Judith Shklar and the liberalism of fear 9781526147745

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Judith Shklar and the liberalism of fear

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Judith Shklar and the liberalism of fear A LLY N F I V ES

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Allyn Fives 2020 The right of Allyn Fives to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN  978 1 5261 4773 8  hardback First published 2020 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Image: Portrait of Judith Shklar, 1972 (Harvard University Archives) Design: Daniel Benneworth-Gray Typeset by New Best-set Typesetters Ltd

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For Anne Marie and Joanna

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction Liberalism

page viii 1

5

Cruelty

31

Utopia

116

Freedom

76

Obligation

155

Theory

218

Tyranny

References Index

191 256 266

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Acknowledgements

As with any book, this one represents the end point of a fairly long and circuitous journey. In part, it began from a feeling I had that my last book left a number of questions unresolved, in particular about the role and limits of political theory. That question arose for me because I was engaging in political theory as a value pluralist, and for that reason felt that the scope of theoretical reflection was probably a lot more restricted than is commonly thought. And, as a number of theorists are or seem to be coming to something like the same conclusion, but doing so as sceptics rather than as value pluralists, I wondered what the connection was between these two strands of thought. That in turn led me to the work of Judith Shklar, in the first instance because of her profound influence on Bernard Williams, and his efforts to bring together sceptical and pluralist thinking. Of course, in plodding on with the book I have not done so without help from others. I was lucky enough to present various papers in connection with Shklar’s work over the past few years, including at the Political Studies Association of Ireland conference at Queen’s University Belfast in 2016, the Association for Social and Political Philosophy conference at the University of Sheffield in 2017, and the Manchester Centre for Political Theory conference at the University of Manchester in 2018. In addition, some of this material was presented to colleagues at National University of Ireland, Galway on a couple of different occasions, as well as at the University of Oxford in early 2020. I want to thank all those who gave me their thoughts on my work as it was developing. That feedback and those insights were crucial in helping me to get my thoughts in some degree of order. I have also benefitted from speaking at some length with a small number of people about the

AC KN OW LED G EM EN T S ix

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issues tackled here, including Keith Breen, Kei Hiruta, Richard Hull, and Bernie Yack. Earlier versions of some chapters (or some parts of those chapters) have appeared elsewhere, including Philosophy and Social Criticism (Chapter 2); Philosophia (Chapter 3); and The European Legacy (Chapter 4). I want to thank the editors of these journals and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments during the peer-review process. I also want to thank all those I have worked with at Manchester University Press, not least Jonathan de Peyer, Caroline Wintersgill, Judith Oppenheimer, and the anonymous reviewers, for their professionalism, their attention to detail, and their commitment to scholarship.

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Introduction

Political theory has various roles or purposes, but perhaps the following two are of fundamental importance. The first is to enhance our understanding of the major political challenges humans face and evaluate the various responses offered to them. One such challenge is to determine how much freedom individuals should enjoy, and indeed what types of freedom, and whether and why freedom should be restricted in the name of other values, and so on. For instance, it may be possible to expand freedom understood as self-mastery or autonomy, that is, positive freedom, but doing so may place restrictions on freedom from interference, that is, negative freedom. If that is the case, we must ask how such a trade-off could ever be justified, for we are, after all, suggesting acting in ways that will restrict freedom, and those restrictions matter. We are then also forced to consider how we could ever hope to answer such a question in the first place and do so with any degree of certainty. Or, more generally, we are asking, what type of certainty can be hoped for from political theory? Attempting to address that question brings us to the second role or purpose of political theory, namely to provide greater clarity on the epistemological status of the claims political theorists themselves make. One such epistemological question, one that will be of great importance for this book, is whether and how political theorists can resolve moral conflicts when they arise, such as that between the various dimensions or manifestations of freedom, as above, or the conflicts between freedom and other values, and so on. When we resolve any such moral conflict, how can we do so with legitimacy? For example, how can we be said to have a warrant for the sacrifice of negative freedom in the name of personal autonomy?

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In this book I will be returning again and again to these two key purposes of political theory. In particular, I concentrate on the following two interrelated questions: How should we conceptualise freedom? And how should we respond to moral conflict? But I address these questions in what may seem like an indirect manner, namely through a critical engagement with Judith Shklar’s work. I examine Shklar’s decision, in her mature work, what she calls the liberalism of fear, to place cruelty first among the vices (Shklar 2006 [1982]; 1984; 1989a). And I propose two closely related theses about her work. The first is that Shklar’s liberalism of fear adopts a specific epistemological position, namely a value monist approach to moral conflict, although one that is also in various ways sceptical. My second thesis has two parts. The first is that her mature work departs radically from the value pluralist (and sceptical) arguments in her early work (see Shklar 1964a; 1964b; 1964c; 1966; 1967; 1998 [1972]). The second is that the problems this creates, both epistemological and normative in nature, illustrate the benefits of a value pluralist approach to political thought more generally and to our understanding of freedom more specifically, an approach that owes a great deal to the work of Isaiah Berlin (see Berlin, 2004 [1958]; Williams, 1965; Fives 2017). As we shall see below in much greater detail, my interpretation of Shklar’s work is a novel and even a controversial one. Others draw attention to, and give priority to, Shklar’s scepticism in its various guises (see Rosenblum 1996; Forrester 2012; Hess 2014, 2016; Misra 2016; Thaler 2017; Yack 2017, 2019; Gatta 2018). It is of course correct that hers is a sceptical political theory, and she has indeed motivated those who are sceptics and who reject the non-sceptical political thought of, among others, John Rawls. Shklar is thus an inspiration to those whom I refer to as political non-moralists, those opposed to what Bernard Williams calls ‘political moralism’, including (but not restricted to) non-ideal theorists as well as political realists (see Williams 2005, p. 3). However, my interpretation of her work shows that her liberalism of fear has something in common with Rawls’s political moralism, something that is highly important: that is, they share a value monist approach both to moral conflict and to the conceptualisation of freedom. The liberalism of fear places cruelty ‘first’ among the vices (Shklar 2006 [1982], p. 81); cruelty is the summum malum [i.e. supreme evil] of politics (Shklar 2006 [1982], p. 81); the avoidance of cruelty is our ‘first right’ (Shklar 1984, p. 237) and the ‘basic norm’ of a legitimate polity (Shklar 1989a, p. 30); cruelty is justified ‘only’ so as to ‘prevent greater cruelties’

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(Shklar 1989a, p. 30); and finally, we are free only insofar as we are free from cruelty but also we are not ourselves free to be cruel (Shklar 1987a, p. 86). As I said, this may seem an indirect way in which to think about the two key purposes of political theory, but, in fact, a consideration of Shklar’s work is highly informative on both fronts. I will try to show that a critical reading of Shklar illustrates the importance of the distinction between a value pluralist and a value monist approach to moral conflict. This is the case in part because as a monist in her mature work she is faced with considerable difficulties when attempting to make sense of substantive political issues. At the same time, we will be able to appreciate the benefits of value pluralism when considering how much freedom (and what type of freedom) individuals should enjoy. This is the case in particular when we raise this question in a range of non-ideal scenarios, such as situations of ordinary crime, intolerance, betrayal of friends under tyrannical power, utopian reforms to overcome grave injustice, as well as situations where paternalism may be justified. Throughout her career, Shklar addresses such questions as a sceptic, but while in her early work she does so as a value pluralist as well, in the liberalism of fear she instead adopts a value monist approach. Her having made this transition creates the perfect opportunity to compare the relative merits of pluralism and monism. What that analysis also shows is that her scepticism is not the definitive factor in shaping her overall approach as a political thinker, and, indeed, what matters most is the position she adopts on moral conflict. A critical engagement with Shklar’s work is therefore a fertile context in which to think again about the proper role and limits of political theory, in particular by placing value pluralism at the heart of political thought. Not only has her early value pluralism gone unnoticed in the literature, the same is true of her later value monism. We will have a chance here to illuminate what has remained unnoticed in both periods of her work. As it happens, Shklar’s own version of value pluralism in her early work is by no means unproblematic. So this will also be a critical engagement with her work. But, in addition, it will prepare the ground for advancing a thesis with a more general application, namely a value pluralist argument about the proper role and limits of political theory. A further point of clarification is, I think, necessary before proceeding any further. Not only has Shklar’s value monism gone unnoticed in the literature, there is a real danger that my use of the term ‘value monism’ will create misunderstanding. So as to address that possibility head on,

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let me be clear about what this term does and does not refer to. A value monist claims to have identified the general rule for the resolution of moral conflicts. But a value monist approach to the resolution of moral conflicts is compatible with a wide range of positions on a variety of important questions for political philosophy. A value monist may also be committed to toleration of difference (as Shklar is), may consider the avoidance of great harms of paramount importance in politics (as Shklar does), may have sceptical doubts about the possibility of devising rules of justice for each other (as Shklar does), and may accept that the world of values is diverse and that these values can and do come into conflict (as Shklar does). As it happens, Shklar also offers a positive conception of freedom, and she is also happy to evoke perfectionist language about what makes a life worthwhile. Nonetheless, it is her negative, tolerant, and sceptical orientation to liberalism that predominates. And none of this is called into question by saying that Shklar is, in her mature work, a value monist. Indeed, we shall see that other liberals (such as Rawls and J. S. Mill) are also value monists. At the same time, we should not as a result think that her being a value monist makes little difference one way or the other. It does matter, and precisely because monism is open to objection on both epistemological and moral grounds, objections that also apply to the work of Mill and Rawls. The epistemological shortcoming is that monists cannot stick consistently to their version of monism, and, as a result, their arguments rest on unjustified and therefore questionable premises. The moral shortcoming is that monists are unable to recognise and acknowledge the wrongs done in the name of what they take to be the general rule for resolving moral conflicts, including, but not restricted to, the infringement of freedom. Given the seriousness of these problems, an argument can be made instead for value pluralism. This is an argument that in this book will be tentative in places, I admit, but I hope to provide the broad outlines of a value pluralist political theory, one that builds on Shklar’s own early work, and one that provides a plausible alternative to the liberalism of fear.

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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,

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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.

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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,

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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

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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 offering a sceptical alternative to the

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liberalism of hope. Nonetheless, in one respect, one that is of central importance to her work, Shklar’s approach is not all that different. The similarity can be seen when we consider how each deals with conflicting moral claims. And what we discover is that they each maintain that they have identified the higher norm applicable to political practice. Shklar is, after all, contending that cruelty is the summum malum. Yes, she refuses to excuse or forgive acts of cruelty by appeal to some other, supposedly higher, norm, but she does so precisely because cruelty, for her, is the higher norm: it, and nothing else, is the supreme evil. At one point she clarifies that the avoidance of cruelty is the ‘basic norm’ of ‘political practices and prescriptions’, and that cruelty is justified ‘only’ so as to prevent ‘greater cruelties’ (Shklar 1989a, p. 30). While cruelty is the supreme evil, nonetheless it can be excused or forgiven, but not by appeal to some other moral claim. Cruelty can be justified only so as to prevent greater cruelties. But, and this is a point that I will have to develop at much greater length below, what this amounts to is that, like Rawls and Mill and Locke and Kant and Rousseau before her, Shklar is adopting a value monist position on moral conflict. In the Introduction I briefly outlined what is meant by value monism. I will come back to this later in this chapter, and then in more detail again in the next chapter. For now I will just reiterate that liberals can also be value monists (indeed, many liberals are). For instance, value monists need not assume there is just the one moral claim to consider in political life. Far from it: Shklar accepts that moral claims are plural and even that they come into conflict. However, the value monist’s contention is that, when there is conflict between moral claims, we give priority, as a general rule, to one of them. While monists disagree among themselves about what the general rule is, they agree that there is such a rule, and that it has been identified. And it is in adopting this position on moral conflict in her mature work that Shklar’s approach can at once be sceptical and yet put cruelty first. It is as a sceptic that she puts cruelty first, and in putting cruelty first she adopts a monist approach to moral conflict. Thus, while the liberalism of fear is ostensibly characterised by scepticism and the decision to put cruelty first, we should also recognise that the latter indicates the presence of a further defining characteristic, namely, value monism. This is one of the most important claims I put forward here, in my reading of Shklar’s thought, and as a result I devote a great deal of the book to its defence. It represents a distinctive way of interpreting Shklar’s mature work, as we shall see. More importantly, however, it

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opens up new possibilities for our understanding of political theory, concerning both its role and limits more generally, but also how political theorists should deal with moral conflict and how they should conceptualise freedom. Shklar’s scepticism

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My thesis is that Shklar’s liberalism of fear combines scepticism with value monism. She claims not only to have identified the supreme evil of politics, but also that in doing so she is engaging in a sceptical form of political thought. I return to her value monism in the next section. For now, let us look in more detail at precisely how Shklar’s liberalism of fear is sceptical. The first thing to emphasise is the quite significant degree of sympathy evident between her scepticism and more recent work in political thought that I am referring to as political non-moralism. As we know, hers is an approach that closes off any appeal to any order other than that of actuality. Political thought must start from the reality, or actuality, of our lives; that is, our actual dispositions, experiences, challenges, opportunities, and so on. She is therefore rejecting the kind of theorising that Williams refers to as political moralism, the kind of theorising we see in Rawls’s work and elsewhere. Rawls’s position is that we discover principles of justice by engaging in a type of reflection cut off from everyday knowledge of ourselves and our place in the world, what he calls the original position or the veil of ignorance. It is only then that we can reason free from bias. And the principles we all would agree to in the original position should, he argues, then shape the basic structure of society (Rawls 1971, pp. 11–12, 48). According to Williams, this type of theoretical work represents ‘the priority of the moral over the political’, where either politics is ‘the instrument of the moral’, or ‘morality offers constraints […] on what politics can rightly do’ (Williams 2005, p. 2). Either way, morality is separate from, and has priority over, the messy work of politics, where we try to persuade others or exercise power over others. The alternative to political moralism, political non-moralism, does not seek to discover or invent moral truths through theoretical reason and to make reality conform to these truths in political practice. One way to engage in non-moralist political theory is through interpretation of the meaning that values, principles, practices, and institutions have for those who share a specific way of life together (see Walzer 1985). This is what Williams is calling for when stating that, in judging whether or

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not a regime is legitimate, we should concentrate on what ‘makes sense’ ‘here and now’ (Williams 2005, p. 11). This is the case, for Williams, because we should not think of ethical conviction either as a matter of the knowledge we possess or as a matter of exercising our will in making decisions. It is, rather, a social state, which he refers to as ‘confidence’: it is ‘basically a social phenomenon’, it is something that requires ‘institutions, upbringing, and public discourse to help foster it’ (Williams 1985, p. 170). Hence, for this approach, liberalism has legitimacy at a given point in time not because of, for example, the truths discovered in Rawls’s original position but, rather, because of what we have confidence in, here and now. So one non-moralist approach to political theory is that of interpretation. Non-ideal theory is another. We should note that Rawls himself engages in both ideal and non-ideal theorising, although he clearly, emphatically even, gives priority to the former. For him, the ideal ‘part’ of political theory ‘assumes strict compliance and works out the principles that characterise a well-ordered society under favorable conditions’ (Rawls 1971, p. 245). In this way, he makes the case for his two principles of justice. We agree on principles of justice by engaging in ideal theory, and then as a separate matter altogether we consider how best, ‘usually in gradual steps’, to move towards realising those ideals in the world as it is (Rawls 1999, p. 89). Importantly, on Rawls’s understanding, the difficulties of implementing them in no way affect the validity of those ideals qua moral commitments. And it is this assumption that non-ideal theorists reject. Difficulties in implementing principles are not somehow a secondary matter when we consider what is owed to others, they contend: rather, ‘normative political theorizing must be integrated with an appreciation of the empirical realities of one’s society’ (Farrelly 2007, p. 844). For political non-moralists, therefore, it is not the role of political thought to force reality to conform to the normative ideals of theory. Instead, we should see ourselves as interpreting what already exists, while we cannot determine what morality demands of us without also considering how those demands would be put into practice. And it is also accurate to place Shklar’s liberalism of fear in this category. To begin with, this is evident when we consider her conceptualisation of cruelty. She is a liberal, and like all liberals appreciates the importance for individual liberty of the public–private division: without this barrier to limit and restrict the influence of the wider society and the state, it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to maintain basic liberal freedoms (Shklar

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1989a, p. 24). Nonetheless, unlike political moralists, Shklar does not see her role as either inventing or discovering moral truths that are then to be imposed on reality. Other liberals may assume that, because of the theoretical construction of the public–private distinction, power is primarily a phenomenon of public life and therefore we need only consider the legitimacy of the power exercised in that sphere (see Nagel 1990 [1987], p. 322). For Shklar, in contrast, the judgement that cruelty is the supreme evil is made from within a world where cruelty occurs as part both of our normal private life and our daily public practice. As a sceptic she starts from the reality or actuality of our lives, and it turns out to be one where not only is there a ‘minimum of fear required for law enforcement’ (Shklar 1989a, p. 30) but also parents and not just public officials can be ‘despotic and cruel’ (Shklar 1984, p. 145). The sceptical viewpoint is one that not only affords us the possibility of perceiving the cruelty of our everyday lives, but forces us to confront that reality. Not only is cruelty something we come to understand by being attuned to everyday reality, what we find is that cruelty is pervasive and unavoidable, a vice we cannot either relegate to one sphere of life or hope to finally eradicate. I am placing the liberalism of fear in the category of political nonmoralism, and I am doing so because it is a sceptical approach to political thought. However, I also want to emphasise that Shklar’s scepticism in her mature work is inextricably bound up with her putting cruelty first among the vices. We can see this, for a start, when she considers utopianism. Other non-moralists also raise sceptical doubts about utopianism, including what Rawls refers to as his ‘realistic utopia’ (Rawls 1999, pp. 6–7). For example, of utopian discourses about liberty, Williams says ‘they, and the comparisons they invite with the actual, do not do much for the specific construction of liberty as a value for us’ (Williams 2005, p. 90). Utopianism is too far removed from reality to be of any real aid to political thought and practice. As a sceptic, Shklar likewise closes off any appeal to any order other than that of actuality. She is a critic of those utopian thinkers who call for the transformation of reality, a world they see as ugly, wicked, unjust, irrational, and, in general, deficient. We shall see below that her commentators ultimately misrepresent her position on utopianism, but nonetheless it is true that Shklar sees the liberalism of fear as an ‘entirely nonutopian’ approach to political thought (Shklar 1989a, p. 26). In particular, she is hostile to what she calls the utopianism of efficiency, namely where it is claimed that violence, including tyrannical terror, is necessary, a means to an end, an unavoidable hardship that will, however,

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issue in a morally justified utopia: a just, rational, harmonious, and beautiful world. Shklar’s response to such utopianism is informed by her scepticism, but also by her decision to place cruelty first among the vices: The usual excuse for our most unspeakable public acts is that they are necessary. How genuine are these necessities, in fact? […] Once necessity has been mapped and grasped, it is just a matter of plotting and executing. This is the utopianism of efficiency, with all the cruelty and treachery that it invites. (Shklar 2006 [1982], p. 94)

Montaigne is the primary inspiration for her sceptical non-utopianism here. On the one hand, she notes how ‘Montaigne thought that politics were far too chaotic and uncertain to be managed according to any plan’ (Shklar 2006 [1982], p. 94). On the other, she reminds us of Montaigne’s warning that the well-intentioned tendency to rush in and act often does more harm than the evil it is meant to eradicate. And, Shklar believes, ‘There is no temper that is less utopian than this sort of scepticism’ (Shklar 2006 [1982], p. 91). As a sceptic, Shklar will not countenance appealing to any order other than that of actuality, including utopian blueprints for a perfected future. In regard to the utopian work of her contemporaries, she is particularly scathing in her criticism of post-Marxist critical theory, which, she maintains, ‘lives in an extreme state of rejection’ (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 189). Once again, however, we can see that her scepticism is inextricably bound up with her putting cruelty first among the vices. Revolutionary utopianism is objectionable not just because it lacks epistemic justification but also because of the cruelty and treachery that it invites. Hers is the party of memory rather than the party of hope. On the one hand, that means she will not countenance sacrificing the vulnerable among us, here and now, in the name of a hoped-for future of human perfection. On the other, she sees herself as engaging with a history of political practice and political thought. Not for her a political theory radically detached from the present or the past, but, rather, one that builds on our historical memory. We can see this clearly in her ongoing efforts to, as she says, ‘redeem’ American political thought: we ‘have much to gain from seeing our present work as a continuation of the history of political thought in America’, she says (Shklar 1998 [1991c], p. 91). For example, she makes the case for a right to work in American society on the basis of the continuing relevance of what she calls the ‘Jacksonian faith’ (Shklar 1991a, p. 99). At the same time, she engages with history as a sceptic. She is thus critical (scathing, even) of those hermeneutic

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and communitarian thinkers who claim to have discovered a ‘substrate’ of ‘intersubjective’ shared meanings from history, shared meanings that supposedly form the basis for political action now (Shklar 1998 [1986], p. 81). Her party of memory does not endeavour to recreate or recapture some one true vision of our past. Rather, she believes that ‘ours is a culture of many subcultures, of layer upon layer of ancient religious and class rituals, […] and ideological residues whose original purpose has by now been utterly forgotten’ (Shklar 1984, p. 4). Shklar’s scepticism warns us against rushing to radically reform society in the name of a hoped-for utopia. And although it is the party of memory, nonetheless it does not promise to discover any one set of shared beliefs or intersubjective meanings from our past. Her scepticism also is a warning against being too quick to judge the wrongs of others, given that very often when we attempt to do so we are faced with ambiguity. In Ordinary Vices she observes that the meaning of situations, actions, and events may be unclear and, as a result, we may be unable to make moral judgements with any degree of certainty. While, for political moralists, moral judgement entails a straightforward application of norms and principles to reality, for Shklar, such judgements may be anything but straightforward. This is the case when we try to understand (and evaluate) the actions of those faced with great fear and uncertainty, for example, those who collaborated with Soviet and Nazi tyranny: Danger and habit: both create environments in which the climate of betrayal is so pervasive that individual acts of betrayal, however simple and pure, acquire an uncertain meaning and make judgment doubtful. (Shklar 1984 p. 149)

It is wrong to betray others, but we cannot simply ignore the fact that, in Soviet Russia for example, betrayal became ‘a habit, a way of life’ (Shklar 1984 p. 149). We are left to wonder what betrayal means under such extreme circumstances, and how we are to judge ‘the Soviet citizen who shuts his door and heart to a dissident who once was his friend’ (Shklar 1984, p. 148). Shklar is here offering a sceptical warning to those who would rush to make damning judgements, a warning that ambiguity in fact limits our capacity to do so. But this is also a warning about the cruelty that such judgements unleash. We may wish to punish those who betrayed Soviet dissidents, for example, but to attempt do so when caught in the fog of ambiguity will simply exacerbate cruelty. When we start to punish informers, where do we stop? Is everyone guilty of collusion, short of those who died refusing to comply? Shklar’s scepticism will,

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she believes, help to prevent unleashing an unending spiral of cruelty. But this insight has just as much relevance, she believes, in a liberal democracy as it does under totalitarian tyranny. That is why she calls for toleration in response to the ‘ordinary vices’ of everyday life in American society (Shklar 1984, pp. 87, 88, 117). Better to tolerate these ordinary vices, better to accept that we will never achieve full adherence to our moral values, than to make life unbearable by striving (without any hope of success) to perfect humanity. As a sceptic, therefore, she focuses on the negative rather than the positive: on both the vices that we should tolerate, the ordinary vices of an imperfect society, and, also, those we must always fight against, namely the summum malum, the vice of cruelty. So, as a sceptic, she is saying that political theory cannot appeal to any order other than that of actuality, and so it must be entirely non-utopian, historically engaged, and accept that we are often faced with ambiguity. At the same time, it is an approach with a negative focus, an emphasis on avoiding the greatest evil, and also an insistence that we can never hope to finally eradicate every flaw from the human character. It is not at all surprising therefore that her scepticism also requires a radical reconsideration of justice. She focuses her critique on what she calls the ‘normal model of justice’, according to which justice is simply a matter of the faithful implementation of the rules of justice. It is true that other liberals do make very ambitious claims on behalf of moral rules. Mill’s ‘harm principle’ is just one example. I return to this below in more detail. For now, however, I focus on his contention that it is the ‘one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control’ (Mill 1985 [1859], p. 68). To borrow Williams’s terms, we can say that, as a political moralist, Mill is claiming to have discovered the moral principle with which to govern the messy reality of political life. Shklar, in contrast, ‘doubts that we can ever know enough about each other to devise rules for each other’; but also, she maintains that ‘although the purpose of justice in general is abstract, every unjust act is particular, as is the sense of injustice’ (Shklar 1990a, pp. 26, 110). This is a thoroughly sceptical critique of rule-based morals. She is saying that no theory of justice can ever provide us with an exhaustive account of either justice or injustice: we can never hope to have the kind of knowledge required by the normal model of justice, and anyway no set of rules could ever account for each and every subjective experience of injustice. But her dissatisfaction with rule-based morals is not just a sceptical one. It is also explained by her decision to put cruelty first among the vices. The normal model is problematic because, were it

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to be implemented in full, it would make cruelty worse. As a society we could only strive to eliminate injustice once and for all, we could only make society conform completely to the rules of one specific conception of justice, by unleashing unprecedented levels of cruelty: and ‘we prefer liberty to this prospect’ (Shklar 1990a, p. 45). Shklar’s work offers an understanding of justice very far removed from what we see in political moralism. It is also true that she differs from many political moralists in regard to the relative importance of justice itself as a normative and political issue. Shklar puts cruelty first among the vices. The fear of cruelty is the summum malum; and the avoidance of cruelty is the basic norm of a liberal politics. In making that argument, we can see her moving away from the political moralism of Rawls in particular, and of all those who have been influenced by his work. Rawls’s argument is that ‘Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought’ (Rawls 1971, p. 3). Institutions, however efficient, ‘must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust’, he says, and this is the case, given that ‘each person possess an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override’ (Rawls 1971, p. 3). Rawls goes on to argue that we must therefore give priority to the principle guaranteeing equal liberty. However, his critics reject his very starting point, namely the idea that our first consideration in politics is justice, and the just treatment of individuals. For political realists, for example, power is our primary concern. Williams thus identifies ‘the “first” political question in Hobbesian terms as the securing of order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation’ (Williams 2005, p. 3). For her part, Shklar maintains that, because of the ‘undeniable actualities’ of torture and other forms of cruelty, the liberalism of fear ‘concentrates on damage control’ (Shklar 1989a, p. 27). This is an argument placing cruelty first among the vices. However, once again, hers is also a sceptical argument. Her point is that, as a theorist, she starts from actuality, and this is a reality where we must always struggle to protect the most vulnerable from these kinds of cruelties. Indeed, when we fail to do so, then those who have been treated in this way (and those who have been morally disgusted at their implication in such inhumanity) may become exiles, set free from the bonds that normally hold people together in a community (Shklar 1993a). Shklar’s liberalism of fear therefore offers a sceptical critique of the liberalism of hope, the normal model of justice, utopianism, and justicebased theories. As we have said, it is part of a wider movement that is hostile to political moralism, in particular to the work of Rawls, who,

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through a process of theoretical reflection radically disassociated from everyday reality, claims to have identified our principles of justice and also placed them in a hierarchical order. His sceptical critics doubt that philosophers have easy access to such moral truths or can determine how they are to be realised in practice (Williams 2005, p. 8; Farrelly 2007, p. 845; Gaus 2016, p. 141). Shklar’s liberalism of fear is not only one example of that sceptical critique but itself is a widely acknowledged and significant influence on these developments towards political nonmoralism (see Williams 2005, pp. 52–61). As someone who places cruelty first among the vices, and who reminds her readers, again and again, of the horrors of twentieth-century tyranny in particular, her work is an inspiration for those who see liberalism primarily as a protection against the worst abuses of power (Sagar 2016, p. 370). She is also an example to those who adopt a sceptical approach to political thought, one that, it is argued, does not ‘evoke a set of contestable moral claims’ (Hall 2014, p. 564). More significantly, like other non-ideal theorists and political realists (Valentini 2012, p. 654; see also Galston 2010), Shklar does not assume that full compliance with normative standards is even a possibility. That is why she calls for toleration in response to the ordinary vices of everyday life in a liberal democracy, and this also explains why, despite her commitment to social reform in various guises (Shklar 1990a, p. 122; 1991a, p. 99), she rejects what she calls ‘transformative’ or ‘prophetic’ utopias (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 187). Thus, the liberalism of fear is at the centre of the current move among political theorists towards a sceptical alternative to political moralism. And yet, as we have already seen, neither scepticism nor the focus on damage control adequately accounts for what the liberalism of fear is offering. In her mature work Shklar is also providing a distinctive approach to moral conflict, namely value monism, and it is to this that we turn next. Shklar’s value monism My thesis is that the liberalism of fear represents a value monist approach to moral conflict. But I have also acknowledged that the term itself may lead to misunderstanding. It is therefore important to keep before us what value monism is and what it is not. To begin with, Shklar is a value monist in her mature work even though she sees moral conflict as pervasive. In fact, the two are not incompatible. She says that, because of moral conflict, political agents are forced to do what is wrong, and hence left with regret: ‘If princes must commit atrocities, let them at least regret

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it and make some effort to avoid going to war in order to indulge some personal whim’ (Shklar 2006 [1982], p. 95). It is important, for Shklar, that we should feel regret at the wrong we must commit. Her main objective here is to make sense of moral conflict in a way that is very different from Machiavelli’s work, in particular. His argument would seem to be that, because we can successfully pursue political objectives only if we are willing to do what is wrong, we should simply replace virtues with vices in the public realm: he [the Prince] will find that some of the things that appear to be virtues will, if he practices them, ruin him, and some of the things that appear to be vices will bring him security and prosperity. (Machiavelli 2003 [1513], XV; hereafter Machiavelli, P)

Shklar’s response to Machiavelli, a response informed by her reading of Montesquieu as well as Montaigne, is that we are not freed from moral responsibility in political life, simply because we cannot avoid moral conflict: I have tried to present the views of those who rejected him [Machiavelli], not because they were moved by religious or moral illusions, but because they were more realistic, had read Plato’s remarks about dirty hands more carefully, and were more honest. (Shklar 2006 [1982], p. 93; emphasis in original)

If we can bring about a morally preferable state of affairs only by doing what is prima facie wrong (by waging war, for example), then we are facing a situation of genuine moral conflict about which we must be honest. The reality of moral conflict does not free us from our moral responsibilities, then. But how are we to resolve such conflicts? How do we decide what is the right thing to do? From what we have already seen, we know how in her mature work Shklar answers this question. For she is saying not just that cruelty is the supreme evil, but also that the avoidance of cruelty is the basic norm of political practices and prescriptions and cruelty can be justified only so as to prevent greater cruelties. It follows, when moral claims come into conflict, we must give priority to the avoidance of cruelty over any other competing claim (such as the requirement to promote utility, say), and, in deciding between cruelties, we must always act so as to prevent the greater cruelty. Therefore, her scepticism notwithstanding, Shklar is offering a value monist approach to the resolution of moral conflicts. As a sceptic, she insists that we

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cannot appeal to any order other than that of actuality. Yet, the reality or actuality of our lives is one where not only are we faced with moral conflicts, but also the worst evil is cruelty. We cannot resolve moral conflicts by appeal to some norm that, it is claimed, transcends reality; but reality itself provides us with the general rule for their resolution: the avoidance of cruelty. To understand the value monism of Shklar’s liberalism of fear it is necessary to contrast it with value pluralism (see Galston 2005, pp. 174–5). And to get to the heart of value pluralism we must first be clear about what a moral conflict is. We can present such conflicts, formally, as follows: 1 We ought to do X (e.g., not interfere with A’s choices and activities, including the option of treating B cruelly). 2 We ought to do Y (e.g., keep B safe from A’s cruelty). 3 In the given circumstances, we can do either X or Y. 4 In the given circumstances, we cannot do both X and Y. We have here two moral requirements that are incompatible: if we do what is required by X, we cannot do what is required by Y. A decision is needed between X and Y, but on what basis can we make that decision? Monists resolve the moral conflict by appeal to a general rule: for Mill, the general rule is that we must interfere with A’s choices and activities (only) when they will harm others; for Rawls, the general rule is that we must interfere with A’s choices and activities (only) when they will violate the principle guaranteeing equal liberty; and so on. Pluralists, however, reject any such claim to have identified the general rule to resolve moral conflicts. When faced with moral conflict it is not possible, pluralists maintain, either to reduce the diversity of moral values to some master value or to rank order moral claims (see Williams 1981 [1979], p. 80; Kekes 1993, p. 19; Galston 2005, pp. 12–13; Fives 2017, pp. 64–8). Not only is there no one claim that always has priority over others in this way, but also, when we decide between conflicting claims, the item not acted upon is not somehow ‘eliminate[d]’ (Williams 1965, p. 117). Whatever we do in a moral conflict, even when our decision is justified, all things considered, we do something prima facie wrong: something ‘intrinsically bad’ (Raz 1986, p. 405). Value pluralists do not simply reject the monist claim to have identified the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. As we shall see in more detail throughout this book, pluralists also object to value monism on both epistemological

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and normative grounds: their first argument is that monists cannot consistently give priority to one moral claim over all others, and, as a result, their arguments rest on unjustified premises. We cannot but help to appeal to a diversity of moral considerations, but this fact of life is something value monists seek to deny. The second criticism is that, because monists assume they have identified the general rule for resolving moral conflicts, nor can they recognise and acknowledge the moral costs of their own monist political projects. We do something wrong when we resolve a moral conflict because the value not acted upon has not somehow been cancelled. It still matters; it is still binding on us. And this is something monists cannot perceive. Another theme that is central to this book is the implications of our approach to moral conflict (whether monist or pluralist) for how we conceptualise freedom. For example, I will argue that the value pluralist approach to moral conflict can, and I will say should, go hand in hand with a value pluralist conceptualisation of freedom. We see this, most famously, in Berlin’s work, according to which negative freedom is ‘the absence of obstacles to possible choices and activities’ (Berlin 2004 [1969], p. 32). A political community will interfere with our choices and activities, and strive to prevent us from taking certain options, and do so by various means, including the threat of coercion. Berlin accepts that this will happen, and sometimes even with justification, but nonetheless insists that it is a wrong: a violation of freedom. As Berlin puts it, ‘law’, all law, even law whose purpose is to protect liberty, ‘is always a fetter’ (Berlin 2004 [1958], p. 170 n. 3). To return to our example, when we stop A from being cruel, even when justified in doing so, we have done something wrong: we have violated A’s freedom. But if value pluralism provides a distinctive way to conceptualise freedom, so too does value monism. And we see this in Shklar’s mature work. What I will try to show in the coming chapters is that her mature work rejects Berlinian value pluralism. Her liberalism of fear is based on a value monist approach to moral conflict generally speaking, but also a value monist conception of freedom as well. That is why, as we shall see, she distinguishes genuine freedom from mere independence. Her argument is that we are not free if we live in fear of cruelty; but also we ourselves are not free to be cruel. Freedom is not independence, which is just doing what we please (Shklar 1987a, p. 86). That is, for the mature Shklar, there are some things we simply are not free to do. In particular, if cruelty is the supreme evil, then cruelty cannot be one of

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our options; and if society prevents me from oppressing you, although it has removed what Berlin would call an option, it has not restricted my liberty in any way. I am contrasting the monism of Shklar’s mature work with Berlin’s value pluralism. The contrast is sharp: indeed, as sharp as it can be. But this is not just a difference between two thinkers; I will show that it is also a divergence between Shklar’s own arguments at two different stages in her career. This is a point of supreme importance to the argument of this book, and also one that is highly controversial among those writing about Shklar’s work. Specifically, what I will endeavour to show is that Shklar offers a value pluralist approach to moral conflict in her early work (in particular, her publications from 1964 to 1972), an approach she abandons in the liberalism of fear (her work from the start of the 1980s up to her untimely death in 1992). Specifically, what I try to show is that we can clearly discern the value pluralism of Shklar’s early work in the arguments of her second book, Legalism (1964a). Thus, the liberalism of fear arises from Shklar’s rejection of her own earlier value pluralism. This must be borne in mind if we are to explain what seems to be a blatant contradiction in the liberalism of fear. That is, in her mature work she calls for an entirely non-utopian approach to political thought, and it is on this basis she has been an inspiration to non-ideal theorists and political realists. Yet at the same time, as we shall see, Shklar also embraces a specific type of utopianism in her mature work. As both a monist and a sceptic she distinguishes what she calls normative (reformist) models, on the one hand, from prophetic (transformative) utopias, on the other. While she rejects the latter because their psychological assumptions are false, their plans unworkable, and so they will lead to greater injustice and cruelty, she is perfectly happy to accept the former, including Rawls’s realistic utopia, because they appeal to no order other than that of actuality (Shklar 1998 [nd1]). Therefore, we need to keep in mind Shklar’s utopianism when we set about determining precisely what kind of approach to political thought we have here, and specifically what her mature work can tell us about non-ideal theory and political realism. After all, while other critics of political moralism can find little, if anything, to retain from Rawls’s work, she, in contrast, endorses Rawlsian utopianism. However, that convergence with Rawls’s ideas is less surprising when we consider their respective views on one of the most important thinkers shaping modern political thought: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Indeed, this provides a vantage point from which to view Shklar’s utopianism in her

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mature work. As we shall see in much greater detail in the chapters to come, Shklar’s mature utopianism is the upshot of what has been a radical reappraisal on her part of Rousseau’s work (see Fives, 2019a). At one point, she concludes that Rousseau’s moral vision is beset by unresolved moral conflicts, conflicts that arise for Rousseau concerning the different ways in which we can hope to be free (Shklar 1964b, p. 929). In contrast, in her mature work, her liberalism of fear, she not only embraces value monism, but does so as a Rousseauian. In particular, she adopts a Rousseauian approach to freedom: as we have seen, she conceptualises freedom as liberty of action in accordance with the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. It is true that, for Shklar, the rule in question is not Rousseau’s general will but instead, following Montesquieu, the avoidance of cruelty. But she is offering a conception of freedom in her mature work whose form, or structure, is the same as Rousseau’s. And in this she is in perfect agreement with Rawls. They each maintain that we are free insofar as our actions do not violate the general rule for resolving moral conflicts; and that utopian reforms can have legitimacy insofar as they too do not violate this general rule and for that reason also do not infringe on individual freedom. Just as Rawls is happy to clear Rousseau of all charges of totalitarianism, in her mature work Shklar is, as we shall see, even happy to follow Rousseau in talking of being ‘forced to be free’ (Shklar 2019 [1990b], p. 12). It is through this reappraisal of Rousseau, therefore, that Shklar, in her mature work, wishes to pull together her scepticism, her putting cruelty first, and her liberal (utopian) commitments. She does so in a way that shows how little real distance there is between the liberalism of fear and Rawls’s liberalism when we consider many of the fundamental questions raised for political thought. Shklar’s liberalism I have briefly introduced the various aspects of what Shklar refers to as the liberalism of fear. But, it might be asked, in what sense precisely is hers a liberal political theory? And equally, in what ways does it differ from other forms of liberalism? It is important to reiterate that her value monism is not itself incompatible with liberalism. Mill and Rawls are both value monists and also liberals. And yet, Shklar’s liberalism is different again from that of Mill and Rawls, in particular because of her scepticism. So, in precisely what way is she a liberal? As we know, Shklar is a sceptic. Whereas hers is the party of memory, she sees other liberals as belonging to the non-sceptical party of hope.

