Examined Life

Nozick meditates on sex as the realm of one's strongest emotions, the ``we'' of a romantic couple, accepting death, the holiness in simple everyday acts, the need of each person to feel important, to feel she or he makes a difference. In 27 informal, pointed chapters the Harvard social thinker ( Anarchy, State, and Utopia; Philosophical Explanations ) fixes his attention on areas often glossed over in formal philosophy. What is creativity if there's nothing new under the sun? Is Zen-like enlightenment too good to be true? His answers to these and other questions are worth heeding in an accessible, novel discourse. A systematizer, Nozick constructs a matrix of reality's manifold dimensions (value, wisdom, destiny, etc.); he formulates ``principles of proportionality'' to help us give each thing its due weight. (Nov.)