After many months and multiple blog posts, we have now reached the tenth and last chapter of Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick begins this chapter by asking whether his ideal of the minimal state would inspire men to struggle or make sacrifices on its behalf, or as Nozick puts it (p. 297, end note omitted): “Would anyone man the barricades under its banner?” Before we jump into Chapter 10, however, let’s take a closer look at its overall organization and structure.

Chapter 10 is titled “A Framework for Utopia,” and it is the most creative and thought-provoking chapter in a book full of creative and thought-provoking ideas. This last chapter is divided into eleven separate subsections as follows:

• The model (pp. 297-306)
• The model projected onto our world (pp. 307-309)
• The framework (pp. 309-312)
• Design devices and filter devices (pp. 312-317)
• The framework as utopian common ground (pp. 317-320)
• Community and nation (pp. 320-323)
• Communities [that] change (pp. 323-324)
• Total communities (p. 325)
• Utopian means and ends (pp. 326-331)
• How utopia works out (pp. 331-333)
• Utopia and the minimal state (pp. 333-275)

Here, Nozick will “pursue the theory of utopia to see where it leads” (ASU, p. 297). But what conditions must a society satisfy to qualify as a “utopia”? Nozick will present a beautiful and original mental model to begin his pursuit of utopian theory; we will restate his model in our next post.