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In particular, they engage in a type of utopianism that she rejects, so-called prophetic or transformative utopianism. It is as a sceptic that she objects to prophetic and transformative utopias that promise to transform us into perfectly virtuous (or happy or free or rational) humans. It is as a sceptic that she instead focuses on our vices. On the one hand, she gives priority to the avoidance of the worst vice, cruelty. On the other, she is, as a liberal, explicitly committed to the toleration of what she calls our ordinary vices: It is by keeping its hands off our characters that governments provide the setting and conditions in which we just might begin our poor but epic battle against vice. To create such a government, however, demands no particular virtues at all. It is a government for men as they are, not as they might be. (Shklar 1984, p. 235)

Here, in Ordinary Vices, she calls for a government for men as they are. Toleration of vice is required for the government of people who can of course improve themselves but nonetheless cannot be perfected through utopian reform. Nonetheless, although she places significant emphasis on vice in this book, at this time she is also concerned with the institutional requirements of a liberalism of fear, including individual rights, something that she returns to again and again throughout her later work (see Shklar 1998 [1980a]; 1989a; 1992a). It is of course true in one sense that hers is not a rights-based form of liberalism. As a sceptic, she does not appeal to individual rights as a higher norm, as natural rights theorists do, for example. Nonetheless, individual rights are at the centre of the liberalism of fear, and this is made clear in Ordinary Vices: ‘The first right is to be protected against the fear of cruelty’ (Shklar 1984, p. 237). If cruelty is the summum malum, then, in a liberal society, our first right is to be protected against cruelty. But this is not her only argument for rights. She also calls for the joining together of the negative and positive dimensions of freedom in the notion of rights (Shklar 1998 [1980a]); she defends a right to work (Shklar 1991a) as well as extensive welfare rights (Shklar 1990a); but also she insists that the most important freedom of all, and our first right, is the right to fight for our rights (Shklar 1998 [1980a]). I return to each of these strands of her argument on rights at various points below. But we should note that charges of inconsistency are inevitable at this point. Shklar is a sceptic who nonetheless wishes to defend a specific political programme, one with rights at its centre. But this is what she does, and the clearest illustration can be found in her essay ‘The Liberalism

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of Fear’. Once again, Shklar insists on the sceptical starting point for her version of liberalism. Hers is the party of memory. Rather than set out prophetic utopian hopes for the future, she believes that we must instead remember, we must keep before us, the legacy of two world wars and of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century: We say ‘never again,’ but somewhere someone is being tortured right now, and acute fear has again become the most common form of social control. To this the horror of modern warfare must be added as a reminder. The liberalism of fear is a response to those undeniable actualities, and it therefore concentrates on damage control. (Shklar 1989a, p. 27)

Her liberalism is distinctive, in part because, out of its highly attuned historical sensibility, it concentrates on avoiding repetition of the worst wrongs of the past. It does not lose itself in striving to attain ambitious hopes for the future, in part because, as we have seen, the pursuit of (prophetic) utopias often turns into dystopian tyranny. However, Shklar is exercised not only by the dangers of tyranny, but also by the complacency that can set in among the citizens of liberal democracies: Given the inevitability of that inequality of military, police, and persuasive power which is called government, there is evidently always much to be afraid of. And one may, thus, be less inclined to celebrate the blessings of liberty than to consider the dangers of tyranny and war that threaten it. (Shklar 1989a, p. 27)

There is a real and continuing danger that, in ostensibly liberal and democratic societies, we will see the re-emergence of illegitimate forms of power, of forms of cruelty that lack normative justification. It is for this reason that we must be sceptical, put cruelty first, and focus on damage control. How can we best respond to the dangers of tyranny? How can we successfully engage in damage control? To start with, she maintains, we should conceptualise political agents in the right way, namely by considering who is most exposed to cruelty and who in turn is most likely to be cruel: For this liberalism the basic units of political life are not discursive and reflective persons, nor friends and enemies, nor patriotic soldier-citizens, nor energetic litigants, but the weak and the powerful. And the freedom it wishes to secure is freedom from the abuse of power and the intimidation of the defenseless that this difference invites. (Shklar 1989a, p. 27)

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Shklar here makes clear what, for her, is not compatible with the liberalism of fear. Despite saying that our first right is the right to be free from the fear of cruelty (and our most important freedom and our first right is the right to fight for our rights), she rejects a rights-based liberalism, as is found in Locke or Nozick, according to which we are (first and foremost) sovereign right holders, who, as energetic litigants, can turn to the courts to defend ourselves from attack. Despite the importance for her of positive freedom, nor are her basic units the discursive and reflective self-legislating citizens Kantians talk of, those whose powers of reflection can be relied upon to discover or invent the basic rules of the normal model of justice (see Rawls 1971). Despite seeing her own version of the liberalism of fear as arising from a history of American political thought and practice, one that she seeks to redeem, the basic units are not patriotic soldier-citizens either, bound together by ‘shared social meanings’ (Shklar 1990a, p. 114), as communitarians believe to be the case regarding the social goods pursued in historically specific social spheres (see Walzer 1983). And, despite her sensitivity to the great evils that can be perpetrated, and how this can turn us into exiles, nonetheless she believes that we cannot divide ourselves simply into friends and enemies, as is claimed by romantics and Nietzscheans, who think of citizens along the lines of the agonal individualists of the classical Greek city state, the polis (see Arendt 1993 [1961]). Now perhaps the distinctiveness of the liberalism of fear is not as clear cut as I have presented it here. As we shall see throughout this book, there remain clear similarities between Shklar’s liberalism of fear and each of these opposing approaches to political thought. Although she rejects rights-based forms of liberalism, she is happy to identify what she claims to be the first right of a liberal polity: whether the right to be protected against the fear of cruelty or the right to fight for one’s rights. She remains a critic of communitarians, arguing that they have not justified their claims to have discovered shared social meanings. Nonetheless, as we shall see, she herself emphasises the importance of group-based loyalties, and the fact that they may come into conflict with our political obligations (see Chapter 5). And although she is highly critical of Hannah Arendt in particular, and others who take the Nietzschean line that all modern societies make freedom impossible, nonetheless, what she says about tyranny, and how it cancels obligations of justice, has close parallels with Arendt’s position on the same question (see Chapter 6). So there are similarities with libertarian, communitarian, and Nietzschean thought. But the central issue for the argument of this

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book is that, in the liberalism of fear, Shklar combines scepticism with value monism. And it is for this reason that there are obvious and important similarities with Rawls’s liberalism. Like many political nonmoralists, as we know, Shklar offers a sceptical alternative to the political moralism we see in Rawls. Nonetheless, like Rawls, in her mature work Shklar also takes a monist approach to moral conflict and to the conceptualisation of freedom, and on that basis she even embraces Rawls’s (normative) utopianism. And this point brings us back once again to consider just what scepticism can be said to offer as an alternative to Rawls’s liberalism. We know that, in her early work, Shklar combines scepticism with value pluralism. Therefore, an examination of her work permits us to make a very important judgement of the relative merits of pluralist and monist versions of scepticism. And that is of considerable importance for current debates around non-ideal and realist forms of political thought. For a start, we cannot equate sceptical and pluralist arguments. Some pluralists take a non-sceptical position on values themselves, as is the case with Berlin, for example (Gray 2013 [1996], p. 77). On the other hand, many political realists have been influenced by the work of Williams, but while they take on board his scepticism they pay little or no attention to his pluralism (Sagar 2016, p. 368). This indicates that scepticism and pluralism offer something different, and it is this suggestion that I take up here, one that is confirmed when we examine Shklar’s work, and in particular her changing position on Rousseau. Her mature position on Rousseau is representative of her efforts to combine scepticism, monism, and liberalism, as we have seen. We have also seen that it is diametrically opposed to her interpretation of Rousseau in her earlier work, which instead combines scepticism and liberalism with a value pluralist approach to moral conflict. This transformation (from value pluralism to value monism) is not only key to explaining Shklar’s liberalism of fear in her mature work. As I hope to show, it also exposes Shklar’s arguments to significant and ultimately insurmountable difficulties, both epistemological and normative: firstly, she cannot stick consistently to her value monism, and, as a result, her arguments rest on unjustified premises; secondly, because she assumes that she has identified the general rule for resolving moral conflicts, nor can she recognise and acknowledge the moral costs of her own monist political projects. My argument, as I develop it at various stages throughout this book, is that her mature monist position, and therefore her liberalism of fear, has no answer to the criticisms that arise from value pluralism generally, and her own early value pluralism

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in particular.1 This in turn has important implications for those wishing to develop a non-moralist alternative to Rawls’s work. It suggests that sceptics need to pay more attention to the issue of moral conflict, given that value pluralist versions of scepticism have a pronounced advantage over value monist alternatives. Shklar’s critics So far, I have set out what I take to be the central characteristics of Shklar’s liberalism of fear. I have in addition drawn attention to what I maintain is a dramatic change in her arguments, between her early and her mature work. I have done so up to now in only a preliminary and cursory manner. The remainder of this book will examine these points in greater detail, both by exploring Shklar’s written work more closely and in greater depth and also by applying these theoretical arguments to the consideration of various practical issues dealt with in politics. In doing so I will, of course, also enter into a broader academic conversation. I have already touched on debates concerning monist and pluralist approaches to value conflict and the conceptualisation of freedom, the debate between political moralists and political non-moralists, as well as controversies concerning the role and limits of political theory generally and also liberal thought and practice more specifically. We will return to these debates below. However, we will also address the literature that has grown up around Shklar’s own work, and there is added urgency in our doing so, given that I am putting forward what is a novel, even controversial, interpretation of her work. When we do look at the literature, we find that the value monism of Shklar’s mature work and the value pluralism of her early work have both remained unnoticed, and, as a result, no one has yet adequately accounted for the way in which she comes to reject that earlier pluralism, or how this is bound up with a radical change in her interpretation of Rousseau. Some commentators simply maintain that in her mature work Shklar is a value pluralist, and that as a pluralist she defends Berlin’s negative conception of freedom (Misra 2016). In contrast, others fail to see that her early work provides a value pluralist approach to moral conflict (Forrester 2011; Moyn 2014). Thus, while some commentators miss the  See George Crowder’s similar approach to Bernard Williams, using the latter’s own value pluralism to question his turn towards political realism and hence his defence of the relativism of distance (Crowder 2017, p. 134). 1

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fact that Shklar is no longer a value pluralist, what others overlook is that she once was. Shklar’s adoption of a monist approach in her later work is also part and parcel of her reappraisal of Rousseau and her turn towards the (normative) utopianism we find in Rawls. Seyla Benhabib comes closest to recognising this fact, but nonetheless ultimately sees Shklar as standing in opposition to both Rawls and Rousseau (Benhabib 1996, p. 57). Why do her commentators believe that Shklar’s work is irreconcilably in conflict with that of Rawls? Some have concluded that, because of its scepticism, Shklar’s work is diametrically opposed to Rawls’s, given the latter’s idealism (Misra 2016) and his concern with justification (Yack 2017). Also, Shklar is concerned primarily with the negative features of politics, it is said, and she is offering a negative morality (Allen 2001). Rawls, in contrast, the argument goes, is concerned with the positive task of justifying a set of prescriptive moral principles. And because Shklar is a sceptic focused on avoiding the worst evils, she cannot be a utopian thinker in the way that Rawls is (Rosenblum 1996; Forrester 2012; Thaler 2017). Many of her commentators evidently assume that Shklar cannot be a value monist because they also assume that it is logically incompatible with a sceptical and negative liberalism. What I therefore need to show is that Shklar’s mature work does in fact manage to combine value monism, on the one hand, with scepticism and a focus on avoiding the worst evil, on the other. Many commentators therefore do not recognise the way in which the liberalism of fear is a utopian position, namely a form of normative utopianism. Other commentators go in the opposite direction, and maintain that Shklar can be interpreted as a political radical, namely as an agonistic or Nietzschean or Arendtian thinker (Gatta 2018). The difficulty with the latter interpretation is the fact of Shklar’s clear and unambiguous (and repeated) rejection of that line of thought (e.g., Shklar 1957, p. 99; 1998 [1972]; 2006 [1982]; 1998 [1983]; see Fives 2018b). Others agree that Shklar is no Nietzschean, but they go on to contend that the liberalism of fear must presuppose something like communitarianism in one form or another. Michael Walzer thus maintains that Shklar’s liberalism of fear in fact depends upon a (communitarian) liberalism of hope (Walzer 1996, p. 19). This interpretation of Shklar’s work again must deal with Shklar’s own explicit rejection of both communitarianism and hermeneutics (Shklar 1998 [1986]; 1990a, pp. 114–15). Others also notice that, as I am arguing here, Shklar’s position on utopianism changes dramatically over the course of her writing career. For Kerry Whiteside, Shklar’s early work focuses on the decline of utopian

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faith, whereas her mature work, in contrast, finds a utopian basis for egalitarian politics (Whiteside 1999, p. 503). Although Whiteside is correct to state that Shklar’s utopianism changes dramatically over time, his argument does not acknowledge that this is bound up with, and explained by, the change from a pluralist to a monist approach to moral conflict (see also Moyn 2019). In a similar vein, Samantha Ashenden and Andreas Hess (2016) do not notice the value pluralism of Shklar’s early work and how this is bound up with a distinctively pluralist understanding of Rousseau at this time. As we have briefly sketched out above, in her early work Shklar maintains that Rousseau’s utopian vision is beset by a series of unresolved moral conflicts. The liberalism of fear, in contrast, represents an effort to resolve these conflicts, and to do so by appeal to a general rule derived from Montesquieu, namely the avoidance of cruelty. As I said, this represents a new way to interpret Shklar’s work. Up until now, the value monism of her mature work has remained unnoticed, and as a result no one has yet adequately accounted for the way she comes to reject her own earlier value pluralism, or how this is bound up with a radical change in her interpretation of Rousseau. Attention has focused on her scepticism, and justifiably so, given that this does mark her work out when compared with the political moralism of Rawls, Mill, and others. For that reason, her work has been an important source of guidance and encouragement for political non-moralists. And yet the extent to which her work has been influential in this way also reflects the degree to which it has been understood in a narrow and simplified manner. I am offering a broader and more detailed reading of her work, but also one that comes to conclusions that are perhaps unwelcome for those who want to retain a clear distinction between political moralism and political non-moralism. My conclusion here is that if political nonmoralists are also value monists their arguments will be open to many of the same objections rightly advanced against many political moralists. The distinction that matters most, I will argue, is the one that separates Shklar’s early and mature work, that between value pluralism and value monism. And it is in defence of value pluralism that the arguments of this book are developed.

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2 Cruelty

Shklar’s liberalism of fear is, as we have seen, an approach to political thought that ranks the vices in a particular way. She is, of course, in various ways a sceptic as well. Nonetheless, my thesis here is that her putting cruelty first among the vices in this way is evidence of a not insignificant degree of epistemological ambition. Although she is offering a sceptical alternative to political moralism, in one important respect Shklar’s work is not all that different from that of its most representative figures, including Rawls and Mill. This is the case as her liberalism of fear offers a value monist position on both moral conflict and the conceptualisation of freedom. As we shall in this chapter, the liberalism of fear is a product of Shklar’s publications in the latter part of her career. And the sceptical monism of her mature work represents a sharp departure from the value pluralist (and sceptical) approach to moral conflict evident in her early work. As I shall try to show in the present chapter, this transformation is most clearly evident when we consider her changing views on paternalism. In her early work she maintains that we are left with unresolved conflicts between the requirements of justice, on the one hand, and those of paternalism, on the other (Shklar 1964a; 1966; 1967). In contrast, in her mature work, the liberalism of fear, she concludes that paternalistic infringements of liberty are unjustifiable as a general rule (Shklar 1989a; 1990a). As I have already said, her mature monism, and the move away from her earlier value pluralism, has gone unnoticed in the literature on Shklar’s work. As a result, it has not been understood that her objection to paternalism in her mature work arises not only from her scepticism but also from her value monism. In this chapter I want to address these alternative interpretations of Shklar’s work. This is necessary, as I first

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must establish that the liberalism of fear does indeed represent a form of value monism before being in a position to evaluate the cogency and coherence of that monist position.

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Value pluralism As I have said, there is a radical change evident in Shklar’s work, between her early and mature publications. I am arguing that Shklar, in her early work, adopts a value pluralist approach to moral conflict. So, building on our introductory remarks in the last chapter, let us consider what is meant by value pluralism itself. The value pluralist thesis, in short, is that we may be faced with conflicts between incompatible moral claims and we have not identified the general rule for their resolution. As John Gray puts it in his discussion of Berlin’s work, we may be faced with ‘conflicts among the ultimate values’ of a ‘morality or moral code’; conflicts within any one of these ‘internally complex and inherently pluralistic’ values or goods; and conflicts that arise between ‘different cultural forms [that] generate different moralities and values’ (Gray 2013 [1996], pp. 79–80). In Berlin’s terms, ‘we are faced with choices between ends equally ultimate, and claims equally absolute, the realisation of some of which must inevitably involve the sacrifice of others’ (Berlin 2004 [1958], p. 213). If we must choose between such claims (whether ends, values, goods, and so on), and if they are each ultimate and absolute (whether or not they are equally so, as Berlin says), we are thus faced with a dilemmatic choice; that is, an unresolved moral conflict. As we saw in the last chapter, we can represent moral conflicts, formally, as follows: 1 We ought to do X. 2 We ought to do Y. 3 In the given circumstances, we can do either X or Y. 4 In the given circumstances, we cannot do both X and Y. Now the crucial thing to note is that there are value monist as well as value pluralist approaches to conflicts such as these. Value monists can agree that we are at times faced with moral conflicts. However, they will maintain that, although we cannot in such situations do both X and Y, nonetheless we are not left caught on the horns of a dilemma; and this is the case because, for monists, there is a clear order of priority between the two options. That is the value monist argument. And it is this idea that value pluralists reject. When faced with such conflicts, pluralists contend, we do not have to hand the general rule for their resolution.

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One reason why this is the case is that ‘there are no comprehensive “lexical orderings” among types of goods’ (Galston 2005, pp. 11, 13). That is, even in those instances when we can compare goods and values, we cannot rank-order them. And we cannot do so because they are incommensurable. One way (and by no means the only one) in which rank orderings would be possible is if there were a common source of value. Utilitarians say this is the case with respect to utility. Utilitarians therefore assume that it is possible to assign each moral claim a numeric value in terms of its contribution to utility, and on that basis to rank-order such claims, and hence provide a general rule to decide between them when they conflict. For example, if protecting people’s freedom from interference makes a greater contribution to utility than paternalistic efforts to promote their own good, then whenever there is a clash between the two we always give priority to the former. Not only that, but we do nothing wrong in acting in this way. How could it be wrong to choose the course of action that better promotes utility? (I return to this utilitarian argument in more detail below in this chapter.) According to value pluralists, however, the notion of a common source of value does not fit with our experience of moral diversity. As William Galston says, we can be faced with ‘competing demands [that] are independent of one another and authoritative’, and so if we ‘reach an all-things-considered judgment that endorses one side of the argument, it may well be the case that we will set aside something of genuine value’ (Galston 2005, pp. 17–18). That is, we are not simply deciding between greater and lesser quantities of the same value (e.g. a decision between promoting more or less utility). As a result, not only is there no one general rule to decide between claims in situations of conflict, but making a decision one way or the other does not cancel the item not acted upon. The prima facie ought that we have not acted on has not been cancelled by that fact. We are leaving aside something of genuine value. To return to our example, if we decide to protect someone’s freedom rather than promote their own good, we may have done what is right, all things considered, but nonetheless we will have failed to do what is right as demanded by the principle of beneficence. That is, it is still the case that we ought to promote this person’s good, here and now. Others do object to value pluralism. And one explanation is that it appears to be contradictory. According to this line of critique, we must start from what the word ‘ought’ means. One ‘ought’ to do something, Philippa Foot maintains, only if ‘there are better moral reasons for doing

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this action than for doing any other’ (Foot 2002 [1983], p. 44). This argument does not require appealing to a supposed common source of value in rejecting value pluralism. All that is required is the idea that the meaning of ought itself is such that we cannot be left with unresolved conflicts between ought statements. For example, if it is the case that we ought to do X (say, refrain from interfering in A’s choices and activities), then that just means that there are better moral reasons to do this than there are to do some other, incompatible course of action (say, promote A’s own good paternalistically). It follows that there is no reason for feeling regret when we have resolved a moral conflict. If we do what we ought to do we are simply doing the right thing, and to have acted otherwise would have been wrong. It also follows that the value pluralist argument is a contradictory one. Value pluralists must be assuming that there are situations where there are better moral reasons to do X than Y, and yet at the same time that there are better moral reasons to do Y than X. And this is evidently contradictory. However, I do not think that value pluralism is guilty of such a contradiction. There are two levels of the pluralist argument to consider here. The first is to clarify that pluralists are not saying that we ought to do both X and Y and, at the same time, we cannot do both X and Y. That would be one form of contradiction. Rather, it is that we ought to do each of X and Y, and yet, because of the circumstances, we are unable to do both. A choice is required; and whatever choice we make, though it may be morally justified, it will require not doing what we ought to do. But is it the case that we still ought to do Y (the claim not acted upon)? To address that point, we must turn to the second level of the pluralist argument. Pluralists do not accept that the meaning of ought is that there are better moral reasons for doing this action than for doing any other. Of course, if we are simply faced with the choice between promoting a greater amount of utility and a lesser amount, then, yes, we are being asked to choose between two options the significance of each of which we can measure on a scale. However, there is no compelling reason to assume that this is the only type of decision we are faced with. At times, there may be stronger grounds for one claim than another, but the differences cannot be mapped on a single metric of value, as Galston notes. That is, although we may be able to make comparisons between them, the claims are incommensurable (as we suggested may be the case, in some circumstances, when freedom is in conflict with beneficence). In addition, there may be situations where even non-scalar comparisons are beyond us, as the claims are incomparable as well as incommensurable

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(as may be the case when the claims of radically different ways of life are in conflict). And at other times, again, there may be an equal weighting on conflicting claims (as Berlin says). Therefore, in some situations of moral conflict (when claims are equally weighted and when no comparison between claims is possible) there will be no basis on which to conclude that there are better reasons to do X rather than Y. It would also seem highly peculiar to insist that we must therefore be mistaken if we think that we ought to do X. If X requires that we protect A’s freedom from interference, this is something we ought to do. The fact that, say, it weighs equally with some other conflicting moral requirement does not change that fact. And this would seem to suggest that we can be bound by an ought judgement without having established that there are better moral reasons for it than there are for other ought judgements. When we turn to other situations there will indeed be better reasons to do X rather than Y. But, based on what we have just said, it does not follow that one is mistaken to think one ought to do Y. It may be that one ought to do Y, even when there are better moral reasons to do X rather than Y. So the value pluralist thesis is that we can be left caught on the horns of a dilemma, where we are faced with an unresolved moral conflict, and that whatever we do, we do something wrong. The fact that this is possible also implies quite a bit about the role of theoretical or philosophical thinking. For if theory were able to identify the general rule for resolving moral conflicts, we would not be caught on the horns of these dilemmas. For value pluralists, theory will not resolve these dilemmas for us. As Berlin says, although we can offer reasons to justify the way in which we resolve a moral conflict in a specific situation, crucially, the reasons ‘cannot always be clearly stated, let alone generalised into rules or universal maxims’ (Berlin 2004 [1958], pp. 172–3). Hence, according to value pluralism, political theory does not provide us with the general rule to resolve moral conflicts. When we resolve conflicts, we do so by exercising practical reason and practical judgement. Shklar’s early value pluralism I have in a very brief and schematic way above set out the value pluralist approach to moral conflict. Now, my argument here is that Shklar adopts just such a value pluralist position in her early work. And we can see this most clearly in her second published book, Legalism (Shklar 1964a), along with a number of related articles published over the following

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three years: ‘Decisionism’ (Shklar 1964c), ‘In Defense of Legalism’ (Shklar 1966), and ‘Facing up to Intellectual Pluralism’ (Shklar 1967). Her overriding aim in Legalism is to offer a pluralist understanding, and defence, of justice, along with what she refers to as the legalistic ethos. According to Shklar, justice is but one instance of rule-based (i.e. legalistic) morality, and rule-based morality is but one of the many forms that morality takes. She thus distinguishes moralities ‘of obligation – of rights and duties clearly resembling law’ from moralities ‘of service and mutual aid’; the ‘morality of the “inner light” – the morality of sentiment, of authenticity, and of self-realization’; ‘irrationalist moralities, the various moralities of the heart’; and the morality of ‘the saint and the hero’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 57). Not only are we faced with distinct moral claims, as well as the cultural forms associated with them; in addition, the same moral claim can be conceptualised in different ways, as happens, for example, with the diverse conceptions of justice derived from distinct criteria of merit or desert (Shklar 1964a, p. 114). And, as a value pluralist at this time, Shklar puts forward the thesis that we can be faced with competing demands that are independent of one another and authoritative. The plurality of moral claims can come into conflict, demanding different and incompatible things from us. For example, we may be ‘faced with […] the difficult choice among a variety of equally valid obligations’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 73). In such a situation ‘it is not a matter of “to be or not to be” moral, but of which of several moral claims one shall honor’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 75). What is more, we cannot identify the general rule for the resolution of moral conflicts: Neither our conscience, our superego, our capacity (if any) to predict the results of our action, nor any moral law can deliver us from the actuality of inner moral conflict, created by a multitude of valid claims. (Shklar 1964a, p. 73)

Of course, political theorists often do try to avoid the anxiety caused by moral conflict. As Shklar says, some appeal to ‘the natural’, including natural rights, as a basis for the resolution of conflicts; some claim to have discovered what ‘true desert’ is, and so on (Shklar 1964a, p. 65, p. 116). However, any such approach ‘hides the facts of moral life’, and so, even if it does assuage our anxieties, the ‘comfort’ offered is ‘false’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 75). In any event, we can do without that false comfort: ‘although it is philosophically deeply annoying, human institutions survive because most of us can live quite comfortably with wholly contradictory beliefs’ (Shklar 1964a, p. x).

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Perhaps Shklar goes too far in saying that most of us can live quite comfortably with value conflict, as in fact our situation can become problematic socially and in other ways. She acknowledges that this is the case when the legalistic ethos of justice is in conflict with perfectionist, educative, and paternalistic principles: On the political level it is thus the manipulative state that is the real rival of the legalistic state, and the policy of inducement, whether by propaganda or by terror and related pressures, competes with the policy of legalism. (Shklar 1964a, p. 120)

Despite the obviously critical tone here, we know that, as a pluralist, Shklar is not claiming to have discovered the general rule to resolve this conflict. Her defence of justice, and the legalistic ethos, can only be a pluralist one. As she says, it is an attempt ‘to account for the difficulties which the morality of justice faces in a morally pluralistic world’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 123). Although she defends the legalist ethos of justice, she is also aware of, and draws attention to, its limits. Shklar further elaborates on these limits, and the conflicts raised by the issue of paternalism in particular, in a number of articles that appeared in the three years following Legalism’s publication. I start with ‘In Defense of Legalism’, where she maintains that the limits of rule-based morals ‘become readily apparent’ when ‘such sore issues as the problems of racial peace and the salvation of the poor emerge’ (Shklar 1966, p. 56). Legalism is limited because it acts to conserve the status quo: law is ‘a stabilizing force in society’; it is ‘designed to promote the security of expectations’ (Shklar 1966, p. 57). It is understandable therefore that the ideal of education, ‘the development of each person to his fullest possibilities, is impatient of rules and their limits’ (Shklar 1966, p. 54). Indeed, as she says in ‘Decisionism’, it is precisely for these reasons that many twentiethcentury American reformers rejected legalism itself. Instead of what they saw as the ‘infantile craving for security’ expressed in legalism, New Deal reformers like Jerome Frank called for each judge to ‘make decisions based not on rules, but on his own estimate of the real needs of the persons appearing before him and of society as a whole’ (Shklar 1964c, pp. 8–9). When confronted with poverty and racial inequality (as Shklar herself was in 1960s America) there is a moral requirement to do something for the worst off, even if this means doing something wrong. The wrong done is not just to break what are understood to be the rules of justice (to violate people’s long-standing, legitimate expectations). There is also the wrong done to those treated paternalistically in order

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to ensure the development of each person to his fullest possibilities, that is, the wrongs of, as she puts it, inducement or manipulation and, at its extremes, propaganda or terror. We shall see below that Shklar’s value pluralism is not identical to Berlin’s. Nonetheless, we should note that what Shklar says here about paternalism has very clear parallels with Berlin’s value pluralist approach to that very issue. Although Berlin maintains that it is always wrong to take away options from others, nonetheless, as a pluralist he also insists that freedom is simply one value among others, that it can come into conflict with others, and that as a result we may be justified on occasion in limiting freedom. And one reason why we may be justified doing so is to promote the good of those whose freedom has been restricted: It is one thing to say that I may be coerced for my own good, which I am too blind to see: this may, on occasion, be for my benefit; indeed it may enlarge the scope of my liberty. It is another to say that if it is my good, then I am not being coerced, for I have willed it. (Berlin 2004 [1958], p. 180)

There are two things to note about this argument. The first is that Berlin is concerned here primarily with negative freedom (freedom from interference) rather than positive freedom (freedom understood as self-mastery or autonomy). We return to this distinction later in the chapter. Second, Berlin’s aim in the quoted passage above is admittedly a negative one, namely to emphasise that, even when paternalistic infringements are justified, for example for those who lack competence (those too blind to see their own good), they still count as violations of negative freedom. But what this line of argument clearly assumes is that paternalism can be justified and that, at the same time, paternalists may be faced with moral conflicts. What we have seen is that, for both the younger Shklar and Berlin, paternalism may be justified, and that it may create unresolved moral conflicts for us. What role can and should political thought play in response to moral conflicts like these? What is the nature of theoretical reflection for the value pluralist? Berlin’s answer, as we saw, is that theory does not provide us with the general rule for the resolution of moral conflicts. Shklar again is in agreement. As she says in ‘Facing up to Intellectual Pluralism’, academic specialisation has brought to an end the great tradition of political philosophy, the tradition of thought with ‘a cosmopolitan intent’, ‘based on psychological, economic, and historical speculations’ (Shklar 1967, p. 292). Gone are the days, she says, when

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political philosophers could offer something like a comprehensive doctrine, one which claimed to show how the diversity of moral claims somehow fit together, each with their own part to play, and each a designated weight. However, although we must ‘face up to the pluralism of political ideas that do not individually or together constitute a political philosophy’, nonetheless political thought retains an important function in a pluralist world: ‘The very prevalence and variety of political notions […] makes the need for critically judging unreasoned and uninformed opinion all the more pressing’ (Shklar 1967, p. 293). Shklar also says that, in emphasising ‘the distinctive and, so conflicting, aspects of the various moralities’, it ‘should be obvious that the aim of such self-recognition is to lessen, rather than to intensify, the tensions of practical life’ (Shklar 1966, p. 54). How can political thought play any such role, though? We cannot construct a systematic political philosophy. Indeed, we must challenge the unreasoned and uninformed opinions of those who think they can, whether, for example, they reject paternalism as a general rule or, in contrast, wish to press ahead with educative reforms without any regard for the wrongs committed in their name. Value pluralism is a bar to systematic political philosophy, but a pluralist political theory nonetheless has an active role to play in enhancing our understanding of, and in offering guidance on how to address, society’s major political challenges. In that way, it can hope to lessen the tensions of practical life. What Shklar is doing here, in her early work, is offering a value pluralist approach to moral conflict, and this is particularly evident when she considers the phenomenon of paternalism. I did also say that there are important differences between Berlin’s value pluralism and Shklar’s. Berlin offers a value pluralist conceptualisation of freedom. But the younger Shklar does not. Why that is the case is something I return to in the next chapter. There we will see how, in her early work, she omits a value pluralist conception of freedom from her overall value pluralist position. We shall also see how this omission makes it all the easier for Shklar, at a later date, to turn away from her own early value pluralism. But, before considering the question of how precisely she does conceptualise freedom in her early work, let us first set out the characteristics of that mature position. Value monism As we have seen above, those who adopt a value pluralist approach to moral conflict draw attention to the variety of potentially conflicting

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moral claims and the fact that we have not identified the general rule for resolving conflicts between them when they arise. In this vein, when Shklar defends the legalistic ethos in her early work she also remains sensitive to the possibility of moral conflict, including conflicts with paternalistic, perfectionist, and educative principles. However, when we turn to consider her mature work, we see that this value pluralist orientation has disappeared altogether. From the start of the 1980s, Shklar performs a dramatic about turn, now adopting a value monist approach to moral conflict. But what is value monism? As we said, monists have no problem accepting that moral claims are diverse, and even that they come into conflict, but they also maintain that they have identified the general rule for resolving such conflicts. For example, we can see this with Mill’s specific formulation of liberalism, one that is constructed from what he calls the harm principle. As a utilitarian, Mill believes that all conflicting values can be reduced to a master value, utility. As we saw, utility is, for him, the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable. He also maintains that the best way to promote utility is by adherence to the harm principle. For that reason, it is the one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control. But what is the harm principle? According to Mill, it states that the only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. (Mill 1985 [1859], p. 68)

The harm principle thus justifies the removal of options from individuals in one type of situation only, namely when to act on the options in question would lead to others’ harm. But Mill also conceptualises freedom as liberty of action in accordance with this general rule (indeed, the harm principle is also referred to as the ‘principle of liberty’). It is on the basis of the harm principle that he outlines ‘the appropriate region of human liberty’, thus concluding that an individual is free to do anything that ‘affects only himself […] directly, and in the first instance’, and, of those things that affect others, only that which does not cause them harm (Mill 1985 [1859], p. 71). Thus, for Mill, the harm principle is the general rule for resolving moral conflicts, and he conceptualises freedom as liberty of action in accordance with this value. For instance, the harm principle leaves people

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free to harm themselves. And so, although we ought to promote the good of others, we must never infringe on their liberty to do so. Here we have two values in conflict (protecting freedom, promoting the good of others), and that conflict is resolved by the general rule (the harm principle) that best promotes utility. Mill accepts that at times paternalism is unavoidable, and he goes on to say that it can be justified. Nonetheless, as the harm principle leaves people free to harm themselves, paternalistic infringements of individual freedom are, as a general rule, impermissible. This may seem paradoxical, but he does believe that he has a way to avoid self-contradiction. He tries to do so by arguing that paternalism is justified only for those to whom the harm principle does not apply: those whom he describes as ‘incapable of self-government’ (Mill 1985 [1859], p. 147; see also p. 69). What can be said about Mill’s account of paternalism? It is clearly a liberal approach, as it endeavours to give the greatest space possible for individual liberty, subject to the proviso that no harm is done to others. It is also an approach that accepts social diversity as a reality and also (as we shall see later in this chapter) as a force for promoting utility. And yet, despite his liberalism, Mill is claiming to have identified the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. Therefore, this is a value monist argument, but this does not in any way entail hostility to individual liberty or the toleration of difference. What we can say in addition is that it presupposes an important distinction between soft and hard paternalism, a distinction that will be vital for our understanding of Shklar’s mature work as well (see Fives 2018a). Mill is not defending paternalism of the hard variety, which is exercised over those who are judged competent to make the decision in question (Beauchamp and Childress 2009, pp. 209–13). In fact, he defends only what is called soft paternalism, the paternalistic treatment of those who are incompetent: those who, for one author, ‘are susceptible to certain errors of instrumental thinking’ (Conly 2013, pp. 101–2). Other monists agree that soft paternalism is justified, and also that we do not violate a moral rule towards those whom we treat (soft) paternalistically (see Archard 1990, p. 41). That is, when we conclude that paternalism is justified, what this means is that any principle that normally or generally would count as a reason against paternalism clearly does not apply in the given case. However, there are also value pluralist voices in the debate on paternalism. And these pluralists do not accept that we do nothing wrong when we treat others paternalistically, and this is the case in respect of paternalism of the soft and the hard variety (see Palmeri 1980; Fives 2017). As

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Bernard Gert and Charles M. Culver maintain, to act paternalistically involves, among other things, not doing what one would otherwise be required to do with regard to the person treated paternalistically: A is acting paternalistically towards S if and only if A’s behavior (correctly) indicates that A believes that […] [inter alia] his action involves violating a moral rule (or doing that which will require him to do so) with regard to S. (Gert and Culver 1976, pp. 49–50; emphasis in original)

The paternalist does, it is true, act with the intention of promoting the good of the person treated paternalistically. However, we need to distinguish acts that are simply beneficent in their intent from acts that are not just beneficent but also paternalistic. What makes a beneficent act also a paternalistic one is that in acting paternalistically, inter alia, we do something wrong to those whom we seek to benefit, perhaps (although this need not always be the case) violating the freedom of those treated paternalistically. Crucially, the paternalist does some wrong to the person treated paternalistically. And it is the pluralist who is able to perceive this wrong. I will come back to this point. Shklar’s mature value monism So there are both value monist and pluralist approaches to moral conflict generally, and to the moral conflicts created by paternalism specifically. We have already seen Shklar’s value pluralist approach to moral conflict and to paternalism in her early work. Now I want to turn to the value monism of her mature work. We will see that Shklar’s liberalism of fear represents a value monist position, even though she defends individual liberty and the toleration of difference. Not only that, she also adopts an approach to paternalism similar to that found in what we are here calling political moralism, both Mill’s utilitarianism as well as Rawls’s social contract liberalism, and this is the case despite her scepticism and even though hers is (largely) a negative morality. To start with, Shklar makes clear that her decision to put cruelty first, her regarding cruelty as the summum malum, is also a decision to reject value pluralism (or, as she refers to it, ‘moral pluralism’): The liberalism of fear in fact does not rest on a theory of moral pluralism. It does not, to be sure, offer a summum bonum toward which all political agents should strive, but it certainly does begin with a summum malum, which all of us know and would avoid if only we could. That evil is cruelty and the fear it inspires, and the very fear of fear itself. To that extent the

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liberalism of fear makes a universal and especially a cosmopolitan claim, as it historically always has done. (Shklar 1989a, p. 29; emphasis in original)

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Like Mill, Shklar is rejecting value pluralism here. Her argument does, it is true, differ from Mill’s in certain respects. Whereas for Mill utility is the ultimate end, Shklar in contrast is not setting before us the summum bonum of politics. Nonetheless, she is clearly aware that, as she is claiming to have identified the summum malum, she is no longer adopting a value pluralist approach to moral conflict. She is aware that the two are incompatible. In addition, as a monist, she sets out what she maintains is the general rule for resolving moral conflicts as follows: What liberalism requires is the possibility of making the evil of cruelty and fear the basic norm of its political practices and prescriptions. The only exception to the rule of avoidance is the prevention of greater cruelties. (Shklar 1989a, p. 30)

Her decision to put cruelty first gives priority, as a general rule, to the avoidance of cruelty if and when it comes into conflict with some other moral claim. This is the case both because it is the basic norm of political practices and prescriptions, and also because cruelty is permitted only so as to prevent greater cruelties. In the next section I will address those who see Shklar’s work in a different way. Nonetheless, at this point it is helpful to anticipate some of the objections that my interpretation of her work will invite. I appreciate that to some it may seem odd to characterise Shklar as a value monist, given that she draws attention, over and over again, to the reality of moral conflict. However, as we know, monists are perfectly happy to accept that moral claims are diverse, and that conflicts arise between them. Therefore, the fact that Shklar continues to highlight the various ways in which we can be faced with moral conflict need not take from her value monism. As she says in Ordinary Vices, ‘as social actors, we all have unclean hands some of the time’ (Shklar 1984, p. 243). One such conflict arises from the fact that, although we ought to avoid cruelty, nonetheless, in certain circumstances cruelty may be permitted or even obligatory. Indeed, in ‘The Liberalism of Fear’ Shklar maintains that ‘any government must use the threat of punishment’, and so ‘the liberalism of fear does not dream of an end of public, coercive government’ (Shklar 1989a, pp. 29, 30). Thus, she is indeed highlighting the pervasiveness of moral conflicts. But she also claims to have identified the general rule for their resolution: the avoidance of cruelty. That is why ‘the threat of

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punishment’ is referred to as ‘an unavoidable evil, to be controlled in its scope and modified by legally enforced rules of fairness, so that arbitrariness not be added to the minimum of fear required for law enforcement’ (Shklar 1989a, p. 30). Her referring to the minimum of fear required for law enforcement should be considered in the context of her value monist position outlined above. She assumes that we are faced with a moral conflict here because, on the one hand, it is cruel to threaten others with punishment, but, on the other, this cruelty is necessary so as to prevent greater cruelties. It is possible to justify the cruelty of law enforcement, but only insofar as it does prevent greater cruelties, namely the cruelties of a world without law enforcement. I am arguing that Shklar’s mature work adopts a value monist approach to moral conflict. It may be objected that this cannot be true, given that she is also a sceptic. However, in actual fact scepticism need not entail value pluralism, just as value pluralism need not entail scepticism. For a start, Gray has argued that Berlin’s value pluralism is not a sceptical position. Berlin in fact assumes that moral values are something about which we can hope to attain objective knowledge. It is for this reason that I categorise Berlin as a political moralist, like Mill and Rawls. Gray also points out that what is distinctive of a ‘sceptical and subjectivist’ position on ethics is found in ‘the denial of moral knowledge, the rejection of anything akin to moral belief or moral judgement, and in the consequent assimilation of morality to the expression of preference’ (Gray 2013 [1996], p. 77). Shklar does not go so far as to deny moral knowledge outright, but in various ways she does highlight the limits of our capacity to judge between right and wrong. For example, and as we saw in the last chapter, as a sceptic she is critical of the normal model of justice, which equates justice with the application of rules of justice. She doubts that we can ever know enough about each other to devise rules for each other. Of course, this statement seems to entail that Shklar herself cannot ever be understood as offering a value monist position. Surely (it could be argued), a sceptic, who doubts we can devise rules for each other, cannot also be a monist, who claims to have identified the general rule for the resolution of moral conflicts? As I have already set out very briefly in the first chapter, there is no inconsistency between Shklar’s scepticism (including her sceptical critique of the normal model of justice) and her claim to have identified the summum malum. To start with, Shklar thinks of her scepticism as inseparable from her value monism. Indeed, she assumes that the decision to put cruelty first forces us to be sceptical. By putting cruelty first one

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closes off any appeal to any higher norm and any order other than that of actuality. Why is this the case? She believes that it is by experiencing cruelty that we are compelled to be sceptical in this way. Because human cruelty is so pervasive, we are forced to doubt what we know: This kind of skeptic may well begin the journey away from the common understanding because he or she is overwhelmed by the evil of the times […] [I]t is reasonable to ask: ‘Why do we do these appalling things?’ and then, ‘What do we know about ourselves and each other? And finally, ‘What can we know at all?’ (Shklar 1990a, p. 20)

In addition, those who ignore these sceptical warnings will simply make cruelty worse; and so adopting a sceptical attitude is one important obstacle to the worsening of cruelty: There is also a purely psychological skepticism that not only doubts that we can ever know enough about each other to devise rules for each other but also suspects that our efforts to do so may do us a lot of harm. (Shklar 1990a, p. 26)

Of course, Shklar’s line of argument here is itself open to question. Any observation of human conduct will show that many people who have witnessed or experienced cruelty do not become sceptics. Many become unyielding in their moral certainties. So, even if Shklar is pointing towards a merely psychological connection between the two rather than one of strict logical inference, that psychological connection itself is a questionable one. Nonetheless, putting to one side such concerns about the strength of the argument, what we can say is that, for her, scepticism and monism are bound together. Our experiences of cruelty force us to doubt what we know; while it is those who are free from such doubts who risk causing ever greater harm. It is as a sceptic that she puts cruelty first, and it is by maintaining this scepticism that, she believes, we can act on the commitment to avoid cruelty. And it is as a value monist that she puts cruelty first. As we have said already, she does not appeal to higher norms in order to excuse or forgive acts of cruelty. But while she refuses to excuse or forgive acts of cruelty by appeal to some other, supposedly higher, norm, she does so precisely because, for her, cruelty is the higher norm: it, and nothing else, is the supreme evil. This brings us back to the normal model of justice. Those who have no sceptical doubts will be the ones to propose the normal model of justice, and in doing so they risk causing ever greater harm.

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What we have seen is that, for Shklar, scepticism is intimately bound up with the decision to put cruelty first. However, there is one further side to her scepticism that again may seem incompatible with what I am calling her value monism, namely her commitment to toleration in the face of social diversity. This commitment could not be clearer in Ordinary Vices. There she notes that snobbery, or ‘the habit of making inequality hurt’, is condemned in a democracy ‘as an obnoxious violation of the public ethos’, but nonetheless, we should see it as unavoidable where there is social mobility, and also it is ‘the consequence of any sort of pluralism [i.e. social diversity]’ (Shklar 1990a 1984, pp. 87, 88, 117). This is a moral conflict where we ought to treat others as our equals, and yet we ought to tolerate those who are snobs and who make inequality hurt. Now, it is informative to consider how the paternalist will respond to this moral conflict: the paternalist will, of course, strive to improve these snobs, and do so for their (the snobs’) own good. The paternalist would cure them of their snobbery. Shklar instead maintains that we should simply tolerate their vices (see Galston 1988; Yack 1996, p. 5; Dunn 1996, p. 46). But toleration of diversity does not amount to value pluralism. For a start, there is nothing standing in the way of value monists defending toleration as a moral virtue and a moral obligation, as can be seen, for example, by considering those who attempt to do so on the basis of Mill’s and Kant’s arguments (see Mendus, 1989). And, in fact, this is precisely what Shklar does in her mature work. She calls on us to tolerate such vices as snobbery, but does so because for her (as a value monist) cruelty is first among the vices. That is, if we do not tolerate snobbery, if instead we strive to stamp out the snobbery of others in the name of democratic equality (and use whatever threats of force are necessary to achieve this end), this will entail permitting cruelty in situations other than to prevent greater cruelties, and so, as a general rule, it will be unjustified. According to the arguments of her mature work, cruelty cannot be justified in the name of such ‘noble’ ‘causes’: this rules out, as a matter of principle, paternalistic or perfectionist or educative politics, or, as Shklar puts it, an ‘educative government that aims at creating specific kinds of character and enforces its own beliefs’ (Shklar 1989a, pp. 32, 33). Hers is the party of memory, as we know, not the party of hope. As she makes clear, her sceptical critique of paternalistic reform owes a great debt to Ralph Waldo Emerson. For Shklar, Emerson ‘is defending democratic people against the moral reform societies’; he is ‘the skeptic’ who ‘is just

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the dose of salts that democracy needs’ (Shklar 1998 [1990c], pp. 60, 61). A sceptical political theorist needs to puncture the bubble of those who feel they have right on their side and who, as a result, will exercise cruelty in the name of noble causes. And this is where Shklar’s reading of Montesquieu also comes in. For an educative government may appeal to some utopian thinkers, for example, those who believe themselves to be implementing the ideals and values of the ancient republics of Athens and Rome. But it is precisely this that Montesquieu warns against. He highlights ‘the differences between modern and ancient politics’, and Shklar believes he was right to conclude that the modern polity should be more like that of his English contemporaries: it ‘created a legal system to protect the property and freedom of individuals, not to teach them civic and martial virtue’ (Shklar 1998 [nd3], pp. 161, 169). But it is not merely or solely her scepticism that explains Shklar’s objections to an educative government. They arise also from her value monism. It is because the English system (as Montesquieu saw it) focuses on limiting cruelty against individuals that it is preferable to the utopian ideals of those who would kill and torture real, living, actual people so as to bring about what they think to be the perfect, ideal polity. An unnoticed value monist A most dramatic about turn in philosophical argumentation is evident between Shklar’s early and mature work. From having been a value pluralist, she has become a value monist, and from having accepted that paternalism presents us with unresolved moral conflicts, she has come to insist that paternalism is unjustified as a general rule. However, I must address the fact that this interpretation of her work is a novel one. What we will see is that her mature value monist position on moral conflict remains unnoticed by those who have studied her work. Why that should be is, I think, not just because Shklar herself never drew attention to this aspect of the changes in her approach to political thought over time, although that may be a contributing cause. Instead, a more important explanatory factor is the level of attention given to her scepticism. It is true that the scepticism of Shklar’s mature work marks it out as different in important respects from the monism of other liberals, such as Mill and Rawls, for example. That does not make her work any less monist, but it may explain why her monism has not been noticed before now. Shklar, as we saw, sets out her mature position on Berlin’s value pluralism in ‘The Liberalism of Fear’. There she is explicit that her mature work

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does not, in her words, rest on a theory of moral pluralism. But what is the significance of this statement? It has importance for a start because she is here rejecting her own early value pluralism, in particular as set out in Legalism, and yet those examining her work have not detected this fact. Some do see Legalism as arguing for the importance of social diversity and for that reason as expressing doubt about the chances of securing consensus on questions of justice (Yack 2017, p. 118). That is of course true, but it is only part of the story. What her commentators do not see is that Legalism is offering a value pluralist approach to moral conflict. Some do note that Shklar is here rejecting natural law arguments, but nonetheless fail to appreciate the value pluralism she is putting forward in its place (Moyn 2014, p. 720; Ashenden and Hess 2016, p. 525; Gatta 2018, p. 112; Scheuerman 2019, pp. 57–8). Indeed, Katrina Forrester goes so far as to say that Shklar was a critic of value pluralism: unlike Berlin, she ‘was not interested in the monism of utopias. Her suspicion of grand critiques with their all-encompassing claims also,’ according to Forrester, ‘extended to pluralism and anti-utopianism’ (Forrester 2011, p. 602). When commentators do draw attention to Shklar’s thesis, set out in Legalism, about the limits of legalism, they do not see this as a value pluralist argument about irreconcilable conflicts between legalistic moral thinking and other sources of normativity. What they see instead is her sceptical argument challenging those unable to see the limitations of rule-based thinking: ‘Legalist confusions paved the way for a pathological legal imperialism that downplayed the necessary limits of strict and impartial legal decision making’ (Scheuerman 2019, p. 57). For this line of thought, there are no profound differences between the arguments of Legalism and those of her penultimate book, The Faces of Injustice: they fit into ‘her lifelong preoccupation with the pathologies of “legalism”’ (Scheuerman 2019, p. 54). Others agree that the arguments and preoccupations of Shklar’s mature work are already present in Legalism. This is clearly the case, the argument goes, given that in Legalism she refers to her position as a ‘barebones liberalism’ and a ‘liberalism of permanent minorities’ (Shklar 1964a, pp. 5, 224). That is, at both the start and the end of her career, it is argued, she is taking a sceptical approach and she is giving priority to the interests of those most vulnerable to the abuses of power (Gatta 2018, pp. 36–7; Moyn 2019, p. 33). However, I think it is possible to reach a very different, and more adequate, interpretation of Shklar’s arguments in Legalism, starting with

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what she means at this time by the terms barebones liberalism and a liberalism of permanent minorities. As a value pluralist at this time, what she is most concerned with is the fact of diversity. That is her primary concern in Legalism, whereas, in contrast, in her mature work she states that the basic units of society are the weak and the powerful. As she says herself, the barebones liberalism of Legalism ‘is committed only to the belief that tolerance is a primary virtue and that a diversity of opinions and habits is not only to be endured but to be cherished and encouraged’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 5). Her early liberalism is rightly described as barebones because, by combining her scepticism with her commitment to diversity, she is rejecting any ‘theory of progress’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 5). Also, this is not a position that focuses on damage control, as the later liberalism of fear does. Rather, in Legalism she insists that it is pluralism (not cruelty) that is ‘a social actuality that no political theory can ignore without losing its relevance’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 5). The permanent minorities she refers to are those that arise from social diversity, and what she is concerned with first and foremost is not the freedom from cruelty but the idea that ‘it is in diversity alone that freedom can be realized’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 5). Legalism offers a sceptical and value pluralist approach to liberalism, that is, a barebones liberalism, a liberalism of permanent minorities. Shklar’s critics have not noticed her early value pluralism, as we have seen. One critic, Kerry Whiteside, does appreciate that her early work is pluralistic in one sense, but even he does not see it as a form of value pluralism. This is the case because he employs the arguments of Shklar’s first book from 1957, After Utopia, to characterise what he calls the ‘pluralism’ of her early work, and mentions her second book from 1964, Legalism, only once and only in passing, and then only with reference to Shklar’s rejection of natural law theory. For that reason, his description of her early work as pluralistic ignores altogether what we have referred to as its value pluralism. Hence, for Whiteside, the Shklar of After Utopia is a pluralist in the sense that her work reflects the decline of utopian faith, and specifically faith in the power of ‘reason’ to ‘lead citizens to a “natural harmony”’ (Whiteside 1999, p. 503). It is true that After Utopia reflects a decline of utopian faith, but that is so because, as we shall see in Chapter 4, its defining quality is a sceptical critique of utopianism. In that book Shklar does not (as she does in Legalism) talk about moral conflicts and our not having identified the general rule for their resolution. Instead, After Utopia puts forward the sceptical argument that we lack

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the utopian faith necessary for radicalism to be ‘meaningful’ (Shklar 1957, p. 219). Not only do her commentators not recognise the value pluralism of Shklar’s early work, nor do they see the value monism of her mature work. For example, Shefali Misra concludes that Shklar does not offer ‘a moral system or decision procedure like utilitarianism or deontology’ (Misra 2016, p. 86); while Nancy Rosenblum, in addition, maintains that the liberalism of fear is ‘not a political or moral theory or prescription for social reform’ (Rosenblum 1996, p. 43; see also Forrester 2012, p. 260; Yack 2017, p. 116; Thaler 2017, p. 12). So, how should we understand Shklar when she says that cruelty is first among the vices? Kamila Stullerova concludes that Shklar’s putting cruelty first is, like Bernard Williams’s basic legitimation demand, ‘not a principle from which a theory of morality and ethics should be deductively developed’ (Stullerova 2014, p. 37). Why is this the case? In Williams’s own words, he identifies the ‘first’ political question in Hobbesian terms as the securing of order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation. And he says that meeting the ‘basic legitimation demand’ is what distinguishes a legitimate from an illegitimate state, and it ‘can be equated with there being an “acceptable” solution to the first political question’ (Williams 2005, p. 4). Stullerova points out that, for Williams, simply because the basic legitimation demand is the first question of politics, it does not follow that once it has been solved it never has to be solved again. Similarly, for Stullerova, Shklar’s putting cruelty first ‘is meant to direct attention – again and again – to the possibility’ that somewhere someone is being tortured right now (Stullerova 2014, p. 37). The interesting thing about the parallel Stullerova draws between Shklar’s and Williams’s arguments is that it does not rule out the possibility that Shklar is claiming to have identified the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. This is the case because Williams can be understood as simply making an empirical observation, namely that we can never guarantee political regimes that do have legitimacy will remain legitimate. It may be an empirical fact that the basic legitimation demand needs to be solved over and over again. Such an observation says nothing about whether he thinks there is also a general rule to resolve moral conflicts. Similarly, it is true that Shklar wishes to direct our attention to the reality of cruelty, in all its diversity in so many different contexts, and the possibility that it may emerge in its worst guises again. It is still possible that she is at the same time arguing that the avoidance of cruelty is the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. And my argument above is that she does actually make that monist claim.

