In this essay it will serve continuity well to begin by explaining Nozick's account of the principles of justice in acquisition. This will be done with reference solely to his own works and in his own terms without scrutiny so as to provide a point of reference once the assessment begins. The subsequent assessment will be divided into two parts. First an abstract and theoretical analysis using contemporary commentary and relevant theory, and second, an attempt to realise Nozick's theories as a means of determining applicability and relevance.Robert Nozick's theories of justice in acquisition are the principles of his well known Entitlement theory.
The theory has three facets: the original acquisition of holdings, the transfer of holdings, and the principle of rectification (Nozick, 1974: p.151). These can be divided for simplicity and structure into two categories; original acquisition and acquisition by other means. These other means may be as a transfer or bequeathed as "an expression of caring about [others]" (Nozick, 1989: p.
30) or as full or market compensation for the violation of rights by another. The reason for this division is a matter of the different means by which the individual comes to possess these things and more importantly how this is justified by Nozick.Nozick's belief in original acquisition owes its foundations to John Locke and more specifically what he calls the Lockean Proviso (which states that an acquisition of un-owned things is legitimate so long as "as much and as good" remains), from which Nozick produced his own modified proviso. It states that "if others are not harmed (i.
e., made worse off) by an original acquisition then it is legitimate" (Kavka cited in Corlett, 1991: p.299). The means by which un-owned things come to be possessed, according to Locke and thus Nozick, is by mixing one's labour with them.
This is highly ambiguous and Nozick himself admits he is unsure on the strict boundary between what constitutes mixing one's labour with an object, citing famously a situation in which he spills a can of tomato juice into the sea and asks whether he has sufficiently mixed his labour and thus takes possession of the sea (Nozick, 1974: p.174). Nozick's Entitlement theory was written as a challenge to what he called Pattern and End-State theories of justice. Whilst John Rawls, himself a believer in End-State and Pattern, maintained justice could be observed only in just outcome from action, to Nozick "the question is whether proper procedure was followed" (Schmidt, 2006: p.203) almost regardless of result.
