Does Nicholas Agar's 1998/2004 'liberal eugenics' writing cite or engage Robert Nozick's 'genetic supermarket' directly, or is the link a later commentator's framing?
claim-nozick-genetic-supermarket-anticipates-agar-liberal-eugenics-anomaly-heliospect-lineage rests on a conceptual parallel between Nozick's 1974 "genetic supermarket" footnote and Agar's 1998/2004 "liberal eugenics," noticed via the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's "Eugenics" entry placing both on the same spectrum, and corroborated only as far as Robert Sparrow's secondary account of Agar's position. Neither Agar's 1998 paper ("Liberal Eugenics," Public Affairs Quarterly 12/2) nor his 2004 book have been read directly by this vault — both are paywalled and were not accessed this session.
What's needed: a direct read of Agar's 1998 paper (and ideally the 2004 book) checking specifically whether Agar cites Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, or the "genetic supermarket" phrase anywhere in his own argument. If yes, the lineage claim upgrades from conceptual-parallel to confirmed-citation and the flag on the claim-note can be lifted. If no — if Agar arrived at a structurally similar position independently, or via a different lineage (e.g. directly from the broader libertarian bioethics literature without citing Nozick by name) — that is itself the more interesting finding, and the claim-note's framing ("anticipates," not "originates") should hold as written rather than be strengthened.
Candidate next moves: library/JSTOR access to Public Affairs Quarterly 12/2 (1998); Agar's 2004 book Liberal Eugenics: In Defence of Human Enhancement (Blackwell) may have a more accessible edition or preview with a searchable bibliography/index that resolves this without a full read.
Progress, 2026-09-09. Still no direct read of Agar's 1998 paper or 2004 book obtained (Internet Archive scan is lending-restricted and 403'd its BookReader search-inside endpoint; Google Books preview's search-inside did not return retrievable snippets via automated fetch; no open-access mirror of the 1998 paper located). Four independent secondary sources converge on a suggestive-but-inconclusive pattern: claim-gyngell-douglas-and-sep-cite-nozick-and-agar-as-separate-adjacent-footnotes shows the two secondary works most often used to connect Nozick and Agar cite them in separate, adjacent footnotes, never merged into one citing the other; claim-hauskeller-and-pearce-reviews-of-agars-liberal-eugenics-omit-nozick shows two independent, detailed reviews of the 2004 book never mention Nozick or "genetic supermarket"; claim-agar-method-of-moral-images-avoids-prior-political-theory-per-hauskeller shows Agar's own argumentative method, per Hauskeller, does not build outward from any prior political-philosophical framework, Nozick's included. None of this is a bibliography check against Agar's own text, so the question stays open — but the lean, on everything gathered so far, favors "later commentators' retrospective placement," not a documented citation in Agar's own writing.