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So, for some commentators, Shklar’s decision to put cruelty first is merely a device designed to draw attention to the different ways in which people do, in fact, suffer from cruelty. It is not the first principle of a moral theory. For others, Shklar is simply a sceptic, and it is because of this scepticism that she does not, indeed could not, offer a decision procedure or prescription for social reform. And specifically, it is argued, her scepticism explains her mature position on paternalism. As we have seen, her sceptical critique of the normal model of justice is that we do not know enough about each other to devise rules of justice for each other. As a result, people’s experiences of injustice often will not be captured by our rules of justice. In response, Shklar maintains that we should listen to the voices of those who claim to be the victims of injustice, revise our principles of justice on that basis, and in that way aim at attaining ‘consent as a continuous process under conditions of personal freedom’ (Shklar 1990a, p. 122). This has important implications for how she understands paternalism, given that paternalism is an exercise of power over others, for their own good, but (crucially) without their consent (Fives 2017, p. 12). For Shklar’s commentators, it is simply this sceptical line of argument that explains ‘her dislike of paternalism, however well meaning’ (Hoffmann 1996, p. 87), and it is why she herself ‘deftly avoids’ paternalism by requiring that those in power discern ‘the facts’ and respect people’s judgments ‘about their own affairs’ (Misra 2016, p. 90). In contrast, paternalism will result when we ignore these sceptical doubts, whether we do so because of a liberal theory of distributive justice that is too far ‘removed from actuality’ (Whiteside 1999, p. 251) or because of a communitarian account of the ‘predominant opinions in any society’ whose veracity has not been checked against the views of the least advantaged members of that society (Yack 1996, pp. 8–9). For her commentators, therefore, Shklar objects to paternalism because of her scepticism, which requires listening to the voices of the victims of injustice. I am of course not calling into question the sceptical character of Shklar’s mature work. But what I am arguing is that, in her mature work, she combines scepticism with value monism. It is true that because of her scepticism there are reasons why Shklar objects to the political theories of other monists. This is evident in some of her criticisms of Mill’s utilitarianism in particular. Nonetheless, there is one sense in which Shklar, like Mill, is offering a decision procedure and a prescription for social reform. This is the case as she makes the evil of cruelty and fear the basic norm of liberalism’s political practices and prescriptions. What she is claiming to provide is a procedure for deciding between

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alternative courses of action, and thus a basis for normative prescription. Its being negative, in being based on a summum malum rather than a summum bonum, does not change that fact. This is of course a crucial point for my interpretation of Shklar’s work, but in fact one that, on consideration, should not be considered all that controversial. I am assuming that value monism need not necessarily entail either identification of the summum bonum or the rank-ordering of virtues. Now of course Mill does claim to have identified the summum bonum, namely utility. Nonetheless, the norm that he gives priority to as a general rule is a negative one (the harm principle). Rawls, for his part, does rank-order principles of justice (and he does say justice is the first virtue), but at the same time he does not claim to have identified the summum bonum. Turning again to the mature Shklar, what we see is a form of value monism based on a negative morality, a claim to have identified the summum malum. And on that basis, she does offer prescriptions, and does so as a monist. Specifically, when she rejects paternalism, she does so not just because of sceptical doubts, but also because paternalism violates the principle of the avoidance of cruelty. This becomes clearer still when we consider her conception of freedom. I have already said that value monists offer a distinctive approach not only to moral conflict but also to the conceptualisation of freedom. This is also the case in Shklar’s mature work, but, once again, this has gone unnoticed by her critics. Some maintain that the mature Shklar not only is a value pluralist but also endorses Berlin’s negative conception of liberty: What she remained firmly opposed to were theories of what Berlin had identified as the opposite of negative liberty – positive liberty, with its exalted visions of how one ought to use one’s freedom. How they used their freedom was up to individuals to decide. (Misra 2016, pp. 87–8; see also Stullerova 2014, p. 26)

At first it may seem that there is some support in Shklar’s mature writings for this interpretation of her work. ‘Every adult’, Shklar contends, should be able to make as many effective decisions without fear or favor about as many aspects of her or his life as is compatible with the like freedom of every other adult. That belief is the original and only defensible meaning of liberalism. (Shklar 1989a, p. 21)

The emphasis here is clearly on individual freedom of choice. This seems very far removed from a positive conception of freedom in the sense

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that Berlin describes, and warns against. Positive freedom refers to selfmastery or autonomy. Berlin accepts that this is a genuine value, but also warns that it can become a dangerous idea when it is equated with mastery of my lower self by my better self, as is the case, for example, with the idea that I can be free only with respect to ‘my “real,” or “ideal,” or “autonomous” self, or […] my self “at its best”’ (Berlin 2004 [1958], p. 179). Shklar is clearly not claiming to provide a comprehensive account of our real selves (based, say, on metaphysical speculation about human nature) and conceptualising freedom on that basis. She in fact stresses that conflicts about our aims and values are unavoidable, and even necessary for our freedom, as can be seen when she reflects on her own underlying assumptions in Ordinary Vices: After all, Aristotle said ‘we,’ frequently […] And he did not seem to ask his audience of ‘we’ to necessarily agree with him […] What distinguishes this book, however, is my consciousness of conflict among ‘us’ as both ineluctable and tolerable, and entirely necessary for any degree of freedom. Indeed, I have tried to make ‘us’ even more aware of our incompatibilities and their consequences. (Shklar 1984, p. 227)

What kinds of conflicts and incompatibilities is she referring to? Not only is there no one comprehensive account of our true selves as human beings, nor is there just one way in which to rank-order virtuous human qualities. Rather, we should simply accept that, except in some extreme cases, we must tolerate people as they are. Government should therefore keep ‘its hands off our characters’ if we are to ‘begin our poor but epic battle against vice’, for what we need ‘is a government for men as they are, not as they might be’ (Shklar 1984, p. 235). Thus, what we have seen is Shklar defending individual freedom of choice, while also insisting that conflict is unavoidable, and necessary for freedom, and that we should also tolerate the differences represented by such conflicts. But none of this amounts to value pluralism: she is not saying that we lack the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. Nor is she offering a value pluralist conceptualisation of negative freedom, as Berlin does. In fact, there are two ways in which she departs clearly and explicitly from Berlin’s pluralist conception of negative freedom. She first notes that ‘Berlin’s negative liberty of “not being forced” and its later version of “open doors” is kept conceptually pure and separate from “the conditions of liberty,” that is, the social and political institutions

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that make personal freedom possible’ (Shklar 1989a, p. 28). Shklar is not a value pluralist in her mature work, but she is an institutional pluralist. She thus calls for a dispersion of power among a plurality of politically empowered groups, pluralism, in short, as well as the elimination of such forms and degrees of social inequality as expose people to oppressive practices. (Shklar 1989a, p. 28)

She is here saying that Berlin’s conception of negative freedom is insufficient, as freedom requires certain background conditions. His conception of freedom does not go far enough. That by itself, however, does not call into question the pluralism of Berlin’s position: as a pluralist, Berlin himself accepts that negative freedom is just one value, and that the commitment to social and economic equality is another (perfectly valid) value (Berlin 2004 [1958], pp. 172–3). However, the second way in which Shklar departs from Berlinian negative freedom is of far greater significance for our purposes because it does entail her rejection of his value pluralism. Following Montesquieu, Shklar believes that freedom is ‘not independence, which is just doing as one pleases, but rather the condition that causes people to feel that their person and property are secure’ (Shklar 1987a, p. 86). Yes, freedom requires a wide sphere of non-interference, but, crucially, we are rightly free from interference only insofar as our actions are not cruel. According to Shklar’s interpretation of Montesquieu, a legitimate polity should not use coercive force to control ‘religious belief and practice, consensual sex and expressions of public opinion’, and so it should guarantee an ‘extensive sphere of personal liberty’, but also it may rightly punish ‘any act of violence against the person or property of the individual’ (Shklar 1987a, p. 90). Let us be clear. Her argument is not that we are free to be cruel, but that we may rightly be prevented from being cruel. Rather, pace Misra, in her mature work Shklar is saying that how we use our freedom is not up to us to decide; we are, in fact, not free to do as we please when what we please to do is in violation of the general rule for resolving moral conflicts, that is, the avoidance of cruelty. Yes, Shklar objects to paternalistic infringements of liberty. She does not accept that freedom may be infringed in the name of our own welfare, so as to make us autonomous, or virtuous, or happy, and so on. But nonetheless, in her mature work Shklar is offering a value monist conception of freedom. Freedom is not just doing as we please. It is, rather, liberty of action in accordance with the general rule

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for resolving moral conflicts. The implication is that if we are prevented from treating others cruelly (say, by the threat of punishment) this does not restrict our freedom, as we are simply being prevented from doing something we are not free to do in the first place. I have tried to show that in her mature work Shklar provides a value monist conception of freedom, although one that does not rest on or presuppose the claim to have identified the summum bonum. I have done so without mentioning the distinction between positive and negative freedom. However, we will have to consider that distinction when we return to the idea of freedom in more detail in the next chapter. For at times during her mature work Shklar makes an explicit case for positive freedom, and insists that she does so without rejecting the distinction between a lower and a higher self. As we know, positive freedom is freedom understood as self-mastery or autonomy, rather than simply the freedom from interference in our choices and activities. At this time, Shklar says she wants ‘to make a case for the higher self in politics’ and ‘that it can be a genuine form of liberty’ (Shklar 2019 [1990b], p. 10). What is that higher self ? It ‘refers to being able to be an active citizen and to have some part in the decisions that affect me and mine’ (Shklar 2019 [1990b], p. 10). Shklar is also happy to use perfectionist language to talk of what it is to be a complete person, as she does when explaining why she teaches political theory. There she refers to her own conviction that a complete person must be able to think intelligently about government, and that the only way to rise above banality is to learn to think one’s way through the works of the great writers on the subject and to learn to argue with them. (Shklar 2019 [1988a], p. 215)

So there is perfectionism here, and it does enter into Shklar’s thinking on freedom. But what type of perfectionism is this? I come back to this question in more detail in the next chapter when we focus on freedom. For now, what we can say is that Shklar’s perfectionism is one that goes hand in hand with the conviction that our basic norm is the avoidance of cruelty. The higher self of politics is, for her, the self that is willing to tolerate others and also to fight to restrict the power of the dominant so as to better limit cruelty: this is what it means to be an active citizen. It is not the higher self as envisaged by any one substantive normative doctrine. Indeed, she assumes that we will always disagree about whether one perfects oneself through, say, faith, heroism, contemplation, or whatever. Of course, she does say that, for her, a complete person must also engage in political theory. Does that mean that the higher self is, as some

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interpretations of Aristotle have it for example, the self as philosopher and, in particular, political philosopher? Given her scepticism, clearly not. This statement should instead be seen as specifying one necessary condition of completeness; and it does not imply that political theory is the most valuable part of a worthwhile life. Of course, even this is to claim quite a lot, for it would follow that a good life must have some role given over to political theory. But it does not amount to claiming to have identified the summum bonum, or conceptualising freedom on that basis. To return to points made right at the outset of this book, value monism is compatible with a wider variety of arguments in political philosophy. Value monism does not entail or require illiberal political commitments (as we can see with Shklar’s commitment to toleration, for example). Nor does value monism entail or require philosophically conservative arguments concerning the conceptualisation of values (as can be seen with Shklar’s insistence that we can identify the summum malum but not the summum bonum). Yes, Shklar does also offer a positive conception of freedom and she is happy to evoke perfectionist language. But that does not make her into a moralist. As we said at the outset of this book, despite her value monism, it is her negative, tolerant, and sceptical liberalism that predominates. Negative morality and value monism The liberalism of fear is, I have argued, a value monist approach to moral conflict, and it includes a value monist conception of freedom. In defending this interpretation of Shklar’s mature work I have argued that her monism has remained unnoticed by her commentators, including those who see the liberalism of fear as, simply, a negative morality. The idea of negative morality is important for debates about value pluralism more generally, so let us look at it more closely. According to one interpretation of Shklar’s work, she is simply identifying the worst evil, what she believes to be the summum malum at all times and in all places, and this should not be confused with the arguments of mainstream political theory, which aim to identify the positive traits citizens should develop and/or the aims they should pursue. Unlike mainstream political philosophy, it is argued, hers is a ‘refined and acute moral sensibility’, whose ‘goal’ is to ‘explore and anatomize negative moral dispositions so that it becomes clear what is at stake morally and politically in experiences of cruelty, hypocrisy, betrayal, and so forth’ (Allen 2001, pp. 340, 341). Shklar’s critics have focused on her negative morality and have shown, quite

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rightly, how that emerges from her sceptical take on political theory (see Yack 2019). However, what I think has remained unnoticed is that this negative morality is also a value monist one. Indeed, I think this becomes clear when we compare what Shklar is doing in her mature work with the arguments of others who combine negative morality not with value monism but, rather, with value pluralism. This can be seen in the work of Berlin, Gray, and Stuart Hampshire. It can also be seen by looking at Shklar’s own early work. As we know, Shklar’s work changes over time in profound ways. When we examine this process of change, what we see is that, in her early publications, she does approach the problem of great evils in a way that is largely compatible with the pluralist arguments of Hampshire, Berlin, and Gray, whereas in her mature work she does not. Let us first consider how she herself engages with the problem of evil in her early work. In her essay ‘Ideology Hunting’, she has the following to say about what she calls the ‘survivalist’ approach to political thought: It includes all those for whom […] the preservation of the political order is the first task of politics. Amoral, and a-ideological, it rests on the assumption that government cannot make men good, but that it can keep them from violent action. (Shklar 1998 [1959], p. 230)

It is important to note precisely when she wrote this essay. It appears two years after her first book, After Utopia, and five years prior to Legalism. Given the importance of Montesquieu in shaping her later work, it is interesting to see her, in this early essay, also say that the theory of survivalism ‘in its most sophisticated form’ can be found in his [Montesquieu’s] work (Shklar 1998 [1959], p. 230). And, given that her description of the liberalism of fear as entirely nonutopian, it is again intriguing to see her here argue that ‘with a decline in ideological fervor a new appreciation for limited government and the values of peace and order emerged’ (Shklar 1998 [1959], p. 236). Finally, she also notes that there is a clear order of priority at the heart of survivalism, as all ‘knew stability, peace, order, and civic unity to be the highest of all social and political aims. Liberty, justice, and equality – these were all means to that supreme aim’ (Shklar 1998 [1959], p. 230). Given these comments, it is perhaps understandable that some conclude that she has been ‘moved to embrace […] a “survivalist” approach to political theory’ in this essay (Moyn 2019, p. 25). According to this interpretation of her work, there is equivalence between these early arguments on great evils and what she says in her mature work about

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the fear of cruelty being the summum malum of politics. However, I do not think this interpretation holds up to scrutiny. For a start, it is going too far to say that, in this 1959 essay, she embraces or advocates survivalism. She notes that it ‘is a philosophy that is sure to appeal to those who have seen enough of civil war and ideological wrangling to last them forever’ (Shklar 1998 [1959], p. 230). But this reads more like an observation than a defence; her tone is decidedly neutral and non-committal. Also, for her to advocate survivalism would not be at all consistent with her other arguments at this time. Two years previously, in After Utopia, she rejects as ‘unrealistic’ an approach to political thinking concerned solely with power: it is not realistic, psychologically, to ‘isolate power as the single motivation in political thought’; and in any case, such an approach is not ‘morally particularly attractive’ either (Shklar 1957, p. 272). Not only that, survivalism is actually quite different from the liberalism of fear of her mature work. She sees survivalism as not just a-ideological but a-moral as well. Although survivalism gives priority to certain aims over others, she is not here referring to the priority given to one moral claim over others. Rather, it is a position that gives order priority over various principles of morality. For that reason, this is quite different to the liberalism of fear, which in fact does claim to have identified the basic norm of politics. Shklar’s early work, therefore, does indeed address the issue of avoiding the worst evils, but does not do so in the manner of the liberalism of fear, for at this time she does not claim to have identified the summum malum. The same can be said of her argument in ‘Subversive Genealogies’ (1998 [1972]), which is perhaps the final publication of what I am referring to as her early period of work. In this essay she addresses the creation myths of Rousseau and others. In Rousseau’s account of the transition from the state of nature to society, she says, the ‘origins of law and government’ have ‘fraud and force’ at their foundations (Shklar 1998 [1972], p. 146]). She sees Rousseau as following in the tradition of Hesiod, for whom ‘fear is the only restraint effective among’ us (Shklar 1998 [1972], p. 139); and therefore also in the same tradition as Machiavelli, whose ‘countermyth […] has revolution and the repetition of the creative bloodbath as its object’ (Shklar 1998 [1972], p. 140). Nonetheless, she does not, at this time, accept that fear, cruelty, and violence are the first considerations in political thought: Rousseau may have exaggerated in seeing inequality as the defining characteristic of all association. There is more to politics than inferiority

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and superiority, and the powerlessness of the weak. (Shklar 1998 [1972], p. 155])

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This last point is important because in her mature work, as we know, she says that the basic units of society are the weak and the powerful. She explicitly rejects that very idea here, in her early work. Her point is the pluralist one, that there is a diversity of considerations in politics; cruelty is just one of many; and it is unrealistic as well as morally unattractive to give priority to it. So, in her early work, she does draw attention to how important it is to keep them from violent action, but she is, very clearly, not claiming to have here identified the basic norm of political life. This is not surprising because we know that, at this time, she does not claim to have identified the general rule for resolving moral conflicts, whether because of her reasoned scepticism (as set out in After Utopia) or her value pluralism (as set out in Legalism). We also know that in her mature work she does maintain that the avoidance of cruelty is the basic norm of politics. In her mature work she leaves behind her earlier value pluralism, and when she now refers to the fear of cruelty as the summum malum she is, in fact, claiming to have identified the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. This is a point worth emphasising precisely because it has remained unnoticed, even in Bernard Yack’s perceptive analysis of the ways in which Shklar employs Montaigne as part of her ‘genealogy’ of liberal morals. What Yack calls Montaigne’s ‘transvaluation of values’ requires us to focus not on the positive but on the negative: it shifts our focus ‘from demanding that we measure up to our place in things to shielding ourselves from the worst that others throw at us’ (Yack 2019, p. 89). However, Yack also says that ‘Shklar’s transvaluation of liberal morals leads us back not just to Montaigne’s transvaluation of values but to the priority that he gave to cruelty among the ways in which we harm each other’ (Yack 2019, p. 90). And, he goes on, ‘Shklar denies that this ranking of the vices is optional for liberals’ (Yack 2019, p. 90). So Yack is highlighting that there is a ranking of the vices, a ranking that is not optional. But once again, as with other commentators, he does not consider the significance of this fact for the resolution of moral conflicts or for the debate between value pluralism and value monism. My argument is that Shklar deals with the issue of political evil in two very different ways over the course of her career. She does so as a value monist in the liberalism of fear. In sharp contrast, she does so as a value pluralist in her early work, and she is not alone in taking such

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a stance. Other value pluralists also refer to what they believe to be universal evils (as well as universal goods). However, when they do so they make clear that, although these evils are universal, it does not follow that their avoidance has priority over other values. According to Gray, for example, ‘a universal evil’ is wherever ‘the thwarting of a generically human need renders a worthwhile life unattainable’, and the conditions that endanger a worthwhile life include torture, separation from one’s ‘friends, family or country’, humiliation, persecution, the threat of genocide, and being ‘locked in poverty or avoidable ill-health’ (Gray 2000, p. 66). But, although these evils are universal they do not ground a universal minimum morality. When faced with conflicts among them, different individuals and ways of life can reasonably make incompatible choices. Different ways of life come partly from divergent settlements among universal evils […] More, universal evils do not always override particular loyalties […] One who fights against hopeless odds to preserve his way of life, or who chooses death rather than accept its extinction, incurs universal evils; but what he does is not necessarily wrong. (Gray 2000, pp. 66–7)

This is just one way in which a value pluralist can employ the idea of a universal evil and do so without contradiction. According to this line of thought, the universality of an evil does not require that it be given priority over other moral claims. Hampshire is another value pluralist who claims to identify universal evils. To start with, he stresses the importance, and the validity, of the concept of evil. His own experience as an intelligence offer, which brought him into direct contact with, and lengthy interrogation of, some of those responsible for the ‘vast enterprises of torture and of murder’ in the Nazi regime, was enough to change his attitude to politics and to philosophy (Hampshire 1989, p. 8). He came to see how ‘natural’ evil is (Hampshire 1989, p. 8). And he uses the term ‘evil’ to refer to a ‘force which is actively working against all that is praiseworthy and admirable’, whereas what he calls ‘pure evil’ (as evident in the deeds of the Nazis) is ‘a great evil which brings with it no good thing and which destroys without benefit’ (Hampshire 1989, p. 67). Unlike Gray, Hampshire does think that a universal morality follows from the idea of evil, although one that is ‘entirely negative’: There is a basic level of morality, a bare minimum, which is entirely negative, and without this bare minimum as a foundation no morality directed

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towards the greater goods can be applicable and can survive in practice. A rock-bottom and preliminary morality of justice and fair dealing is needed to keep a balance between competing moralities and to support respected procedures of arbitration between them. (Hampshire 1989, p. 72)

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The basic morality of procedural justice is the direct corollary of evil, as the fair procedures of justice are the rational response to ‘an unrestrained natural drive to domination’ (Hampshire 1989, p. 77). But, once again, it does not follow that Hampshire’s ‘universal’ and negative morality must have precedence or priority over ‘the particular’ aspect of morality, which can be seen in various and varied ‘conceptions of the good’, such as the goods of the Protestant, the Catholic, the Marxist, and so on, goods that are ‘in some important respects incompatible and mutually hostile’ (Hampshire 1989, p. 77). Hampshire does not give priority, as a general rule, to the minimal, negative, and procedural morality of justice, as for example Rawls does (Rawls 1985, pp. 225–6; 1988, p. 421). In fact, Hampshire stresses that conflicts between conceptions of the good characteristic of particular morality will also be conflicts between competing conceptions of justice: The contrary conceptions of the essential virtues and of the best way of life will also include divergent conceptions of justice itself. This must happen, because each conception of the best way of life entails some duties and forbearances, supporting the particular way of life, and some of these duties will fall under the heading of justice. (Hampshire 1989, p. 73)

Yes, procedural justice is needed in order to resolve conflicts between, inter alia, incompatible particular moralities. But it does not follow that we can give priority to justice over the claims arising from any one particular way of life. As Hampshire notes elsewhere, there is a distinction between justice as an ‘abstract virtue’ and the ‘specific content’ of justice at different times and places. And so, for example, when we choose between a modern liberal conception of justice, on the one hand, and the conception of justice that Aristotle provides us with, on the other, we know that, whichever choice we make, there will be a moral cost. The Aristotelian conception is tied up with a way of life that has, at its centre, ‘the development of superior character and superior intelligence’, and although there are good reasons to reject it (not least the in-egalitarian nature of that conception of justice), nonetheless, that decision ‘entails a cost in the loss of the values realized by [it]’ (Hampshire 1983, p. 147).

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According to this value pluralist argument, therefore, there are universal goods and bads, but it does not follow that they have priority, as a general rule, over other (non-universal) values. This is an argument that Berlin also advances. In discussing the nature and role of political philosophy itself, Berlin believes that it deals with ‘problems which preserve a considerable degree of continuity and similarity from one age and culture to another’ (Berlin 1999 [1961], p. 169). In rejecting relativism, Berlin states that there is a point beyond which we have not a difference in moral commitments but, rather, a distinction between what is moral and immoral, or between what is human and inhuman: But if I find a man to whom it literally makes no difference whether he kicks a pebble or kills his family, since either would be an antidote to ennui or inactivity, I shall not be disposed, like consistent relativists, to attribute to him merely a different code of morality from my own or that of most men, or declare that we disagree on essentials, but shall begin to speak of insanity and inhumanity. (Berlin 1999 [1961], p. 166; emphasis in original)

On Gray’s reading, Berlin’s universal moral categories include the ‘universal goods of fairness and well-being, universal virtues of courage and sympathy, that are generically human’ (Gray 2013 [1996], p. 100). However, what is distinctive about Berlin’s account of the universal categories of moral thought is not its content, Gray says, but, rather, his value pluralist account of ‘the incommensurabilities and undecideable dilemmas it contains’, and this is the case because ‘the universal content of morality itself generates irresolvable conflicts among its constitutive values’ (Gray 2013 [1996], p. 100). On precisely this point George Crowder gives a highly critical account of Berlin’s thought, damning much of what Berlin says as ‘unsystematic and inconsistent’ (Crowder 2004, p. 132). Nonetheless, although Berlin is thought guilty of offering ‘competing formulations’ of these universal moral categories, according to Crowder they have one thing in common: Berlin’s universal values are extremely ‘thin’ or generic. They are so general or abstract that most human societies would satisfy them, including many highly illiberal societies. (Crowder 2004, p. 134)

But notice what follows from this critique. If Crowder’s interpretation is accurate, there will be no grounds to conclude that, as a general rule, we should rightly give priority to such thin or generic values. Their being universal does not entail that they provide a general rule when it comes to informing the decisions we make when resolving moral conflicts. That

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is only to be expected from a value pluralist analysis of moral categories, whether they are said to be universal or particular. That is what we found when Shklar, in her early work, addresses such questions. And of course Shklar’s approach to this very issue in her mature work is a very different one. There she makes her universal and cosmopolitan claim, namely that the avoidance of cruelty is the summum malum. It is not just a universal evil for her, therefore. She makes clear that it has priority over other values: it is our basic norm. The normal model of justice (once again)

My argument so far is that Shklar is a value monist in her mature work. I have also argued that, unlike many other monists, Shklar is also a sceptic. And while many of her commentators notice her scepticism, her monism is overlooked. However, so far I have proceeded on the assumption that, from the start of the 1980s, Shklar is and remains more or less consistent in the position she puts forward. An alternative interpretation is that her work in fact underwent a further significant change at a later point, one that breaks apart the two characteristic features of her mature work: her scepticism and her putting cruelty first. Specifically, the argument is that The Faces of Injustice (1990a) represents a form of scepticism that is incompatible with the position, as elaborated at length in Ordinary Vices (1984), according to which cruelty is the summum malum of politics. We have already seen that Shklar’s objective in The Faces of Injustice is to throw into question the normal model of justice. She maintains that although the purpose of justice in general is abstract, every unjust act is particular, as is the sense of injustice. In turn, principles of justice should be revised based upon these subjective, individual experiences of injustice, in order to pursue what she calls consent as a continuous process under conditions of personal freedom. She contrasts this set of ideas with Mill’s understanding of injustice, which, Shklar maintains, shows ‘only that it is unjust to break the rules of normal justice’ (Shklar 1990a, p. 19). Shklar is here, clearly, offering a sceptical critique of the normal model of justice: her point is that we do not know enough about each other for this conception to be acceptable. However, my argument, as already outlined, is that Shklar’s objection is not only a sceptical one, for it is also informed by her value monism. And on this point my interpretation of Shklar stands opposed to that of Kerry Whiteside, in particular. He maintains that Shklar cannot be a sceptic, in this sense, and at the same time maintain that cruelty is first among the vices. Indeed, he contends, the

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sceptical arguments of The Faces of Injustice challenge the claim (made in Ordinary Vices) to know the summum malum, which had ‘egalitarian implications because it applies to all’, whereas, in contrast, to ‘listen to victims means to lend some degree of credence to their complaints, whatever they may be’ (Whiteside 1999, p. 522; emphasis in original). Do Shklar’s sceptical arguments in The Faces of Injustice call into question her contention that cruelty is first among the vices? She does insist on listening to the subjective experiences of injustice, whatever they may be, but, as I have argued already, we are required to do so precisely because the avoidance of cruelty is, she believes, the basic norm. In Chapter 1 I set out very briefly my thesis that Shklar rejects the normal model of justice for the reason that it makes cruelty worse. Let us examine that argument in more detail now. First, her sceptical argument that we do not know enough about each other to devise rules for each other itself arises, as we have seen, for those overwhelmed by the evil of the times. In the midst of the evils of civil war, for example, it is reasonable to ask, What can we know at all? As we said, Shklar is making a psychological connection (between scepticism and cruelty) rather than a strictly logical inference. And there are reasons to question the plausibility of her psychological hypothesis. Nonetheless, her point is that sceptical doubts about the normal model of justice have their origin in our exposure to, our experience of, what she maintains is the summum malum. Second, her objection to the normal model of justice is that it itself, or more precisely its implementation, is cruel. She observes that ‘Most injustices occur continuously within the framework of an established polity with an operative system of law’ (Shklar 1990a, p. 19). She goes on to say that the normal model of justice is ‘designed merely to check, but in no way to redirect the ways of men perpetually at war with each other, with neighboring cities, and with themselves’ (Shklar 1990a, p. 26). Law is cruel, it causes harm, when it represents a non-sceptical approach to justice. As we have seen, as a sceptic she not only doubts that we can ever know enough about each other to devise rules for each other but also, and more to the point, suspects that our efforts to do so may do us a lot of harm. Why is that the case? She goes on to say, ‘Far from reducing cruelties, rules simply redirect and formalize our ferocity’ (Shklar 1990a, p. 26). We return to this point in more detail below (see Chapter 5). For now we can note that, for Shklar, any attempt to ensure full compliance with the rules of justice would itself be unjustifiably coercive and therefore cruel: ‘there is no possible way to reduce injustice significantly without a massive and effective education in civic virtue for each and every citizen’,

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and, Shklar believes, we prefer liberty to this prospect (Shklar 1990a, p. 45). So there has been no evident departure here from the claim that cruelty is the summum malum, a claim that, in Whiteside’s words, does have egalitarian implications because it applies to all. Shklar is objecting to the normal model of justice because of, above all else, its cruelty. And her objection arises from an egalitarian concern for the fate of those who, just a year earlier, in ‘The Liberalism of Fear’, she refers to as the defenceless. As she says there, while the basic units of political life are […] the weak and the powerful, our primary concern is freedom from the abuse of power and the intimidation of the defenceless. In The Faces of Injustice Shklar continues to combine scepticism with monism. There is, therefore, little difference between her argument here and the argument as it is developed in the first years of her mature period. In particular, in Ordinary Vices she calls for an approach that does not try to iron out the ‘indecision, incoherence, and inconsistency’ of real life, alongside an attempt to ‘establish general laws or models to explain and judge political conduct’, which, she concludes, ‘is particularly necessary for assessing the rational consistency and consequences of specific decisions or policy choices’ (Shklar 1984, pp. 230, 231). Her scepticism explains why we are faced with indecision, incoherence, and inconsistency, including for the reason that moral values are in conflict. As we have seen, we can be faced with a conflict where we ought not to tolerate snobbery, because it is incompatible with the virtues demanded in a democracy, and yet at the same time we ought to tolerate snobbery. However, we also need general laws and models, she says. Thus, the reason why we ought to tolerate snobbery is, again as we have already seen, because cruelty is the worst vice: that is, there is a value monist explanation for why we should not attempt to impose what we believe to be a rank-ordering of the virtues. Any such ranking of virtues will depart from actuality, and acting on such premises will threaten to make cruelty worse: if we impose one moral doctrine, for example, the moral doctrine of the public ethos in a democracy, we will simply unleash ever-greater cruelty. Thus, in Ordinary Vices Shklar is rejecting attempts to rank-order the virtues, on the sceptical grounds that they ignore the actuality of our particular and varied, conflicting and contradictory, dispositions, values, and ways of life. But, as she places cruelty first among the vices, she is setting down a general law and offering a normative model. Although she does not accept Mill’s utilitarian model, for example, nonetheless, like him and other value monists, she believes that such models are necessary. In The Faces of Injustice her emphasis is on questioning the

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normal model of justice. In Ordinary Vices her concern is with those who would rank-order the virtues. In both cases, however, her overall orientation is one that combines scepticism with value monism. Indeed, as we have seen, her scepticism is intimately bound up with her particular version of monism: those who insist on transcending the actuality of our lived experience are, she believes, guilty not only of ignoring sceptical doubts but also of making cruelty worse. What this suggests is that, across the various publications of her mature work, Shklar is consistent in combining value monism and scepticism. This combination of scepticism and monism explains her objection to the normal model of justice generally speaking, but also to one of its specific manifestations, namely paternalistic theories of justice. She objects to paternalistic infringements not only because they ignore these sceptical doubts but also because they make cruelty worse: they violate the basic norm of the liberalism of fear, and for that reason they also violate freedom. As she says in The Faces of Injustice, she objects to certain contemporary ‘theories of primary justice’ because they involve troubling provisions for perpetual public moral education based on dubious psychological theories […] [These] plans for reform of existing institutions often require remaking the citizenry as well. And who exactly is competent to do so? (Shklar 1990a, pp. 118–19)

Those who ignore these sceptical warnings (paternalists among them) will simply make cruelty worse, she believes: ‘we tend to become too sure of our competence and that makes us arrogant, cruel, and tyrannical’ (Shklar 1990a, p. 27). And so it is by combining scepticism with monism that she hopes to reject paternalistic infringements of liberty. We are none of us sufficiently competent to make such paternalistic decisions, and any attempt to implement paternalism simply makes cruelty worse and, as a result, violates freedom. Is cruelty first among the vices? In the previous sections of this chapter I defended the interpretation of Shklar put forward in this book, namely that her mature work is a combination of value monism and scepticism, and so her mature work also rejects the value pluralism of her early work. In this section and the next, however, I turn to a critical analysis of her value monism itself. Can it be defended, and does she offer a compelling defence? Shklar is

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claiming to have identified the summum malum of politics, the greatest of evils. But what precisely is her argument? How does she endeavour to justify this ambitious claim? In Ordinary Vices she contends that the fear of fear does not require any further justification, because it is irreducible. It can be both the beginning and an end of political institutions such as rights. The first right is to be protected against the fear of cruelty. (Shklar 1984, p. 237)

If we look closely at this passage we see that there are two distinct points being made here, and, crucially, I do not think that the second of these follows from (is entailed by) the first. The first point is that the fear of fear is irreducible: by this, Shklar means that it is an independent source of value, and therefore it cannot be reduced to some other source of value. That is, it is intrinsically wrong to be cruel; and its being wrong is not explained by some other wrong, such as our failure to promote utility, for example. It is in this sense that it does not require any further justification. And this surely is correct: some forms of cruelty will promote utility, others will not, but in the first instance each is wrong simply by being cruel. Even if this is correct, nonetheless, it does not follow that our first right is to be protected against the fear of cruelty. This is so, firstly, because there are many things that are intrinsically wrong, and we cannot have a right to be protected against all of them. For a start, there are real-world restrictions on what can be guaranteed as a right. Secondly, there are many forms of cruelty, and, again, we should not have a right to be protected against all of these. Indeed, Shklar herself acknowledges this point, for, as we have seen, her argument is that cruelty sometimes is justified, namely when necessary to prevent greater cruelties. That is why it would be wrong not to have the minimum of cruelty necessary to enforce the rule of law. Therefore, we are left without an argument to justify the claim that the avoidance of cruelty is the basic norm. The question posed for Shklar as a monist is, what makes cruelty, as a general rule, worse than other evils, and what makes some cruelties, again as a general rule, worse (greater) than other cruelties? One attempt to answer this question she derives from Montaigne’s thesis that cruelty is first because it explains all the other vices: Cruelty comes first, then lying and treachery. All, every single one, are the children of fear. Fear is not just a vice, or a deformity of our character. It is the underlying psychological and moral medium that makes vices all but unavoidable. (Shklar 1984, pp. 241–2)

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But, we must ask, is this a plausible explanation of vice? The fear of cruelty may often explain why people commit some wrongs, such as when they betray others, for example, as Shklar brilliantly illustrates in regard to Stalinist Russia, where betrayal became ‘a habit, a way of life’ (Shklar 1984, p. 149). We return to this issue in Chapter 6, as it arises in connection with tyrannical societies specifically. However, it is far from clear that the fear of cruelty explains other vices, or that it explains vices in other contexts. To take just one example, the fear of cruelty does not explain why citizens in liberal democratic, prosperous societies are indifferent to the suffering of those who are most vulnerable, the indifference that paternalists, among others, strive to overcome. Indeed, to claim that it does is just as questionable as the Christian argument that all vices are explained by pride, a thesis that Shklar herself summarily rejects (Shklar 1984, pp. 240–1). In any event, attempting to explain all vices by reference to one underlying medium lacks the subtlety and nuance so evident in her scepticism, which, as we have seen, highlights instead the indecision, incoherence, and inconsistency of actual experience. There are similar issues with the argument as it is developed in ‘The Liberalism of Fear’. In one important passage Shklar contends that the avoidance of cruelty ‘is simply a first principle, an act of moral intuition based on ample moral observation, on which liberalism can be built, especially at present’ (Shklar 1989a, pp. 29–30). One point she is making here is that the avoidance of cruelty is not by itself a sufficient basis for a liberal political project, as in addition it must be ‘universalized and recognized as a necessary condition of the dignity of persons’ (Shklar 1989a, p. 30). It is in that sense simply, or solely, a first principle of the liberalism of fear: much more is needed besides. Nonetheless, she is also saying that the avoidance of cruelty is simply a first principle in the sense that, as she argues in the same article, it is the basic norm of the liberalism of fear. However, Shklar cannot just mean that the avoidance of cruelty is a first principle, that is, one among other (perhaps many) first principles. If that were all that was being asserted on its behalf, it would not follow that, when it came into conflict with some other first principle, we would be required, as a general rule, to give it priority. If we have two moral claims, and each is merely a first principle (say, the avoidance of cruelty and the promotion of the good of others), nothing is settled about how we are to resolve a conflict between them, should it arise. For one way to resolve such a conflict is by concluding that, whatever we do, we should always strive to promote more rather than less good for others. The question is whether monists like Shklar can show that a given moral

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claim is the first principle of moral deliberation, and, as such, will always have priority over other, conflicting claims. How can Shklar hope to show that some cruelties are greater than others and that the avoidance of cruelty is the first principle of moral deliberation? A final line of argument concerns the effect that cruelty has on freedom. ‘Systematic fear,’ she contends, ‘is the condition that makes freedom impossible, and it is aroused by the expectation of institutionalized cruelty as by nothing else’ (Shklar 1989a, p. 29). Developing this point, we could imagine someone arguing that institutionalised cruelty is worse than other forms of cruelty, and so we have a right to be protected against it, because it makes freedom impossible. But in fact this is not an argument that is available to Shklar, and the reason why this is so is absolutely crucial to our understanding of her work. We must remember that when Shklar refers to freedom in her mature work she is employing a value monist conception that itself draws on the principle of the avoidance of cruelty. Her argument is that we are free only when freed from cruelty, but also that we ourselves are not free to be cruel. Thus, she is not saying that systematic cruelty is abhorrent because it prevents us from doing what we please, but, rather, that it is abhorrent because it violates our freedom from cruelty. The problem is that this is true by definition. In itself, therefore, this particular point adds nothing in defence of her decision to put cruelty first: her conception of freedom presupposes the latter and so cannot be appealed to as independent support for it. We return to this very point in the next chapter, where we examine freedom as understood by both pluralists and monists. For now, however, we have seen enough to conclude that Shklar does not provide anything like a clear, persuasive, and definitive justification for her value monism. Every argument she puts forward simply leaves questions unanswered. As a result, there is no compelling case in support of Shklar’s most ambitious claim from her mature work, namely that cruelty is first among the vices and that, therefore, the avoidance of cruelty is the general rule for the resolution of moral conflicts. Shklar’s soft paternalism We were unable to find a convincing argument justifying Shklar’s decision in her mature work to put cruelty first among the vices. This raises questions not only about the validity of her value monism generally speaking, but also about the strength of her argument on paternalism

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more specifically. But we cannot leave the issue there, for there is one further dimension to what Shklar has to say about paternalism in her mature work that needs consideration. When Shklar rejects paternalism as an unjustified infringement of individual liberty, her argument in fact assumes that one form of paternalism is justified, namely soft paternalism. And when we reconstruct what Shklar’s argument in defence of soft paternalism would look like, what it would look like if she had made such an argument explicit, we will see that not only is it inconsistent and resting on unjustified premises, but also it is an approach to politics that will be unable to recognise and acknowledge the moral costs inflicted in its name. Of course, one could say in reply that I am uncovering very little of importance here about Shklar: I am rejecting as flawed an argument she herself never chose to make. So I want to show that this is an argument that other value monists do attempt to make, in particular Mill (although, as we shall see later, the same is true of Rawls), and that they face significant problems in doing so. Also, unlike other commentators, I am not here ‘appropriating’ Shklar’s work for some purpose that is at odds with what she herself says (see Gatta 2018, p. 5). That is, what I identify is an argument that must be assumed if we are to make sense of what Shklar does herself say, explicitly, about paternalism. First, let us return to Mill’s argument in defence of what we now call soft paternalism. Earlier in this chapter we saw that, for Mill, soft paternalism is justified, and when it is justified it does not give rise to moral conflicts. In particular, his point is that, as we are not required to protect the liberty of those whom we may treat (soft) paternalistically, we cannot be guilty of violating their liberty when we remove options from them for (soft) paternalistic reasons. However, when we examine the argument more closely we see that Mill in fact departs from his specific version of monism here. Although he claims that the harm principle is the one principle that governs absolutely when considering questions of compulsion and control, this is clearly not the case when he turns to permissible forms of paternalism. His justification for (soft) paternalism comes not from the harm principle but instead from the value of autonomy, what he refers to as ‘individuality of power and development’ (Mill 1985 [1859], p. 121). Thus, he says that paternalism is justified only ‘anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion’ and ‘of being guided to their own improvement by conviction or persuasion’ (Mill 1985 [1859], p. 69). The harm principle does not apply to those who should be treated paternalistically, but also, and crucially for our purposes here, it is not

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on the basis of the harm principle that Mill makes this decision. It turns out that the value of autonomy is used to determine to whom the harm principle is to be applied. Of course, it might be argued that this in itself undermines my thesis: if Mill is in fact appealing to a wide variety of values (utility, autonomy, the harm principle) this would suggest that he is not a value monist at all. At different times, in dealing with different issues, he gives priority to different values. However, that line of argument is plausible only if we ignore (or treat as having no particular significance) Mill’s contention to have discovered the one principle that governs absolutely when addressing all political issues. His position is that his arguments should, and will, start from this first premise, and we have seen that they do not. It follows that not only does Mill not stick consistently to his version of monism, but, as a result, his arguments concerning the permissibility of (soft) paternalism rest on unjustified assumptions. Rather than starting from the harm principle, the argument rests on questionable premises. Turning to the monism of Shklar’s mature work, do we find the same problem? Shklar’s work differs from Mill’s not only because she is not a utilitarian, and not only because she is a sceptical critic of the normal model of justice, but also because she does not set out to justify paternalism in any form. She does not offer an argument explicitly stating the conditions under which paternalism is justified. Nonetheless, I maintain, she clearly assumes the latter in her rejection of one form of paternalism. We have already examined why she concludes that a paternalistic infringement of liberty is unjustified: as the principle of the avoidance of cruelty leaves us free to harm ourselves, then paternalistic interference will always be an unjustified restriction of liberty. However, in her argument we can also discern a distinction between those forms of paternalism that are permissible and those that are not. In The Faces of Injustice Shklar notes that when a paternalistic social policy is unjustified it ‘begins with a view of the poor as so defective as to have no understanding of their own welfare’ (Shklar 1990a, p. 191). In rejecting this type of paternalism, her argument is as follows: They [the poor] not only deserve explanations for the rules that alter their lives but must be assumed to be able to understand them. Nor should one forget that if one really understands a subject, however complex, it is generally possible to explain it to almost anyone who wants to listen. Most social policies are not all that complicated in any case. To assume imbecility is as unjust as one can imagine. Paternalism is usually faulted for limiting our freedom by forcing us to act for our own good. It is also,

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and possibly more significantly, unjust and bound to arouse a sense of injustice. Paternalistic laws may have as much consent as any other, but what makes their implementation objectionable is the refusal to explain to their purported beneficiaries why they must alter their conduct or comply with protective regulations. People are assumed to be incompetent without any proof. (Shklar 1990a, p. 191)

This argument does not reject paternalism in all its forms. In fact, it is only an objection to hard paternalism: paternalism, she says, is objectionable when those treated paternalistically are (mistakenly) assumed to lack the competence required to make decisions for themselves. And it is not just that she fails to explicitly reject soft paternalism. Rather, what she finds normatively objectionable about paternalism not only applies to hard paternalism alone but also presupposes that soft paternalism is justified. It is not treating others paternalistically per se that she objects to, but doing so when they are competent, or when we have no proof that they are incompetent. At the same time, it is assumed that some people, in contrast, are not able to understand or are not willing to listen when we try to explain ourselves to them. Not only does she not object to paternalism when exercised over those who lack competence in these ways, but also it is evident that, for her, we do wrong when we fail to act paternalistically in these situations. Perhaps some will argue that Shklar can reject hard paternalism without thereby having to endorse (whether implicitly or explicitly) soft paternalism. It could be argued that she wishes to construct a political theory that addresses only the relations between those who are competent, and she need say nothing of the ways in which society is to treat those who are incompetent. And, alongside this, it might be said that Shklar’s concern, as a political thinker, is with the public sphere, where paternalism is impermissible, as opposed to the private sphere, where paternalistic treatment of children, say, is a separate matter altogether. However, this counter-argument does not get very far. It is the case that, if we take a very critical view of, say, Rawls’s work, we could argue that his ideal theory proceeds as if we need only consider what is to happen among rational, autonomous agents. But Shklar, in contrast, is a sceptic, and as a sceptic she is concerned with the real world of politics, and that is one where society does have to deal with incompetent individuals: for example, elderly adults who were once competent but no longer are, and for whom medical (and other) decisions must be made; as well as most adults who make less than optimally competent decisions in daily life regarding, for example, how they drive cars, what drugs they take, and what they eat

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(Buchanan and Brock, 1986). There is also the case of children, of various ages, with varying levels of decision-making competence, but this is not an issue that we can simply relegate to the private sphere. Not only are there good reasons to consider the home itself as an essentially political domain, given the power relations that structure it, as Shklar herself emphasises (Shklar 1984, p. 145), but in addition government policies of numerous sorts (concerning education, medical care, sexual freedom, and so on) directly impact on this supposedly private sphere, and so the treatment (paternalistic or otherwise) of children is a central concern for political action (Brighouse and Swift 2014; Fives 2017). Political theorists need to consider how society should treat those who are incompetent. Indeed, Shklar does so, including when she addresses the moral conflicts faced by both parents and public officials: Stark choices and great decisions are very rare in politics. The sorts of choices that occur in public regularly are no different from those that have to be made by every single person who is responsible for other people and not just to them. No mother of a family can cultivate her conscience only; and if she does not calculate the consequences of her actions in a cool matter-of-fact way, her children will suffer the effects. (Shklar 1984, p. 243; emphasis in original)

She makes these comments as part of a discussion of Max Weber’s distinction between an ethics of conscience, on the one hand, and an ethics of responsibility focused on outcomes, on the other. Her aim here is not primarily to show that parents often do, and often should, act paternalistically towards their children. That much is assumed: they are responsible for others. Rather, it is to show that public officials also are faced with conflicts between what conscience requires and what instead must be done so as to bring about good consequences for those whom they are responsible for. If soft paternalism is, on some occasions, justified treatment (namely for those who lack competence), as is assumed in Shklar’s work, arguably this is one way that public officials could try to resolve the conflict between the ethics of conscience and the ethics of responsibility. Again, we are trying to make explicit what has so far remained only implicit in Shklar’s work. We need to ask, why may public officials be permitted (even required) on many occasions to act paternalistically for those who lack competence? Shklar could not say that it is justified because it is the best way either to avoid cruelty or to use cruelty so as to prevent greater cruelties. That is, what she assumes about the permissibility of soft

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paternalism is incompatible with her value monism (i.e. her putting cruelty first). Instead, just as Mill has to appeal to the value of autonomy rather than his harm principle in justifying soft paternalism, Shklar would have to appeal to some consideration other than the principle of avoidance of cruelty: that is, she would have to start from some value directing us to treat incompetent individuals in some specific manner (i.e. a value that requires us to treat them paternalistically). Her argument would be that on many occasions we ought to make decisions for others without their consent, sometimes removing options from them, sometimes doing so coercively so as to promote their own good, and this is justified because of their relative incompetence. So, what is the problem with such an argument in defence of soft paternalism? The problem arises because Shklar will not countenance treating competent individuals in this way, as we know, and this is the case because doing so, she believes, would ignore sceptical warnings, which itself makes cruelty worse and so violates freedom. This is deeply problematic, because the same sceptical doubts surely apply when a mother makes decisions for her child, and yet Shklar is not concerned that this will lead to cruelty and therefore a restriction of freedom. Soft paternalists cannot know for certain that when they act paternalistically they will be successful: just because they are acting benevolently on behalf of incompetent individuals it does not follow that sceptical doubts no longer apply to them. They have good intentions; but that does not make them omniscient. Nonetheless, they are expected to act paternalistically on behalf of those who lack competence. Why is that so? Shklar can only assume that soft paternalism is justified if she also thinks that we are not required to protect the freedom of those whom we are entitled to treat paternalistically. And such a line of argument also requires setting to one side what Shklar also says is the basic norm of political action and political prescription, namely the avoidance of cruelty. Her position on paternalism is therefore beset with the same twin problems as Mill’s. She does not stick consistently to her version of value monism, and, as a result, her argument rests on unjustified and therefore questionable premises. Those are the epistemological problems with such an argument. But there are moral problems as well. Shklar’s approach to paternalism seems to be one that is blind to the moral harms and costs that it itself will cause. She assumes that soft paternalism is justified, but also that it does not violate freedom, but paternalism will often involve removing options, and sometimes by force. However, her position is one that cannot take

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account of those infringements of freedom. I am not suggesting that Shklar is unconcerned about how her proposed political projects would affect freedom, or more generally that individual freedom is not a central commitment of Shklar’s mature work. What we have so far seen is sufficient to reject both notions. Nonetheless, despite her undoubted liberalism, Shklar’s value monism is such that she will be blind to the ways in which the liberalism of fear violates freedom. Not only that, we find the same shortcoming in the work of other value monist liberals: for a start, it is evident in Mill’s approach to paternalism. He too believes that paternalistic infringements of freedom are always unjustified, but also that justified paternalism will not infringe on freedom: this is the case because the harm principle simply does not apply to those whom we ought to treat paternalistically. So, we must ask, why is Shklar (like Mill) unable to appreciate the moral costs of her own approach, in particular, the violations of liberty that her position requires? The answer, as we shall see in the next chapter, lies in her offering a value monist conception of freedom.

