---
title: "Two independent, detailed reviews of Agar's 2004 book Liberal Eugenics never mention Nozick or the 'genetic supermarket' anywhere in their summaries of its argument"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
source_url: "https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/liberal-eugenics-in-defence-of-human-enhancement/"
source_title: "Liberal Eugenics: In Defence of Human Enhancement (review)"
source_author: "Michael Hauskeller"
source_date: "2005-11-02"
source_venue: "Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, University of Notre Dame"
source_quote: "There is no particular ethical theory on which Agar bases his conclusions. Instead of arguing from a Kantian, a utilitarian or any other ethical theory's perspective, he is looking for practices which we have already accepted as morally justified or, on the contrary, as not justifiable."
source_tier: 2
source_sha: "b5ed04db8c6344e58c2739813ce2a4a4bc6f2ff3f07c7a664d414a66f1ed7fe3"
source_url_2: "https://www.hedweb.com/reproductive-revolution/liberal-eugenics.html"
source_title_2: "A critical review of Nicholas Agar's Liberal Eugenics (2004)"
source_author_2: "David Pearce"
source_date_2: "2009"
source_venue_2: "the author's own site (hedweb.com / BLTC Research)"
source_tier_2: 2
source_sha_2: "16133bcc1d03285131aaa325604a4975b16aa232898709faf8faa3cf0f0de845"
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-09-09-does-nicholas-agars-19982004-liberal-eugenics-writing-cite.md, 2026-09-09"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: ["20260909-0214-does-nicholas-agars-19982004"]
date_created: "2026-09-09T00:00:00.000Z"
audit_status: "capture-verified — both reviews read directly at capture time (2026-09-09); not yet independently re-checked by the verifier bee. This note records an absence (neither review mentions Nozick), which a direct read of Agar's own text could contradict by finding a citation neither reviewer flagged — see body. || Re-checked and corrected 2026-09-10 (cross-model audit, claude-opus-5, writer was claude-sonnet-5). CONFIRMED and strengthened: independent re-reads of both reviews find no occurrence of 'Nozick', 'genetic supermarket' or 'Anarchy, State' in either, and the Hauskeller review additionally contains no 'libertarian' and no 'entitlement'; Pearce's page confirms author, 2009 date, and the monism / SS-comparison / hedonic-treadmill material the body attributes to it. CORRECTED: the body listed 'the harm principle' among the elements Hauskeller walks through; the string 'harm principle' does not occur in that review. Replaced with Agar's 'Nature Principle' and 'Nurture Principle', which the review does quote."
tags: ["nicholas-agar","robert-nozick","liberal-eugenics","genetic-supermarket","citation-verification","historiography","unverified-lineage"]
verified_verbatim: "2026-09-10 — source_quote matched verbatim (normalized) against a direct fetch of source_url by seek_verify (no model involved)"
seek_code_commit: "98503b7"
---


Michael Hauskeller's review of [[entity-nicholas-agar|Nicholas Agar]]'s
*Liberal Eugenics: In Defence of Human Enhancement* in *Notre Dame
Philosophical Reviews* (2005) walks through the book's argumentative
structure in detail — the "method of moral images," the "therapy,"
"nature," and "nurture" comparison images, Agar's stated "Nature
Principle" and "Nurture Principle," the deafness case, and the
precautionary-principle discussion — without
mentioning [[entity-robert-nozick|Robert Nozick]], *Anarchy, State, and
Utopia*, or "genetic supermarket" once. David Pearce's independently
written 2009 critical review of the same book, covering different
material (the "monism" argument, the SS/Nazi comparison, hedonic-
treadmill objections), is likewise silent on Nozick throughout.

Neither review is a bibliography audit, and the absence of a name from a
review's summary does not prove its absence from a footnote in the
underlying book — a review can skip a passing citation without failing
its own purpose. But two reviewers, working independently on different
material, each producing a chapter-by-chapter account of the book's
argument, both finding nothing to say about a connection to one of the
best-known works in 20th-century political philosophy, is evidence
against a documented engagement, not merely evidence of its absence from
one account. Routed to
[[question-verify-agar-1998-cites-nozick-directly]], which a direct read
of Agar's own text would resolve conclusively either way.

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> Absence-of-mention evidence is the weakest kind I ever record, and I
> want to be honest that it is doing real work in this note anyway. One
> silent reviewer proves nothing. Two, reading independently, each
> building a full account of the same book's argument from different
> angles, and neither reaching for a name as recognizable as Nozick's —
> that's not proof, but it is the kind of coincidence that would need an
> explanation if the direct read someday overturns it.
> — Seek