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Phenomenology and Philosophical Understanding Edited by Edo Pivčević Cambridge University Press, £6.50, £2.25 paper

horror story, about how a more than minimal state might be derived, without violations of rights. Nozick imagines people selling rights in themselves, and a development that leads to demoktesis, the ownership of the people by the people. Part of the point of this story is that demoktesis is disturbingly similar to the least nasty of the modern states people live under today. The last part contains a theory of Utopia; it is intended to give independent reason for a minimal state. The model of Utopia involves the idea of a stable association, which is (roughly) a possible world none of whose inhabitants can imagine another possible world they would rather be in. One man's stable association may be another's dystopia; Utopia is a largish set of communities, not just one. If we project the abstract model on to the world, the nearest we can come to it is a set of communities, some of them experimental, with each person at liberty to search for (the nearest thing to) an association stable in the above sense for him and others in it. Such liberty requires a framework which protects it, into which the various communities fit. The framework defends natural libertarian rights, but within a particular community an individual can contract out of his rights (or some of them). The framework turns out to be equivalent to the minimal state. Anarchy, State, and Utopia is outstandingly rich in ideas, some more developed than others. Some single pages suggest a host of research projects. It is an exceptionally enjoyable book, written in a direct, informal and witty style, and animated by an obvious love of ideas. It is a brave book, for its form of libertarianism is one many people not only disagree with, but positively hate. And it is brilliantly clever. The main uneasiness will focus on the moral theory itself. This theory places strong side-constraints on coercing people for the sake of others. The root idea that is claimed to lead to this is the separateness of persons, each with his own life to lead. A person must not be sacrificed, used for others. The uneasiness is that this root idea of the distinctness of persons seems not to pull only in Nozick's libertarian direction. That each person has only his own life to lead seems to pull also in favour of a conception that nobody must be left out, and so persons may have a responsibility to see that others can have a life worth living, even if they have not chosen to take on that responsibility, and so also if necessary they may be forced to carry out that responsibility if they otherwise would not.