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3 Freedom

Value monism is not only a specific approach to moral conflict; it also offers a distinctive way in which to conceptualise freedom. So far, I have said very little about freedom itself. Although I did refer to competing conceptualisations of that term in the last chapter, I could not do justice to the issue there. However, the whole of the present chapter is devoted to this question, and I think this level of scrutiny is justified for at least two reasons. The first is that value pluralism tells us something about freedom that is profoundly important for political thought and political practice, but which itself is deeply unsettling to many. Indeed, as we shall see, it is even unsettling to many value pluralists. The second is that an examination of the concept of freedom may well provide the key to understanding the trajectory we have uncovered in Shklar’s work: that is, her transition over time from value pluralism to value monism. We have already seen how the liberalism of fear is based on not just a value monist approach to moral conflict but also a value monist conception of freedom. Shklar’s mature work, therefore, rejects Berlin’s value pluralism more generally along with his value pluralist conception of freedom specifically. We may therefore expect to discover in her early work, where she is clear and unambiguous in her defence of value pluralism, a value pluralist conception of freedom as well. In fact, it is missing from her early work, and this omission is most clearly evident in the way she understands Rousseau at this time. As a result, there is a significant tension in her early work, where what amounts to a value monist conception of freedom sits, uneasily, within an overall value pluralist position. As we trace the development of her thought over time, and in particular the various transformations in her understanding of Rousseau, we see this monist conception of freedom begin to gain greater clarity, and

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finally crystallise in her mature work. It should also be remembered that this is the first time Shklar’s work has been read in this way. Therefore, at issue here is how best to understand Shklar’s liberalism of fear. But there is more at stake than just an interpretative quarrel. I will try to show that a monist conception of freedom is highly problematic, and this is the case whether it is offered by a political non-moralist like Shklar or by political moralists, such as Rawls or Mill. The problems are epistemological and normative in nature, and they point once again to the benefits of value pluralism. Negative freedom and positive freedom I have already addressed the arguments of numerous commentators on Shklar’s mature work. As we have seen, some maintain that she offers a negative conception of freedom, and she does so because of her scepticism. And they conclude that Shklar objects to paternalism on that basis. According to this argument, it is because of the limitations of human knowledge that, for Shklar, we cannot justify paternalism, and should instead leave people free to make up their own minds about what is good for them (Hoffmann 1996, p. 87; Yack 1996, pp. 8–9; Whiteside 1999, p. 251). Hence, it is argued, hers is a sceptical defence of a recognisably liberal understanding of negative freedom. That is not the only way in which her mature work is understood, however. According to another line of argument, Shklar is committed to negative freedom, but this is so because she is a value pluralist. Shklar ‘shared wholeheartedly’, Misra says, in his [Hobbes’s] skeptical dismissal of the possibility of a summum bonum in the face of a manifest and wide-ranging pluralism about views of the good. The necessary concomitant of such a sensibility with regard to justice is what Isaiah Berlin famously called negative liberty – the freedom of each person to follow her preferences so long as she extended the same courtesy to others. To this, Shklar added the infrastructure of liberal institutions that guaranteed such liberty. (Misra 2016, pp. 87–8; emphasis in original)

Misra concludes that, for Shklar, How they used their freedom was up to individuals to decide. On this reading, the mature Shklar defends Berlin’s pluralist conception of negative freedom. Therefore, the prevailing view in the literature is that Shklar, in the liberalism of fear, offers a negative conception of freedom, and her defence is either a sceptical or a value pluralist one. Although I think this is not

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an adequate interpretation of her work, nonetheless, it is understandable, up to a point, that many of Shklar’s remarks on freedom in her mature work are understood in these ways. She is a sceptic; she refuses to identify the summum bonum; and she does defend an extensive sphere of personal choice. Nonetheless, in her mature work she is also offering a value monist conception of freedom. Yes, she does so as a sceptic, and also as a liberal committed to toleration of difference. But if we omit her value monism, we will fail completely to understand the conception of freedom at the heart of the liberalism of fear. In her essay ‘The Liberalism of Fear’, it is true that Shklar begins by referring to freedom in ways that, ostensibly at least, bear a strong resemblance to Berlin’s conception of negative freedom. She asserts that the meaning of liberalism is, simply, the protection of each person’s liberty: Every adult should be able to make as many effective decisions without fear or favor about as many aspects of her or his life as is compatible with the like freedom of every other adult. And yet, as we have also seen, at this time Shklar does explicitly reject a strictly Berlinian conception of negative freedom, and she does so for two reasons. The first is that the absence of interference is not sufficient to guarantee the type of freedom Shklar has in mind. Freedom, she says, is ‘unimaginable’ without the following ‘minimal condition’: ‘limited government and the control of unequally divided political power’ (Shklar 1989a, p. 28). Berlin’s conception of negative freedom does not go far enough, therefore. We need more than freedom of choice, as we also need to be protected from inequality and oppression. And Shklar’s point is not just that we need equality as something in addition to and separate from Berlin’s negative freedom. Rather, it is that people cannot be free without greater equality. As we shall see in more detail, there is some similarity therefore between what Shklar is saying on this point and the republican notion that social and economic inequalities render us unfree to the extent that they leave others with the capacity to interfere in our choices (Pettit 2012). Berlin’s negative freedom does not go far enough, therefore. However, in another sense it goes too far for Shklar. Berlin’s argument (as we shall explore below in more detail) is that, because negative freedom is one value among others, we are free to do as we please. Of course, there are good reasons why we are prevented from doing many of those things, but these interventions nonetheless do count as restrictions of negative freedom. For Shklar, however, there are some things that Berlin believes to be covered by the concept of negative freedom that we simply are not free to do in the first place. This argument is set out clearly in numerous

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publications, including Shklar’s essay ‘Conscience and Liberty’. There she makes the case for a conception of freedom that combines both its negative and positive dimensions: that is, both freedom as the absence of interference and freedom understood as self-mastery or autonomy. Not only that, she draws a distinction between a lower and a higher self, a distinction that, as we shall see in greater detail below, is key to positive conceptions of freedom: I want to make a case for the higher self in politics under some circumstances and argue that it can be a genuine form of liberty and one which is necessary to sustain negative liberty at its best. (Shklar 2019 [1990b], p. 10)

This is an argument for a form of liberty understood as our higher self. True, she is not offering a general or comprehensive account of that higher self, as found in, say, Catholic social thought, or comprehensive conceptions of liberalism, or Marxism, and so on. Hers is a higher self suited to the restricted sphere of politics alone. But a higher self it is; one that refers to being able to be an active citizen and to have some part in the decisions that affect me and mine. It is also presented as a choice between majority rule and the rights of a dominating minority, which itself is a choice ‘between two freedoms, that of the master and that of the slave’, and also ‘an inner struggle between two parts of ourselves’, one that requires the ‘conquest of one’s base impulses’ (Shklar 2019 [1990b], p. 11). What we have here is a conception of freedom with both positive and negative dimensions, according to which we are free insofar as we conquer our base impulses and strive towards our higher self. My argument will be that this is a value monist conception of freedom, according to which we are not free to act in ways that violate the basic norm of politics, namely the avoidance of cruelty. That is, our negative freedom (the freedom from interference) extends only as far as that which is compatible with the avoidance of cruelty. In contrast to Berlin, we are not free to do as we please, therefore. Now, others have drawn attention to the fact that Shklar is combining both positive and negative freedom. However, they do not appreciate that hers is a value monist position. ‘Had Shklar somehow found her way back to the antipluralistic natural law views she forcefully attacked in Legalism?’ Scheuerman asks, before deciding: ‘Not quite’ (Scheuerman 2019, p. 60). For Scheuerman, Shklar is interested in the constitutional rights of the American system that combine positive and negative freedoms, and, he concludes, ‘this model of law could not

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be plausibly accused of reproducing traditional natural law’s obsession with moral agreement or consensus’ (Scheuerman 2019, p. 60). I do agree that Shklar is not somehow building an argument from a basis in natural law. Indeed, that is not in doubt at all. Nonetheless, as we shall see, hers is a value monist position, and it is derived from her commitment to view the avoidance of cruelty as our basic norm. If it is true that Shklar is offering a value monist conception of freedom, then she will also conclude that negative freedom is a value (it has validity; it is prescriptively binding) only insofar as it does not clash with her basic norm of politics. As we know, that is the way in which Mill puts in place a value monist conception of freedom, namely with respect to the harm principle as the basic norm of his version of liberalism. Let us therefore see what Shklar is willing to say in defence of negative freedom in its own right. And we can start with her higher self of active politics. One thing we can say straight off is that this notion has clear affinities with republican ideas of freedom. As she says in letter to Quentin Skinner written during 1991, the really ‘interesting’ question for republicans like him ‘is whether one can develop a theory and practice of citizenship that does not slight liberal notions of personal freedom, fairness and justice’ (quoted in Skinner 2019, p. 261). We cannot buy republican freedoms at the cost of liberal protections. But will she say that all interference in individual choice and activity is a violation of negative freedom, regardless of what it is that has been restricted in this way? This is one way of interpreting her claim that America’s nineteenthcentury slave owners had negative freedom, and it was ‘genuine’ negative freedom: no one ever had more negative freedom than the slave owners within their domain […] It is, of course, an idea of freedom in which the wolves eat the sheep in a morally unregulated state of nature, but it sure is genuine negative freedom. (Shklar 2019 [1990b], p. 12)

Indeed, ten years prior to this, she again says of the slaveholders in the American South that ‘It seems to me that theirs was a perfect negative liberty’ (Shklar 1998 [1980a], p. 120). However, nothing in these lines suggests that, for Shklar, the removal of options from slave owners will violate their freedom, regardless of the options themselves. It is more accurate to conclude that, for Shklar, if we can say that slave owners were exercising negative freedom, then this merely illustrates how little there is to be said for negative freedom as such, negative freedom without qualification.

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In fact, as it becomes clear, she is not interested in defending negative freedom as such. As we have seen, she wants to sustain negative liberty at its best. She even makes clear that not only should there be some restrictions on choices and activities (e.g. those of slave owners), but they need not count as violations of freedom properly understood. ‘Equal protection of the laws’, she says, ‘should not be understood as a request for an equality that would limit negative liberty, but as the political and legal realization of the idea of natural rights’ (Shklar 1998 [1980a], p. 121). The freedom of the strong that flourishes at the expense of the freedom of the weak is not freedom properly understood. This is a concern for democrats, in particular, given their commitment to both freedom and equality. For example, as Shklar shows, those like Emerson, who were not just egalitarian democrats but also committed to personal self-reliance, were well aware of the tension between defending the democratic ethos while recognising the many ‘features of democratic life that were not compatible with self-reliance’ (Shklar 1998 [1990c], p. 52). As we said, she does not think that when we enforce equality we restrict liberty. For example, when she talks of the century-long process by which the ‘masters’ in American society eventually lost their ‘monopoly of negative liberty’, because of changes that ‘redistributed negative liberty to all citizens’, she asks: ‘Were the masters forced to be free? Yes’, she concludes, ‘and in Rousseau’s sense’ (Shklar 2019 [1990b], p. 12). As we shall see below in greater detail, in Rousseau’s account no one’s freedom is violated by being forced to be free: removing certain options does not violate freedom properly understood when we are justified in removing those options in the first place. And in the end, for Shklar, negative freedom ceases to have any role or purchase in its own right. That is why she wishes to see negative freedom and positive freedom combined together in the notion of rights: ‘the theory of rights which combines the two liberties’ (Shklar 2019 [1990b], p. 14). Her position is not just that negative freedom has certain prerequisites or conditions without which it cannot be guaranteed to all. It is that negative freedom ceases to have validity when it is incompatible with positive freedom. It seems to me that even though one is right to separate freedom from the conditions which make it possible for it to flourish, negative liberty itself is just a condition for more active and wider freedoms. The fact of acting without hindrance and the existence of open doors can be considered as simple conditions for claiming positive rights and freedom. (Shklar 1998 [1980a], p. 123)

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As she herself asks, ‘is negative liberty not merely a condition for other things, such as demanded by positive liberty?’ (Shklar 2019 [1990b], p. 14). Let us recap, and re-emphasise, precisely what Shklar is saying here. Her point is not that there are many things we are free to do that, nonetheless, we ought not to do, or that we should be criticised for doing, or that we may rightly be prevented from doing. Berlin could accept any of those claims: the Berlinian will argue that we are free to choose between options, and yet also we should be prevented from acting on some of our choices, but also when we are prevented from acting in those ways our freedom has been violated. Shklar is fully aware of that line of argument; and it is not one she herself pursues (Shklar 2019 [1990b], pp. 8–9). Her mature argument is that there are many things we are not free to do in the first place: the concept of freedom does not extend to include such choices and actions. Were we to be prevented from doing any of these things, such an intervention would not count as an infringement of our freedom. It is this conclusion that a Berlinian cannot accept, and it is for this reason that Shklar’s conception of freedom in her mature work is distinct from, and opposed to, Berlin’s value pluralist conception of negative freedom. Freedom, not independence Now we must examine why the mature Shklar rejects the value pluralist conception of negative freedom, but also in what way precisely hers is a value monist conception of freedom. To answer these questions, we need to consider first the distinction she makes between freedom and independence. In arguing that negative liberty is merely a condition for positive freedom, Shklar is building an argument that owes a great deal to her reading of Montesquieu. Of particular importance is the distinction Montesquieu makes (and Shklar highlights) between mere independence and genuine freedom. ‘What is liberty?’ she asks: According to Montesquieu it is not independence, which is just doing as one pleases, but rather the condition that causes people to feel that their person and property are secure. If fear is the predominant emotion of the subjects of despots, a sense of security is normal among a free people. A free citizen may do whatever the law permits and what he ought to will, and he is not forced to abstain from what the law does not forbid. It is very much a matter of negative liberty, of not being interfered with. Montesquieu refused to engage in metaphysical speculations about the

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freedom of the will. When he said that liberty was willing what one should will, he only meant that one should agree to what law and custom in a free society demand, because is it a supreme benefit. A man in a free state who has been condemned to hang in a fair trial still has more liberty than a Turkish pasha. (Shklar 1987a, p. 86)

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In the quote above Shklar uses the term negative liberty to refer to Montesquieu’s conception of freedom, but, as we shall see in more detail now, this is clearly not negative freedom as Berlin understands it. Shklar distinguishes what she calls Montesquieu’s negative freedom from a conception of freedom based on metaphysical speculations about the freedom of the will. On her reading, Montesquieu is concerned not with the latter but instead with whether we are in fact interfered with in the exercise of our free will. At the same time, Shklar also distinguishes negative freedom (as Montesquieu understands it) from a condition that she refers to as independence. Shklar wishes to make clear that freedom, for Montesquieu, is doing what one ought to will; and that freedom is not independence, which is just doing as one pleases. Montesquieu himself explicitly spells out that distinction in his The Spirit of the Laws: It is true that in democracies the people seem to do what they want, but political liberty in no way consists in doing what one wants. In a state […] liberty can consist only in having the power to do what one should want to do and in no way being constrained to do what one should not want to do. One must put oneself in mind of what independence is and what liberty is. Liberty is the right to do everything the laws permit; and if one citizen could do what they forbid, he would no longer have liberty because the others would likewise have this same power. (Montesquieu 1989 [1748], Bk 2, Ch. 3)

Freedom is law bound or law based. We are free to do only that which we should want to do. In contrast, when people merely do what they want, then liberty is destroyed, because the others would likewise have this same power. While freedom is law bound, independence, in contrast, brings about a chaotic, mutually destructive scramble for power. The question then becomes: what is it that we should want to do? We must answer that question before being in a position to understand what genuine freedom is. Montesquieu’s distinction between freedom and independence is, in Shklar’s reading, derived from his decision to place cruelty first among the vices. Montesquieu thought of freedom as willing what one should

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will. He also thought that cruelty is the summum malum. On Shklar’s reading, it follows that we simply are not free to do as we please, when what we please to do is cruel. As she says, freedom is the condition that causes people to feel that their person and property are secure. We cannot be free if we feel insecure; but also we are not free to make others feel insecure. And if we are rightly prevented from doing what we are not free to do, although this is a restriction of our independence, our freedom has not been interfered with. So, if I am hanged in a fair trial, and in a free state, to use Shklar’s terms, it is not just that on balance I can have no complaints. That may or may not be true, but nonetheless it is not the foremost issue here. It is, rather, that there has been no violation of my liberty, both because the trial was fair and because I, evidently, did something that, in a free state, I was not free to do. In fact, as a convicted criminal in a free society, I am freer than a privileged elite in an unfree society (Shklar’s Turkish pasha, for instance). How can Shklar hope to justify this distinction between (genuine) freedom and (mere) independence? What we have seen, here and in the previous chapter, is that the distinction itself rests on her value monism. Shklar’s thesis is that we are free to do whatever does not violate the general rule for resolving moral conflicts; the avoidance of cruelty is that general rule; and so, we are not free to be cruel. Now, on Shklar’s reading, Montesquieu is offering a monist conceptualisation of freedom, where the freedom to do as we ought is distinguished from mere independence or doing as we please. That monist conception of freedom is unlike Berlin’s pluralist conception, of course. Because of that very fact, however, it is of some significance that Berlin himself could not make up his mind one way or the other whether Montesquieu was a pluralist or a monist. At one point Berlin concludes that Montesquieu is ‘not a monist but a pluralist’ and that Montesquieu believes ‘only those societies are truly free […] whose members are to pursue – to choose between – a variety of ends or goals’ (Berlin 1981 [1955], pp. 157–8). There seems little difference here between what Berlin takes Montesquieu to be saying and what Berlin himself says in his own pluralist defence of negative freedom. And yet, just three years later, Berlin is convinced that Montesquieu’s conception of freedom, ‘the power of doing what we ought to will’, ‘virtually repeats Kant’, and involves Montesquieu ‘forgetting his liberal moments’ (Berlin 2004 [1958], pp. 193–4). For this second interpretation of his work, therefore, Berlin is saying that Montesquieu, like Kant, is a monist, and offers a monist conception of freedom. Berlin

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also believes that such a monist conception poses a threat to basic freedoms, and it is for this reason that he sees Montesquieu as forgetting his liberal moments. I return to that side of things presently. But for now let us just note the fact that at different points in time Berlin felt it plausible to interpret Montesquieu in each of these distinct ways, as first a value pluralist and then a value monist. This is highly relevant for our interests here, given that Shklar, in her mature work, has no doubts about how he should be interpreted: for her, Montesquieu is offering a value monist conception of freedom, according to which we are free to do as we ought, and our freedom is not infringed when we are prevented from doing what we are not free to do in the first place. Looking at Montesquieu reveals yet another important difference between Berlin and the mature Shklar. Berlin fears that, insofar as Montesquieu is a monist, this involves him forgetting his liberal moments. On Shklar’s reading, in contrast, Montesquieu is ‘one of the greatest’ liberals and offers a liberal conception of freedom: Montesquieu’s claim to being one of the greatest of liberal thinkers rests […] on his theory of the criminal law and punishment. The liberty of the individual, according to that doctrine, depends radically on the extent of the criminal law and the kinds of punishment that it inflicts. This is a liberalism of fear, an effort to avoid oppression rather than directly to promote rights to political action or self-development, but its arguments in favour of an extensive sphere of personal liberty are just as compelling […] The single most important requirement for the realization of liberty is that only a very few misdeeds should be criminalized at all. (Shklar 1987a, p. 89)

In one sense, of course, Shklar is correct. This is a liberal conception of freedom. In particular, it is liberal in not claiming to have identified the summum bonum and in not insisting that we are free only when we are pursuing this one end. As a liberal, Shklar (no less than Montesquieu) defends the diversity of legitimate options available to individuals, and the importance of being free to choose between them. Hence, in Shklar’s reading, Montesquieu is saying that a legitimate polity should not use coercive force to control religious belief and practice, consensual sex and expressions of public opinion, and so it should guarantee an extensive sphere of personal liberty. So it is indeed a liberal conception of freedom, but nonetheless it is very different from Berlin’s liberalism. Shklar says that, for Montesquieu, ‘there is one crime that must always be punished: any act of violence

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against the person or property of the individual’ (Shklar 1987a, p. 90). But the crucial point here is that, for Shklar, when we punish cruelty of this sort we do not restrict freedom. As no one is free to act in this way in the first place, removing that option by the threat of punishment does not restrict freedom, properly understood. As we said, Berlin is caught between seeing Montesquieu as a pluralist and as a monist. In contrast, the mature Shklar is in no doubt about how to read Montesquieu’s work, offering an unambiguously monist interpretation. In fact, Shklar finds robust support for her own value monism, including her monist conception of freedom, in Montesquieu’s distinction between (mere) independence and (genuine) freedom. Forced to be free I have sketched out in fairly broad brush strokes the way that Shklar conceptualises freedom in her mature work, both in her defence of the liberalism of fear and in her reading of Montesquieu at this time. But, arguably, we cannot fully make sense of Shklar’s conception of freedom without also referring to her work on Rousseau. In fact, the development of Shklar’s thought from her early to her mature work needs to be mapped onto the changes in her interpretation of Rousseau during that time. Rousseau’s importance itself is not surprising. His account of freedom has been the focal point around which conflicting monist and pluralist conceptualisations of freedom have been elaborated, in particular in the work of Rawls and Berlin. Before turning to these competing interpretations, let us start by examining Rousseau’s own account of freedom. Freedom is not merely following one’s desires, Rousseau says. Freedom is law bound and law based: ‘to be governed by appetite alone is slavery, while obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself is freedom’ (Rousseau, SC, 1:8). What are the implications of thinking of freedom in this way? One is that we can be, Rousseau believes, ‘forced to be free’ (Rousseau, SC, 1:7). How can this be the case? Perhaps the best place to start is by considering the two separate ways in which we can be free. The first, as Rousseau sets out in Émile, is through one-to-one instruction with a tutor, a person of authority. The second, as he discusses in The Social Contract, is as a citizen of a republic where we pursue the general will. Through the former, we strive for freedom in private, as an individual member of a household; in the latter, we do so in the public sphere, as part of a community of equals. In each case, we can be forced to be free

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because freedom is obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself. With respect to the social contract, Rousseau maintains that, insofar as each person puts their ‘power in common under the supreme direction of the general will’, then any individual who refuses to obey ‘shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free’ (Rousseau, SC, 1:7). Turning to the education of the individual, Rousseau stresses that the aim is for the scholar to live ‘at peace with himself ’, but this is possible only if there is agreement between the education that comes to us ‘from nature, from men, [and] from things’ (Rousseau 1948 [1762],p. 6). His message to parents and tutors is, from ‘the outset raise a wall round your child’s soul’ (Rousseau 1948 [1762], p. 6). But this is a wall raised in the name of freedom. In Shklar’s words, Rousseau’s Émile is being forced not to be ‘weak’ and ‘dependent’, and it is in this sense that he is also being ‘forced to be free’ (Shklar 1964b, p. 930). The first question usually raised about Rousseau is whether his work, though ostensibly a plea for human freedom, is in fact an apology for tyranny. Does the idea of being forced to be free justify the worst excesses of despotic power? If we can be forced to be free, perhaps intensive surveillance and unrestricted power (for example, of the kind envisaged in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four) (Orwell, 2008 [1949]) is required to ensure that subjects willingly comply with the supreme direction of the general will? The argument in defence of Rousseau starts by drawing attention to the distinction that he makes between ‘natural’, ‘civil’, and ‘moral’ freedom. We are by nature free or independent, ‘the sole judge of the proper means of preserving [ourselves]’; we have civil freedom only under a social contract, as it is freedom ‘limited by the general will’; while moral freedom is rational self-control, and that is why Rousseau distinguishes it from the mere following of appetite (Rousseau, SC, I:2). Importantly, it is in respect of our moral freedom that, Rousseau believes, we can be forced to be free (Rousseau, SC, I:8). And for one interpretation of Rousseau there is no ‘implicit totalitarianism’ here (Rawls, 2007, p. 241). Being forced to be (morally) free entails no more than being held to do what, according to one’s own reason, one should do, morally speaking. Under the social contract we are each of us the authors of the general will, and so being required to obey it is nothing more than being forced to comply with the moral rules we have freely agreed to. This is freedom, given that obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself is freedom. The same is true of the education of the individual. Yes Émile is forced to be free, but nonetheless ‘should do nothing against his will’ (Rousseau 1948

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[1762], p. 6, p. 135). Therefore, for this line of argument, there is no tension between freedom and authority, whether it is the authority of the political community or that of the tutor. And that is why Rawls believes there is no implicit totalitarianism here. Others, however, do not accept this interpretation of Rousseau. For Berlin, the idea of being forced to be free is the starting point from which ‘we gradually reach the notion of absolute despotism’ (Berlin 2002 [1952]), pp. 43, 47). If we equate freedom with some one moral ideal, if we assume that we are free only insofar as, for example, we act in accordance with the general will, then a ‘law which forbids me to do what I could not, as a sane being, conceivably wish to do is not a restraint on my freedom’ (Berlin 2004 [1958], p. 195). That is, Rousseau’s argument leaves no room to acknowledge that coercion, even when legitimate, does restrict freedom. For these critics, this starts us on the road to despotism, as it signifies that, when we as a society pursue some normative ideal, there can be no additional, separate requirement to protect freedom from interference. As Williams puts it, the problem is that ‘Rousseau believed there were no socially presentable claims against the state in a just society’ (Williams 2005, pp. 120–1). We have seen two very different ways in which to interpret Rousseau’s conception of freedom. We should note that both Rawls and Berlin are committed to defending a negative conception of freedom. However, while Rawls does so as a value monist, Berlin does so as a value pluralist; and my thesis is that this difference in their approach to moral conflict is what explains their diametrically opposed interpretations of Rousseau. For the monist, Rousseau says merely that there are some things we are not free to do, and they are the things we can be rightly prevented from doing. And the pluralist, in contrast, sees such a line of argument as opening up the possibility of tyranny, as it means that coercion (when it is legitimate) does not count as a restriction of freedom. Let us look more closely at both the monist and the pluralist conceptions of freedom that arise from these two opposing readings of Rousseau. To start with, how can monists like Rawls contend that being forced to be free does not have totalitarian implications? Rawls’s value monist conception of freedom Like Rousseau, Rawls’s account of freedom has a social contract starting point. The principles of justice that determine the rights and duties of citizens are, Rawls says, those that rational and autonomous individuals

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would choose in the original position, a social contract-type situation of initial choice. Principles of justice provide the framework within which we are to develop our aims and then choose the means to their satisfaction. It follows, when we formulate our plans, when we define our interests in a particular way, that they ‘have no value’, they have ‘no merit in the first place’, according to Rawls, if they require the violation of such principles of justice (Rawls 1971, p. 31; see also Rawls 1988, p. 262). One of these, the principle of equal liberty, covers our negative freedoms: ‘freedom of thought and liberty of conscience, freedom of the person and the civil liberties’ as well as ‘the freedom to participate equally in political affairs’ (Rawls 1971, p. 201; see also Rawls 1993, p. 295). It is of paramount importance for Rawls’s overall approach to political thought that the principle of equal liberty has ‘lexical’ priority, which means that it must be satisfied before moving on to consider any other principle of justice (Rawls 1971, pp. 42–3). This means that, although our liberties can be broadened or narrowed at different times and places, we may justifiably limit any one liberty, or the liberty of any one class of persons, ‘only for the sake of liberty itself, that is, only to insure that the same liberty or a different basic liberty is properly protected’ (Rawls 1971, p. 204). Rawls is here ordering the moral principles of political thought; he is placing them in a hierarchy. Whenever they come into conflict, one principle always has priority over others. This also entails that we simply are not free to act in ways that violate this principle. Hence, if an act (for example, an act of cruelty, such as that of a violent extremist) will violate the principle of equal liberty, it has no value or merit in the first place, and we may stop others from acting in that way. Not only that, in doing so, we have not infringed the freedom of those whom we have prevented from acting: in this case, the extremists. Rawls makes clear that, for him, the extremist is simply not free to violate the principle of equal liberty. Thus, he claims, ‘liberty can always be explained’ not only in terms of ‘the agents who are free’ and ‘the restrictions or limitations which they are free from’, but also in terms of ‘what it is they are free to do or not to do’ (Rawls 1971, p. 202; see also 1993, p. 341). That is, as each person’s freedom is limited by the principle of equal liberty, to violate that principle is something we are not free to do. Rawls puts the same point another way by arguing that we are not faced with moral dilemmas when, through the threat of imprisonment, say, we limit the freedom of the intolerant extremist, but we are faced with a dilemma when, through such threats, we limit the freedom of those who are not intolerant extremists (Rawls 1971, p. 242). Why is

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that the case? In less than ideal situations, where there is not full compliance with the principles of justice, we may be required to wrongly interfere with freedom. His example is a situation of ‘sharp religious antagonism’ where armed bands are being formed ‘in preparation for civil strife’, and where, as a result, it may be necessary to convict some people for possession of firearms even when it is clear they themselves had no knowledge of the weapons having been concealed on their property. This policy will infringe on the freedom of non-extremists, as it requires them ‘resigning themselves to the fact that they may be held guilty for things they have not done’ (Rawls 1971, p. 242). Why, according to Rawls, is this a moral dilemma? On the one hand, we ought to protect the freedom of each individual, but, on the other hand, we ought to defend the system of equal liberty. In the situation of religious conflict that he outlines, we can do either of these but we cannot do both. In contrast, we are faced with no such moral dilemma, according to Rawls, when we threaten to arrest and imprison those who do wish to violently attack those whom they abhor. This is so because the punishment of those whose acts violate the principle of equal liberty does not infringe on their freedom. We are still required to defend the system of equal liberty, but, in the terms used in the debate on moral conflicts, the requirement to protect the freedom of the extremist is, simply, cancelled or eliminated. Rawls is a value monist. Although he does not claim to have identified a master value, he does rank-order moral claims, giving lexical priority to the principle of equal liberty. In response to Rawls, others have tried to show that there are situations where we should remove options for reasons other than to guarantee the principle of equal liberty. For example, removing options could be justified where violent extremist acts do not infringe on the freedom of the victims but where, nonetheless, the pain and suffering and distress they cause have a ‘weight independent’ of their tendency to limit freedom (Hart 1983, p. 239). Utilitarians would make such an argument. Of course, utilitarians are also value monists, but they disagree about the general rule for resolving moral conflicts: as we have seen, for Mill, we always give priority to the harm principle, and do so in order to best promote utility. In her mature work Shklar is yet another value monist liberal, someone who gives priority to the avoidance of cruelty. This very diversity among monists exposes a significant weakness in each of their positions. For it draws attention to what is, for them, an uncomfortable truth: although each theorist claims to have identified the one general rule for resolving moral conflicts, they disagree as to which rule it is. Only one answer can be the correct one: only one moral

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claim can be the general rule for the resolution of moral conflicts. The very best possible scenario for monism is that all monists are wrong, bar one. However, maybe that is not a very powerful counter-argument, as it does not challenge value monism in principle. If Shklar, in her mature work, can show that she is correct in claiming that the avoidance of cruelty is the basic norm, then she will have successfully defended value monism as well. Another possible line of argument is that the value monist cannot consistently maintain that one moral claim (whatever it is) is the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. We have already seen this to be the case for the mature Shklar when she deals with the issue of paternalism; and it was also the main objection to Mill’s position on paternalism. As we shall now see, when Rawls turns to consider paternalism, he too is forced to give priority to a moral claim other than the one said to be the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. Although the principle of equal liberty leaves individuals free to harm themselves, Rawls concludes that paternalism can be justified. But, as was the case for both Shklar and Mill, Rawls assumes that paternalism is justified only for those whose freedom we are not required to protect. For those ‘unable to make decisions for their own good’, or those who need ‘to protect themselves against their own irrational inclinations’, it is justified for someone else to act on their behalf and at times override their present wishes (Rawls 1971, pp. 249–50). As we shall see below, such paternalistic arguments have been to the fore in responding to extremism: that is, society should protect people from the consequences of their own bad decisions, that is, the decision to follow extremist leaders and to engage in extremist acts (Coppock and McGovern 2014, p. 252). How can this paternalism be justified, however? Rawls’s argument here is that paternalism is justified by considering a specific formulation of the principle of autonomy, namely what he calls ‘goodness as rationality’ (Rawls 1971, p. 416; see also Rawls, 1993 pp. 176–8; Fives 2005; 2009; 2013). Therefore, his position on paternalism has an almost identical structure to the one we see in the mature Shklar (and Mill), and, as such, is open to the same objections. Rawls’s principle of equal liberty not only does not apply to those who should be treated paternalistically, but also it is a principle of autonomy (goodness as rationality) that he appeals to in deciding whose freedom needs protecting and whom, instead, we may treat paternalistically. Therefore Rawls has been unable to show that the principle of equal liberty is, as he claims, the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. And so, it follows, his liberal argument on paternalism rests on questionable assumptions, as he draws on the principle of

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goodness as rationality rather than, as is claimed, the principle of equal liberty. To recap, the value monist argument is that Rousseau’s notion of being forced to be free does not have totalitarian implications. If we are prevented from doing what we are not free to do, there has been no infringement of our freedom. But that argument in turn assumes that we are not free to do anything that violates one specific moral claim, namely the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. Therefore, for the mature Shklar, as we saw, we are not free to be cruel. However, monists are faced with a very significant problem, as each one is unable to stick consistently to their specific monist position. They continue to maintain that we can rightly remove options from others and that in doing so we have not restricted their freedom. But they are making that argument in cases of paternalism, for example, where there has been no violation of the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. Not only do monists not adhere to their monist conception of freedom, as a result they are left in a position where they call for the removal of options in situations where, based on their own monist conception of freedom, to do so would violate freedom. This is a conclusion that leaves monists, including monist Rousseauians, in a condition of debilitating internal contradiction. Berlin’s value pluralist conception of freedom So far I have tried to show that value monist conceptions of freedom (including those based on monist readings of Rousseau) are not internally consistent. That is a largely epistemological objection to value monism, pointing as it does to a weakness in the justification of monist arguments. However, there is an even stronger challenge to monism, one that is largely normative, and it comes from Berlin in particular. His ambition is to show that there is a conception of freedom that monists are ignorant of, and it forms the basis of a fundamental challenge to Rousseau’s position in particular. According to Berlin’s value pluralist conceptualisation of negative freedom, we have liberty insofar as we are free from interference in our choices and activities. If that is the case, then we are free to do as we please (and much else besides), and when we are prevented from acting as we please this is a prima facie wrong, regardless of what it is we are prevented from doing. The monist Rousseauian remains ignorant of these violations of freedom, and it is this that justifies Berlin’s claim that, with Rousseau’s conception of freedom, we gradually reach the notion of absolute despotism.

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In ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ Berlin begins by setting out his conception of negative freedom (or liberty) as follows: I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others […] Being free in this sense I mean not being interfered with by others. The wider the area of non-interference the wider my freedom. (Berlin 2004 [1958], pp. 169–70)

Such a concept can be thought of in narrower or broader terms. Narrowly conceived, it is the freedom from interference in our wants and desires: the freedom to do as we please. Broadly conceptualised, it is ‘the absence of obstacles to possible choices and activities’ (Berlin 2004 [1969], p. 32). For Berlin, the narrower conception is insufficient on its own, because we may achieve freedom from frustration in satisfying our desires simply by removing those of our desires that are difficult to satisfy. This may be a good guide to our contentment without saying anything of our freedom: I may be content with a narrow range of options; and so I may be content even when I have very little freedom of choice. That is why we need the broader conceptualisation: for our freedom, it matters that we have a broader rather than a narrower range of options, even if we do not currently aim at or pursue these options (Berlin 2004 [1958], p. 177 n. 1). Nonetheless, the broader conception includes the narrower one. That is, insofar as our negative freedom (broadly conceived) is guaranteed, then we are free to do as we please (and much more besides). We should have more options than the ones we happen to want at any one moment. That is all true. Nonetheless, being prevented from doing what we merely want to do still counts as an infringement of our freedom. One way to put this is that negative freedom has intrinsic value for Berlin: it is wrong to violate negative freedom, regardless of what good reasons we may have for doing so. Of course, at times its violation is justified, all things considered. A political community will interfere with our choices and activities, and strive to prevent us from taking certain options, and do so by various means, including the threat of coercion. Berlin accepts that this will happen, and sometimes it will even broaden our range of options in the long run, but he nonetheless insists that it is a wrong: a violation of freedom. That is why he says that law is always a fetter. So far I have focused on Berlin’s negative conception of freedom. But, as we know, this is a conception that arises out of a contrast with its positive counterpart. Positive freedom is the freedom which consists in

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being one’s own master. According to Berlin, this idea of self-mastery developed into the idea of freeing one’s ‘dominant self ’ from slavery to one’s own ‘lower’ self: This dominant self is then variously identified with reason, with my ‘higher nature’ […] with my ‘real,’ or ‘ideal,’ or ‘autonomous’ self, or with my self ‘at its best’; which is then contrasted with irrational impulse, uncontrolled desires, my ‘lower’ nature, the pursuit of immediate pleasures, my ‘empirical’ or ‘heteronomous’ self, swept by every gust of desire and passion, needing to be rigidly disciplined if it is ever to rise to the full height of its ‘real’ nature. (Berlin 2004 [1958], pp. 178–9)

Among those offering positive conceptions of freedom, some think of liberty ‘as rational self-direction’ (Berlin 2004 [1958], p. 191). This is the case with Rousseau’s general will in particular, but the same can be said of Locke and Kant. In each case, Berlin says, ‘Freedom is not freedom to do what is irrational, or stupid, or wrong’ (Berlin 2004 [1958], p. 194). It also follows that there are no real conflicts between the freedom of one person and that of another: My claim to unfettered freedom can prima facie at times not be reconciled with your equally unqualified claim; but the rational solution of one problem cannot collide with the equally true solution of another, for two truths cannot logically be incompatible. (Berlin 2004 [1958], p. 192)

My liberty is always rational. In contrast, my attempt to oppress others is mere irrational licence: ‘it is only irrationality on the part of men […] that leads them to wish to oppress or exploit’ (Berlin 2004 [1958], p. 193). What does Berlin think of the positive conception of freedom? Berlin does not himself equate freedom with rationality, and so he rejects the idea that when I act freely I will always act in ways that will be in (rational) harmony with others. He also rejects the related idea that my being prevented from acting irrationally does not violate my freedom. Nonetheless, and despite his critique of the ways in which this conception of freedom has been deployed by others, Berlin does not reject the positive conception of freedom itself. What he objects to in the idea of freedom as rational self-direction is its value monism. We should see positive freedom as one form of freedom, alongside negative freedom; they can come into conflict; and at times we may be justified in limiting negative freedom so as to promote positive freedom. That is all acceptable to Berlin, but this is the case because it does not challenge his value pluralism.

