealths,)”, Leviathan , at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207- h.htm,Locke, J. Two Treatises of Government , at http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/locke/government.pdf, p. 131 and Rousseau, J. J., The Social Contract , at http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/rousseau1762.pdf, Ch. 9, p. 23 and Ch. 10, p. 24, retrieved 15/04/2016 at 14:39 p.m.
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