Judith N. Shklar

Judith Nisse Shklar (* September 24, 1928 in Riga, † September 17, 1992 in Cambridge ( Massachusetts)) was an American political scientist and professor at Harvard University.

Life and scientific career

Judith Shklar, who was born in Riga to Jewish parents, was thirteen years old when the family left the country and emigrated to Canada.

She studied at McGill University in Montreal and, after they had there obtained a Bachelor and a Master of Arts (1949 /50), at Harvard University, where she studies in 1955 with a Ph.D. completed. After that, she taught at Harvard until she went into retirement. She was the first woman who had a permanent appointment in the Government Department of the University. She was the chairman of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy and the American Political Science Association.

As a high school teacher and as a consultant, she earned high reputation. Many of her students contributed to a Festschrift for Judith Shklar entitled Liberalism Without Illusions, edited by Bernard Yack, at.

In 1984 she was MacArthur Fellow.

The work

The focus of their theory are two thoughts: cruelty is the greatest of all evils ( summum malum ). This topic touched first in Putting Cruelty First and Bad Characters for Good Liberals ( the first and last chapter of her book Ordinary Vices ) and in the essay The Liberalism of Fear, in which she elaborates her theory of liberalism of fear.

The liberalism of fear is considered her most important work and is grounded in the view that cruelty is the greatest of all evils and that governments tend to be the " unavoidable distribution of power ," which arises from the political organization exploit. They therefore advocated a constitutional democracy, which may be incomplete indeed, but still is the best possible form of government, as it protects the people against the powerful, by the power of the rulers is limited and also the power to a variety of politically active groups is distributed.

Shklar assumed that " every adult should have the opportunity to every area of ​​life to make so many decisions without fear and without favor, as is consistent with the corresponding freedom of other adults. " To her, " the original and only defensible meaning of liberalism. " (The Liberalism of Fear )

Rights are less absolute freedom in terms of morality, but of action, which must have the citizens to protect themselves against abuse of power for them.

Shklars was particularly interested in the injustice and the evils in politics. She was of the opinion that the philosophy of injustice does not pay due attention. In the past, most philosophers have ignored the problem of injustice and instead talked only about justice, just as they have ignored the vice and only talked about the virtue. In Ordinary Vices and The Faces of Injustice Shklar attempts to close this gap in philosophical thought. It is based on literature and philosophy in order to show that injustice and the sense of injustice across time and across cultures present and of great importance for modern political and philosophical theory.

Writings

Shklar wrote numerous books and articles in the field of political science, including:

  • After Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 1957
  • Legalism: Law, Morals, and Political Trials, Harvard University Press 1964, ISBN 0-674-52351-2
  • Freedom and Independence: A Study of the Political Ideas of Hegel 's Phenomenology of Mind, University Press, Cambridge 1976, ISBN 0-521-21025-9
  • Montesquieu, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987, ISBN 0 - 19-287649 -X
  • The Liberalism of Fear: Nancy L. Rosenblum, Liberalism and the Moral Life, Cambridge / London, 1989, pp. 21-38 and 255-256 German: " Liberalism of Fear With a foreword by Axel Honneth, Seyla Benhabib of essays, Michael Walzer, and Bernard Williams Edited, translated from the American and with an afterword by Hannes Bajohr. . ", Berlin, 2013, ISBN 3-88221 - 979-3
  • German: About injustice. Explorations of a moral sense. From the American Christiane Goldmann, Red Book -Verlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-88022-780-2; Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-13614-8

Various essays were published posthumously, including:

  • Political Thought and Political Thinkers, edited by Stanley Hoffmann, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998, ISBN 0-226-75346-8
  • Redeeming American Political Thought, edited by Stanley Hoffmann, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998, ISBN 0-226-75348-4
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