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What Berlin is objecting to are monist conceptualisations of freedom, according to which freedom cannot be in conflict with what is said to be the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. That Berlin believes both that all interference is wrong and yet that on occasion it may be justified reflects the fact that his is a value pluralist conceptualisation of negative freedom. For value pluralists, there is no one moral claim that always has priority over others, but also when we decide between conflicting claims, the item not acted upon is not somehow eliminated. Hence, if we do remove options from others, then, even when our decision is justified, all things considered, we do something prima facie wrong. As Berlin’s defence of negative freedom is a pluralist one he does not contend that it (or any other moral claim) has priority as a general rule. That is why Berlin rejects the idea ‘that individual freedom is, even in the most liberal societies, the sole, or even the dominant criterion of social action’ (Berlin 2004 [1958], p. 214). This point is a very important one. It means that Berlin does not, and indeed could not without contradiction, say that as a general rule we are required to live together in a particular kind of liberal society, namely one where negative freedom is the pre-eminent value. This is so, even though Berlin attempts to show that, because of the reality of moral conflict, negative freedom has, as he says, ‘immense value’: we are faced with choices between ends equally ultimate, and claims equally absolute, the realisation of some of which must inevitably involve the sacrifice of others. Indeed, it is because this is their situation that men place such immense value upon the freedom to choose, for if they had assurance that in some perfect state, realisable by men on earth, no ends pursued by them would ever be in conflict, the necessity and agony of choice would disappear, and with it the central importance of the freedom to choose. (Berlin 2004 [1958], pp. 213–14)

Berlin is saying that negative freedom is of immense value because we must choose between independent and at times conflicting ends and claims. However, there is some controversy over how best to interpret this passage. According to Gray, for example, Berlin’s intention is to ground a liberal political morality that gives ‘preeminence’ to the ‘promotion of negative liberty’ (Gray 2013 [1996], p. 67). In contrast, Galston accepts that, although Berlin is giving ‘special status to individual liberty’, nonetheless, on occasion other values are allowed ‘to dominate negative liberty’ (Galston 1999, p. 773). In fact, Galston is correct here. Although

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Berlin does give a special status to negative freedom, he does not give it pre-eminence: Berlin is not arguing that, as a general rule, negative freedom has priority over other values. The implication of Berlin’s pluralist defence of freedom is profound and even, as I will argue, unsettling. The implication is that we must do away with the distinction between genuine freedom, on the one hand, and mere independence, on the other. This is the distinction that Shklar, in her mature work, finds in Montesquieu. We see the same distinction in the arguments of Rawls and Mill. And it is undermined by Berlin’s pluralist conception of freedom because if we are free insofar as we are free from interference in our choices and activities, we are not simply or solely free to do those things that are morally right, or good, or tolerable. Preventing us from pursuing our academic studies, from freely choosing to live our lives together, from striving to promote the public good through political engagement, and from engaging in our preferred pastimes are all harms done to our freedom. But the same is true when we are prevented from stealing, killing, lying, and so on. As Gray, in his discussion of Berlin’s work, says, the intrinsic value of freedom […] is in its embodiment of the ‘basic freedom’ of choice itself – not the rational choice among genuine goods and worthwhile options that is designated by autonomy, but choice simpliciter. Such choice may be capricious or whimsical, perverse or unreasonable, quixotic or self-destructive: it remains choice, and, as such the source of the value of negative freedom. (Gray 2013 [1996], p. 65; emphasis in original)

If negative freedom is a value, and if it is a value regardless of the ends to which it is employed, then we are indeed free to do what is wrong: including, as I have argued elsewhere, the choice to engage in extremist intolerant violence (Fives, 2019c). If we are extremists, then we refuse to tolerate diversity, and assume that we may legitimately use violence against those we abhor (Schmid 2014, pp. 23–4; Midlarsky 2011, p. 346). Of course, we are rightly condemned for such behaviour for various reasons, including on the basis that we should tolerate reasonable or legitimate diversity (Galston 2005, p. 3). But the fact that intolerant extremist behaviour is neither right nor good nor tolerable does not mean (pace the mature Shklar) that we are not free to do these things. In fact, extremist violence is one possible option for us. Extremism should be discouraged, and, on occasion, we may be threatened with punishment if we would otherwise act in this way. But that does not change the fact

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that we are free to do such things; and when we are prevented from doing them (say by our fear of punishment) our freedom has been restricted. I return to this phenomenon at the end of this chapter. It is what I refer to as the unsettling implication of value pluralism. As negative freedom is one value among others, and as there is no general rule to resolve conflicts between it and other values, then we are free to do as we please, regardless of what it is that we please to do. This is unsettling for those who see it as giving some semblance of moral respectability to actions that no one should ever choose to perform. And it is precisely this that monist conceptions of freedom are designed to avoid. That is why Shklar distinguishes freedom from mere independence, but we also know that it is a distinction she cannot sustain. Value pluralism may be unsettling, but it is the better account of the reality of our ethical experience. Being free to do as we please is not the only thing that matters, and it is not at the apex of a hierarchy of values, but it does matter, and so we need to acknowledge the various ways in which it is violated. Indeed, although the pluralist position on freedom is unsettling, it is also salutary. This can be seen when we consider non-ideal situations, situations of non-compliance with the values and principles of a society. For quite some time, sceptical political theorists have been arguing that non-compliance with basic norms is an inescapable feature of any society. Shklar, for example, draws attention to the ‘ordinary vices’ of everyday life in a liberal democracy, vices like snobbery that we could only eliminate at great cost to ourselves, and in particular by unleashing excessive state cruelty and oppression (Shklar 1984, pp. 234–7). It is for these reasons that non-ideal theorists maintain that our greatest challenge now is deciding how to respond to non-compliance: Determining what is feasible in partially compliant societies that exist in the modern era of rapid globalization is perhaps one of the major sources of political disagreement in contemporary democratic societies. (Farrelly 2007, p. 845)

It follows that one key question posed for democratic societies is to what extent and for what reasons our freedom may be restricted so as to ensure compliance. If our society is designed on the basis of certain values, say negative freedom, but also on the avoidance of cruelty, autonomy, and toleration, among others, then we must decide how we may treat members of our society when they refuse to adhere to one or the other of these

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values, for example, because of their violent extremism. And there is a diversity of possible policy responses to extremism. Some promote nonextremism without directly removing extremist violence as an option, for example through persuasion and by offering incentives. Others, in contrast, directly intervene so as to prevent criminal extremist behaviour, including by threatening punishment for non-compliance (see Schmid 2014; Braddock and Horgan 2016). Therefore, societies do respond to non-compliance in different ways. What value pluralism shows is that there is a moral difference between policy responses that do and do not remove options: those that remove options violate liberty. The value pluralist account of negative freedom, therefore, highlights something of great moral significance: no matter how legitimate a society, it is a prima facie wrong to be prevented from acting in ways contrary to its values. And value pluralism is an approach to political thought that brings to the fore the wrongs done in the name of these moral ideals, not least the wrongs done when options are removed so as to ensure compliance with those ideals. The slow crystallisation of Shklar’s value monist conception of freedom We know that Shklar offers a value monist conception of freedom in her mature work according to which we can be, as Rousseau says, forced to be free. And we have also seen how Rousseau’s conception of freedom is the point on which the conflict between pluralists and monists has been focused. Now I want to trace the development of Shklar’s understanding of Rousseau as her career progresses. As I suggested at the outset of this chapter, her understanding of Rousseau’s conception of freedom is key to explaining why and how she turns towards value monism in her mature work. After Utopia (1957) Let us begin with Shklar’s first published monograph. Her focus in this work is the romantic (and existentialist) contention that all modern societies are a threat to individual freedom. For Shklar, Arendt represents this modern romantic position, according to which freedom ‘meant freedom from all social control, from law as much as from arbitrary regulation. The cult of individuality finds law as much of an alien imposition as a tyrant’s fiat’ (Shklar 1957, p. 97). It may be surprising to have the cult

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of individuality ascribed to someone like Arendt, for whom ‘the raison d’être of politics is freedom’ (Arendt 1993 [1961], p. 146). Yet, Arendt does herself conclude that ‘the entire modern age separated freedom and politics’ (Arendt 1993 [1961], p. 150). She believes that ‘society’ is dominant in modernity, and contrasts ‘the conformism inherent in society’, where the expectation of certain kinds of behaviour tends ‘to “normalize” its members’, with the genuine public realm of ancient Greece and Rome, which ‘was permeated by a fiercely agonal spirit’, a realm that was, therefore, ‘reserved for individuality’ (Arendt 1998 [1958], pp. 40–1). Romantics do have political aims, therefore, but Shklar’s point is that those aims ‘spring directly from aspirations which have nothing to do with any definable power structure or concrete institution’ (Shklar 1957, p. 99). Again, this is a fair description of Arendt, who says that politics (and freedom) is impossible without conditions that are, for her, simply missing from modern life, namely ‘the company of other men [and] a common public space to meet them’ (Arendt 1993 [1961], p. 148). So, what type of freedom is possible in modern life for the romantic? It is the freedom that goes with an ‘ethic for isolated individuals’, which contrasts ‘authentic selfhood’ with the conformism of modern mass society (Shklar 1957, pp. 134–5, 136). Shklar finds the same romantic orientation in Henri Bergson’s work, where freedom is conceptualised as ‘creativity’. As she says in ‘Bergson and the Politics of Intuition’, his account of homo faber entails that ‘if we are to be creative […] we must not be explained away as the effects of either society or biology’ (Shklar 1998 [1958], p. 325). At its best, this is simply a romantic ‘identification of originality with freedom’; at its worst, ‘this notion means that the very absence of rational purpose is the true mark of freedom’ (Shklar 1998 [1958]). For Shklar at this time, there is more to freedom than the absence of control, whether we are thinking of the control originating in society or that of reason. As she says in After Utopia, the problem with the romantic ethic is that it denies ‘the reality of all those human relationships upon which systems of morality are explicitly or implicitly based’ (Shklar 1957, p. 134). And, in objecting to romanticism on these grounds, she appeals to Rousseau. Early on in After Utopia, she observes that Rousseau is the first great example of romantic feeling, but his philosophy is not at all romantic, and this discrepancy between impulse and fulfillment is the key to an understanding of Rousseau. (Shklar 1957, p. 26)

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Shklar discerns Rousseau’s romantic feeling most clearly in Émile, and yet, she concludes, Émile also reveals a non-romantic philosophy: It is not that Émile is not educated for citizenship, but that there is no society in which citizenship can be effectively exercised. That is why he must live in isolation – not because society rejects genius or creative originality, not even because solitude is good in itself. True freedom is to be found only in submission to law and to the voice of conscience. When the two coincide the problem of the one and the many is solved. (Shklar 1957, p. 28)

Whereas romantics think of liberty as freedom from all control, for Rousseau, true freedom is to be found only in submission to law and to conscience. Rousseau’s romanticism is evident when he concludes that, where freedom with others is not a possibility, then, like Émile, we must seek it in private, as an individual member of the household. Unlike these romantics, however, Rousseau also offers a utopian account of how freedom is possible with others, such that, in Shklar’s words, the problem of the one and the many is solved. Shklar is rejecting a romantic conception of freedom, and using Rousseau to do so. Nonetheless, After Utopia also takes a highly sceptical position on Rousseau’s utopianism. Shklar concludes that we lack the ‘minimum of utopian faith’ needed for radicalism to be ‘meaningful’ (Shklar 1957, p. 219). Hence, her position at this time, both on Rousseau and on freedom, is an ambivalent one. Unlike romantics, she does not accept that, when faced with modern mass society, the only available option is an ethic for isolates. However, she also admits to being overwhelmed by ‘the insights of psychology and anthropology and of political observation’, insights that silence the urge ‘to deal with politics in moral terms’ (Shklar 1957, p. 272). While this does not justify romantic ‘cultural despair’, it does call for ‘reasoned skepticism’ (Shklar 1957, p. 272). In short, we do not have the utopian faith necessary to pursue Rousseau’s model of moral freedom, but this is the only real alternative to the romantic ethic for isolates. Given Shklar’s reasoned scepticism, it is not possible to see how Rousseauian freedom is a possibility at all. ‘Rousseau’s Images of Authority’ (1964b) Shklar’s position on Rousseau in After Utopia is an ambivalent one: she is caught in a bind where she wishes to reject the idea that freedom means freedom from all social control, but lacks the utopian faith necessary

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to talk meaningfully of freedom understood as submission to law and to conscience. But a quite different understanding of Rousseau is evident in an essay published seven years later. As we have already discussed in the last chapter, Shklar’s second book, Legalism (1964a), offers a value pluralist approach to moral conflict. There is not one mention of Rousseau in this book, but in the very same year she published ‘Rousseau’s Images of Authority’, and in this essay Shklar sets out to offer a value pluralist reading of Rousseau’s conception of freedom. Ultimately, she fails in that effort, but the nature of the failure is itself revealing. As we know, Rousseau thinks of moral freedom as obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself. And there are two separate ways in which we can hope to attain freedom thus understood: as citizens of a republic, or through one-to-one instruction with a tutor. The distinction between these two conceptions of freedom is also presented as a contrast between two utopian models: on the one hand, citizenship of the Spartan city-state; on the other, the ‘tranquil household’ of the ‘Golden Age’ (Shklar 1969, p. 3). However, according to ‘Rousseau’s Images of Authority’, the difference between the arguments of Émile and those of The Social Contract in fact reflects a ‘conflict of ideals’, namely a clash between the ‘virtuous family-man devoted to raising his children’, on the one hand, and ‘the true republic in which public education replaces not only the father, but the entire family’, on the other (Shklar 1964b, p. 929). And for Shklar this is but one of a number of unresolved moral conflicts evident in Rousseau’s work. As we will see in the next chapter, she also identifies conflicts between democracy and ‘Hobbism’, personal authority and law, authority and equality, and liberation and authority (Shklar 1964b, p. 922). That is why, she concludes, Rousseau’s utopian vision can never be implemented. It is not that scepticism prevents us from employing moral terminology, as Shklar had concluded in her first book. Rather, it is that the conflicting claims in Rousseau’s thought are each ‘valid’, and yet neither is ‘likely to be realized’; and indeed, ‘it is’, Shklar concludes, ‘less Burke’s traditionalist rhetoric than Rousseau’s psychological insight that has set the most severe limits on all hopes of easy reform’ (Shklar 1964b, pp. 922, 932). Therefore, what we have seen is that in two works published in 1964 Shklar offers a value pluralist approach to moral conflict and also a value pluralist reading of Rousseau’s conception of freedom. On the face of it, this mirrors the arguments of other pluralists writing at this time, in particular Berlin. However, there is one crucial difference, and it can be explained by a tension, even a contradiction, in Shklar’s reading of

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Rousseau. At the outset of ‘Rousseau’s Images of Authority’, she highlights Rousseau’s ‘vacillating attitudes to authority’, as he is said to believe both that ‘a liberating form of authority was possible’ but also that ‘authority meant submission’ (Shklar 1964b, p. 920). Shklar lists this as one of the moral conflicts besetting Rousseau’s thought. However, towards the end of the essay she returns again to the issue of authority, but this time concludes that this is one area where Rousseau does resolve moral conflict, as ‘it did not appear that genuine authority limits freedom’ (Shklar 1964b, p. 931). Of course, this is of vital importance for what we have been reflecting on up to this point. This is precisely what value monists say about freedom: genuine authority does not limit freedom; and that is why there is so contradiction in saying we can be forced to be free. It is not that during her early work, her value pluralist period, Shklar never got around to formulating a value pluralist conception of freedom. Rather, it is that Shklar is torn between a value pluralist and a value monist conception of freedom at this time, ultimately coming down on the side of value monism. A value monist conception of freedom is sitting at the heart of her early value pluralist work. Indeed, we can see this in Legalism as well. There she says that ‘agreement-as-an-endin-itself can only be achieved by totalitarian methods’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 100). That may appear to be little different from what Berlin is saying, namely that when we enforce any one value we will remove options and therefore restrict freedom. In fact, Shklar’s argument at this time is very different. In short, she is saying that there is a proper scope for individual freedom, it is only when this limit has been violated that liberty is lost, and also the enforcement of those limits does not itself violate liberty. This is what lies behind her reference to the liberal desire to ‘preserve individual autonomy […] and the diversity of morals’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 42). For her, the freedom that is to be defended is not just that of the inner man in his relation to God or to eternal principle, but the freedom to profess moral views that cover a wide range of moral and political attitudes. From the point of view of liberalism, at least, it is diversity that is to be cherished, and tolerance is to be practiced in the interests of social freedom. (Shklar 1964a, pp. 49–50)

It is diversity that is to be cherished. However, it is not that all differences are to be cherished, nor is it that we are free to do as we please. Rather, freedom is here understood as the freedom to profess moral views that cover

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a wide range of moral and political attitudes. It is this diversity of moral views that is to be tolerated; and it is through toleration in this guise that we guarantee freedom: Pluralism [is] […] something that any liberal should rejoice in and seek to promote, because it is in diversity alone that freedom can be realized. A free society is not one in which people are merely allowed to make effective social choices among a variety of alternatives, but one in which they are encouraged to do so. The range and the number of choices available and the mutual tolerance among those who choose conflicting paths are what determine the degree of freedom that the members of any modern society can be said to enjoy. (Shklar 1964a, pp. 5–6)

The argument at this time is that value pluralism requires toleration of difference. Not only that; because of the diversity of ends, values, and claims, as made evident by value pluralism, individuals are free only if they are tolerated in expressing a wide range of views and attitudes: it is in diversity alone that freedom can be realized. But Shklar is not just saying that intolerance restricts freedom; there is also no thought given to the possibility that the enforcement of toleration could itself restrict freedom. Freedom is restricted by policies and actions that are intolerant: those striving for agreement as an end in itself. Toleration is simply the precondition of freedom, and what is to be tolerated is the diversity of moral views. As we know from her interpretation of Rousseau at this time, it did not appear that genuine authority limits freedom. While the repressive and ideological governments that prevent individuals from pursuing these diverse ends do restrict liberty, a legitimate polity does not limit freedom, given that it merely protects this diversity. It is in this way that Shklar attempts to reconcile a value monist conception of freedom with a value pluralist approach to moral conflict. And she is not the only value pluralist to have put forward a set of arguments like this. As we shall see later in this chapter, other value pluralists think of freedom as limited by the requirement to tolerate difference. But, as we shall also see, the fact that this is not an uncommon argument among value pluralists is not sufficient evidence that it can be defended. Men and Citizens (1969) Shklar further elaborates on this line of argument in her monograph on Rousseau, Men and Citizens, published five years later. In it, the following

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lengthy paragraph is lifted verbatim (with the exception of the sentence at the very end, which is new) from ‘Rousseau’s Images of Authority’: To Rousseau it did not appear that genuine authority limits freedom. The real tension was between authority and equality. Personal authority is not merely compatible with freedom; it creates the latter. In its healing form, in ordering the disrupted passions, it is psychologically liberating. In ordering the environment it allows men to retain an integrated self and to preserve their independence […] Freedom, in any case, was for Rousseau not a matter of doing as one pleased, but of not being compelled, either from within or without, to do what one does not wish to do. Inner compulsion is thus a most severe form of enslavement. That is why an ordered existence is needed to support men in a free condition. That also is why moderate desires, a capacity to live in the present and dependence only on things are prerequisites of the very possibility of a free life. All of them, however, depend on an educative, preventive, curative, and ordering authority. Authentic authority liberates. It gives liberty to those who are incapable of creating it for themselves. Better a will dominated by a tutor, than no will at all. (Shklar 1969, p. 162; emphasis in original)

We have here the claim that authentic authority liberates. Authority takes various forms (educative, preventive, curative, and ordering). But, in each case, the authority in question can be authentic, genuine. That allows a distinction to be made between an exercise of power that liberates and one that enslaves. In addition, we see here the distinction that we are already familiar with from Shklar’s mature work, namely that between freedom and independence. Independence is merely doing as one pleased, whereas freedom amounts to not being compelled to do what one does not wish to do. Authentic, genuine authority does compel, but it only prevents us from doing what we (merely) please. The point being made is not the relatively uncontroversial one that it is better, as she says, to have one’s will dominated by a tutor than to have no will at all. Rather, Shklar’s point is the highly controversial one that, for Rousseau, not only is freedom experienced in the former case but also freedom is possible only insofar as genuine, authentic authority is exercised; and that the exercise of authentic, genuine authority is not at the same time in any way a restriction of freedom. According to this reading of Rousseau, first in ‘Rousseau’s Images of Authority’ and then five years later in Men and Citizens, genuine authority does not limit freedom. Therefore, despite her value pluralism at this time, Shklar is continuing to offer a value monist interpretation of Rousseau’s conception of freedom. Not only that, but we can see a

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transition and development in Shklar’s monist conception of freedom over the five-year period between the earlier essay and the later monograph. What happens is a steady diminution of the number of moral conflicts identified in Rousseau’s work. In ‘Rousseau’s Images of Authority’ she highlights conflicts between freedom in a household and freedom in a republic, between democracy and ‘Hobbism’, between personal authority and law, between authority and equality, and between liberation and authority. In Men and Citizens the only moral conflict in Rousseau’s work referred to is the ‘real tension […] between authority and equality’ (Shklar 1969, p. 162). The conflict arises because those in authority will not be the equals of those over whom they exercise authority. Similarly, in an essay published three years later, Shklar says that, for Rousseau, ‘justice and equality are incompatible’, and this is the case because ‘Distributive justice is merely the consistent administration of inequality’ (Shklar 1998 [1972], p. 146). The point again is that political authority perpetuates inequality. That is why there is a conflict between authority and equality. But Shklar no longer even raises the issue that there might also be a conflict between freedom and authority (never mind the other conflicts she had raised in earlier work). And so, what we can see here is a slowly developing position on freedom where moral conflict plays an ever diminishing role. There is one further way in which Shklar’s conception of freedom is changing. She does highlight Rousseau’s pessimism in ‘Rousseau’s Images of Authority’, a feature of his work that chimes with her own scepticism. However, it is also true that, in Men and Citizens, Shklar gives it far more attention than ever before. In particular, she insists that Rousseau never assumed his conception of freedom was a real possibility at all: Freedom is what puts man out of nature and freedom to ‘perfect’ himself (how ironic that word is meant to sound!), puts man into a psychological position which prevents him from ever finding a real home on earth. (Shklar 1969, p. 161)

There is no real home on earth for those who are free. Why is it that we cannot hope to attain true freedom? In ‘Rousseau’s Images of Authority’, Shklar does gesture to Rousseau’s pessimism, noting the fact that he ‘seriously doubted whether this ambitious project could be accomplished’ (Shklar 1964b, p. 923). But, in addition to this sceptical point at this time, her explanation is that his ideals are in conflict: that is why they cannot be realised. In Men and Citizens, in contrast, it is because ‘there is no way to control his [humanity’s] capacity for self-destructive behavior’

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(Shklar 1969, p. 161). Shklar sees Rousseau as offering a sceptical account of the likelihood of realising our normative ideals. Moral conflict has disappeared almost altogether as an explanation for the challenges hindering their realisation. Shklar’s own scepticism on this very issue is something we return to in the chapter on utopia. However, for now, I want to simply emphasise her assumption at this point that, attainable or not, Rousseauian freedom is something that does not come into conflict with authority. We can be forced to be free! ‘General Will’ (1973), ‘Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Equality’ (1998 [1978a]), ‘Reading the Social Contract’ (1998 [1979]) What we have seen is that there is a tension in Shklar’s understanding of Rousseau, a tension between her value monist conception of freedom and her value pluralist approach to moral conflict more generally. A more coherent position begins to emerge in three further essays published during the 1970s, each dealing with Rousseau. However, as we shall see, Shklar advances towards coherence here at the cost of removing all remaining traces of her earlier value pluralist arguments. Let us start with ‘General Will’. There she describes Rousseau’s conception of freedom in the following terms: Nothing is more satisfying than a sense of one’s own goodness, nothing more painful than remorse. A man with a will capable of that, is his own master. He wills what is necessary for his own felicity and does nothing except what he wills. That is freedom. That is also the way to escape from the present torment of being torn between duty and inclination. (Shklar 1973, p. 277)

Freedom consists in not being torn between duty and inclination: free people are inclined to do only what they are duty-bound to do. That, as Shklar says, is freedom. Now, in what way, according to Rousseau, can we attain this state of freedom? An individual may be ‘forced to be free,’ that is, made to abide by the conditions he has accepted when he joined the community; for as a lawbreaker he has returned to the rule of force which threatens his and every other citizen’s freedom. (Shklar 1973, p. 278)

There is no conflict here between liberty and genuine authority, that is, the authority that acts on the basis of the general will. We can be forced to be free. That is the argument Shklar had been making since 1964. A

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new development, however, is her now concluding that, for Rousseau, there is no conflict either between authority and equality or between equality and freedom. She now describes the general will as ‘the will against inequality and all that stimulates and sustains it. For without equality there can be no liberty’ (Shklar 1973, p. 277). Genuine authority liberates, but genuine authority, she is now arguing, requires equality. Therefore, there can be no conflict between equality and authority, and so, nor can equality be in conflict with freedom. This, of course, represents yet another movement in the direction of value monism. We know that, in ‘Rousseau’s Images of Authority’, Shklar finds a wide range of moral conflicts in Rousseau’s thought. By the time of Men and Citizens, she acknowledges only the conflict between authority and equality. Now the very last vestige of unresolved moral conflict has disappeared from her interpretation of Rousseau. Shklar does note that ‘Benjamin Constant had also criticized Rousseau for ignoring freedom’, and how, for Constant’s account of the general will, the ‘protection of individual freedom replaced the battle against inequality’ (Shklar 1973, p. 279). But Shklar does not pause to reflect on the legitimacy or otherwise of an argument that seeks to untangle the values of freedom and equality, an argument that questions the assumption that liberty is impossible without equality. In ‘Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Equality’, published four years later, we see Shklar conclude once again that, for Rousseau, there is no conflict between equality and freedom. Although Rousseau thought the attainment of equality was highly unlikely, nonetheless freedom is impossible without it, according to Shklar. She begins this account by considering why Rousseau is concerned about factions (‘partial associations’) within society: Partial associations are bound to create personal dependencies, and these are so much power withdrawn from the ‘body of the state.’ Freedom is defined, here, as the unimpaired strength of the state, not as personal choice. Dependence on a private person is a loss of freedom now, because it diminishes the state, not because it enchains the subordinate. Freedom is in reliance on the state’s laws which one has made. For one then is not doing anything one does not want to do, which is Rousseau’s definition of freedom in society. It is exceptionally negative. Obeying one’s socialized public ego is not being forced by anyone else. To that end equality is absolutely necessary, because one cannot identify with the law fully in its absence. (Shklar 1998 [1978a], pp. 281–2; emphasis in original)

For this line of argument, freedom is impossible without equality. But this is the case because there is no tension between freedom and authority.

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Freedom is not personal choice; freedom is the unimpaired strength of the state. Equality also is required for freedom, for without it no one can identify with the law. And true authority does not infringe on freedom because free individuals are those who already obey their socialised public egos. Hence, there can be no conflict between liberty, authority, and equality. The following year, in ‘Reading the Social Contract’, Shklar once again pictures freedom and equality as inextricably bound together in Rousseau’s work: Individually each one is interested in preserving his freedom from domination. To that end there must be equality. No one may be so rich as to be able to buy another, and no one so poor as to be forced to sell himself. (Shklar 1998 [1979], p. 267)

Once again, Shklar makes the sceptical point that, for Rousseau, the attainment of freedom and equality in a true republic is highly unlikely: ‘We are capable of seeing the good, but we are too feeble and too stupid to act upon it’ (Shklar 1998 [1979], p. 275). We have seen this sceptical reading of Rousseau in earlier writings. But in this work she takes this scepticism further. She strikes a new note, namely that of humanity beset by ‘tragic’ conflict: Rousseau’s theme is the tragic encounter between man’s character and man’s fate, between the self-absorbed ego and the co-operation that survival, even at its least elaborate, demands. (Shklar 1998 [1979], p. 271)

We should observe that this tragic conflict is very different from the conflict of ideals that, in ‘Rousseau’s Images of Authority’, Shklar identified in Rousseau’s work. She is not now saying that there is a conflict between values where we have no general rule for its resolution. It is instead a conflict between humanity as it is and humanity as it might be: The trouble is that men ‘as they are’ are quite obviously unable to live under laws ‘that might be’ and that the evidence of actuality proves men to be irremediably warped. Mankind is simply a mistake. (Shklar 1998 [1979], pp. 270–1)

This is a reading of Rousseau that builds on and deepens Shklar’s earlier scepticism. Her point is that, given the reality of human motivations and dispositions, we cannot expect full compliance with the norms of a just regime. Similarly, in a later essay, ‘Rousseau and the Republican Project’, she notes that Rousseau was in agreement with Montesquieu about the likelihood of republicanism in the Europe of his time. While he objected

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to what he saw as Montesquieu’s failure to champion republican equality, nonetheless Rousseau ‘did not disagree with Montesquieu about the poor prospects for republicanism in modern Europe’, the implication of which being that it could be pursued only in a place like Corsica, and only as ‘a rejection of modernity’ (Shklar 1989c, pp. 43, 46). Although ‘Reading the Social Contract’ offers a sceptical interpretation of Rousseau, it has no place for Shklar’s earlier value pluralism. Indeed, she sees no incompatibility at this point between her scepticism and a value monist conception of freedom. Straight after commenting on the tragic conflicts making Rousseau’s republic impossible to implement, she goes on to say why, for Rousseau, we must be forced to be free: The reason why men must alienate everything to the sovereign and endow it with such overwhelming power is that any vestige of extra-social freedom will be used by the strong to subject the weak to that condition of personal dependence from which association is supposed to save them. (Shklar 1998 [1979], p. 271)

The same sceptical insight that renders Rousseau’s republic impossible to implement (namely, his account of men as they are) also justifies our being forced to be free. Our tendency to act on our extra-social freedom is what renders Rousseau’s utopian ideal impossible. And our freedom is protected when we are prevented from acting on our extra-social freedom. Freedom and Independence (1976) We have seen how, over time, Shklar moves away from an earlier value pluralist reading of Rousseau. We have also seen that, even at its high point, in 1964, her value pluralism was not coherent, as it was home to a monist interpretation of Rousseau’s conception of freedom. As we know, from the start of the 1980s Shklar goes on to develop a coherent value monist position, marrying a monist approach to moral conflict with a monist conception of freedom. In that period she forms her liberalism of fear, an outlook that, by appealing to the principle of the avoidance of cruelty, distinguishes genuine freedom from mere independence. And I have tried to show how this mature position emerges from her ongoing efforts to interpret the work of Rousseau. However, it is important to note that Shklar’s mature value monism also has its origins in her reading of Hegel. As a philosopher, he is in many ways the antithesis of Rousseau, as well as Montesquieu. Nonetheless, in her reading of Hegel, Shklar

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once again finds the distinction between freedom and independence. Indeed, this is the title that she gives to her monograph on Hegel. She may have less sympathy for Hegel’s politics than she does for Rousseau’s, never mind for Montesquieu’s, but her interpretation of Hegel confirms for her the cogency and necessity of understanding freedom through the lens of value monism. In this book Shklar primarily deals with Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind. According to Shklar, Hegel understands freedom as ‘the identity of the personal goals of individual citizens and the public ends of the polity as a whole’ (Shklar 1976, p. xiv). Freedom is not in conflict with genuine authority, therefore. Freedom, for Hegel, was a feature of the Athens of Pericles: indeed, the ‘Greeks are our sole memory of what freedom might be’ (Shklar 1976, p. 58). Independence, in contrast, arises from ‘the restless demands of reason’, which asserts ‘the destructive force of individual autonomy’, a force that Hegel sees arising first with Socrates, and culminating in the French Revolution (Shklar 1976, p. xiv). For Hegel, Athenian citizens were free insofar as they ‘were not under the dominion of a master, either external or internal’ (Shklar 1976, p. 85). The need to be free from internal as well as external masters shows that freedom has nothing to do with ‘modern individualism’: just as a mind can be enslaved by illusion and superstition, so the ‘urge toward personal autonomy’ is the ‘harbinger and mark of the collapse of public freedom’ (Shklar 1976, p. 85). In Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind freedom is not possible in modernity, because what we have here are societies of (merely) independent humans. Shklar believes that a different picture emerges in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Here, the law is such that it expresses the will of ‘independent men socialised in such a way that their pursuit of private ends reinforces their personal and collective adherence to public values’ (Shklar 1976, p. 205). While much has changed therefore in Hegel’s calculations about the feasibility of freedom, he still presumes that there is no conflict between freedom and genuine authority: The law as a system of licenses and as an expression of the individual’s socialized will is liberating, for it permits the individual to act, to be effective in pursuit of his own purposes. He is transformed by recognizing the ethical realm, that is, all those actions that are both legal, desirable and good, and in keeping with his now undivided ego-as-will. Rousseau had, of course, said as much when he wrote that the social contract changes a ‘narrow stupid animal’ into a man. (Shklar 1976, p. 207)

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For Hegel, law does not restrict freedom: it is liberating. And it is liberating in transforming us. Shklar also believes that both points reiterate Rousseau’s own understanding of freedom. It is not inconsequential that Shklar chooses to discuss Hegel as the ‘successor of Rousseau and Kant’, rather than the ‘precursor of Marx and Nietzsche’ (Shklar 1976, p. xiv). Hegel’s politically conservative conception of freedom is in many respects very different from the radical, utopian view that we find in Rousseau; just as it differs from Montesquieu’s pragmatic liberalism. Nonetheless, what Shklar chooses to emphasise is that, for Hegel, as for Rousseau (and Montesquieu), there is no tension between genuine authority and freedom. Shklar nowhere shows any sympathy with the political conservatism expressed in Hegel’s philosophy, and indeed, as we shall see below, she is highly critical of contemporary communitarians, who do, to varying extents, wish to draw on and implement Hegel’s ideas. Nor is the content of her liberalism of fear as close to Rousseau’s thought as, for example, is the case with Rawls’s social contract theory or the work of some contemporary republicans. Rather, in her liberalism of fear Shklar follows Montesquieu in conceptualising freedom as the freedom from cruelty. There are, of course, some similarities between Shklar’s liberalism of fear and republicanism, given her concern with inequality of power and the higher self in politics; and we shall see in later chapters as well, that there are similarities with communitarianism, not least concerning what Shklar says about the demands of loyalty, as well as her efforts to redeem American political theory. But none of these has anything like the same significance for her, and for the development of her liberalism of fear in her mature work, as do her readings of Rousseau. It is this that gives shape to the distinction that is at the very foundation of her liberalism of fear. What she takes from Rousseau is the very idea of a value monist conceptualisation of freedom, one according to which true freedom is distinguished from merely doing as one pleases. The unsettling implications of value pluralism for value pluralists In this chapter I have tried to show that Shklar’s early value pluralism was never a fully consistent position, and this is the case because she never accepted or developed a pluralist conception of freedom. But how can this be explained? Is it not highly unlikely that one can adopt a pluralist approach to moral conflict and yet fail to do so with respect to freedom? How can she be a value pluralist and yet assume that there is

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no unresolvable conflict between freedom and authority? In fact, this is not an altogether rare phenomenon, and it is not an altogether surprising one either. Its explanation is that value pluralism, and in particular Berlin’s value pluralism, has unsettling implications. For Berlin, as we know, law is always a fetter. As negative freedom is the freedom from interference in our choices and activities, then we are free to do as we please (and much more besides). Although we may rightly be prevented from acting in certain ways, nonetheless, it is prima facie wrong to be prevented from doing what we wish to do. This conception of freedom is unsettling. What we shall see now is that even value pluralists find it unsettling. This can be seen by looking at the work of Crowder and Gray, but for now I will focus on the arguments of Galston, in large part because they are a very close mirror of those in Shklar’s own early value pluralist work. Galston is a value pluralist, and develops a decidedly liberal line of argument, but also manages to conclude that negative freedom may cease to be a value. How does this come about? As a value pluralist, Galston maintains that there are no comprehensive ‘lexical orderings’ among types of goods. In addition, we can be faced with competing demands [that] are independent of one another and authoritative, and so, if we reach an allthings-considered judgment that endorses one side of the argument, it may well be the case that we will set aside something of genuine value. He therefore shares with Berlin a value pluralist approach to moral conflict. Not only that; at one point in his early work he is also happy to defend Berlin’s pluralist conception of negative freedom. There is, Galston maintains, ‘a presumption against’ coercion, ‘grounded in the pervasive human desire to go our own way in accordance with our own desires and beliefs’ (Galston 1999, pp. 773, 776). Thus we have here a value pluralist who is happy to defend the negative conception of freedom. However, over the following years Galston begins to make a distinction between Berlin’s conception of negative freedom, on the one hand, and a conception of liberty associated with the toleration of diversity, what Galston calls ‘expressive liberty’, on the other (Galston 2005, p. 3). Indeed, he comes to the conclusion that expressive liberty is, as a general rule, the most fundamental of all liberties and that the explanation for this is to be found in value pluralism itself. And the upshot of that line of argument is that we are not, pace Berlin, free to do as we please; we are free only insofar as we tolerate diversity. Galston’s argument is as follows. To start with, value pluralism sets before us those things that are ‘intrinsic goods’, along with the awareness

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that these goods may come into conflict. Because how we resolve conflicts between intrinsic goods is central to our identity, both as individuals and as members of social groups, the liberty we exercise in doing so (expressive liberty) ‘bears directly on questions of identity’, and so it ‘requires some basis for arguing that the liberties it comprises are weighty relative to others’ (Galston 2002a, pp. 28 n. 1, 38). Expressive liberty therefore enjoys an ‘elevated status’, and so ‘protection’ of the sphere of the ‘intellect and spirit’ ‘against unwarranted intrusion represents the most fundamental of all human liberties’ (Galston 2005, p. 65). Expressive liberty is the most fundamental liberty because, for Galston, ‘liberalism is about the protection of diversity’ (Galston 2017 [2002b], p. 9). That is why the state must discharge what he calls ‘a burden of proof whenever it seeks to restrict expressive liberty’ (Galston 2005, p. 3). Galston not only argues that expressive liberty is more weighty than other forms of negative freedom. He goes on to say that people are not free to do as they please when what they please to do is in conflict with the requirements of expressive liberty: more liberty (understood as the capacity to act without external impediments) is not necessarily preferable to less liberty, so understood. When we move from this understanding of liberty to a more plausible conception that preserves its standing as an affirmative value, we observe that liberty shouldn’t be understood as the freedom to do whatever we want, but rather the freedom to act as long as we respect the rights, properly understood, of others. (Galston 2005, p. 17)

Galston is arguing that we are not free to do whatever we want, that freedom thus understood is not an affirmative value, but also that this conclusion follows from value pluralism. Value pluralism defines for us ‘the broad range of legitimate variation’ (Galston 2005, p. 2); and reveals for us ‘the range of choiceworthy human lives’ and ‘intrinsic goods’ for us to choose between (Galston 2002a, pp. 37–8). While value pluralism sets before us these intrinsic goods, the freedom to do as we please is not one of them: ‘values must pass a goodness test […] [and] Berlin’s account of liberty does not pass that test’ (Galston 2005, p. 17). If freedom is to be an affirmative value, it cannot be the freedom to do whatever we want. We are not free to be intolerant, in particular. There is only a certain range of things we are free to do, the parameters of which are, Galston maintains, determined by value pluralism. All of this should sound very familiar. As we know, it repeats what Shklar had said in her second book, Legalism, namely, that it is in diversity alone that freedom

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can be realised, where the term ‘freedom’ refers to the freedom to profess moral views that cover a wide range of moral and political attitudes. The freedom to do as we please is not a (affirmative) value, Galston concludes. But have we been given a compelling reason as to why that is the case? Galston shows that negative freedom may be in conflict with expressive liberty (and therefore the toleration of diversity as well), but value pluralism entails that moral claims do come into conflict with each other (and will continue to do so), and that this is not in itself reason to assume that what we thought to be a value in fact is not. Indeed, Galston can advance his argument against the freedom to do as we please only by effectively abandoning a value pluralist conception of freedom. His conclusion is that negative freedom is a value insofar as it does not violate expressive liberty: we are free to do as we please only if what we please to do is compatible with the toleration of diversity. This could be the case only if values are rank-ordered, according to which expressive liberty has priority as a general rule over the freedom to do as we please. Galston himself is aware that such a line of argument is incompatible with his value pluralism (Galston 2005, p. 11), and yet this is precisely what he ends up doing in order to reject the idea that the freedom to do as we please is a genuine value. Galston’s arguments therefore are unsuccessful, but they illustrate precisely the unease felt even among value pluralists about Berlin’s pluralist conception of freedom. And it is this, I think, that explains Shklar’s line of argument in her early work. At this time Shklar does not provide a value pluralist conception of freedom, even though she does offer a value pluralist approach to moral conflict more generally. She is just one more value pluralist who finds Berlin’s ideas about freedom unsettling. Like Galston, she rejects the idea of the freedom to do as we please and in its place thinks of freedom as limited by the requirement to tolerate difference. In addition, the fact that Shklar never embraces Berlin’s conception of freedom helps explain how her approach to political thought changed so dramatically, with the emergence of a value monist position in her mature work. It is this inconsistency in her early work that leaves open a door that, eventually, by the time of her mature work, leads to her openly and explicitly endorsing value monism. This may be true, but does it follow that she is wrong in her early work to proceed as she does? I have said that her position is inconsistent, and that is the case. A consistent value pluralist position will accept that we are free to do as we please, that freedom thus understood is one value among others, but also that it can come into conflict with other values.

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So Shklar is not a consistent value pluralist in her early work. However, this is important not only because it shows a lack of theoretical rigour on her part. There are normative implications of the position adopted in her early work as well. As we saw in the previous chapter, those who put forward a value monist conception of freedom will be, as a result, unable to recognise and accept the moral harms done in its name, that is, violations of our freedom to do as we please. As Shklar says of Rousseau at this time, it did not appear that genuine authority limits freedom. This is the value monist conception of freedom sitting uneasily within her overall value pluralist position during her early period of work. At this time Shklar is able to identify and recognise the moral harms done in the name of other values. What she cannot see, however, are the harms done when people are forced to be free. The moral significance of this short-sightedness becomes apparent in particular when we consider projects of ambitious, far-reaching reform, in particular those inspired by utopian hopes for a just society.

