Judith Shklar and the liberalism of fear

Allyn Fives

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781526147721
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

This book puts forward a novel interpretation of Judith Shklar's liberalism of fear. Shklar's work is usually seen as an important influence for those who take a sceptical approach to political thought and are concerned first and foremost with the avoidance of great evils. In fact, as this book shows, the most important factor shaping her mature work is not her scepticism but rather a value monist approach to both moral conflict and freedom, which represents a radical departure from the value pluralism (and scepticism) of her early work. The book also advances a clear line of argument in defence of value pluralism in political theory, one that builds on but moves beyond Shklar's own early work.

1
Liberalism

Shklar is a liberal political thinker. That may seem to be a straightforward statement, in particular given the frequency with which other theorists are referred to in the same way. In fact, I believe it raises a number of important questions. Perhaps the most fundamental of all is whether a political theorist (or a political theory) can be liberal. That is, are there good reasons why political theorists should not see themselves as, at one and the same time, committed liberals? Should there be some separation between one's liberalism as a set of political convictions and commitments (if one is a liberal) and one's work as a political theorist? I believe that question to be of fundamental importance to political thought as a discipline. At its heart, it is about where we draw the limits on our theoretical work. It is a question that we will have sufficient opportunity to reflect on throughout this book, and one that I return to again, in detail, in the concluding chapter.

There are other questions raised by our referring to Shklar as a liberal thinker. For we must first ask, what is her liberalism? What is the content of Shklar's liberalism? What are its principles and values, and its institutional requirements, and which principle, value, and institutional requirement is given priority over others? This is a vital question to address, and its importance is evident if we simply consider the differences between rival versions of liberalism, for example, libertarian and egalitarian liberalism. In the debate between Rawls (1971) and Robert Nozick (1974), it is evident that both see themselves as committed liberals, but also as deeply opposed to each other. That opposition is evident in the very different answers they give to the following questions: Is liberalism primarily about our freedom from constraint, and in particular the freedom to accumulate and use property? Or is it, as Rawls believes, about an equal status or standing between citizens, one that requires a certain degree of equalisation of social resources, and therefore (in most cases) restriction of our market freedoms? For Rawls, we can only hope to guarantee this equal status if the basic structure of society reflects his two principles of justice: the first guaranteeing equal liberty; the second addressing social and economic inequalities (Rawls 1971, p. 302).

A second set of questions concerns the justification of Shklar's liberalism. That is, in what way can her liberalism be defended? This is a question about the reasons that can be mobilised in its defence, but also what it is that we do when we offer such a defence. Again, her fellow liberals can and do give very different answers when they address that question about their own work. In fact, over the course of his own career Rawls moves from a comprehensive form of liberalism to what he calls political liberalism. In his later work, as a political liberal, he maintains that there is something about the way in which we live, here and now, that provides us with the reasons we can call on to justify liberalism. When we do offer justifications for any one political stance or political programme (such as one particular version of liberalism), what we are doing is drawing on the fundamental intuitive ideas of a culture that we share with others (Rawls 1980, p. 518). This is a departure from the arguments of his first book, where the case for liberalism was based upon what were thought of as the universal requirements of ‘moral justification’ itself (Rawls 1971, pp. 131–2). In that first book he assumes that we have, as humans, a sense of justice as well as the capacity for a conception of the good, and that these universal human powers by themselves are sufficient to justify a liberal politics. That is, by engaging in a type of reflection familiar from social contract theory (what he refers to as the ‘original position’ or the ‘veil of ignorance’) we can, he assumes, identify principles of justice that it is rational for all to accept (Rawls 1971, pp. 11–12).

Where should we situate Shklar's work in connection with each of these concerns? One thing to note is that many theorists now approach each of these questions in ways that show Shklar's influence, and in particular the influence of her liberalism of fear. As we shall see when considering these arguments in more detail, many political non-moralists say that liberalism is, primarily, about protecting the vulnerable from the power of those who are dominant: for example, liberalism is about avoiding the worst forms of cruelty. Only after we have protected the vulnerable from intimidation can we then move on to consider such issues as the protection of individual rights, the promotion of equality, and so on. These theorists also want to take a novel approach to questions of justification in political thought itself. They are self-avowed sceptics: they call for a non-ideal, or non-utopian, form of political thought. This is a political theory that does not rest on controversial philosophical foundations, it is argued, and it is one that starts from the social, historical, and cultural context within which political decisions will be made and implemented. As we said, to use Williams's terminology, they are rejecting ‘political moralism’ (Williams 2005, p. 2). And this political non-moralist line of argument owes a significant debt to Shklar.

At the same time, we should pause to consider a very important question. Can political non-moralists also be liberals, and indeed can they be liberals of a particular stripe? Can they give priority to one value and principle and institutional arrangement over others? As we shall see, in her mature work Shklar says both that the fear of cruelty is the summum malum and that hers is a sceptical argument, one that does not appeal to anything other than actuality. However, we must ask, is there more going on here in putting forward that argument, something that indicates a perhaps surprising degree of convergence with the political moralism of, say, Rawls, a convergence that has so far remained unnoticed? I turn to that question next.

What is the liberalism of fear?

