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“What is the ‘I'?” How is the self possible?
The purpose of this remarkable book is to outline the author's views of fundamental issues of philosophy: metaphysics, including problems of identity and self; epistemology; value, including the problems of free will and ethics; and the roles of philosophy, the humanities, and the sciences in appreciating the meaning of life.
Nozick argues that a more comprehensive and meaningful approach to philosophy involves not the demonstration of proofs, but the setting forth of explanations. This form of philosophical exploration asks, How is such-and-such possible given so-and-so? Apparently, this is a novel approach to philosophical inquiry. The author, earlier a winner of the National Book Award for Anarchy, State, and Society, argues that the customary proofs generated by philosophers may simply overlook “apparent excluders” of their statements. Philosophical explanation assists us in seeing how a belief we hold may have legitmacy despite these apparent excluders. Not unsurprisingly, Nozick affirms the value of philosophical pluralism.
Nozick's treatise sets forth in technically rigorous and coherent terms a philosophy congenial to Horney analysts. It offers an elaboration of the holistic view of the person that is delightful as well as useful. It enlarges upon philosophical positions essentially identical with those of Alexander Reid Martin, positions with which many Horney analysts are familiar. For example, in this work, as in the writings of Martin, the self is a unity, that is, it is a unified structuring of parts that provides a level of integration necessarily lacking in its separate elements. The self, being a unity, “does something to maintaining the integrity and continuance of the whole, unlike a heap which just lies there like a lump” (p. 100). The self synthesizes itself in the act of referring to itself.
This view of the self, as with much else that Nozick offers, lends itself to the Horney perspective: unconscious in