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4 Utopia

A recurrent challenge for political theorists is to determine what role, if any, utopianism is to play in politics. Here I approach the issue in a negative way, by considering why we object to it, when we do. That is, on what basis do we reject utopianism or, as is more often the case, single out its illegitimate manifestations? Utopias are by definition demanding. Indeed, when we do object to utopianism it is because it demands too much of us in the name of some moral ideal or principle, for example, a utopian ideal of the just society. And utopianism is thought to demand too much either because of epistemological concerns that whatever is said in its name has little or no justification, or because of normative concerns that whenever a utopian project is pursued it is at the expense of some other basic moral commitment, including, as is often the case, individual liberty. In recent years epistemological concerns have been to the fore in discussions of utopianism. This is the case with the arguments of political non-moralists. And, as we have seen, Shklar’s scepticism has been an important influence in those developments. But arguably this sceptical turn has pushed to one side what had been a well-established value pluralist line of argument, according to which utopianism generates moral conflicts and as a result demands moral sacrifices (see Fives 2019b). Indeed, we know that Shklar herself, in her mature work, also moves away from and rejects just such a pluralist approach to moral conflict. As we shall see in this chapter, her liberalism of fear also represents a categorical rejection of an earlier pluralist analysis of utopianism. Shklar remains a sceptic throughout her career. In her mature work, she calls for an entirely nonutopian approach to politics; and in her first published book she assumes that we lack the utopian faith necessary

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for radicalism to be meaningful now. However, despite her consistent scepticism, she also moves from a pluralist to a monist position on moral conflict, and it is this that, I argue, is decisive in explaining what are dramatic shifts in her utopianism between her early and mature work. In her early work she advances the pluralist argument that any political project can be faced with unresolved moral conflicts. In contrast, in her mature work she takes a monist stance on moral conflict. And although she characterises her mature work as entirely nonutopian, in fact, not only does she distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate utopianism, but this distinction itself is based on her value monism, and in particular on a monist reading of Rousseau’s account of freedom. Her objections to utopianism in her mature work in fact refer only to what she calls prophetic (transformative) utopianism, while her own proposals presuppose the legitimacy of what I call here, borrowing from Shklar’s own terminology, normative (reformist) utopias. Starting from the basic norm of the avoidance of cruelty, this is a utopian vision according to which the most important freedom is the right to fight for one’s rights, and where in addition our higher self can be a genuine form of political liberty. For the mature Shklar, utopian projects can be legitimate, but only when they do not violate this basic norm and so do not infringe on freedom thus understood. It is in this way that Shklar becomes increasingly reformist in her mature work, without ever leaving behind her liberalism. Her mature work is hostile to the type of utopianism that rejects liberalism and scepticism, and yet, for all that, her mature argument is a value monist one, and so is open to similar criticisms that can be advanced against other monists. Pluralism, scepticism, and utopia

Political theorists aim to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate utopianism. The question remains: how can this distinction be justified? A good starting point is Rousseau’s account of freedom, given that it is the focus for so much of this debate. Freedom is understood by Rousseau as obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself. As moral freedom is rational self-control, it is the opposite of the mere following of appetite: it also explains why it makes sense to talk of being forced to be free. That is, if we deviate from what we, as fellow citizens, have freely agreed to (e.g. the general will), then we can be forced to comply and in this way have our freedom (our true, or moral, freedom) guaranteed. In this chapter I am interested in the utopian dimension of Rousseau’s thinking. And

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one of his utopian arguments is that, insofar as we live together in a true republic, like his Spartan utopian ideal, then coercion will be unnecessary when we are forced to be free. This is the case because, as Shklar says, Sparta represents for Rousseau ‘a picture of the public education of perfectly socialized men – who do not suffer the miseries of actual men’: Because citizenship is a matter of self-repression, Spartan man is also free, in at least one of the senses that Rousseau attached to that word. Not only is he secure from the hostility of his fellow citizens, he is not subject to external coercive pressures, because by the time he reaches maturity his education has made him completely self-disciplined. It may be a morality of a lower order than that of the pure voice of conscience. However, it remains self-directing. For although society supports and encourages the individual, making it relatively easy for him to do his duty, it does not go so far as to impair his independence and moral responsibility. (Shklar 1969, p. 16; emphasis in original)

This is a utopian ideal of full compliance: in this case, full compliance with the general will, with the laws we prescribe for ourselves. To revisit the terms used in the last chapter, it is also a utopia where authority liberates. It is a situation where individuals are forced to be free and yet this does not impair their independence and moral responsibility. Who will defend Rousseau’s utopianism now? Given his claim that we can be forced to be free, it is understandable that some see Rousseau’s work as dystopian rather than utopian. As we have seen, however, Rawls for one rejects that interpretation, concluding that there is no implicit totalitarianism here. And his endorsement of Rousseau is explained in large part by Rawls’s own value monist approach to moral conflict, according to which it is rational, behind a veil of ignorance, to give priority to the principle of equal liberty. Thus, Rawls defends his own ‘realistic utopia’, where ‘the gravest forms of political injustice are eliminated’ (Rawls 1999, pp. 6–7). But it is nonetheless distinguished from utopian projects that are, he believes, merely biased in their justification and that will sacrifice equal liberty in the name of other, lesser, normative claims (including, for example, his own second principle of justice dealing with social and economic inequalities). His is a liberal utopian ideal. Nonetheless, like Rousseau, Rawls is assuming that one can be forced to be free in a legitimate utopia. As we saw when analysing Rawls’s conception of freedom, if one is forced to refrain from acting in ways that violate the principle of equal liberty, one is simply prevented from doing things

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that not only have no merit in the first place, but which one is not, in the first place, free to do. Value pluralists, of course, reject this approach to moral conflict and to Rousseau, and hence to utopianism as well. As we know, pluralists maintain that when we resolve a moral conflict, often we do what is wrong in order to do what is right: we are left with regret. Indeed, what we learn from Berlin’s work is that even legitimate utopian projects are likely to generate unresolved moral conflicts. In particular, we may be required to infringe liberty in order to pursue our utopian ideal. While removing some options may, all things considered, be justified, it still counts as a violation of negative liberty, even when options are removed in order to guarantee a particular conception of liberty (Berlin 2002 [1958], p. 169, pp. 172–3; see also Gray 2013 [1996], p. 61; Crowder 2004, p. 75). For Berlin, this sort of conflict is a perennial feature of politics, and yet a monist like Rousseau does not acknowledge it. For that very reason, Rousseau’s approach to utopianism becomes dystopian: it is Rousseau’s ‘assumption of the coincidence of authority and liberty’ that is the starting point from which we gradually reach the notion of absolute despotism (Berlin 2002 [1952], pp. 43, 47). The value pluralist position is that when we make a decision in a situation of moral conflict we will do something wrong insofar as we are required to violate some specific moral value. I have been defending value pluralism up to this point. However, we must address the fact that not all wrongs are equal, and for that reason not all utopian projects will be equally in the wrong. If that is so, pluralism, for it to be defensible, must distinguish between greater and lesser wrongs. The question is, can pluralists do so, given that they reject the whole project of rank-ordering moral claims? Perhaps they can. Value pluralists do maintain that there is no ‘cardinal’ ranking of values, because we lack a ‘single scale of units of value along which items can be precisely measured’, but nonetheless, in many cases we will be able to make comparisons of better and worse (that is, ordinal rankings), which in turn makes ‘deliberation and choice’ possible (Galston 2005, pp. 12–13). The point being made here is that when we arrive at a moral judgement we do not necessarily employ a scale. Of course, sometimes we do employ a scale, as when we make utilitarian calculations, for example by judging a utopian reform on the basis of the number of people it will benefit, or the scale of the improvements it will create in, for example, public health, and so on. But in many other cases we do not have a cardinal scale to employ, and yet we

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do make judgements. For example, this is the case when we judge whether the costs generated by utopian reforms in respect of one moral claim (say, individual liberty) nonetheless are justified by the benefits of those same reforms in respect of another (say, public health). If value pluralism is no bar to making comparisons of better and worse, then value pluralists can distinguish between greater and lesser harms resulting from moral conflicts. If that is the case, they need not be hamstrung by regret in situations where the wrongs committed are relatively trivial and the benefits quite substantial: for example (to continue with our theme), when there are only minor infringements of freedom, and they result in significant improvements in public health. What this entails is that pluralists should be able to rationalise why a utopian project is, all things considered, justified, despite the wrongs it involves, and this is the case either because the likely gains from the utopian project substantially outweigh those wrongs or because those wrongs are close to negligible in themselves. A related point is that, if we are faced with a moral conflict concerning negative freedom, we also need to distinguish between greater and lesser violations of freedom. Indeed, Berlin himself attempts to do just that. He maintains that ‘the extent of my freedom’ can be made greater or lesser depending on: (i) ‘how many possibilities are open to me’, (ii) ‘how easy or difficult each of these possibilities is to actualise’, (iii) how important these possibilities are ‘in my plan of life’, (iv) ‘how far they are closed and opened by deliberate human acts’, and (v) what value I and the ‘general sentiment of the society’ places on them (Berlin 2004 [1958], p. 177 n. 1). If freedom can be greater or lesser in extent, so too can the violation of freedom. This should be borne in mind when considering Berlin’s claim that, in starting from monism, we gradually reach […] absolute despotism. In fact, not only is this conclusion too simplistic, but it does not follow from Berlin’s own premises. What Berlin himself says above about freedom suggests that we need to distinguish between different forms of value monism, and to do so with respect to their comparative impacts on freedom. Not all monist utopias are equally bad, as not all will violate moral values (in this case, liberty) to the same extent. Making such a distinction is also necessary if value pluralists are to respond to an important counter-argument. As Ronald Dworkin rightly points out, many value monists (and this is true of the mature Shklar, of course) actively oppose the worst excesses of illegitimate power (Dworkin 2006, pp. 105–16). Value pluralists surely must be able to distinguish between what is wrong with the monism evident in Shklar’s

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liberalism of fear, on the one hand, and what is wrong with the monism of a totalitarian, tyrannical political project, on the other. Perhaps it is unfair to say that Berlin is not alive to the importance of making such distinctions, but at times he clearly fails to do so. Nonetheless, his own discussion of the extent of freedom suggests a way in which a pluralist like him can or could do so. I also think that there is one clear deficiency in Dworkin’s critique of value pluralism. He maintains that the consequences of pluralism can be just as bad as those of monism. They can both be guilty of violating individual liberty, and ‘whether the danger of the [monist] hedgehog is greater than the danger of the [pluralist] fox, as Berlin thought, seems very much to depend on time and place’ (Dworkin 2006, p. 107). The problem with making this point is that Dworkin is, on the one hand, stating the obvious, while, on the other, failing to see the most important difference between monism and pluralism. Of course, pluralists may act in ways that violate negative liberty: Berlin, for one, is perfectly frank about that. The real issue is that Dworkin is unable to see that it is monists like himself who will remain unaware of the ways in which even legitimate utopian projects violate negative freedom, and that this is morally significant, even for monist approaches aimed at protecting individual freedom. As Dworkin says in critique of any pluralist conception of liberty, if a state does not wrong any citizen when, according to the proposed definition, it invades liberty – then the proposed conception of liberty is inadequate. It declares a violation when a violation is no wrong, and it therefore does not show us what the special importance of liberty is. (Dworkin 2006, p. 115)

He goes on to say that there are only ever infringements of liberty in cases where violations ‘are really breaches of some special responsibility for which a state should feel remorse’ (Dworkin 2006, p. 115). But this does not help to clarify things at all. Dworkin’s point that there is no violation of liberty in an act that does not wrong any citizen simply begs the question: he is assuming that if a person is not harmed in respect of some other value (something other than the value of negative freedom), then the removal of options does not count as a violation of liberty. But that is what he needs to show by way of argument rather than assume at the outset: namely that removing options in itself is not a wrong. At the same time, he is also clearly assuming that there is no violation of liberty if the removal of options has some overriding justification. That is why, as Williams points out, Dworkin himself will remain unaware

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that freedom has been violated at all in pursuing the egalitarian utopian project that he champions (Williams 2005, pp. 120–2). The consequences of these points are quite important not just for Dworkin but for other value monist liberals, not least Shklar. The fact that they are self-avowed liberals does not entail that they should be free from scrutiny in regard to how their proposals will impact on human freedom. What we can say is that their line of argument conflates two quite separate things: the extent to which freedom is infringed and the fact of freedom being infringed. It may be true that liberal forms of monism will be less detrimental to individual freedom than their illiberal counterparts. But it does not follow that, as Dworkin clearly assumes, there are no wrongs done to individual freedom by such liberal programmes. I have been trying to show that it matters, and matters significantly, whether we take a pluralist or monist approach to utopianism. I return to the distinction between pluralism and monism below in greater detail, but first there is the further distinction between scepticism and nonscepticism to consider. As we have already seen, for a growing number of political thinkers it is the non-scepticism of Rawls’s ideal theory that is its most objectionable feature. As Rawls himself says, behind the veil of ignorance we choose principles of justice ‘suitable for favorable conditions’, and these principles ‘belong to ideal theory and set up an aim to guide social reform’ (Rawls 1971, p. 245). But his sceptical critics, such as Colin Farrelly, see no reason to believe that a philosopher ‘can easily determine (or has privileged access to) what constitutes “best foreseeable conditions”’ for a realistic utopia (Farrelly 2007, p. 845). This critique of Rawls is merely one part of a wider sceptical appraisal of utopianism: sceptics raise doubts about not only the justifiability of knowledge claims made in support of utopian ideals but also the feasibility of implementing such ideals in practice (Gaus 2016, p. 141). Political realism is just one strand of the body of work developing in response to Rawls’s political thought. Realists say that we need to start from political practice rather than from abstract theoretical ideals. This is the case, as it is practice rather than philosophy that determines when utopian projects retain or loose legitimacy: There will have been no great change in the argumentative character of the legitimation or the criticisms of it. The change is in the historical setting in terms of which one or the other makes sense. (Williams 2005, p. 27)

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As political thinkers, we should focus on what ‘makes sense’ ‘here and now’ (Williams 2005, p. 11). And what makes sense is determined by deeds (actions and contexts) and not by thoughts. Pluralists and sceptics therefore appear to be as one in rejecting Rawlsian utopianism. It is also true that Williams is both a sceptic and, like Berlin, a pluralist (see Berlin and Williams 1994). However, we cannot simply equate these two lines of argument. On the one hand, Berlin himself is described as a non-sceptic, for whom ‘values are matters of knowledge for us’ (Gray 2013 [1996], p. 77). On the other hand, many of Williams’s realist interpreters take on board his scepticism and pay little or no attention to his pluralism. What they take from Williams is that there is no ‘grounding’, no ‘guaranteeing that what we do is ultimately right, good, correct’ (Sagar 2016, p. 368; see also Hall 2014; Hall and Sleat 2017). Realists are interested in more than his scepticism, of course, as they also focus on Williams’s contention that the content of political thought is, or should be, distinctively political ( Jubb 2015). Nonetheless, the point is that Williams’s scepticism looks very different when shorn of his value pluralism. For example, Marc Philp warns that realists, insofar as they ignore value pluralism, are in danger of simply devaluing the political role of morality (even a morality that is the focal point for various conflicts) (Philp 2012, p. 634). It is this suggestion, namely that scepticism and pluralism offer something different, that I take up here, a suggestion that is confirmed when we turn to Shklar’s work on utopianism. We have already seen how, in her first published book, After Utopia, Shklar takes a stand of reasoned scepticism with respect to utopian thought, including Rousseau’s. Her mature work, the liberalism of fear, also is characterised by what is, in part at least, a sceptical decision to put cruelty first among the vices, her substituting a summum malum for the summum bonum of much utopian thinking: ‘Intellectual modesty does not imply that the liberalism of fear has no content,’ she says, ‘only that it is entirely nonutopian. In that respect it may well be what Emerson called a party of memory rather than a party of hope’ (Shklar 1989a, p. 26). Shklar’s affinity for Emerson is an important factor here. It is evident when she talks about the way Emerson sought to combine scepticism with a commitment to democracy. As a democrat, he ‘may have to give up utopian enterprises […] The pursuit of the perfect city is an insult to the actual town’ (Shklar 1998 [1990c], p. 61). As democrats, we should ‘look at the reform of other people from their point of view, to consider their consent’, but it is also the case that to do so ‘must introduce doubts

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of the most severe sort into the mind of the reforming agent’ (Shklar 1998 [1990c], p. 61). Shklar’s is the party of memory, the party of democrats assailed by the most severe doubts. As a result, it is said that her work is directly opposed to Rawls’s utopianism. It is true that her scepticism is offering something very different to political moralism. Rawls knows that his account of the original position, where principles of justice are chosen, is indebted to Kant, as well as to Rousseau (Rawls 1971, p. 264). And some commentators discern Shklar’s ‘never quite explicit’ objection to Rawls’s liberalism in her refusal to accept a Kantian ‘rationalistic view of human nature’ (Benhabib 1996, p. 57). It is not just Rawls’s approach that Shklar’s scepticism is thought to be incompatible with. Because of its scepticism, it is argued, Shklar’s work is ‘not a political or moral theory or prescription for social reform’ (Rosenblum 1996, p. 43); although it is not itself ‘anti-utopian’ it is ‘non-utopian’ (Forrester 2012, p. 260); or indeed it is a Cold War ‘anti-utopianism’ arising from her opposition to ‘ideological extremism’ (Thaler 2017, p. 6). It is an example of ‘negative morality’, in that it does ‘not add up to a moral system or decision procedure’, and instead tells us merely ‘what to think about’ rather than ‘what to think’ (Misra 2016, p. 86), and, in this light, it inspires Williams’s ‘realist’ political theory (Sagar 2016, p. 381). Although not a perfect consensus, there does seem to be broad agreement that her scepticism stands opposed to normative and utopian thought. But just how accurate are these interpretations of her work? It is indeed the case that Shklar, in her early work, concludes that we cannot implement Rousseau’s utopian ideal. Yet, we also know that, in her mature work, she adopts a position on Rousseau’s conceptualisation of freedom that is more in line with Rawls’s value monism. What we shall see here, in addition, is that she defends and champions quite substantial social reforms and does so not only by appealing to normative principles but also by engaging with Rousseau’s utopian ideas. While she remains a sceptic throughout, it is the radical transformation in her approach to moral conflict that explains the equally profound changes we see in her utopianism over the course of her career. This suggests that scepticism is far from being the most significant characteristic of Shklar’s utopianism, and that, when it comes to the critical understanding of utopianism more generally, how we respond to moral conflict matters, and matters greatly.

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This minimum of utopian faith

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Despite what its title would suggest, we may with some justification wonder whether Shklar’s first major work is actually a book about utopia at all. She later says that the title of the book was chosen by her editors, and it was only afterwards that she ‘eventually became a minor expert’ on ‘the utopian literature’ (Shklar 1996 [1989b], p. 274). But I would argue that her humility is largely misplaced here. In fact, throughout the book there is a clear and sustained interest shown in the utopianism of Enlightenment thought, or, more precisely, what came after it – both the romanticism of Herder and those it influenced, in particular, existentialism, as well as the conservatism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. So, what is Enlightenment utopianism? The Enlightenment, for Shklar, is characterised by faith in human progress, by the associated belief ‘that a purely intellectual appeal was sufficient to perfect conduct’, and, finally, by the anarchic conviction that ‘Force was not only unnecessary in a society composed of reasonable persons; it was the prime instrument of unreason’ (Shklar 1957, pp. 5, 8). At its heart is a view of freedom according to which there is no essential tension between the individual and society, given that ‘man was a rational and social being’ (Shklar 1957, p. 10). Now, while Rousseau cannot simply be thought of as an Enlightenment thinker, not least given his sceptical pessimism about the possibilities of attaining freedom, nonetheless, he too views freedom in this way. And Shklar contrasts this Enlightenment vision with romanticism. What Hegel referred to as the ‘unhappy consciousness’ has lost all faith in the Enlightenment ‘but is unable to find a home for its spiritual longing in the present or the future’ (Shklar 1957, p. 15). For the romantics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as for their existentialist heirs, such as Arendt, Karl Jaspers, and Jean-Paul Sartre, modern societies are dominated by the masses and by the imperatives of technology, and so are a threat to individual freedom conceptualised as freedom from all social control. In After Utopia, Shklar explicitly rejects the romantic position on utopia. She simply does not accept that modernity is composed of nothing more than mass societies, and that there is no significant difference between, say, democracy and tyranny: ‘It is only in the eyes of a romantic’, she says, ‘that the citizen and the subject seem alike, that citizenship is onerous and law a coercive force, indistinguishable from arbitrary rule’ (Shklar 1957, pp. 146–7). She also wants to reject later conservative

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beliefs, influenced by romanticism, equating all mass movements in modern society, and in particular democracy, with totalitarianism. Empirical observation should be sufficient to show that, contrary to conservative predictions, ‘totalitarianism has not, in fact, triumphed in countries that were at all notable for their democratic government’ (Shklar 1957, p. 247). In any case, what matters, morally speaking, is not state planning per se, but ‘what types of planning are dangerous and […] whose freedom suffers under a fully or partially planned economy’ (Shklar 1957, p. 249). Not only can we distinguish between better and worse regimes, in large part based on how they affect freedom, we must also take responsibility for the political choices we make in responding to tyrannical developments. As Shklar says, referencing Berlin’s 1954 essay ‘Historical Inevitability’, we are not the mere victims of impersonal historical forces, the forces of mass society pushing us towards totalitarianism (Shklar 1957, p. 263). But if we can, as Shklar says, take responsibility for the direction our society takes, this cannot be understood as an endorsement of Enlightenment utopianism. At this time hers is a sceptical position on utopianism, a scepticism evident in her interpretation of Rousseau. For Rousseau, true freedom is to be found only in submission to law and to the voice of conscience. Can true freedom, in this sense, now be achieved? As Shklar says in the final passages of After Utopia, this requires radicalism: Radicalism is not the readiness to indulge in revolutionary violence; it is the belief that people can control and improve themselves and, collectively, their social environment. Without this minimum of utopian faith no radicalism is meaningful. (Shklar 1957, p. 219)

At this time Shklar adopts what she calls a sceptical position on the possibility for utopian thinking. This ‘reasoned scepticism’, ‘this disenchantment – perhaps it is realism’, was thought preferable to the ‘cultural despair and fatalism’ that she saw in conservative critics of, among other things, Rousseau’s account of moral freedom (Shklar 1957, pp. 218, 272–3). I have already said that Shklar’s position on freedom at this time is an ambivalent one. The same ambivalence is evident in her understanding of utopianism. She insists that there are moral differences between modern regimes, and that we are responsible for how we respond to even the worst regimes. Unlike romantics, therefore, she does not equate all modern societies with totalitarianism. Nonetheless, she admits to being overwhelmed by the insights of psychology and anthropology and of political observation, insights that silence the urge to deal with politics

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in moral terms. While this does not justify romantic cultural despair or conservative fatalism, it does call for reasoned scepticism. We do not have the minimum of utopian faith needed for radicalism to be meaningful. For one reading of her work, Shklar here is saying that the Enlightenment offers the only moral benchmark for us, but it is one that we cannot attain: she diagnosed that the ‘rationalist optimism’ of the Enlightenment ‘had become incredible’, but nonetheless her approach ‘put the theoretical premium on the conditions for a believable Enlightenment and an actionable radicalism’ (Moyn 2019, p. 42). The problem with this reading is that it fails to notice the ambivalence of her position at this time. She is not saying that although an Enlightenment utopianism is the only imaginable approach to political thought, nonetheless it is impossible to implement. In fact, she calls on us to make normative judgements concerning how different regimes affect freedom, and she is holding us morally responsible for how we respond to illegitimate regimes. The problem is that, given her reasoned scepticism at this point, she does not show how such judgements are at all possible. Therefore she is in an impasse, and the question we must ask is, can she find a way out? In the next section I look at how Shklar’s thought develops over the remainder of the early period of her work. What we see is that her second book, Legalism, promises a solution in an explicitly value pluralist position on utopianism. At this point she still considers Rousseauian utopianism unviable. Now, however, through a pluralist analysis, she concludes that this is the case not because we lack utopian faith but because of the irreconcilable conflicts at the heart of Rousseau’s moral vision. Democracy or the most perfect Hobbism?

We have already seen how Shklar adopts a value pluralist approach in her second book, Legalism. Now, I want to focus on her pluralist approach to utopianism at this time. I start with what she says about moral conflicts between different dimensions of justice itself. Such conflicts are particularly relevant for our discussion, given the centrality of justice as a motivating force for so much utopian politics. What is justice? It is the ‘disposition to give each man his due’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 113). You are due something insofar as you deserve it; it is what you merit. However, there are several competing conceptions of what is due to each, based on such diverse principles of merit (or desert) as equality, need, work, rank, and so on. They can come into conflict as well. The principle of equality may suggest that I deserve something (a

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guaranteed basic income, say) that, according to the principle of work, say, is not due to me (for example, if I have refused to work, or have worked but done so with negligence, and so on). As a pluralist, Shklar assumes that moral diversity can leave us with unresolved moral conflicts concerning not only these different conceptions of justice but also different systems or structures of justice. Therefore, commutative justice, namely ‘the maintaining of this [just] system of distribution in individual cases’, is ‘never even approximated, because at any given time there are several competing notions as to just who merits what in the first place’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 115). In concluding that commutative justice is never even approximated, the argument of Shklar’s second book does echo the reasoned scepticism of her first book. What is new, however, is that this scepticism is now permeated by value pluralism: It is because we cannot possibly expect to agree on what we ourselves deserve and on what is owed to others (because each person is likely to suffer from moral conflicts, from being torn between different standards as well as different inclinations) that we constantly feel that injustice is being done even by those who accept the legalistic ethos. Even the most impartial and fair-minded people, and especially those who are in a position to impose political or judicial decisions upon us, will seem unjust sooner or later. Even when the rules to be applied, the nature of merit, are not challenged, no two cases are really so alike that equal treatment under a rule can be realized to everyone’s satisfaction. (Shklar 1964a, pp. 116–17)

This is, in part, a sceptical point about the limitations of human knowledge: even when we all accept that a given principle of justice should be applied (say, the principle of work), it will affect different people in different ways even when the principle requires that they be treated in the same way. And so, we will simply be unable to reward people equally who have performed equally well in terms of their work contribution. Such a sceptical argument about how difficult it is to implement any one moral principle would not be out of place in Shklar’s first book. But there is also a new, pluralist line of argument as well, one that was not present at all before. The argument of her second book is that some will always feel, and with good reason, that they have been treated unjustly with respect to one criterion of merit (say, work) even though they have been treated justly with respect to another (say, equality). This is the case because each person is likely to suffer from moral conflicts. For example, I may receive a basic income because this is what is due to me based on the principle

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of equality, but feel unjustly treated because I have not also received higher remuneration due to me because of my comparatively excellent work record. Monists of course do believe that they can resolve these conflicts and so bring to an end that sense of injustice. For example, one part of Rawls’s second principle of justice (the so-called ‘difference principle’) claims to provide a way to resolve such conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth, by stating that inequalities are justified only insofar as they are necessary to ‘improve the expectations of the least advantaged members of society’ (Rawls, 1971, p. 75). Monists like Rawls maintain that the real meaning of justice is represented by one principle; and that this principle of justice also provides the general rule for resolving moral conflicts (it eliminates the competing principle). For example, Rawls’s argument entails that, when considering the distribution of income and wealth, the principle of ‘work’ (or any other contributionbased principle of merit) is eliminated when it conflicts with the overriding necessity of improving the position of the least well-off. However, to adopt such a monist approach, Shklar maintains, ‘is merely to hide the real conflict about the nature of merit’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 116). Legalism thus provides a pluralist position on moral conflict, and, as we know, in an article published in the same year, ‘Rousseau’s Images of Authority’, Shklar also offers a pluralist interpretation of Rousseau’s conception of freedom. What we can now see is that in this article she is also offering a pluralist reading of Rousseau’s utopianism. As we know, Shklar concludes that the choice between the utopian visions of Émile and The Social Contract represents a conflict of ideals. Each is valid, and yet neither is likely to be realized. Hence, if we combine what is said in Legalism with what is said in ‘Rousseau’s Images of Authority’, we have a pluralist approach not just to moral conflict but also to Rousseau’s utopianism. We need to emphasise this fact, as it has gone unnoticed by Shklar’s critics. As we have already seen, Kerry Whiteside’s analysis of Shklar’s early work on utopianism focuses almost exclusively on her sceptical arguments in After Utopia, and not at all on the value pluralist arguments of Legalism. As a result, he misses altogether the latter’s thesis that we are faced with moral conflicts and have not identified the general rule for their resolution (Whiteside 1999, pp. 503, 513). Ashenden and Hess do not mention Shklar’s pluralist argument in Legalism; they also omit her pluralist interpretation of Rousseau at this time. In their discussion of Legalism they note that Shklar is ‘a student of Rousseau’, and so she is well aware of Rousseau’s solution to ‘the problem of how the many

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are to become one’, namely one that ‘requires our “denaturing”’ (Ashenden and Hess 2016, p. 525). They conclude that it is for that reason ‘surprising that Shklar rides over these matters so freely in asserting that in the present [i.e. at the time of Legalism] natural law arguments are coercive of consensus’ (Ashenden and Hess 2016, p. 525; see also Moyn 2014). Does Shklar in fact ride over so freely what Rousseau has to say about our denaturing? As we know, the point she makes in ‘Rousseau’s Images of Authority’ is that there are various moral conflicts at the heart of Rousseau’s work. Now one of these conflicts is between the rule of law, on the one hand, and personal authority, on the other. It is also out of this conflict that Rousseau’s proposal to reconstruct the citizens of a republic (i.e. their denaturing) arises. On the one hand, according to Shklar, Rousseau assumes that one ‘must have the pure rule of law in which all personal authority is eliminated’; and this is the case as ‘only law is compatible with freedom’ (Shklar 1964b, p. 922). On the other hand, however, Rousseau believes that the rule of law is ‘impossible’, and so instead ‘one should accept the most perfect arbitrary, unlimited personal rule’, and this is the case in large part because ‘laws do not grow spontaneously in society. A great legislator must not only invent them, but create the moral climate for their acceptance’ (Shklar 1964b, p. 922). People, as they are, are incapable of generating or adhering to laws that will liberate. For that reason, a great legislator is needed so as to create such laws and to create the moral climate needed for their maintenance. Shklar’s reading of Rousseau remains a sceptical one, as well. Hence, she does stress that Rousseau is pessimistic about the feasibility of any such utopian scheme: The legislator, built on the model of Lycurgus, was to reconstruct every member of the community on the stern Spartan model. However, […] he [Rousseau] seriously doubted whether this ambitious project could be accomplished. (Shklar 1964b, p. 923)

As Shklar says in an essay from the following year, ‘The Political Theory of Utopia: From Melancholy to Nostalgia’, there is one strand of utopian literature that does not pretend to provide a blueprint for political action. For example, Thomas More never believed that his utopian model could be implemented, and this is because the function it served was a ‘critical’ one: it ‘was a model, an ideal pattern that invited contemplation and judgment but did not entail any other activity’ (Shklar 1998 [1965], p. 165). This is a utopianism that forces us to contemplate how far humans are from attaining these utopian ideals, and, given his pessimism, there

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is an element of this in Rousseau’s thought as well. Yet Shklar also stresses that what Rousseau’s utopianism presents us with is an ideal rendered unlikely not just by human weakness, but by unresolved moral conflict as well: There are only two options, democracy, which is for angels, or the most perfect Hobbism. This stark either/or is very revealing. It is a genuine conflict between ideals, not a choice between the possible and the impossible. Neither one of the ideals is likely to be realized, but both are valid. The actuality of bad kings does not invalidate the ideal of beneficial personal rule any more than the actuality of illegality destroys the ideal of the pure rule of law. Here, as on many other occasions, Rousseau was torn by bipolar ideals – both of which could be used effectively to criticize actuality. (Shklar 1964b, p. 922)

This could not be any clearer as a value pluralist reading of Rousseau. It is not just a question of whether the utopian ideal is possible, Shklar says, but that it itself represents a genuine conflict between ideals. It is not that the personal rule of a strong leader is, in some unfortunate instances, the only possible solution, and that we are forced by circumstances to accept that solution. Rather, it is that there is an ideal of beneficial personal rule; it is a moral ideal; and it comes into conflict with other, equally valid, ideals. And, while she believes that Rousseau’s utopianism reflects back the moral conflicts at the heart of his thought, Shklar criticises other utopian thinkers, in particular More, for their efforts to eliminate all such conflicts: [U]topia, the moralist’s artefact, is of necessity a changeless harmonious whole, in which a shared recognition of truth unites all the citizens. Truth is single and only error is multiple. In utopia, there cannot, by definition, be any room for eccentricity. (Shklar 1998 [1965], p. 165)

More’s utopia is, she says, an ‘intellectualist fantasy’, a fantasy of those who ‘identified themselves more closely with the dead of Athens and Rome than with their own despised and uncouth contemporaries’ (Shklar 1998 [1965], p. 165). Rousseau, in sharp contrast, is alive to the conflict between real, valid, ideals. The value pluralist approach to utopia in Shklar’s early work is also evident in an essay on creation myths and their political significance. In this essay she starts with Hesiod, before moving on to Rousseau and others. And she believes that Rousseau follows ‘the Hesiodic pattern’ towards the creation myth, a pattern that ‘was essentially philosophic, critical, and in search of understanding rather than of moral rules’, and

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one that can be called ‘religious in the cultural sense of that term’ (Shklar 1998 [1972], p. 141). The reason why we need such myths, according to Shklar’s reading, is our confrontation with ‘intractable ethical paradoxes’: The need for myths is most likely to arise […] when they are faced with extreme moral perplexity, when they reach the limits of their analytical capacities and powers of endurance. In the face of intellectual despair and intolerable moral tension, men turn to what is called religion. The myth does not ‘solve’ intractable ethical paradoxes, but it is the only available vehicle of expression for an overwhelming sense of such paradox. (Shklar 1998 [1972], p. 141)

These utopian myths (in Rousseau and in Hesiod) arise from our experience of moral conflict, and do not themselves solve those ethical paradoxes. Other creation myths, however, took a very different route. The Old and the New Testament, in particular, required ‘humble obedience’ from humanity when faced with the perfection of God the creator of all life. The Hesiod pattern, in contrast, ‘solves nothing but illuminates everything’, and, as such, appeals to those ‘unable to rest with any obvious solution to its most tormenting paradoxes’ (Shklar 1998 [1972], p. 141). There are, therefore, real conflicts of ideals in Rousseau’s utopianism, in particular between the rule of law and personal authority (between democracy and the most perfect Hobbism), and this reflects the fact that his is an approach that does not claim to solve such ethical paradoxes. That is Shklar’s view of Rousseau and of his utopianism at this time. But, as a result, it is not at all fair to say of the young Shklar that she rides over so freely what Rousseau has to say about our denaturing. She is not assuming that Rousseau is implacably opposed to the idea of rulers who are themselves above the law. Rather, her point is, firstly, that the decision about whether to put a great legislator in place creates a moral dilemma, and secondly, that monist approaches to such political decisions have totalitarian implications. That is what she says in Legalism about deontological ethics. Not only does she doubt that we can agree on the general rule for resolving moral conflicts, as deontological ethicists assume; she also warns that agreement-as-an-end-in-itself can only be achieved by totalitarian methods. This follows, she believes, if the diversity of moral claims is ‘something given’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 63). The same applies to those who wish to implement a Rousseauian utopia. Rousseau’s work does not provide us with one utopian vision to follow. If we pursue his Spartan ideal, say, we do so at the expense of those who would instead be committed to the ideal of the Golden Age. If we put in place a great

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legislator, we offend against the rule of law. And so on. In each scenario, we ought to pursue each option; and yet we cannot do both. Whatever we do, we do something wrong. Shklar’s value pluralism leads her to conclude both that when we resolve a moral conflict we will have to do something wrong in order to do what is right, and also that a monist approach to moral conflict generally and to utopianism specifically has totalitarian implications. On the face of it, this mirrors the arguments of other value pluralists writing at this time, in particular Berlin. However, in the last chapter we saw that there is one crucial difference: at this time, Shklar clings to a value monist conception of freedom, despite her value pluralist approach to moral conflict more generally. This also finds expression in her interpretation of Rousseau’s utopianism at this time, Shklar concluding that it did not appear that genuine authority limits freedom. As we know, Berlin’s argument is that the freedom to do as we please is one value among others. It may be infringed for various reasons, but when it is infringed some wrong is done. In contrast, monists equate freedom with some other moral ideal (for Kant, it is autonomy, for Rousseau, it is the general will, and so on), and conclude that being prevented from acting in ways contrary to that ideal does not count as a violation of freedom. Rousseau’s approach leaves no room to acknowledge that even legitimate forms of coercion do restrict freedom. This starts us on the road to absolute despotism, as it signifies that we as a society, when we pursue our utopian ideal, simply cannot be guilty of infringing liberty. Berlin here has his sights set not just on Rousseau, but also on those versions of socialism that he considers thoroughly unjustified, as can be seen in his writings on the Soviet system in particular (Berlin 2004 [1957]). But the argument also applies to socialist or social democratic reforms that may be, all things considered, morally justified. For Berlin, then, Rousseau’s utopianism leads to despotism because it is based on a value monist conception of freedom, and so it does not acknowledge the unresolved moral conflicts whereby freedom is violated for some utopian ideal. As I have already said in the earlier part of this chapter, we should also amend Berlin’s position, as we need to distinguish between greater and lesser wrongs, and greater and lesser degrees of dystopia. Nonetheless, the fact remains that Berlin makes possible a critique of utopianism that is absent from, and unavailable to, the younger Shklar. Her pluralism is unnecessarily restricted because she lacks a pluralist conception of freedom. There is a further but, I believe, far less significant source of difference between the two. Berlin is a non-sceptic,

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as he assumes that values are a matter of knowledge, whereas, in contrast, Shklar, in her early work, presents her position as one of reasoned scepticism. But it is clear that this difference is not the decisive one when we come to understand and evaluate their respective positions on Rousseau’s utopianism. Shklar, unlike Berlin, is unable to identify the moral wrongs committed when we are forced to be free, but this is explained not by her being a sceptic but by her being insufficiently pluralistic. And, as we shall see below, when we consider Shklar’s mature work, once again it is her position on value pluralism (namely, her coming to reject it) rather than her scepticism (which she retains) that is decisive in shaping her overall approach to utopianism. The pluralist argument is not only that we do morally blameworthy things in the name of even justified utopian projects, but also that monists are unable to discern these moral wrongs. And in order to judge whether value monism suffers from this shortcoming we need only continue to track Shklar’s work across the course of her writing career. We know that in her mature work she leaves behind her early value pluralism, but as we shall see, she also casts off the conviction that we cannot implement Rousseau’s utopianism. Her work remains sceptical in many important respects, but, I argue below, this does not save it from the shortcomings of value monism. What is the use of utopia? Shklar’s mature work has at its centre one highly ambitious, distinctive claim, namely that cruelty is first among the vices. In putting cruelty first, Shklar also provides a value monist conceptualisation of freedom. But what are the broader political implications of that decision? In particular, what are the implications for liberalism as a political (and utopian) project? For a start, Shklar is a liberal. I have tried to make that as clear as possible throughout this book. My argument is that a value monist may be committed to toleration of difference, may consider the avoidance of great harms of paramount importance in politics, may have sceptical doubts about the possibility of devising rules of justice for each other, and may accept that the world of values is diverse and that these values can and do come into conflict. Hence, Shklar’s value monism in her mature work is no bar to her sceptical and tolerant liberalism. Therefore I do not accept John Kekes’s interpretation, according to which Shklar’s putting cruelty first is more compatible with political

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conservatism, as it will require restricting freedom (the freedom of cruel people) in ways that liberals would object to (Kekes 1996, pp. 843–4). It is certainly the case that, as we have seen, Shklar is not defending negative freedom as Berlin understands it, namely the freedom to do as we please (and much else besides). We are not free to do as we please, she assumes, when what we please to do is cruel. However, it need not follow that she is leaving liberalism behind. Indeed, despite her characterising the liberalism of fear as entirely nonutopian, I will try to show here that Shklar is defending a liberal utopia of a particular sort. We have already seen that, for her commentators, Shklar’s liberalism of fear is a non-utopian or even anti-utopian position, and this is the case because of her scepticism. And it is true that Shklar calls on us to avoid the worst scenarios rather than pursue what is said to be the summum bonum, and also that she does not assume that full compliance with a normative political ideal is a possibility at all. Indeed, at times she is explicit in refusing to provide anything like a guide to action. In a passage from the final chapter of Ordinary Vices she concludes, This has been a tour of perplexities, not a guide for the perplexed […] I cannot think why any readers of this book would ask for my advice on how to conduct themselves or about what policies they should choose. (Shklar 1984, p. 226)

Well, one reason why her readers may, in fact, feel justified asking her for advice, is that she goes well beyond a mere ‘exploration of some types of characters and manners that we often – ordinarily, in fact – condemn’ (Shklar 1984, p. 226). Indeed, right at the outset of Ordinary Vices itself, she says we are faced with the alternative between cruel military and moral repression and violence, and a selfrestraining tolerance that fences in the powerful to protect the freedom and safety of every citizen, old or young, male or female, black or white. (Shklar 1984, p. 5)

How can we read this passage and still think that she is not offering advice? The truth is that she is doing more than that. She is prescribing policies. We should, she says, endorse an approach that fences in the powerful in this way. As we have seen, in the same book she also states that our first right is to be protected against cruelty and that we should respond to others’ vices with toleration. This is a morally prescriptive guide to action, and a recognisably liberal one, a liberalism of fear.

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Ordinary Vices, therefore, calls on us to act and, specifically, to focus on limiting cruelty. We should note that in this work there is little appetite shown for anything like radical (e.g. socialist or social democratic) social reform. For example, in her chapter on ‘snobbery’ in American life, Shklar nowhere mentions slavery and the forms of inequality that it has bequeathed to contemporary American society (Shklar 1984, pp. 394–5). But the same cannot be said of her arguments as they develop over the remaining years of her life. Thus, in ‘What Is the Use of Utopia?’ a posthumously published essay written in the mid-1980s, she presents a three-fold distinction, namely between classical utopias, prophetic (or transformative) utopias, and what she refers to as normative (or reformist) models. While in her early value pluralist work she saw a role for classical utopias in guiding our critical understanding and judgement, in her mature value monist work she is indeed highly critical of prophetic utopias; but also, I argue that the implication of her mature position is to provide a role for normative utopian models as guides to action. She uses the term classical utopia to refer to the arguments in More’s Utopia, and she sees Rousseau as continuing that tradition. Of The Social Contract, she says that it is an example of classical utopia’s ‘intense and radical critical spirit and its pessimism about actual states of government when compared to a utopian society’ (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 179). Both More and Rousseau ‘used imaginary societies to expose the faults of the actual world, and neither one expected to change or improve it’ (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 179). Thus, the classical utopian model is an evaluative ideal that could never be implemented. In contrast, the prophetic (transformative) utopia ‘called out for realization’; it is ‘a blueprint for a planned new society’; and such utopian projects as were pursued in nineteenth-century America, for example, ‘were set up not only for the benefit of their members but to promote, ultimately, the social transformation of mankind’ (Shklar 1998 [nd1], pp. 181, 182). There is, however, an alternative to the classical and prophetic utopian models. There is now, Shklar says, a ‘revival of normative thought’, and this can be seen in the work of those who, like Jürgen Habermas and Rawls, are ‘devoted to setting up normative models of the just state’ (Shklar 1998 [nd1], pp. 188, 189). The question then becomes, what does Shklar’s endorsement of a Rawlsian/Habermasian approach entail for her argument on utopianism? The text of ‘What Is the Use of Utopia?’ is ambiguous on this question. That ambiguity is reflected in the diverse ways in which her argument has been interpreted.

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On one reading, Shklar’s is a Cold War ‘anti-utopianism’ arising from her opposition to ‘ideological extremism’, and, it is argued, she also ‘collapses all kinds of utopianism into eternal blueprints of whole other worlds’ (Thaler 2017, pp. 6, 12). The text of her essay could be said to give some support to this position. Shklar does indeed reject prophetic utopias, which she believes are characterised by ‘hope’, ‘transformative politics’, ‘the creation of a new man’, and a ‘total critique of the actual’ (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 189). And at one point she seems to equate utopian thought with transformative utopianism. In political science, she says, we have heuristic, normative, and transformative models; and ‘Utopia is usually the latter sort of model’ (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 187). And yet, in the very same sentence, she goes on to say but there is also a normative model that tries to demonstrate the positive potentialities of existing forms of government. This essentially reformist model is the real challenge to the transformative utopia at present. (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 187)

At the very least, Shklar is distinguishing transformative utopias (which she rejects) from normative reformist models (which she is happy to endorse). It is thus very hard to justify the conclusions of her commentators that hers is not a political or moral theory or prescription for social reform; and that it is an example of negative morality, in that it does not add up to a moral system or decision procedure, and instead tells us merely what to think about rather than what to think. Indeed, in ‘What Is the Use of Utopia?’ Shklar is explicit in defending normative reformist models in political theory. For example, as has been noticed before this, her mature liberalism of fear takes equality seriously as a value, and this itself ‘requires engaging in a critical discourse that treats value judgments as validity claims subject to cognitive verification and normative generalization’ (Whiteside 1999, p. 511). Does this amount to a defence of utopian thought, however? Shklar does refuse to simply reject utopianism. She does ‘not wish to join the rather large chorus that sees a great danger in utopian thought’ (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 190). She also admits that she was wrong in her earlier work to assume that ‘with the end of utopia, by which I meant the end of hope for a better future, we had run out of ideas as well’ (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 186), and she now indicates that she herself does ‘not identify hope with transformation’ (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 190). She goes on to say, ‘it is still worth asking: “What is the use of utopia?”’, and at that point presents the normative (reformist) model of

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political theory as an alternative to ‘future-oriented ideologies’ (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 187). But does she see normative (reformist) models as utopian models? For one interpretation, Shklar’s position is not in itself ‘anti-utopian’, but nonetheless it is ‘non-utopian’ (Forrester 2012, p. 260). However, there is again ambiguity in Shklar’s use of language on this question. At one point she says, ‘We may well be able to get on without utopia but not without the political energy required to think both critically and positively about the state we are in and how to improve it’ (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 190). Certainly, she does not give into nostalgia for the classical republics of Rome and Athens; hers is not a classical utopianism. Thus, of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson she says: The ancient republics did not excite their admiration at all. Rome had made a desert of the world, while the older Greek republics had no political sense. America was the only good republic and the only free nation, and they were thrilled to have lived to see it mature. (Shklar 1998 [1987d], p. 27)

Indeed, Shklar’s own normative approach to political theory is one that starts from a similar sense of the moral resources that her own time and place make available for her. In any case, it is odd for her to suggest our being able to get on without utopia, given that she is endorsing Rawls’s approach, and Rawls sees himself as a utopian thinker. Rawls and Habermas, she says, provide ‘models to judge actuality’; they bring existing states ‘before the bar of their own professed values […] [and] find them wanting’ (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 189). And they operate not simply in the arena of critical understanding and judgement (the role of what Shklar calls classical utopias), for normative models are also essentially reformist. In other publications from her mature work (as we shall see presently), she herself calls for quite substantial social reforms, and does so on explicitly normative grounds, and also by applying Rousseau’s utopian ideas. In addition, she also supports these normative prescriptions by appeal to what she calls our higher self. All these points, taken together, warrant our referring to Shklar’s mature work as utopian. Hers is a politics of hope, although one that requires not a transformative utopia but normative (reformist) models. She does not explicitly refer to the latter as utopian models, but they do represent a utopian answer to her own question: ‘Should we permit ourselves to consider a better world or should we abandon hope and grimly accept things as they are?’ (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 176). She has not abandoned hope in her mature work,

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and her defence of normative (reformist) models is also a defence of normative (reformist) utopianism. I am arguing that Shklar turns towards the utopianism of Rawls and Habermas in her mature work. Not only that, I want to show that her utopianism is compatible with both her scepticism and her decision to put cruelty first in her mature work. That is, it is as a value monist and a sceptic that she calls for normative utopian reforms, and rejects prophetic utopianism. She objects to prophetic utopias on sceptical grounds: they are divorced from reality or actuality (see Forrester 2012, p. 260). They are therefore open to the same criticisms that Aristotle advanced against Plato and other utopians of the time: that their schemes were impossible, that their moral psychology was deeply flawed, that ultimately they would produce injustice, and finally, that it was an intellectual mistake to plan everything so precisely, as if there would be no need for alterations. (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 187)

However, she also rejects prophetic utopias on value monist grounds. Prophetic utopias not only forget reality; in doing so they also make cruelty worse. As with Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, it is only through fear that we can remake the world by ‘inventing reality’ (Shklar 1998 [1985], p. 348). It is also as a sceptic and a monist that Shklar endorses normative utopias. Her argument leads her to call for significant change, and to do so on explicitly monist (though sceptical) grounds, and, as we shall see, by appealing to Rousseau. We can see this in her proposals for how American society should respond to injustice. The Faces of Injustice draws on Rousseau’s ‘proposal for uninterrupted deliberation about the rules of primary justice’ (Shklar 1990a, p. 122). In doing so, Shklar finds a strong rationale for a nonpaternalistic response to injustice, one that listens to the voices of the victims: Stripped of its imaginative excesses and reduced to the possible, Rousseau’s proposal for uninterrupted deliberation about the rules of primary justice is at least a plausible way of reducing the sense of injustice that must attend legal change. Consent as a continuous process under conditions of personal freedom may well be the only way we know to avoid laws that doom us to a recurrent sense of injustice. It does not abolish the latter or the occasions that give rise to it, but it does allow us to do something about them, and it creates the hope that they will be altered […] Though not transforming, the politics of consent and dissent in constitutional democracies narrows the unbridgeable gulf between a personal

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sense of injustice and public laws that might change too slowly or too quickly. (Shklar 1990a, p. 122)

This provides a very clear picture of what needs to be done in order to address injustice. And the suggested approach is radical, even revolutionary: Consent as a continuous process under conditions of personal freedom. Despite calling for radical social change in how we deal with injustice, Shklar is in no way endorsing prophetic utopianism. Rousseau’s arguments may lead towards prophetic utopianism in some people’s hands, and that is why she insists that his thought must be first stripped of its imaginative excesses and reduced to the possible. For example, Rousseau did believe that the social contract would create humanity anew, as, in Shklar’s terms, ‘a people would be given a character by the Legislator’ (Shklar 1969, p. 174). And how will humanity be refashioned? Rousseau assumed that the freedom we enjoy in his utopian republic is one that overcomes our personal and social conflicts. Because it is a form of liberty where, as Shklar says, the ‘personal self is utterly absorbed by the moi commun’, hence, this type of liberty ‘was not that of modern individualism’, for ‘it is the agony of modern individualism that inflicted those inner and external conflicts upon us’ (Shklar 1989c, pp. 47, 48). The mature Shklar does assume that we can be forced to be free. Nonetheless, as a sceptic, she can have no time for a utopian vision intent upon inventing reality and in that way removing all our inner and external conflicts. That is why, although Rousseau provides the form or structure of Shklar’s conception of freedom, namely in the idea that genuine authority liberates, it is Montesquieu whose ideas shape the content of Shklar’s liberalism of fear. Shklar is proposing a Rousseauian approach to how we address the problems of injustice. However, this is not a prophetic utopianism, for, as she says, we cannot ever hope to finally remove injustice once and for all: One of the reasons why there is no cure for injustice is that even reasonably upright citizens do not want one. This is not due to disagreements about what is unjust but to an unwillingness to give up the peace and quiet that injustice can and does offer. A decent society requires a bundle of positive conditions, among which peace and a general spirit of tolerance are certainly not insignificant. A sophisticated skeptic might thus also favour accepting an amount of passive injustice as a price well worth paying for other social goods. She might also remark that active citizenship does not automatically translate into wise, just, or humane policies. The active citizen may be a good neighbour but he might, just as likely, be a raging bigot or revolutionary, or both. (Shklar 1990a, pp. 45–6)

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In her early work, as a pluralist, she concludes that commutative justice is never even approximated, but her explanation at the time is the pluralist one that we are faced with moral conflicts between different conceptions of justice. In contrast, in her mature work, she is explicit that the reason why there is no cure for injustice is not due to disagreements about what is unjust. What is the explanation? First, there is the sceptical argument that we cannot expect full compliance with the rules of justice (rules that we agree on). This is due to an unwillingness to give up the peace and quiet that injustice can and does offer. That is why A sophisticated skeptic might thus also favour accepting an amount of passive injustice. Once again, Shklar finds this idea in her reading of Rousseau, who assumed that, without justice, ‘the laws invariably favor the rich’, and yet who also concluded there was ‘no hope’ for this republican project in modern Europe, due to our ‘unalterable and perpetual psychological distress’ (Shklar 1989c, pp. 46, 47). The second reason why, for Shklar, there is no ultimate cure for injustice comes from her putting cruelty first. Prophetic utopias strive to finally eliminate all injustice, but, in reality, they will make cruelty worse. The person who attempts to finally eliminate injustice may be a good neighbour, but is just as likely to be a raging bigot or a revolutionary, or both. It is this zeal that threatens the basic norm of the liberalism of fear, namely the avoidance of cruelty. The liberalism of fear gives priority to peace and quiet and a general spirit of tolerance, and so prophetic utopias lose their legitimacy when they clash with these ideals. How much of Rousseau is really left after all these qualifications and restrictions? Perhaps the best insight comes from considering what Shklar proposes in the place of Rousseau’s great legislator. We should be wary, she says, of the raging bigot or revolutionary. And yet, we should work tirelessly to fight injustice and to promote freedom. Not only that, to do so we need to understand the role played by the ‘great person’ in human history. As she says in her discussion of Emerson, the ‘great person is a “mapmaker”’, and ‘the point is for us to actively use that map and make the road ourselves. The way by which the great individual liberates us is that this person does not stay around forever’ (Shklar 1998 [1990c], p. 56). These mapmakers should not remain in office long: ‘one’s term comes to an end – and none too soon’ (Shklar 1998 [1990c], p. 56). And, of course, their role is not the one that Rousseau assigned to the great legislator, namely to create humanity anew. Nonetheless, although it is we ourselves who finally determine our destination, we do need great people, rotating in and out of office, who will map out a course that liberates us.