In her mature writings Shklar defends an approach to political thought, and political practice, that she calls the liberalism of fear. In the first instance it is a position that ranks the vices in a particular way. As Shklar says in ‘Putting Cruelty First’, the liberalism of fear is a ‘mentality […] that regards cruelty as the summum malum, the most evil of all evils’ (Shklar 2006 [1982], p. 81; emphasis in original). Cruelty is the supreme evil, then, but what is cruelty? In one account, it is the ‘wilful inflicting of physical pain on a weaker being in order to cause anguish and fear’ (Shklar 2006 [1982], p. 81). According to a subsequent conceptualisation, it ‘is the deliberate infliction of physical, and secondarily emotional, pain upon a weaker person or group by stronger ones in order to achieve some end, tangible or intangible, of the latter’ (Shklar, 1989a, p. 29). There are of course discrepancies between these two conceptualisations of cruelty. Perhaps most significantly, the latter entails that cruelty must always be exercised so as to benefit those who are cruel, and this restriction in the meaning of cruelty not only is questionable in itself but is missing from the slightly earlier conception. Putting those concerns to one side, however, let us focus on the mere fact of putting cruelty first among the vices.

For the Baron de Montesquieu, whose work has, as we shall see, a profound influence on Shklar's thinking, cruelty is ‘the ultimate vice of them all’ (Montesquieu 2003 [1580–81], Bk 2, Ch 11, p. 481). However, as Shklar herself is aware, while others will readily agree that cruelty is a wrong, not everyone is happy to put it first: ‘although intuitively, most of us might agree about right and wrong, we also, and of far more significance, differ enormously in a [sic] way we rank the virtues and the vices’ (Shklar 2006 [1982], p. 81). Even fellow liberals (or those who have provided inspiration for later liberal thinkers) disagree on this point. For others, what matters most is not whether acts or people are cruel, but whether they either violate the principle of equal liberty (Rawls 1971, pp. 42–3), or cause harm to others (Mill 1985 [1859], p. 68), or violate either respect for autonomy (Kant 1956 [1785], pp. 66–7) or basic human rights (Locke 1993 [1683], II:6), or whether they undermine the shared interests (the general will) of the political community (Rousseau 1968 [1762], II:3; hereafter Rousseau, SC), and so on.

So the first defining characteristic of the liberalism of fear, what sets it apart from other forms of liberalism, is that it puts cruelty first among the vices. However, Shklar not only ranks the vices in this way. Her putting cruelty first is, at its core, a sceptical approach to political thought. Her work is sceptical in various ways, as we shall see below in this chapter and throughout this book. For now, I want to emphasise the fact that, as a sceptic, Shklar ‘closes off any appeal to any order other than that of actuality’ (Shklar 2006 [1982], p. 81). Cruelty ‘is a wrong done entirely to another creature’, and so, for instance, it stands in contrast to the (non-sceptical) idea of vice in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, according to which sins are ‘transgressions of a divine rule and offences against God: pride, as the rejection of God, must always be the worst one, which gives rise to all the others’ (Shklar 2006 [1982], p. 81). But she is not merely rejecting Judaeo-Christian thought as a possible basis for liberal politics. Hers is an approach that rejects all non-sceptical political theory, religious or otherwise. Indeed, she believes that many liberal arguments appeal to an order other than that of actuality. And on that point she is, I think, right. Rawls, on the basis of a thought process carried out in the so-called original position, gives ‘lexical priority’ to one principle of justice, namely the principle of equal liberty (Rawls 1971, pp. 42–3), whereas others appeal to utility as the summum bonum [i.e. the highest good], ‘the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable’ (Mill 1991 [1861], p. 142), or the rights of humans in a hypothetical state of nature (Locke 1993 [1683], II:6), or what is ‘solely a priori in the concepts of pure reason’ (Kant 1956 [1785], p. vi; emphasis in original), or a utopian account of the ideal community brought into existence by a ‘Legislator’ (Rousseau, SC, II:7), and so on. For Shklar, these approaches are non-sceptical: they lack ‘intellectual modesty’, and so they represent the ‘party of hope’; whereas, in contrast, the liberalism of fear, appealing to nothing other than actuality, is aligned with the ‘party of memory’ (Shklar 1989a, p. 26).

Ostensibly, therefore, there are two distinguishing characteristics of the liberalism of fear: it is a sceptical approach that puts cruelty first among the vices. Nonetheless, despite Shklar's scepticism, arguably the latter is evidence of a not insignificant degree of epistemological ambition. After all, Shklar is claiming to have identified the summum malum, the most evil of all evils. This may seem incompatible with her avowed scepticism, and so we must consider how she attempts to combine the two.

Let us start with Shklar's contention that the liberalism of fear does not appeal to ‘any other higher norm’:

When it [cruelty] is marked as a supreme evil, it is judged so in and of itself, and not because it signifies a rejection of God or any other higher norm. It is a judgement made from within a world where cruelty occurs as part both of our normal private life and our daily public practice. By putting it irrevocably first – with nothing above it, and with nothing to excuse or forgive acts of cruelty – one closes off any appeal to any order other than that of actuality. (Shklar 2006 [1982], p. 81)

As we can see from this passage, in judging cruelty to be the supreme evil, Shklar does not appeal to theological norms, but nor does she appeal to any other higher norm. Hence, she does not appeal to higher norms of secular morality, such as utility, autonomy, consent, liberty, and so on, in order to excuse or forgive acts of cruelty. Another way of expressing this is to say that, for Shklar, not only is cruelty prima facie [i.e. at first sight] wrong, but also it cannot be justified by considering other moral claims. Cruelty cannot be justified in God's name; but nor can it be justified insofar as it promotes utility, say. In one sense, this marks an important difference between the liberalism of fear and the approaches that have dominated liberal political thought for two centuries and more, what she refers to as the liberalism of hope. Liberals of the latter sort do appeal to what each considers to be the higher norm when judging acts to be right or wrong. Shklar is offerin...