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To sum up, the mature Shklar rejects prophetic utopias, including those derived from Rousseau’s arguments. But she is drawing on Rousseau’s utopianism in justifying normative reform. She says that Rousseau himself saw his work as playing a merely critical role, as is the case with other classical utopias. But she herself is drawing on his ideas, and in doing so she is providing what can only be said to be a guide to action. As we saw, Shklar insists that active consent on the part of the most deprived is necessary for the legitimacy of laws and policies designed to tackle injustice, and she is explicit that Rousseau’s ideas lie behind these proposals. As we shall see in the next section, she also argues for a right to earn a living from paid employment, and also the right to fight for one’s rights more generally. And in each case her argument, while rejecting prophetic utopianism, simultaneously draws on Rousseau. Fighting for rights How precisely does Shklar’s argument count as a defence of normative utopianism? How can any utopian project be acceptable to her in her mature work, given that she is a liberal, a sceptic, and someone who places cruelty first among the vices? The answer is that it can be, if it is part of an open-ended struggle whose primary aim is to protect the rights of the defenceless and in that way protect them from cruelty. And, as we shall see, this is another way of saying that utopian reforms are justified in the name of what Shklar calls our higher self. In American Citizenship she sets out a specific normative (utopian) project. Others have said that her ambitious set of proposals here goes far beyond a concern with the avoidance of cruelty (Scheuerman 2019, p. 61). In fact, I would argue, it is expressive of both her scepticism and her decision to place cruelty first among the vices. Specifically, in this book she defends two basic rights: the right to vote and the right to earn a living from paid employment. Here I focus on the latter of the two, which Shklar characterises as a ‘comprehensive commitment to providing opportunities for work to earn a living wage for all who need and demand it’ (Shklar 1991a, p. 99). As a right, it ‘must be entirely separated from relief, now misnamed welfare’ (Shklar 1991a, p. 100). She concludes that ‘the minimal political obligation must be the creation of paying jobs geographically close to the unemployed and offering them a legally set minimum wage and the chance of advancement’ (Shklar 1991a, p. 101). Her style of argumentation here is clearly sceptical. She is not offering a universal prescription but, rather, presents the right to

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work as arising from one specific cultural and historical experience. It is an argument addressed exclusively to fellow Americans. She refers to ‘a right derived from the requirements of local citizenship, not a primary human right’ (Shklar 1991a, p. 100); and her argument appeals to the ‘Jacksonian faith’ that is part of her American heritage, although in doing so she does not ‘mean to say that we should abstain from criticizing these habits of mind’ (Shklar 1991a, pp. 98–9). Nonetheless, although it is a sceptical argument, it is also derived from Shklar’s decision to put cruelty first among the vices. As we know, that decision requires us to protect the defenceless from the intimidation of the powerful. Now, those without the standing of citizenship are most exposed to the intimidation of the powerful. With the history of chattel slavery in the background shaping the social and political significance of paid employment for Americans, Shklar thus refers to ‘the loss of public respect, the reduction of standing and demotion to second-class citizenship, to which the public ethos, overtly and traditionally, condemns them [the unemployed]’ (Shklar 1991a, p. 100). The fear of cruelty is the greatest evil, she has said. Her proposals here are a direct response to those things that we fear because we fear cruelty more than anything else, including ‘the fear of unemployment’ (Shklar 1991a, p. 95), a fear that has ‘simply worked to reinforce the realization that only earning offers citizens their standing’ (Shklar 1991a, p. 92). Shklar’s mature utopianism is focused on securing rights for the most vulnerable, and doing so without appealing to any order other than that of actuality. These are arguments made from within a cultural heritage and a set of shared experiences. They are sceptical arguments, therefore. But that forces us to ask, how can such rights ever be justified? Precisely what kind of justification can such a sceptical line of argument deliver? And to address that question, let us look more closely at her understanding of the rights in question as set out in two essays from her mature period. In the earlier of the two essays, ‘Positive Liberty, Negative Liberty in the United States’, Shklar makes the case for rights as bringing together both the negative and the positive dimensions of freedom. That much we know from the last chapter. In this essay she also makes the case for one right as having priority over all others: [T]he right to claim one’s rights will remain the first of all rights. When all liberties are positive liberties, the right to fight for one’s own rights and for other specific rights is the most important of all freedoms. (Shklar 1998 [1980a], p. 125)

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She is here claiming to have identified the first of all rights. And it is instructive to consider that point alongside the argument in American Citizenship. In the latter, as we know, she calls for a right to earn a living from paid work. Of that right she says: ‘Instead of being regarded as just one interest among others, it ought to enjoy the primacy that a right may claim in any conflict of political priorities’ (Shklar 1991a, p. 99). The right to work, therefore, has primacy over other political priorities. And Shklar goes further again when talking of the right to fight for one’s rights through the courts. It not only has primacy as a right; it is the first right and also the most important of all freedoms. While both are rights that protect the defenceless against intimidation, the latter is the very condition of struggling to secure such rights. And that itself is freedom: freedom means that every person has the right to defend himself effectively in a judicial court against all those who would like to deprive him of his full citizenship and of his constitutional right. (Shklar 1998 [1980a], p. 112)

The argument can be summarised as follows. Among our various rights, one is the most important, and it is the right to fight for one’s rights. This is also what freedom means, and, as we know, this is a conception of freedom that combines together its positive and negative dimensions. So, if we put cruelty first among the vices, if the avoidance of cruelty is our basic norm, then we also give priority to freedom understood as the right to fight for one’s rights. Where does this leave Shklar’s utopian vision? To start with, we should note that hers is a dynamic understanding of freedom. Freedom is not passive or static; it is not a status that we are conferred with. It is an ongoing and open-ended struggle, the struggle to defend oneself and to fight for one’s rights. This fits with Shklar’s sceptical view that we cannot hope to transform reality so as to fully and finally implement a prophetic utopian vision. Utopia is not something we achieve, once and for all, not only because we humans cannot be perfected but also because utopia is a condition of open-ended struggle the outcome of which we cannot fully predict: [T]he drama of freedom in the United States is not a simple fight between liberty and equality, between the minority and the majority, or between the individual and the masses’ state. It is the quest of a political situation in which justice and freedom would be inseparable because all the rights would be respected. Until such a utopian state comes into being, which

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nobody believes possible, political liberty remains the pursuit of rights. (Shklar 1998 [1980a], p. 113)

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Nobody believes this utopia will come into being, but nonetheless, like the normative utopia of Rawls and of Habermas, it provides the normative standard for political practice and prescription. It is one where freedom does not conflict with the rights of justice; or, as Shklar says elsewhere, where freedom is the combination of negative and positive freedom in the idea of rights, or, more precisely, the right to fight for one’s rights. This is not a universal statement about freedom as such; it is, rather, based on the reality or actuality in which she is writing. It is what freedom means here and now: that is, in late twentieth-century America, a time and a place shaped, in particular, by the awful history of slavery and the social and economic inequalities it has bequeathed to the present. We get a further insight into Shklar’s utopianism in an essay from the last year of her life. She again takes up the issue of how to determine the relative significance of competing claims, in particular regarding the conflict between negative and positive liberty. Again, the solution lies in seeking out the approach that best protects the defenceless from intimidation: ‘The real issue is always how best to balance incompatible claims in such a way as to reduce effective intimidation’ (Shklar 1992a, p. 32). This is what she sees the liberalism of fear as doing. In this essay, Shklar again acknowledges the debt that she owes to Rousseau, making clear that his ideas are at the heart of the liberalism of fear: This is scarcely a utopian temper, but it is not all that difficult to imagine what a society of mutually forbearing, unafraid, and reasonably optimistic people might look like, even if we do not expect ever to see one. It would be a liberal society in which government would still be coercive, but not more so than was generally recognized as absolutely necessary and in which no one was so poor as to have to sell himself or herself and no one so rich as to be able to buy him or her. The phrase is, of course, Rousseau’s and it serves to link the liberalism of fear to a democratic ethos that requires a reduction of social inequalities. (Shklar 1992a, pp. 31–2)

Again, we see her scepticism about the likelihood of attaining this ideal. It is something we do not expect ever to see, and in that sense this is, she says, scarcely a utopian temper. Despite this scepticism, the liberalism of fear does provide a normative guide to politics, one that is informed by Rousseau, and in particular his conception of freedom. What Shklar is proposing does not reject reality; in fact, it is not all that difficult to imagine

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such a society. Specifically, what is required of us is to continue to struggle to better protect the defenceless. Shklar’s is a utopia based not on the freedom to do as we please but, rather, on the freedom from cruelty. It is the freedom ‘not from duties and concern for others, but from the external pressure and suffering that fear of deprivation inflict upon us’ (Shklar 1992a, p. 32). There is one further dimension to Shklar’s mature utopianism still to be considered, and in its absence we will not have a complete picture. As we saw when discussing her mature account of freedom, Shklar wishes to draw together both negative and positive freedom in the idea of rights. But in making that argument she also talks about freedom in terms of the higher self in politics, which she says refers to being able to be an active citizen and to have some part in the decisions that affect me and mine. This is an argument that evidently draws on perfectionist sources of value, ideas of human fulfilment or human perfection (see Nagel, 1979 [1977] pp. 129–30). But what kind of perfectionism can this be? For a start, it is one that nonetheless stands opposed to prophetic utopianism. Referring again to Rousseau, in American Citizenship Shklar notes that he ‘understood […] perfectly well’ that calling ‘for perfect republican virtue itself is persuasive only if it is placed within the full context of a perfect democracy’, and she also notes that there ‘is very little evidence that there are many Americans who contemplate such transformative politics with interest’ (Shklar 1991a, p. 12). She is objecting to ideals of citizenship insofar as they are transformative or prophetic utopian ideals. That explains why her prescriptions are normative rather than prophetic. For example, she calls for a right not to be deprived of one’s standing as a citizen, not ‘a right to self-respect’; and she accepts that ‘it is not feasible to enforce the right [to work] fully’ (Shklar 1991a, pp. 100, 101). Only a transformative utopian project would promise to transform its citizens, and to attain complete compliance with its ideals, and such a project will, of course, descend into mere dystopia. Given her rejection of prophetic utopianism, how are we to understand Shklar’s perfectionism, including her conceptualising freedom in terms of the higher self in politics? It is important to remember that she makes these comments as part of her discussion of conscience, and the importance of conscience claims for the American abolitionists of the early nineteenth century, such as Henry David Thoreau and William Lloyd Garrison: The conscientious person I am concerned with does not say, ‘I should be free to do as I choose.’ She says, ‘I am right, and I am oppressed not

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because I am going to jail – which I expected to do – but I would feel, and do feel, oppressed because even in jail I am forced to do something I regard as evil.’ (Shklar 2019 [1992b], p. 8)

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Again she is rejecting the idea of the freedom to do as we please. Jailed abolitionists are not oppressed in respect of freedom thus understood. Rather, it is oppressive for them to sew cotton sacks as part of their punishment, for the reason that the cotton was picked by slaves. This is ‘oppression in being implicated in not being able to get out of doing what is regarded as a serious evil’ (Shklar 2019 [1992b], p. 8). Therefore, Shklar’s perfectionism is inescapably tied up with not just her concern with great evils but also her considering the avoidance of such evils as our basic norm. Earlier we spent some time considering Shklar’s negative morality (see Chapter 2). What I said at the time was that in her mature work (in contrast to the quite different approach in her early work) she advances a negative morality as a value monist, and does so in stating that the avoidance of cruelty is our basic norm. However, that is not all there is to say about the liberalism of fear. As we can see now, not only is there a utopian dimension to her mature work, but it itself draws on perfectionist sources of value. At the heart of her political vision we find a utopianism informed by visions of the higher self, according to which we are not free when implicated in what, as a matter of conscience, we consider to be great evils. Unlike other perfectionists, including many republicans, Shklar’s vision is not oriented towards attainment of a summum bonum, nor is it one that assumes that full compliance is even possible. We are not justified transforming society so as to bring about complete compliance with such ideals, of course, because, for Shklar, this can end only in tyranny. However, if we do not forget these sceptical insights it is perfectly valid to pursue quite substantial social reforms in the name of a perfectionist ideal, if that itself is the best way either to avoid cruelty or to prevent greater cruelties. Pluralism and critique The liberalism of fear presents us with a form of utopianism that is both sceptical and value monist. As a monist, Shklar gives priority to the avoidance of cruelty. Ultimately, she objects to prophetic utopias on the grounds that to pursue them would be to worsen cruelty. However, we should pause to recall the pluralist argument that she, in her early work,

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advances against monism in its various guises: namely, that agreementas-an-end-in-itself can only be achieved by totalitarian methods. Is the liberalism of fear open to the charge she herself advanced against monists in her early work? When we consider the legitimacy of utopianism, we are, according to value pluralists, faced with independent sources of moral value, which can at times come into conflict, demanding different, incompatible things from us. Two such values are the requirements to not demand too much from citizens and to not demand too little of them. As Thomas Nagel says, it is utopias that demand too much, or at least, utopias lacking normative legitimacy: A theory is utopian in the pejorative sense if it describes a form of collective life that humans, or most humans, could not lead through any feasible process of social and moral development […] Worse still, when what is described is not in fact motivationally possible, the illusion of its possibility may motivate people nevertheless to try to institute it, with results that are quite different. (Nagel 1991, pp. 6–7)

In diametric opposition to utopianism is hard-nosed realism, which we also must guard against: ‘we shouldn’t be too tied down by limits derived from the baseness of actual motives or by excessive pessimism about the possibility of human improvement’ (Nagel 1991, p. 7). As value pluralists like Nagel appreciate, we can be left with unresolved conflicts between the requirement to not demand too much and to not demand too little. This will be the case with many utopian efforts to remove entrenched disadvantages. Not only is a certain level of utopianism necessary if we are to ‘abolish a fundamental injustice such as slavery, serfdom, a caste system, or the subordination of women’, but also we may have to wait for ‘a generation or two’ before a significant number of citizens will be motivated to accept the new system (Nagel 1991, pp. 26–7). So, even legitimate utopian projects will, at times, demand too much: they will demand that people give what they (with what they think to be good reason) are unwilling to give. Also, it is value pluralism that can account for this fact. The benefit of value pluralism, therefore, is its being able to account for what is prima facie wrong in political projects while also acknowledging their legitimacy. The value monist response to this line of argument is a very simple one: there are no prima facie wrongs in the first place if a utopian project is in fact legitimate. What we do in the name of a legitimate utopia is

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morally justified. We can discern this monist assumption in Shklar’s mature work. In ‘The Liberalism of Fear’ she calls for the elimination of such forms and degrees of social inequality as expose people to oppressive practices, and in other books and articles she makes specific utopian prescriptions designed to limit the exposure to oppressive practices in various ways. For Shklar, as a monist, there are no prima facie wrongs here insofar as the project has legitimacy. Cruelty is justified only so as to prevent greater cruelties. If the coercive enforcement of these policies is justified as the best way in which to prevent cruelty, by preventing exposure to oppressive practices, then any conflicting moral claims (say, in situations where these reforms are to be financed by taxation of citizens’ income and wealth, the claims of property owners to retain their income and wealth) are simply eliminated. This follows from the fact that there is, for value monism, a clear priority between competing moral claims: as Shklar says, the avoidance of cruelty is the basic norm. We should remind ourselves of what precisely is at stake here. Value pluralists are not maintaining that, if there is something prima facie wrong with a utopian project, such as Shklar’s call for a right to earn a living from work, then the project in question itself cannot be legitimate. Pluralists can acknowledge that Shklar’s proposal may well be legitimate, but nonetheless, if there are prima facie wrongs committed in its name, these can be and should be accounted for. So let us see if we can discern such prima facie wrongs in Shklar’s proposals, and, to do so, let us in the first instance consider only what Shklar herself in her mature work identifies as the possible wrongs of utopian projects. The first reason Shklar gives for our objecting to utopian projects (when we do) is that they make ‘self-sacrifice’ in the name of some ‘cause’ a ‘political duty’ (Shklar 1989a, p. 32). She accepts that the liberalism of fear ‘offends those who identify politics with mankind’s most noble aspirations’, but her point is that, while ‘it may be noble to pursue ideological ambitions or risk one’s life for a “cause,” […] it is not at all noble to kill another human being in pursuit of one’s own “causes”’ (Shklar 1989a, p. 32). We are not justified in demanding self-sacrifice (whether or not the ultimate sacrifice) in the name of controversial causes, she says. However, what we see is that because Shklar herself is a utopian, her proposals can also be criticised on these grounds. Her utopian proposals will demand self-sacrifice, given the scale of reform that she herself is calling for. For example, in The Faces of Injustice she argues that, in shaping our policies to tackle deprivation, we must, as an

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ongoing and continuous process, listen to the voices of the most deprived. At the time of its publication, in comparative studies of welfare states America is representative of the ‘liberal’ model, where the role of the state is, largely, to deter reliance on social provision (Esping-Andersen 1990). Shklar, in effect, calls for a democratisation of state support, even going beyond the more top-down, state-led social democratic models found in Scandinavian countries at this time. Shklar may respond by saying that she calls for utopian reforms only so as to prevent greater cruelties, that is, to reduce oppression. However, if her proposed reforms of American society are to be implemented, even if they are successful in preventing greater cruelties, they will, in addition, make self-sacrifice in the name of this noble cause a political duty. This is clear from the great distance that American society, and its citizens, including its taxpayers, will be required to travel from where they are to where they need to be in order to reduce oppression, where the requirement itself will be backed up by the coercive power of the state. Can Shklar reply by saying that, if our policies do in fact prevent greater cruelties, then whatever other impacts they have on citizens cannot be considered sacrifices on their part? If this is what she believes, then she is equating the following two things: giving priority to the avoidance of cruelty and not demanding self-sacrifice. However, if we can equate the two, then maintaining that a utopian vision does not demand self-sacrifice adds nothing in our evaluation of that project to what we already could conclude from the fact that it gives priority to the avoidance of cruelty. In any case, there is, in fact, little reason to equate the two. If we put cruelty first, we require people to refrain from being cruel themselves and also to support policies designed to protect others from cruelty, and, so, to make sacrifices in whatever aspects of their lives such a prescription touches upon. Shklar may not be calling for people to die for the liberalism of fear, but she is calling for them to refrain from acting in certain ways, she is calling for them to hand over some of their possessions to finance these collective goals, and she is saying that coercive force will be threatened for those who would resist. In her mature work Shklar gives a second reason for our objecting to utopian projects. She highlights the utopian ideal of an ‘educative government that aims at creating specific kinds of character and enforces its own beliefs’ (Shklar 1989a, p. 33). Once again, however, we see that this may be an unavoidable feature of her own utopian proposals. It is true that she is highly critical of the hermeneutic assumptions informing

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communitarianism, as we have seen (and as we shall return to in our final chapter). Also, in American Citizenship Shklar takes aim specifically at Walzer’s communitarianism. She does not accept the assumption that we can hope to identify a moral consensus within our community, and that we can judge the legitimacy of political action by reference to such values. Nonetheless, in arguing for a right to work as necessary for full citizenship in American culture, she concludes that it is important to recall not only the antiquity and continuing prevalence and relevance of the Jacksonian faith, but also the fact that it creates a presumption of a right to work as an element of American citizenship. (Shklar 1991a, p. 99)

She does explicitly warn against being understood as endorsing anything similar to contemporary communitarianism: I emphasize this point because I do not want this argument to be identified in any way with Michael Walzer’s endorsement of shared values as a general ethical justification of social practices. Nothing in these essays should be taken as support for the leading notions of his Spheres of Justice. (Shklar 1991a, p. 114 n. 50)

Even if there is a difference between communitarianism and her, more sceptical, approach to the Jacksonian tradition in American political culture, how is it that her utopian reforms will not aim at creating specific kinds of character and enforce its own beliefs? Admittedly, Shklar does not wish to create citizens anew, to radically transform their characters, and to do so against their will, but nonetheless hers is a concern with character. After all, her interest is in cruelty as a vice, and her aim is to avoid the worst vices. In addition, she is not simply calling on citizens to refrain from oppressing others. Specifically, she is calling for the coercive apparatuses of the state to be used to implement policies embodying what she calls the Jacksonian faith; and so to use coercion to prevent those who do not share this faith, this set of normative beliefs, from opposing these policies. Although she does not offer a comprehensive normative vision covering all aspects of moral life, nonetheless, she is calling on society to prevent the worst vices and also to coercively enforce a specific set of beliefs. We have also seen that she thinks of this whole project in terms of our higher self, although admittedly this is offered as a perfectionist ideal of the political realm only. In response to these ideas, we should recall how, as a value pluralist in her early works, Shklar warned that value

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monism will lead to totalitarianism. The monist approach to utopianism in her mature work seems to be open to precisely this charge, given that it will coercively enforce beliefs and it will make self-sacrifice a political duty. So far, we have turned the value pluralism of Shklar’s own early work against the sceptical monism of her mature work. But we should recall that we found reasons to suggest that Shklar’s early pluralism also does not go far enough. In particular, the early Shklar never provides a pluralist conceptualisation of freedom, such as we find in Berlin. What would be the benefit of doing so? Well, if we employ a value pluralist approach that does extend to a pluralist conception of freedom, this can be the vantage point from which to engage in a more wide-ranging critical evaluation of utopian projects. Berlin’s central concern regarding Rousseauian utopianism arises from the latter’s assumption that we can be forced to be free, which Berlin takes to be the starting point from which we gradually reach the notion of absolute despotism. We have seen that the mature Shklar agrees with Rousseau that we are not free to do as we please; we are free only insofar as we do not violate the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. That is why the mature Shklar also accepts Rousseau’s formulation: we can be forced to be free. She assumes that we do not violate freedom by forcefully preventing others from acting cruelly, or by forcing them to help others escape from the inequalities that expose them to cruelty. As a result, however, Shklar’s mature utopianism also is open to the value pluralist charge of despotism. She too will be unable to identify when the pursuit of her utopian ideals violates (negative) freedom. As we said earlier in this chapter, it is one thing to identify prima facie wrongs, but it is another to distinguish between lesser and greater wrongs. The same can be said of the need to distinguish between lesser and greater goods. We need to take on board both sets of considerations when evaluating any utopian projects, including Shklar’s. She provides compelling reasons in support of her various utopian proposals. We are indeed committed to the defence of the vulnerable, in particular because of the principle of non-maleficence, and for that reason there are very strong grounds to support the right to work, democratic engagement on welfare reforms, and the right to fight for one’s rights through the courts. Nonetheless, we need to acknowledge and recognise whether sacrifices are required to implement these reforms, while at the same time distinguishing between greater and lesser sacrifices. For example, if we are asking the wealthy to make more sacrifices than they are

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currently asked to make, we need to openly acknowledge this fact, while also having the confidence to argue that these burdens are comparatively light when compared with the great evils that they will help to fight against. To do anything else risks descending into prophetic utopianism and then, as a result, dystopia. This is what happens when over-zealous reformers feel that they do no wrong when they strive to reform society and that, as a result, anyone who criticises their actions must be either mistaken or malevolent. Since the early 2000s, we have seen an expansion in sceptical approaches to utopianism, and so a proliferation of sceptical doubts about not only the veracity of knowledge claims made in justification of utopian ideals but also the feasibility of implementing such ideals in practice. Many commentators interpret Shklar’s work as providing a sceptical approach to utopianism, and thus an inspiration for these non-ideal and political realist developments. In this chapter I have not tried to put political non-moralism itself in question, although I have, for example, said that realist sceptics who ignore Williams’s value pluralism do so at their own peril. What I have tried to do is show that value pluralism provides us with a critical evaluation of utopianism that we do not get from value monism, even when monism is combined with scepticism. In regard to Shklar’s own work, what pluralism shows is that even if her mature utopian projects are legitimate, they will demand too much of us, and that she, as a monist, is unable to identify and acknowledge these prima facie wrongs. Value pluralism thus makes it possible to see certain normatively important facts that remain invisible to Shklar’s (mature) scepticism. Although in her mature work Shklar, as a sceptic, warns against utopian projects that ignore reality, nonetheless, her monism blinds her to the prima facie wrongs committed in the name of her own utopianism. In addition, value pluralism provides a more nuanced understanding of utopianism. For the pluralist, prima facie wrongs, such as the ones we have identified in Shklar’s own proposals, will be a common feature of even legitimate political projects. Pluralists can both identify and acknowledge the wrongs committed, while at the same time judging the utopian project to be, all things considered, legitimate. At the same time, if our legitimate projects do involve prima facie wrongs, we must take this on board, maybe by finding ways to avoid those wrongs, maybe by lessening the felt wrong when it is unavoidable, maybe by making reparations to those who are wronged. These prima facie wrongs do not require us to forego ambitious, utopian political projects. It is, rather,

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that our utopian zeal must be tempered by the awareness that we do not have right on our side without qualification. And this is an insight that has profound implications when we consider not just whether an ambitious policy of reform has legitimacy but also in what we way are bound by political obligations in regard to those policies. For, if value pluralism is the correct approach to moral conflict, it would seem to follow that not only will we be faced with moral conflicts regarding our political obligations but also we will not be able to call on a general rule for their resolution.

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5 Obligation

We have been examining the two opposing approaches to moral conflict that predominate in political thought. For value pluralists, in a situation of moral conflict, when moral claims demand different and incompatible things from us, there is no general rule for its resolution. In contrast, value monists maintain that they have in fact identified the general rule needed to resolve any such conflict. Now, one of the issues about which these two positions sharply diverge concerns the nature and status of our obligation to obey the law. What is generally agreed is that the obligation to obey the law is one of our political obligations, that we do have such an obligation in the first instance, and yet, under certain circumstances, we may be justified in breaking the law in the name of any one of a number of competing moral claims (Walzer 1970, p. 16; cf. Smith 1973). What remains unresolved is when, precisely, such conflicts arise and how, exactly, they are to be resolved. And it is particularly illuminating to analyse Shklar’s work on political obligation because, as we know, at different points in her career it is representative of these two diametrically opposed approaches to moral conflict. As we shall see in this chapter, at the very heart of Shklar’s mature position on political obligation is a dichotomous distinction between what she calls ‘exile’ and ‘ordinary crime’ (Shklar 1993a, pp. 181, 188). She believes that political obligations may be cancelled altogether for exiles, whereas, in sharp contrast, ordinary criminals are faced with no moral conflicts at all concerning such obligations. What I try to show is that Shklar’s exile/ordinary crime dichotomy is explained by the value monist approach she takes to moral conflict in her mature work, but also that because her early work is wholeheartedly value pluralist it has no place for such a distinction. I go on to argue, pace the mature Shklar,

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that criminals may be faced with genuine moral conflicts concerning their political obligations, but also that we can discern this possibility only by both adopting a value pluralist approach to the resolution of moral conflicts and by dropping the exile/ordinary crime dichotomy. This chapter will defend a value pluralist perspective on political obligation generally and the obligation to obey the law specifically, and in doing so build on the value pluralist arguments of Shklar’s own early work. In her second book, Shklar considers crimes to be public wrongs, subject to public investigation and punishment (Shklar 1964a, pp. 36–7). At this time she also conceptualises crime without claiming to have identified the general rule for resolving moral conflicts, and, in addition, she does not employ the exile/ordinary crime dichotomy. Admittedly, her early value pluralism is unnecessarily restricted, for, as we know, she fails to offer a pluralist conception of freedom at this time. This is important for our purposes here because Berlin’s (pluralist) conception of negative freedom will permit us to examine something that remains impossible to consider in Shklar’s early work, namely, whether one is, in the first instance, free to engage in crime. Building on Berlin’s work, we can also consider whether criminals are faced with genuine moral conflicts between the obligation to refrain from crime and any conflicting moral claim that, in the first instance at least, justifies their crime. Specifically, I will endeavour to show that criminals may be faced with genuine moral conflicts with respect to what Nagel refers to as ‘commitment to one’s own projects or undertakings’ (Nagel 1979 [1977], pp. 129–30). Obligation I start with Shklar’s mature position on political obligation, where she employs the dichotomous distinction between exile and ordinary crime. As we shall see below, exiles are those who not only have good reasons to break the law, but for whom the obligation to refrain from doing so has lost its normative legitimacy. I start with what Shklar has to say about exile, but doing so should not blind us to the fact that her negative focus here (i.e. the extreme situation of exile) goes hand in hand with a concern for the more everyday scenario, where laws have legitimacy, as does our obligation to obey the law. Shklar is interested equally in both; and both help to shed light on the nature of our political obligations. Indeed, before looking at her account of exile we should first ask: what is it that makes political obligations legitimate in the first place? We find Shklar’s mature position on political obligation set out primarily in

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two essays from the last year of her life (‘Obligation, Loyalty, Exile’ and ‘The Bonds of Exile’), along with her lectures on this topic delivered at Harvard in the same year, and posthumously published as On Political Obligation. What Shklar has to say about political obligation needs to be read against a background of ongoing philosophical debate on the nature of our obligations and the sources of their legitimacy. What is distinctive about her argument is that she continually emphasises the diversity of moral demands and the reasons for them. Political obligations are one of a number of such demands; and there are diverse reasons giving them legitimacy. Her taking this approach also ensures that what she has to say does not fit easily into existing categories, in particular that of liberalism and communitarianism. This is the case even though she begins talking about obligations in ways that are very familiar to liberals. Thus, in ‘Obligation, Loyalty, Exile’, Shklar emphasises that, in the main, we do not get to choose our political obligations. Nonetheless, a regime has ‘legitimacy’, she says, only insofar as there are reasons for us to give it our ‘consent’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 183). The consent requirement, as other liberals note, introduces an element of ‘quasi-voluntariness’ into otherwise unchosen obligations (Nagel 1991, p. 37). As there must be reasons to accept one’s obligations in order for them to be legitimate, it follows, for Shklar, that political obligation is rational and law-like: ‘By obligation I mean rule-governed conduct, and political obligation specifically refers to laws and lawlike demands, made by public agencies’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 183; see 1993b, p. 58). Because of their ‘rational rule-related character’, we have political obligations only insofar as the regime is law-like, and we have ‘a duty to comply’ only when ‘it is rational to do so’, and so it follows as well that tyrannies cancel those obligations: ‘whatever else tyrannies are and have been, they are always lawless regimes that we may resist’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 183). In considering its legitimacy, Shklar also emphasises that political obligation is but one of numerous ways in which we can be said to owe something to others. For a start, in being unchosen, an obligation is unlike a ‘commitment’ to a party or cause, or the ‘fidelity’ we owe to friends, or an ‘allegiance’ we have formed (Shklar 1993a, pp. 183–5). In fact, obligations are more like loyalties, in the sense that loyalties also are (usually at least) unchosen. Group-based loyalties are central to communitarian accounts of political obligation (Walzer 1970; MacIntyre 1984). And Shklar acknowledges their significance for political obligations, but she also wishes to make a clear distinction between loyalty and obligation,

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and in doing so creates some distance between the liberalism of fear and communitarianism. Whereas obligation is rational and rule driven, loyalty is ‘an attachment to a social group’ where ‘membership may or may not be chosen’, and has an ‘emotional character’, and so it ‘is motivated by the entire personality of an agent’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 184). Shklar is thinking about obligation in ways that are not simply either liberal or communitarian. And a further source of her distinctiveness is what she has to say about claims of conscience. Even if we are required, as a matter of political obligation, to obey the laws of our regime, and even if those obligations are buttressed by group-based loyalties, nonetheless, Shklar says, claims of conscience may require us to break the laws of that very regime (Shklar 1993a, p. 195). The clearest example of this is Thoreau’s response to his own slave-based society (see Thoreau 1996 [1849], p. 2). We are morally bound in different ways, therefore. In addition, these demands can come into conflict. Shklar’s focus on the prevalence of such conflicts again distinguishes her approach from that of most liberal and communitarian thinkers. Thoreau’s claims of conscience were incompatible with his obligations, for instance. What is more, we can be faced with conflicts between incompatible political obligations, as happens, for example, ‘between the demands of military security and the obligation to the laws’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 187). What we owe to our polity also may require us to, among other things, betray our friends and family, and be disloyal. Given the reality of such conflicts, how are they to be resolved? Well, we cannot say in advance that, for example, we should never betray our friends for the sake of our polity. Thus, E. M. Forster’s contention that, as Shklar puts it, ‘personal relations matter more than any duty to one’s country’ is, for Shklar, ‘not an intelligent statement. It trivializes the bitterest of conflicts because it says nothing about the kind of “state” involved or how one’s friends might betray it’ (Shklar 1984, pp. 155, 156; see also 2019 [1992b], p. 58). When we do examine the state in question, we may find that, as is the case with Soviet Russia, for example, political obligations are weakened or even eliminated by the very nature of the regime: [G]overnment illegality is not a disregard to casual undertakings, such as exist in many private quasi-contracts, but a disruption of the law as it stands and is known. It violates trust in a way that renders the very basis of public life unreliable and vitiates the chief reasons for our obligation to obey the law. Political loyalty may survive, but not obligation to obey the law. That is why I assume exiles have no obligations to the country that expels them illegally and unconstitutionally. (Shklar 1993a, p. 190)

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Political obligation must be justified by reasons; if we are to have a duty to comply it must be rational to do so. Those reasons dissolve into thin air when the regime is tyrannical: government illegality has this effect because it renders the very basis of public life unreliable. Here Shklar is referring specifically to those who are involuntary exiles from their own country, but her conclusion applies also to those who are exiles within their own borders. Political obligations, Shklar believes, are simply cancelled in both cases. This is so because we should comply with obligations only when it is rational to do so; and it is not rational to do so in a regime that is lawless and arbitrary. However, if it does matter what kind of state is in question, this suggests that political obligation amounts to something more than mere law-like behaviour. If a regime is law-like but the laws themselves are morally repugnant, surely this matters when determining what kind of state is involved? If the subjects of Stalin’s rule were turned into exiles this was because they were treated in ways that were unacceptable, irrespective of whether this treatment departed arbitrarily from what the laws of the land prescribed. This would seem to be the more accurate description of Shklar’s position, in particular as it is she who puts cruelty first, who considers the avoidance of cruelty our basic norm. It is the cruelty (the excessive, the unjustified cruelty) of tyrants that turns their subjects into exiles, in her thinking. It is, as we shall see more clearly below, her value monist position on cruelty that underlies her distinctive approach to political obligation. Exile What I want to do now is explore precisely how, according to Shklar, the subjects of a regime can be turned into exiles in this way. And what we see is that the way in which she conceptualises exile once again marks out the distinctiveness of her approach when set alongside liberal and communitarian theories. However, there are two things to note before proceeding. My exegesis emphasises what Shklar herself emphasises. Her focus is, primarily, on the type of exile that arises, directly or indirectly, from governments who ‘abuse residents under their jurisdiction’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 181). As a result, I will have little to say about what Shklar herself notes is an important category of exile, namely, ‘involuntary emigrés who leave under threat of harm to themselves and to their family’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 188; see Shklar 1998 [1993b], p. 58). In addition, as we have already mentioned, at the heart of her mature work is a fundamentally

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important distinction between exile (in all its various forms) and ordinary crime. For example, at one point, in referring to ‘involuntary emigrés’, she states: I put aside ordinary criminals who are on the run and limit myself to persons who have good grounds to claim that the state has treated them unjustly by excluding them from its borders. They are the injured party. (Shklar 1993a, p. 188)

Not only are ordinary criminals not the injured party; more generally, they are not exiles. I return below to her account of ordinary crime in her mature work. In this section, however, I want to examine the various ways in which polities abuse residents under their jurisdiction and how this treatment in turn creates three different kinds of exile. Betrayal Betrayal is one form of government abuse, and some exiles are ‘created by governments who betray them’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 181). This was the case for many Americans of Japanese ancestry during the Second World War. Those who were interned after the attack on Pearl Harbor were to be released only if they declared themselves loyal to the United States of America and renounced loyalty to Japan. As Shklar notes in her Harvard lectures on political obligation, this episode did not start as a government initiative: It was private pressure from civilians upon the military in California that forced Roosevelt to order the internment of citizens of Japanese origin. It was not a government intelligence operation, but a citizen initiative that led to this dreadful policy. (Shklar 2019 [1992b], p. 163)

The internees were to be ‘subjected to loyalty oaths’ so as to ‘make sure they posed no danger to the United States’ (Shklar 2019 [1992b]). Although many were happy to swear an oath of loyalty, some would not do so because of internment; and many were justified in refusing to do so on the grounds that they had been betrayed: ‘there was’, Shklar says, ‘a deep and justifiable sense of betrayal. Not they but their country had betrayed them. Why should you not act as an enemy alien if you are treated as one?’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 192). This example raises numerous questions, but let us start with the following. There seems to be a conflict here between obligation and loyalty. Should the obligation to support a just or near-just regime (in

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this case the United States of America at this time) always have priority over our group-based loyalties? In most cases, liberals will answer in the affirmative. For example, Rawls’s assumption is that, when we reason free from bias, including the biases that arise from group-based loyalties, we will see that it is rational to support just institutions even when this does not promote our own interests (as individuals or as members of a group) on a given occasion (Rawls 1971, p. 337). Obligations (or, for Rawls, natural duties) must come first. Otherwise, we descend into a situation of special pleading, where everyone is free to wriggle out of their obligations to the regime on any pretext. Now, although Shklar is a liberal, she does not assume that obligation always has priority in this way. Indeed, what Shklar shows is that in some instances there can be a real and tragic ‘conflict between obligation and loyalty’, and it was just such a conflict that the interned Japanese Americans faced, one that was reconciled ‘at the expense of the exiles’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 192). For it is not that Japanese Americans were simply unwilling to put to one side mere biases. It is that there was a conflict between loyalty and obligation, where the claims of familial and national loyalty provided very strong grounds for refusing to pledge allegiance to the United States of America. For Shklar, therefore, the group loyalties of exiles may provide very strong motivations and very good reasons to reject their political obligations. Nonetheless, she is not as a result simply giving priority to loyalty here. That is, this cannot be understood as a communitarian line of argument, according to which political obligations have legitimacy only when derived from group membership (see Horton 2010, p. 175). This is the case despite evident similarities between her arguments and those of communitarians. For a start, Shklar does not deny the role and significance of loyalty in politics: Political loyalty is evoked by nations, ethnic groups, churches, parties, and by doctrines, causes, ideologies, or faiths that form and identify associations. When it is a result of choice loyalty is a commitment that is affective in character and generated by a great deal more of our personality than calculation or moral reasoning. It is all of one that tends to be loyal. (Shklar 1993a, p. 184)

Loyalty is a powerful motivation in politics. Indeed, our loyalties sustain us in our everyday obligations, but they do so only up to a point: Unreflective citizenship is often habitual and not really an expression of obligation. Once the question of whether one should or should not obey is asked, however, the difference between loyalty and obligation emerges.

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Then we cannot ignore the difference and the ways in which loyalty can both sustain and undermine public rules. (Shklar 1993a, p. 187)

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Much of politics is habitual, as she says, and often our loyalties will sustain us in the habits of citizenship. However, this cannot blind us to the reality of conflicts between obligation and loyalty. For a start, there is always conflict between political obligation and national loyalty: it is evident that nationality and state structures must conflict, because there is no single territorial state, except perhaps Iceland, that is not multi-ethnic and multinational or could ever be or have been. (Shklar 1993a, p. 186)

Not only that, she concludes that in American history (as evidenced, for example, by the internment of Japanese Americans), loyalty has generally worked to undermine directly ‘political obligation, the duty to obey the law and the constitutional authorities’ (Shklar 2019 [1992b], p. 165). Here she is thinking not of the loyalty that Japanese Americans felt towards their families and their ancestors’ country of origin but, rather, the group-based loyalties of American nationalists which motivated the citizen initiative that brought about the internment policy. Although loyalty is a virtue, nonetheless, ‘political ideologies and the loyalties they inspire have made the past two centuries a hell on earth for many people’ (Shklar 2019 [1992b], p. 165). Hence, despite the significance of loyalty for politics, it is not the case that obligations have their basis or foundation in loyalty. When forced to provide a justification for political obligation, we cannot simply assume that membership of a group and loyalty to that group will answer the question for us. At times, in fact, the two are irreconcilable, as was the case for interned Japanese Americans. In this instance, it made Japanese group-based loyalties incompatible with American political obligation, forcing Japanese Americans to decide between the two, a painful decision that other national minorities (with the exception of German-speaking Americans (Shklar 2019 [1992b], p. 162)) did not have to make at this time. As they knew this to be ‘a violation of their rights’, there was a deep and justifiable sense of betrayal (Shklar 1993a, p. 192). Internal exile Shklar is carving out a position that owes a great deal to both liberal and communitarian thinking, and yet cannot be reduced to, or equated with, either. This is the case when trying to show that some exiles are

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created by governments who betray them, as we have seen. Her distinctiveness is evident again when she addresses the second category of exile, those who become internal exiles because of the demands of conscience. She is referring to those ‘who exile themselves without moving by escaping into themselves, as it were, because their world is so politically evil’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 181). According to Shklar, the example of Thoreau, like other abolitionists in America at the time, helps to illustrate the importance of ‘conscience claims in politics’, showing as it does that such men and women ‘have been so completely isolated by the injustice they perceive around them that ties of loyalty and fidelity may be eroded along with political obligation’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 195). That is, claims of conscience can eliminate, erode, political obligation (and much else besides). Shklar is not the first liberal writer to address the issue of conscience-based disobedience. Yet, hers is not the usual liberal argument. Liberals are wont to contend that, while we have an obligation (or, for Rawls, a duty) to support just institutions, and to work to help bring them about where they are absent, civil disobedience may be justified in protest at serious violations of justice (Rawls 1971, p. 372). For this line of argument, political obligation and civil disobedience have the same normative source, or justification, such that when we are required to engage in civil disobedience we are simply required to act in ways that political obligation itself demands. Once again, despite her own liberalism, Shklar is saying something that is clearly different. Her point is that claims of conscience can erode our political obligations because of what, following Thoreau, she calls ‘the unconditional primacy of conscience in the face of what he regarded as absolute evil’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 194). The evil of slavery demands something of us, of our conscience, in an immediate way, independent of what our political obligations call for. What we have here are independent sources of moral value, which at times come into conflict, demanding different, incompatible things from us. At the same time, unlike communitarians, Shklar also rejects the notion that we must tie claims of conscience to group-based loyalties. One communitarian thesis is that when people have rebelled and disobeyed, they have done so as members of groups to which they were loyal. Whether we are talking about religious groups in the early days of the Reformation, or trade unionists in the last century, or those who object to military service on religious grounds, their primary group loyalty gives legitimacy to their rebellion, as it creates a duty as well as a right to revolt (Walzer 1970, p. 3, pp. 14–15). However, despite the significance she gives to loyalty as a basis for moral claims in politics, Shklar is rightly

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seen as a critic of communitarian tendencies towards relativism (Hoffmann 1996; see also Shklar 1991a, p. 114n50; 1998 [nd2]). Here her argument is that, if we are exiled by claims of conscience, we have principled grounds for refusing to play our part in the polity, independent of whether we belong to the unjustly treated group (cf. Sleat 2013, p. 102). She does make the point, in looking back over the history of Western political thought, that ‘conscience is a very rare and a very odd ground for either obeying or disobeying public authorities’; and that it is more often conflicts of loyalties that lead to questions about whether or not one has an obligation to obey (Shklar 2019 [1990b], p. 1). Nonetheless, conscience does ‘come into its own’, she believes, for the abolitionists of the pre-Civil War period of American history (Shklar 2019 [1990b], p. 2). Of course, these claims of conscience themselves have no grounding in group-based loyalty. American Abolitionists were not themselves the victims of slavery, and, she observes, ‘in no way could they identify with the slaves, be part of their society, or become blacks’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 195). Yet, from the point of view of a conscience-based claim, the system itself did not have moral authority to rule over an abolitionist like Thoreau: ‘No government that rules over slaves is good enough to rule over him’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 194; emphasis in original; see also Shklar 2019 [1992b], pp. 169–75). Inherently unfit for full membership Exiles in the third and final category are those denied ‘membership in the polity and other rights, not as a matter of legal punishment but because they belong to a group that is thought to be inherently unfit for membership’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 181). Shklar takes up this theme with respect to many examples, including Jewish Germans living under Nazi rule, which I discuss in more detail in the next chapter. Here I focus on what she says about African Americans of the late twentieth century. In The Faces of Injustice she observes that in ‘a radically unequal society the rules cannot but encourage unlawful conduct among the deprived and their exploiters. The former are desperate, the latter can get away with it’ (Shklar 1990a, p. 87). Reflecting what others have noticed is her commitment to active politics and social compassion (Benhabib 1996, p. 62), Shklar stresses that the deprived are desperate because society provides no conventional means to remedy their position. As she says in American Citizenship, her study of the exclusion experienced by African Americans even since their emancipation from slavery, they are excluded insofar as they do not have the ‘standing’ that can be attained by earning

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a living from paid work (Shklar 1991a, p. 92). They have also been excluded – and continue to be excluded, some argue (Alexander 2019 [2010]) – from the franchise. As Shklar says, the argument for universal male suffrage (in particular after the 1812 war) was also one concerned with the status that such a right conferred: ‘For voting was the supreme emblem of status. And equality of status was what democracy was all about’ (Shklar 1998 [1988b], p. 179). It was not the act of voting as such that mattered; it was what the denial of the vote said about your status that made the extension of the franchise so important. Shklar is offering an explanation of the moral significance of African American inequality that, once again, highlights her distinctiveness with respect to both liberals and communitarians. For many communitarians, it is primarily cultural difference that serves to separate African Americans from mainstream American society. While social capital and social networks are, it is argued, the cultural foundations necessary for economic success (e.g. when applying for employment), ‘these social networks are absent in precisely the places where they are needed most’, including among ‘blacks who live in extreme poverty’ (Putnam 2000, p. 321). Are African Americans turned into exiles because they lack social capital? For a start, Shklar doubts that communitarian thinkers really know much about the cultural norms and practices of marginalised and disadvantaged groups. That is why any claim to have discovered ‘shared social meanings’ has little or no value until they are ‘checked against actual opinions’, in particular the opinions of the least advantaged members of the society in question (Shklar 1990a, pp. 114–15). In any case, when Shklar talks of exile she does not see it simply as a matter of cultural difference or cultural deficit, and hence something to be overcome by gaining a greater understanding of, and strengthening, the cultural resources of the exiled group. African Americans are not turned into exiles simply or solely because they lack social capital, therefore. Rather, they are exiles because they are desperate, and have no standing or status. At the same time, Shklar is not simply repeating the usual liberal argument that focuses primarily on the unjust treatment of African Americans. According to Rawls, for example, we have a duty to comply with unjust laws in a ‘state of near justice’, but nonetheless, he emphasises that ‘the burden of injustice should be more or less evenly distributed over different groups in society’ (Rawls 1971, pp. 354–5). Rawls also is aware that, in many societies, the burden of injustice is not evenly distributed, and this matters: ‘the duty to comply is problematic for permanent minorities that have suffered from injustice for many years’ (Rawls 1971,

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p. 355). While there is a substantial area of overlap here between the arguments of Shklar and Rawls, it is also the case that her position on exile goes beyond what he has to say about permanent minorities. For Shklar, it is not just the fact of having been treated unjustly that turns one into an exile. Rather, it is that one has been treated unjustly because one is thought inherently unfit for membership. It is this that makes one desperate, and encourages illegality. Reasons to accept political obligations Shklar’s reasoning is that contemporary African Americans, nineteenthcentury abolitionists, Jewish Germans living under Nazi rule, the interned Japanese Americans of the Second World War are each in their own way exiles. In each of its various forms, the experience of exile undermines the legitimacy of political obligation. Obligations have legitimacy when there are reasons to accept them, when it is rational to do so; and, the argument goes, exiles cannot be given such reasons. Shklar, therefore, is maintaining that political obligations are cancelled for exiles. However, we need to say more about how she reaches this conclusion in her mature work. In particular, there are two features of her argument that I focus on. On the one hand, Shklar employs a dichotomous distinction between exile and ordinary crime. I return to that in the next section. For now, I want to look at the value monism of her mature work, and examine precisely how that informs her arguments on exile. In this book I am putting forward a novel interpretation of Shklar’s work, and this is the case again when we consider what she has to say about exile. According to the prevailing view, Shklar’s scepticism is sufficient to explain her understanding of exile. For Andreas Hess, Shklar not only maintains that government illegality cancels obligations to a ‘state, country or government’, but also that this itself follows from ‘the individual’s critical judgement and the conscientious rejection of what is demanded of him or her’ (Hess 2016, p. 9). Hess also insists that Shklar’s ‘relatively late turn towards exile is neither accident nor retrospective construction’ (Hess 2016, p. 1), and so, with respect to work published after Legalism, it ‘would be a mistake to assume that [Shklar] had somehow abandoned her earlier scepticism’, that is, her concern with ‘what could realistically be achieved’ (Hess 2016, p. 6). Rather, ‘what happened was a shift in emphasis’, where ‘a whole new set of questions emerged, particularly in relation to obligation, loyalty and exile’ (Hess 2016, p. 6). According to this line of thought, therefore, it is from a sceptical concern

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with what can realistically be achieved that Shklar, in her mature work, highlights how some forms of political practice generate non-compliance with (that is, conscientious rejection of ) political obligations. This is also said to be a line of argument perfectly in accord with that of her earlier work, despite her not having at that time tackled the theme of exile. We have already seen that Shklar is, in various ways, a sceptic. Her scepticism is without doubt an important feature of her mature work, including her account of exile at this time. Nonetheless, it is by no means the only important feature. Indeed, it becomes clear that her value monism is far more significant in shaping that argument. In the essay ‘Obligation, Loyalty, Exile’, Shklar maintains that political obligations have legitimacy when it is rational for us to accept them, that legitimate societies are rational and law-like, and that a tyranny is arbitrary and lawless. In this essay she enumerates the diverse meanings of rationality in different political theories (including utilitarianism, natural law theory, and deontology), but does not make an argument one way or the other for one specific meaning of rationality (Shklar 1993a, p. 183; 1993b, p. 59). But we should not therefore conclude that she does not herself have a specific understanding either of what rationality means or of what counts as a reason to accept political obligations. As we know, her mature work places cruelty first among the vices. The avoidance of cruelty is the basic norm of politics, according to which cruelty is justified only so as to prevent greater cruelties. When we reason, our first premise is the avoidance of cruelty. Of course, this is a value monist approach to political rationality. It is also a value monist approach to political obligation. In her mature work, she asks whether we are turned into exiles by certain regimes. Shklar does indeed approach this issue as a sceptic: she concentrates on the various ways in which it is difficult to do what is right under these conditions. However, hers is a value monist approach as well. And, based on what we have already seen, we can very briefly sketch out her value monist approach to exile in its various forms. Shklar maintains both that we should comply with political obligations only insofar as it is rational to do so and that the avoidance of cruelty is our basic norm. It follows, for Shklar, that it is not rational to accept political obligations when to do so violates the basic norm of all political practice and prescription. We have political obligations in situations where this basic norm is guaranteed; whereas the bond of political obligation is cancelled for those who are exiles. This seems to be her thinking in regard to so-called internal exiles. She maintains that some become internal exiles because of the demands of conscience in reaction

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to the injustice they perceive around them. It is highly informative that she believes that internal exiles live in a ‘moral vacuum’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 194). More precisely, internal exiles have nothing else to fall back on but an ethic of ‘personal heroism’, as is the case with American Abolitionists, as well as those faced with Nazi rule: Was the character of America’s wrong such that nothing other than a heroic individualism, even anarchism was really adequate? If we say that nothing less than exile and defiance was acceptable in Nazi Germany, then we must grant Thoreau’s case for personal heroism as the only way to respond to a very great evil that has tacit support of most people and the very vocal support of a substantial minority. (Shklar 2019 [1992b], p. 174)

Shklar’s argument seems to be that the moral community in which abolitionists once had obligations has been destroyed for them by the fact that it is based on a cruelty that goes beyond what is minimally acceptable. Exiles owe something to themselves, namely heroic individualism. However, this creates a moral vacuum, anarchism, in regard to what is owed to others (including political obligations). It is important to note that the American polity at this time was not arbitrary or lawless. That was not the issue. It is clear therefore that what matters here is the greatness of the evil, and the support of the community for that great evil. We find a similar line of argument when Shklar turns to those who become exiles because of the terrible ways in which they themselves have been treated. They have been betrayed, they are thought inherently unfit for full membership, and so they become desperate. Once again, the issue is the greatness of the evil that has been inflicted. They have been subjected to a cruelty beyond what is minimally acceptable. That is why they are exiles: there can be no reason to accept political obligations in a regime that violates the basic norm of political practice and prescription. Once again, the political community has been destroyed for them. Certainly, it makes no sense, it is not rational, to consider themselves still bound by political obligations in such terrible circumstances. Ordinary crime We have been examining Shklar’s arguments about exile in her mature work. I also said at the outset that her mature work presupposes a dichotomous distinction between exile and ordinary crime. In what way are the two categories so different, according to Shklar? In brief, the

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distinction is as follows: she believes that exile erodes political obligations, but those obligations are not cancelled for ordinary criminals. What lies behind, and explains, this distinction? To start with, let us look closer at Shklar’s understanding of ordinary crime in her mature work. It is important to remind ourselves that Shklar is just as concerned with the everyday reality of largely legitimate polities as she is with the exception, the experience of exile. The need to stress this fact arises because of a growing tendency to see her as primarily concerned with radically non-ideal situations, specifically injustice and exile. Not only that, when we look at what she says about ordinary crime, once again it is not her scepticism that is of most importance but, rather, her value monism. And yet the prevailing view is that Shklar’s mature account of justice (and therefore crime) is simply a sceptical one (Whiteside 1999). It is of course true that she is a sceptical critic of the normal model of justice, according to which injustice is ‘a prelude to or a rejection and breakdown of justice’, arguing instead that we must listen to the voices of those who are the victims of injustice, and reform our rules of justice on that basis (Shklar 1990a, pp. 17, 108, 110). Whiteside maintains that, in The Faces of Injustice, Shklar allows her scepticism to trump and even cancel her commitment to the avoidance of cruelty. Whiteside’s point is that our being required to listen to victims lends credence to their complaints, whatever they may be. If any individual has a complaint, Shklar must consider this an injustice. This, in turn, threatens to render her incapable of both identifying what is genuinely an injustice and distinguishing between greater and lesser injustices. Yet, as we have already seen, Shklar’s argument here (her criticism of the normal model of justice) is not just a sceptical one but also reflects her commitment to put cruelty first among the vices. Her concern is that a non-sceptical approach to justice, as can be seen in the normal model of justice, threatens to make cruelty worse: Our subjective, personal experiences are too various and incommensurable to be fit into general rules of conduct and the attempt to impose them tends to backfire. Far from reducing cruelties, rules simply redirect and formalize our ferocity. (Shklar 1990a, p. 26)

Rules simply redirect and formalize our ferocity, rather than reducing cruelties. Why is that the case? When we trust the rules, we tend to become too sure of our competence and that makes us arrogant, cruel, and tyrannical […] In our radical uncertainty, therefore, the best we can do is to regret our insuperable

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limitations and to do as little harm as possible. One might even hope that if we were less eager to judge and condemn, we might have a less violent and fear-ridden society. (Shklar 1990a, p. 27)

Although Shklar is calling on us to listen to all experiences of injustice, her primary concern is to place limits on (rather to expand indefinitely) the scope for judgement, condemnation, and punishment of such injustices. Otherwise, we become arrogant, cruel, and tyrannical. Thus, the reason why we should restrict our tendency to punish others is so as to avoid cruelty and to employ cruelty only so as to prevent greater cruelties. Shklar’s value monism is, therefore, essential in explaining where the boundary is to be placed between what should and should not be punishable by criminal law. We see this most clearly in her discussions of Montesquieu and his understanding of criminal law. In Shklar’s reading of Montesquieu, certain areas of behaviour should not be subject to criminal law because to do so would worsen cruelty. Hence, Montesquieu’s conception of the ‘Rule of Law’, must, she says, take certain kinds of human conduct entirely out of human control, because they cannot be regulated or prevented without physical cruelty, arbitrariness and the creation of unremitting fear in the population. Coercive government must resort to an excess of violence when it attempts to effectively control religious belief and practice, consensual sex and expressions of public opinion. The Rule of Law is meant to place a fence around the innocent citizen so that she may feel secure in these and all other legal activities. (Shklar 1998 [1987b], p. 22)

As a society, how do we know whether to regulate or prevent certain kinds of human conduct? Unlike many liberals, Shklar does not think that we do so by appealing to natural rights or considerations of utility; and, unlike communitarians, she does not think that we can draw on some account of human flourishing or the shared values of the community. Rather, in order to mark out the proper limits of criminal law, we simply employ the principle of the avoidance of cruelty. Criminal law goes too far when it leads to cruelty and fear; and the proper role of criminal law is to ensure that the innocent citizen is not paralysed by fear but instead feels sufficiently secure to freely go about their daily business. This is, of course, a decidedly liberal approach to crime in one important sense. That is, Shklar hopes to limit the scope of criminal punishment to the greatest extent possible. As a sceptic, she does not assume that even a legitimate government can make citizens perfectly safe from cruelty, while as a monist she fears that any attempt to do so will simply

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make cruelty worse. Yes, a legitimate government does make citizens feel ‘less threatened’ by such things as ‘murder, rape, and theft’, but, at the same time, ‘a law-bound government is the least threatening form of social control’ (Shklar 1990a, p. 104). Once again, she is following Montesquieu’s arguments. According to Shklar, his concern was to avoid ‘concentrations of political authority in too few hands’, which is why he argued for the separation of powers that, he believed, would help to achieve ‘the real end of modern constitutional government: political stability without the oppression of individuals’ (Shklar 1998 [nd3], p. 160). One important implication of the separation of powers is to remove political influence over the punishment of crime, something, Shklar says, that Montesquieu could see in the English system of government at the time: The cornerstone of English freedom was a judiciary that was completely independent from other government agents. It was impartial, aided in its justice by popular juries, and dedicated to one end, the security and freedom of every individual. (Shklar 1998 [nd3], p. 163)

Hence, a law-bound government will strive to prevent cruelty, and punish those who are guilty of it, but in doing so it will not itself worsen cruelty. However, that is also the explanation for why the polity cannot ever fully eliminate crime: there is no possible way to reduce injustice significantly without a massive and effective education in civic virtue for each and every citizen, and, Shklar maintains, we prefer liberty to this prospect. What we have seen is that this is not only or merely a sceptical and liberal approach to crime. It is also a value monist position. For that reason, in her mature work Shklar also assumes that when we do in fact threaten punishment for criminal acts we do not, at the same time, violate freedom. How is this the case? For a start, we know that as a value monist Shklar rejects Berlin’s pluralist conception of negative freedom. We can now see that this monist approach to freedom is evident in her conceptualisation of ordinary crime as well. Following Montesquieu, she conceptualises freedom as liberty of action in accordance with the general rule for resolving moral conflicts, and on that basis she identifies what citizens are and are not free to do. Specifically, freedom requires a wide sphere of non-interference, it is true, but also we are rightly free from interference only insofar as our actions are not cruel. That is why freedom is not independence, which is just doing as one pleases. For a start, a legitimate polity criminalises only behaviour that creates fear and, as a result, limits freedom. Based on her reading of Montesquieu,

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Shklar maintains that her own liberalism of fear ‘knows only two figures and one place: victimizers and victims here and now’ (Shklar 1984, p. 241). What freedom requires, at a minimum, is that public and private intimidation do not prevail. Hence, as Shklar puts it, Montesquieu maintains that a legitimate polity may rightly punish any act of violence against the person or property of the individual: With religious opinion, consensual sex among adults and the public expression of public opinions decriminalized, the only task of the judiciary was to condemn the guilty of legally known crimes defined as acts threating the security of others, and to protect the innocent accused of such acts. (Shklar 1998 [1987b], p. 25)

This is a value monist understanding of ordinary crime, but it also clearly presupposes Shklar’s monist approach to freedom. That is why crimes are defined as acts threatening the security of others: Montesquieu’s [Rule of Law] really has only one aim, to protect the ruled against the aggression of those who rule. While it embraces all people, it fulfils only one fundamental aim, freedom from fear, which, to be sure, was for Montesquieu supremely important. (Shklar 1998 [1987b], p. 24)

Crimes make people afraid, and hence undermine their freedom. Criminal law guarantees freedom insofar as it protects people from the cruelty of both the state (those who rule) and the criminal. And yet it is not just that criminal law protects our freedom (i.e. those who are innocent of crime) by protecting us from fear. Following Montesquieu, Shklar also thinks of freedom as willing what one should will. As the avoidance of cruelty is our basic norm, we are not free to be cruel. In addition, only those things that are cruel (that threaten the security of others) should be crimes. It follows that we are not free to engage in crime, and hence when we are prevented from doing so (by the threat of punishment, say) our freedom has not been violated. Furthermore, it is our political obligation to obey the laws of a just society, and so criminal behaviour is forbidden by our political obligations. However, if we are not free to engage in crime, we also are not free to violate these political obligations. That is why Shklar refers only to the freedom of those who are innocent of crime: it is their freedom that is to be protected against both the unlawful cruelty of criminals and the arbitrary cruelty of an illegitimate polity. At the same time, in doing so we as a society do not protect the independence of the innocent but, rather, their freedom. As we have already seen, Shklar is happy to use Rousseau’s famous formula,

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namely our being forced to be free. This fits perfectly well with what she has said about political obligation and crime. In a society where the avoidance of cruelty is the basic norm, freedom is not restricted when we are prevented from acting in ways that violate our political obligations, namely, in ways that are cruel. Therefore, although hardly a fully worked-up theory, nonetheless Shklar’s mature work provides a distinctive standpoint on crime and punishment. It suggests that punishment is justified partly as retribution for past wrongs (i.e. past cruelties) and partly on the basis of consequentialist considerations regarding what will make people feel more secure in the future (i.e. safe from the cruelty of others).1 But what is truly important, and what I have emphasised here, is that Shklar’s understanding of crime in her mature work is based on her value monist approach to moral conflict and her value monist conception of freedom and political obligation. That is what really sets her apart from other liberals as well as from communitarians, far more so than her scepticism, or her focus on the negative experience of the extreme cases of injustice and illegitimate power. She does reject the normal model of justice, and so she is saying that we should make sure that society itself (in particular through its criminal justice system) does not make cruelty worse in its efforts to fully impose its rules. At the same time, we are not free to be cruel, and so criminals are not free to engage in crime. Society may not try to finally eliminate crime. Nonetheless, we are not free to break the law. That means that society does not violate our freedom when we are stopped from acting in this way and, as a result, forced to adhere to our political obligations. The exile/ordinary crime dichotomy There is a dichotomous distinction in Shklar’s mature work between ordinary crime and what she calls exile. While ordinary criminals are never free to break the law, exiles simply have no obligation to obey the law in the first place. I now want to set out formally the value monist basis for this dichotomous distinction between exile and ordinary crime. First, Shklar’s value monism explains why, for her, citizens are not free to commit ordinary crimes. When a legitimate society threatens to punish those who might engage in ordinary crime, it is threatening cruelty. However, this is a threat that has legitimacy, and it has legitimacy because  For one other attempt to combine the two, see Hare 1989 [1986].

1

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it is the threat of employing cruelty so as to prevent greater cruelties. The threat of punishment is to be controlled in its scope and modified by legally enforced rules of fairness, the result of which is that arbitrariness is not added to the minimum of fear required for law enforcement. We can reconstruct her argument, formally, as follows: 1 The avoidance of cruelty is the basic norm of a legitimate polity; 2 Actions that threaten the security of others, such as theft, murder, and rape, violate (1); 3 Punishing (or preventing) acts that violate (1) is legitimate, if the punishment (or prevention) itself does not violate (1); 4 Therefore (2) should be punished (or prevented) as crimes, if the punishment (or prevention) itself does not violate (1); 5 Because of (1), citizens are not free to engage in (2); 6 Therefore, being prevented from engaging in (2) by the legitimate threat of punishment does not violate freedom. According to this line of argument, being legitimately prevented from engaging in cruelty does not violate our freedom. Hence, moral conflicts do not arise when we consider ordinary criminality, as there is no conflict between legitimately preventing criminal activity and protecting the freedom of the criminal: in a situation like this, the latter moral claim is eliminated, as no one is free to engage in crime. Turning now to exiles, we can, based on what we have seen so far, also formally present Shklar’s value monist position, as follows: (1) The avoidance of cruelty is the basic norm of a legitimate polity; (7) Political obligations to a polity therefore have legitimacy insofar as the polity employs cruelty only so as to prevent greater cruelty; (8) Political obligations to a polity (in particular, duties to obey the law) have legitimacy insofar as the polity does not violate (1); (9) When a polity betrays its subjects, treats them as inherently unfit for full membership, or surrounds them with evil, it violates (1); (10) When a polity violates (1), it cancels political obligations; (11) When a polity violates (1), it turns its subjects into exiles. We can be turned into exiles by polities that are in large part law-like and legitimate (as is the case, Shklar believes, when African Americans are exiles of contemporary American society). In addition, tyrannies also turn their subjects into exiles and, as a result, cancel political obligations. I postpone until the next chapter the more detailed examination that Shklar’s argument on tyranny (and exile) requires. As we shall see in

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that chapter, she also puts forward two other lines of argument supporting the same conclusion: i.e. that tyrannies make political freedom impossible, and that they are incompatible with the most important political and personal aim, namely to live without being forced to choose between betrayal and heroism. I have so far focused on showing that Shklar’s value monism is a crucial factor in explaining her mature position on crime and exile. Before moving on, I want to raise some concerns about the distinction itself. She says that some are made into exiles because of the way in which they themselves have been treated. Specifically, they have been denied membership or basic rights. Crucially, for Shklar, this has not been brought about as a matter of legal punishment. The political obligations of exiles are cancelled in part because of this fact. We know that ordinary criminals, if they are punished for their crimes, will be denied some rights as part of their punishment. However, if ordinary criminals are denied membership or other rights, this does in fact happen only as a matter of legal punishment. That is partly why their political obligations are not cancelled by the fact of their being punished. They have been punished, but they have been treated justly and fairly. They have been dealt with in a law-like manner, whereas exiles have experienced arbitrary, lawless treatment. In addition, she says at another point that ordinary criminals are not the injured party. Ordinary criminals are the ones causing harm to others, their victims. In contrast, exiles are the injured party. And it is for this reason that, according to Shklar, their political obligations are cancelled. Not only have they been treated in an arbitrary, lawless manner, but they have been harmed in a most serious manner. We have here the dichotomous distinction between exiles and ordinary criminals. We have ordinary criminals who injure others and as a result must accept the law-like imposition of punishments for their crimes; and we have exiles who themselves have been unjustly injured and who have been treated in an arbitrary and lawless fashion. However, there are clear weaknesses with this dichotomous distinction as it is laid out here. For a start, we know that in one of Shklar’s own categories of exile, namely internal exiles, the exiles have not themselves been injured. As she says of Thoreau and other abolitionists, in no way could they identify with the slaves, be part of their society, or become blacks. So it is clear that being the injured party is not necessary for one’s status as an exile. It might be replied that internal exiles do not injure others, and that is why they are so different to ordinary criminals. But that does not get us very far either, as many acts that do not cause direct harm to others

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are nonetheless punishable by criminal law: paternalistic legislation that criminalises the personal consumption of certain drugs is a case in point. So, while one can be an exile without being the injured party, one can be a criminal without injuring others. Hence, the distinction, as it is presented in Shklar’s work, is open to serious question. However, my focus has been (and will continue to be) on the underlying ideas behind her views on political obligation. And what we have seen is that, in her mature work, what matters most is her value monism. That is why it seems to her that political obligations are cancelled for exiles (and why criminal law does not restrict the freedom of criminals). The distinction between ordinary crime and exile does not stand up to sustained scrutiny, but it is an understandable manifestation of Shklar’s mature value monism. The voluntary and the free So much for Shklar’s mature work. I turn now to her early work. And what I want to do is show how, at this time, and in particular in Legalism, she takes a value pluralist approach not just to moral conflict but also to political obligation, including the obligation to obey the law. Her early value pluralism does require some rethinking, as I have suggested already, for at this time she fails to offer a value pluralist conception of freedom as well. Indeed, later in this chapter I will try to go beyond Shklar’s own early arguments, and show that, because of value pluralism, criminals can be faced with moral conflicts concerning their political obligations. First, however, let us look more closely at what Shklar has to say in her early work about one aspect of political obligation, namely the duty to refrain from crime. We know that Shklar offers a value pluralist approach to moral conflict in her early work. It is also a value pluralist approach to crime. We can see this if we begin with what she says at the time about injustice, and contrast that with her account of exile in her mature work. It becomes clear that her early work, in particular Legalism, has no place for the concept of exile as it appears in her mature work. In her early work her argument is that we are faced with a variety of valid, and potentially conflicting, moral claims, and there is no general rule to resolve conflicts arising between them. One implication of this value pluralism is that legitimate feelings of injustice will be common, and even commonplace. Therefore, being treated unjustly is not always the shattering experience that Shklar assumes it to be in her mature work, where it makes exiles

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of its victims. For Shklar’s early work, it is due to the plurality of potentially conflicting criteria of merit that we cannot ever completely remove injustice: even in the best possible regimes, there will always be some who feel, and justifiably so, they have been treated unjustly based on one of the various criteria of merit (Shklar 1964a, p. 115). It is not that Shklar’s early pluralism prevents her from accounting for the worst excesses of the most illegitimate regimes, or distinguishing them from the feelings of injustice in even the best regimes. It is that, in her early work, she does so without employing the concept of exile, or the exile/ordinary crime dichotomy, of her mature work. There is, of course, a not insignificant degree of convergence between her early and mature arguments. We know that, in her later publications, Shklar, as a sceptic, continues to stress that no moral rule can ever hope to account for the plurality of individual experiences of injustices, and so, for that reason, we can never eliminate the sense of injustice. However, in her mature work she also presupposes that being surrounded by political evil, or being the victim of such evil, eliminates political obligations. She does not make such an argument in her early pluralist work. Rather, at this time she maintains that even when we are the victims of the worst abuses of power, our political obligations are not simply eliminated. That is why deciding whether or not to resist tyranny leaves us caught on the horns of a dilemma: Looking at the problem from the point of view of the individual who asks, ‘What should I do?’ it is clear that there is no moral authority simply ‘there’ to decide his case for him. What he is faced with is the difficult choice among a variety of equally valid obligations – to his family, to his friends, to his associates, to his profession, to his countrymen, and to his political convictions (to name but a few). (Shklar 1964a, p. 73)

Shklar does not here explicitly address whether the duty to obey the law is still normatively binding under tyranny, but, arguably, based on what she does say, that may be the case, in particular if it is justified by, among other things, obligations to our countrymen. In any case, it is clear that, for the early Shklar, tyranny does not extinguish our obligations, including political obligations, more generally. Indeed, we are left caught on the horns of a dilemma concerning precisely those obligations. My argument is that, in Legalism, Shklar adopts a pluralist approach to moral conflict, an approach that she then abandons in her mature work. Once again, it must be noted that this interpretation is, in important

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respects, at odds with what we find in the literature. For a start, Samuel Moyn’s detailed examination of Legalism fails altogether to mention its value pluralism. This is the case even when he discusses Shklar’s treatment of the moral dilemmas faced by those forced to decide whether or not to resist tyranny, which he refers to as ‘the fearful decision to resist’ (Moyn 2014, p. 720). What Moyn draws attention to is Shklar’s rejection of the natural law approach to resistance. He quotes Shklar as saying that, when faced with such a decision, instead of natural law what is needed is ‘a critical and independent attitude among citizens in general’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 72, quoted in Moyn 2014, p. 720). But he does not address what Shklar says on the very next page, and which I have quoted in the previous paragraph. In that passage, Shklar claims that the victims of tyranny are faced with a difficult choice among a variety of equally valid obligations. In addition, there is no moral authority, there, to decide the case for them. They are faced with an unresolved moral conflict. The implication of the above is that Shklar’s early work has no place for the exile/ordinary crime dichotomy found in her mature work. Firstly, she does not put forward anything like the concept of exile as it is understood in her mature work. As we have already seen, in her early work she does not think that injustice and tyranny necessarily cancel political obligations: they do not of necessity turn us into exiles. It follows that, secondly, in her early work she is also offering a different conception of crime, and this must follow simply because she is not operating with an exile/ordinary crime dichotomy. So, precisely how does she understand crime in her early work? As with others, for the younger Shklar, crime is a public wrong. Some wrongs are private, or civil, rather than public. Crimes are public wrongs both because they are condemned as wrong on the basis of authoritative social norms, and also because it is the community as a whole, rather than the individual victims (in cases where there are victims), that the wrongdoers must answer to (see Duff 2005, p. 356). In addition, as the community responds to crime through public investigation, prosecution, and punishment, we are forced to ask how we can (normatively) justify the coercive enforcement of law in such instances (see Anscombe 1990 [1978], pp. 146–7). Therefore, although crime is obviously a legal issue, it is a moral one as well. This is a point that Shklar is at pains to emphasise in Legalism. She is therefore rejecting the positivist approach to law. She stresses that, although crime is a public wrong, nonetheless, it is not ‘logically necessary or conceptually possible to separate law and morals’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 42). This follows because it is simply not the case that

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while law ‘is social, objective, and coercive; morals are individual, subjective, and voluntary’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 44). Our political obligation to refrain from crime, therefore, is not simply or solely a legal obligation; it is also moral. However, as a pluralist, Shklar must find some way to conceptualise the political obligation to refrain from crime without presupposing the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. Thus, while she agrees with natural law theorists that crime (and the laws relating to crime) is a moral issue, she rejects natural law itself because of its value monism. Although law is inseparable from morals, we cannot base law on what some individual or group insist is the fundamental, higher moral law. Indeed, as a value pluralist, Shklar rejects what she calls ‘moralistic jurisprudence’: It insists that any proper definition of law must include some reference to the higher values law should serve […] Classification and evaluation are here openly joined […] The feeling that what one does not approve of ‘is’ not, either because it has been or soon will be destroyed, is a real necessity for many people who have a ‘cause.’ Here the logical difficulty of deriving an ‘is’ from an ‘ought,’ or vice versa, is of no importance compared to the sense of security gained from the feeling that a true law, a rule that is genuinely valuable, ‘exists’ as a natural, universal necessity. (Shklar 1964a, pp. 36–7)

Is cannot be derived from ought. We may want it to be the case that what we believe ought to be the highest moral law does in fact have that status. But our wanting it to be the case does not make it so. While Shklar remains throughout her career a sceptical critic of this type of utopianism (the transformative or prophetic kind bent on inventing reality), it is only in her early work that she also objects on value pluralist grounds. Indeed, it is hard to credit that she will herself later turn to value monism when we see her here, in her early work, refer as follows to two ‘incompatible intellectual-psychological types’: namely, ‘people who fall into despair if their moral convictions were not anchored to a universally valid order and those who find a state of doubt not only endurable but positively enjoyable’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 37). In her mature work, Shklar remains a sceptic, and so retains that sense of doubt to some extent. But she also claims to have identified the greatest evil of all, and on that basis she defines what crime is and also concludes that we are not free to act in that way. We are left to wonder how is the liberalism of fear any different from the moralistic jurisprudence that she rejects in her early work? It looks like Shklar, in her mature work, is attempting

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to derive is from ought, to insist that, because we ought not to be cruel, then no one is free to be cruel; and because we ought to refrain from criminal activity, then no one is free to engage in crime. If natural law theorists have no justification for arguing in this way, why should we think any differently of the mature Shklar? We should also note that, in pursuing this line of argument, what we are doing is applying the ideas advanced in Shklar’s own early work to help make better sense of what she then comes to say in her mature work. Her own early value pluralism provides a very solid platform from which to critically analyse a value monist approach to crime and political obligation. At this point in our exegesis things become a little bit more complex, however. We have a value pluralist approach to crime in Shklar’s early work. However, we also know that hers is a restricted version of value pluralism, for, at this time, she is unable to reject a (Rousseauian) monist conception of freedom, according to which genuine authority does not limit freedom. Indeed, there is clear evidence for her value monist conception of freedom in her discussion of crime at this time. This is the case in the way she emphasises the importance of criminal law not unduly restricting individual freedom. She refers to the ‘liberal desire to preserve individual autonomy, and to preserve the diversity of morals which is in constant danger of ideological and governmental interference’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 42). This point is made in explaining the objections liberals usually raise to those who wish to base criminal law, instead, on the ‘absolutism’ of ‘moralists’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 42). The absolutist approach to criminal law infringes on individual liberty, Shklar is saying, by being absolutist. It does not infringe on liberty by being law. That is, absolutism will violate liberty, properly understood, because it will criminalise what should not be criminalised. If instead we practise tolerance in response to the diversity of moral and political views, then and only then will we guarantee freedom. As I said, we can see the influence of that (Rousseauian) monist idea of freedom that Shklar was unable to reject at this time, according to which genuine authority does not limit freedom. In particular, this is the case with the distinction she makes between voluntary acts and freedom. She starts by saying that the idea of voluntary action has a place in criminal law. An action is considered voluntary that was not performed while the agent was being coerced by others or was mentally deranged, nor was done accidently or when the agent was totally incapable of appraising the facts of the situation in which he found himself. (Shklar 1964a, p. 49)

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The idea of voluntary action has a place in criminal law because it serves ‘to educate self-reliant citizens’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 49). If citizens are made aware of these extenuating circumstances, this will ‘increase the security and freedom of the individual by making the conditions of criminal responsibility clear and explicit’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 49). Another way to put this is that legalism (law-based morals and legislation) increases security and freedom. It is for this reason that Shklar is decidedly critical of those whose attack on criminal law is not concerned ‘with the reform of that eminently reformable institution, but with the fundamental wrongness of trying to govern with rules, especially punitive’ (Shklar 1964c, p. 6). When we consider existentialist and romantic thinkers, it is, she says, ‘startling to find objections to the criminal law that aim at its institutionalized regularity’, and that such objections show an ‘immense sympathy for criminal offenders, many of whom have very little claim to it’, a sympathy that is felt ‘simply because he is defiant, not because his acts are anything other than reprehensible’ (Shklar 1964c, pp. 6, 7). For Shklar, it is the regularity of these rules, the rules of criminal law, that are its greatest merit. Far from themselves being the source of danger to individual freedom, they are its guarantor. And, as we shall see, not only should we feel no sympathy for criminals, we should not think of them as acting freely, even though it must be the case that they act voluntarily. The latter point arises because Shklar is presupposing a distinction between voluntary action and freedom. Only voluntary acts are punishable by law, and in that way the freedom of those innocent of such crimes is better protected. The law-abiding citizen has the freedom to act in pursuing any number of the diverse aims and ends that are tolerated in a free society. What is not tolerated is crime, and we are not free to pursue criminal aims and ends. When criminals do engage in crime, they do so voluntarily, but not freely. In addition, it is by insisting that only voluntary acts can be criminalised that we properly protect the freedom of the law-abiding citizen. There is ‘a threat to individual freedom in the uncertainty and incalculability that might follow if extenuating circumstances were ignored in punishment’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 52). Freedom requires certainty about what one may or may not do; what will or will not be punished: If accidental and unintended acts were not treated as less punishable than premeditated ones, the individual’s ability to predict the action of public authorities would be decreased, and his freedom as well; for he could never be quite sure when he was in danger of committing a crime. (Shklar 1964a, p. 52)

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It is not the freedom of the criminal that is of concern here. Yes, criminals act voluntarily, for otherwise their deeds should not be considered crimes. But when Shklar talks of freedom she is thinking only of those options and activities that should not be criminalised, and in a legitimate polity would not be criminalised. Indeed, in a legitimate polity, criminal law simply guarantees freedom, because it is predictable, and as a result it sets before us what we are and are not free to do. This is the value monist conception of freedom sitting at the heart of Shklar’s early value pluralism. She is not the only value pluralist to advance such an argument. Others agree that because there is no general rule to resolve moral conflicts we should therefore be free to choose among the variety of valid and valuable ends of life; but also, we are not free to act in ways that prevent others from doing likewise (see Galston 2005). And when we prevent others from pursuing their aims and ends in ways that deserve criminal punishment we do not violate their liberty, given that they were not free to act in these ways. The political obligation to refrain from crime is not justified by some supposed higher norm, as natural law theorists assume. Nonetheless, Shklar at this time does conclude that because we ought not to commit crime, for that reason we are not free to do so. This is the germ from which her mature work emerges, not just her mature value monism but also the associated ideas about exile and ordinary crime. Crime as a personal commitment If Shklar’s early work is not consistent in its value pluralism, let us explore what a consistently pluralist position on political obligation would look like. In particular, what does value pluralism have to say about the duty to refrain from crime? Under value pluralism, crime is conceptualised without a value monist approach to moral conflict. But there is one significant, perhaps unsettling, implication of a (consistent) value pluralist understanding of crime. It is that the obligation to obey the law may come into conflict with other moral claims, and that we have no general rule to resolve such conflicts when they arise. In taking up this line of argument I will now ask whether ordinary criminals can be faced with genuine moral conflicts concerning their political obligations. And I will examine just one possible source of moral conflict, namely between the political obligations and the personal commitments of ordinary criminals. However, we should note that this is not a question Shklar herself poses, not even in her early work. And perhaps this is because, as we have seen,

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she does not offer a pluralist conception of freedom at this time. Therefore, in raising the question myself I am endeavouring to take the arguments of her early work in new directions. At the same time, all I am doing is endeavouring to be a consistent value pluralist, and, as a result, I think that it is fair to say I am trying to see what Shklar’s early work would look like if she had been a consistent value pluralist. To start with, consider what Nagel has to say about personal commitments. Alongside obligations, general rights, utility, and perfectionism, personal commitments are one of the ‘five fundamental types of value that give rise to moral conflict’: The final category is that of commitment to one’s own projects or undertakings, which is a value in addition to whatever reasons may have led to them in the first place. If you have set out to climb Everest, or translate Aristotle’s Metaphysics, or master the Well-Tempered Clavier, or synthesize an amino acid, then the further pursuit of that project, once begun, acquires remarkable importance. It is partly a matter of justifying earlier investment of time and energy, and not allowing it to have been in vain. It is partly a desire to be the sort of person who finishes what he begins. But whatever the reason, our projects make autonomous claims on us once undertaken, which they need not have made in advance […] These commitments should not be confused with self-interest, for self-interest aims at the integrated fulfillment over time of all one’s interests and desires (or at least those desires one does not wish to eliminate). Special commitments may, in their pursuit, be inimical to self-interest thus defined. (Nagel 1979 [1977] pp. 129–30)

Nagel’s argument is that commitment to one’s own projects or undertakings is one of the five fundamental types of value because such projects or undertakings make autonomous claims on us once undertaken. Remember, this is a pluralist account of the sources of value. Therefore, it is qua personal commitments that projects and undertakings are a source of value, whether or not such commitments are judged morally valuable by reference to, say, utility or perfectionism or rights or obligations. However, arguably the full significance of what is being argued for here is obscured by the nature of the examples Nagel chooses for its illustration. Those who are committed to climbing Everest, or translating Metaphysics, or mastering the Well-Tempered Clavier, or synthesising an amino acid are a peculiar breed. Independent of their pursuing a personal commitment, what they each do is already a source of value, at the very least on either perfectionist or utilitarian grounds, or a mixture of both. So it is curious that they are chosen to illustrate the idea that commitment

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to one’s own projects or undertakings is a fundamental source of value. A better illustrative example would be some activity that, generally speaking, does not contribute to utility, or foster perfectionist excellence, or satisfy obligations, and does usually violate the rights of others. In most cases, crime fits that description. And, for crime to be a fundamental source of value qua personal commitment, all that is required is that criminals have good reason either to ensure that their earlier investment of time and energy was not in vain, or to be the sort of person who finishes what he begins. For the pluralist, there is no a priori reason why this cannot be true of the projects and undertakings of the criminal. Of course, other moral sources may provide us with good reasons to prevent criminals from pursuing those commitments, or halt them when once begun, for example because crime violates the rights of others, but that is not relevant to the question at hand. Nagel says elsewhere that we ‘cannot sustain an impersonal indifference to the things in [our] life which matter to [us] personally’ (Nagel 1991, p. 11). What counts, in the first instance, is whether this is true also of criminal commitments. Again, a life of crime also may be detrimental to the self-interest of criminals themselves, in particular when they are caught and punished. But even if this is so, and irrespective of its being so, based on Nagel’s own conceptualisation, it can still be a project and an undertaking. This is in part an empirical matter. As a matter of fact, are people committed to crime and is crime a central part of their lives? There is some evidence to suggest that this is so. For example, studies have reported that ‘crime runs in families’, as imprisonment of family members predicts imprisonment of young males (Farrington et al. 2001, p. 579), but also that we can now study crime as a ‘career’, in particular by considering its duration and the seriousness of the offences (Piquero et al. 2003, p. 361). Many policies are aimed at breaking this inter-generational cycle, which is seen as central to the so-called culture of poverty by thinkers aligned with both left and right (Gans 1996). Of course, the objective of such policies is to bring an end to the culture of poverty, but in pursuing them the concession is made that people are committed to crime, that crime is central to their lives. Also, the issue is not whether a turn to crime could be justified by considering some extraneous principle. We are not asking whether there are people in society who have been betrayed or who have been subjected to continued injustice, such that their turning to crime may be considered a justified response. For example, in his discussion of race and justice in America Melvin Rogers refers to ‘the

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norm of Black devaluation that makes Black lives disposable’ (Rogers 2014); and Juliet Hooker highlights ‘racial profiling, excessive use of force by the police, disparities in sentencing, and lack of accountability of law enforcement’ (Hooker 2016, p. 462; see also Katzenstein and Waller 2015, p. 639). As Shklar says in her mature work, illegality is encouraged by such injustices. But all of this is tangential to the point at issue here, namely whether it is possible for crime to be a personal commitment. As we have seen, the empirical evidence suggests that people are committed to crime. If crime matters personally to criminals, then even though this commitment will give rise to many moral conflicts, it is a source of value. This is the case unless there is some reason, at the outset, why crime could never be a project, an undertaking, a personal commitment. And we already know what monists say about this: we are not free to do as we please; we are free only insofar as we do not violate the general rule for resolving moral conflicts; and criminal activity will violate that general rule. For example, if we give priority to the value of autonomy (as many liberals do, following Kant and others) we will see crime as something that we are not free to do, on the basis that no truly autonomous person would do such a thing. Indeed, it is widely assumed that criminals are not autonomous, and that criminal lives are ‘more dependent, less fulfilled, lacking in “social currency”’ (Elkins 2010, p. 226). However, there is a serious problem facing value monists, those who wish to conceptualise freedom as liberty of action in accordance with the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. The problem is that monists do not agree on what that general rule is: for the mature Shklar, it is the avoidance of cruelty; but for others it is the principle of equal liberty, or the harm principle, or the promotion of utility, or autonomy, or the Christian conception of charity, and so on, potentially ad infinitum. There is no consensus on what the general rule is for resolving moral conflicts, but each monist is claiming to have identified what that rule is. How, then, should we judge value monism? Even the best possible interpretation of this lack of consensus is that monists must, all bar one, be wrong. Perhaps this is the case; and perhaps the mature Shklar alone among others has hit upon what the general rule is. Perhaps she has; but she has not managed to convince her fellow value monists. As that is so, why should value pluralists concede the point when her fellow monists do not? Arguably this is a matter for monists to try to resolve among themselves, and indeed this is the approach that, in her own early work,

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Shklar adopts in regard to the competing, and incompatible, accounts offered of the content of natural law:

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One of the delights of those who do not happen to be partial to natural law theory is to sit back and observe the diversity and incompatibility among the various schools of natural law, each one insisting upon its own preferences as the only truly universally valid ones. (Shklar 1964a, p. 68)

Value pluralists would be justified in following the advice of the early Shklar when considering the monist arguments of the mature Shklar, sitting back with ironic detachment as yet one more value monist insists that their preferred norm is the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. However, value monists may respond by arguing that we simply cannot do without a general rule for resolving moral conflicts, although we may disagree about what that rule is. If we are faced with conflicting moral claims, we need some way to resolve them, for otherwise there will be arbitrariness. Hence, for Rawls, ‘finality’, a rational ordering of potentially conflicting claims, is one of the requirements of moral justification itself (Rawls 1971, p. 103). The argument could be that at the very least monists are attempting to do what is necessary, namely to identify the general rule for resolving moral conflicts and then show what follows from its consistent application. And arguably the need for finality is greatest when we consider crime: we need to be able to act decisively in response to actions that threaten, say, liberty or security or peace, and so on. However, this counter-argument does not take us very far. In the first place, value monism can provide finality only if the general rule employed is the correct one. Otherwise in what meaningful sense of moral justification could we say the conflict is brought to an end? And so we are back to the fact that monists are unable to agree what that general rule is. But, putting that objection to one side, it is far from clear that monists themselves do in fact adhere consistently to any one general rule for resolving moral conflicts. I have already argued that Shklar, in her mature work, simply must appeal to considerations other than the avoidance of cruelty. This is the case when she considers paternalism, but it is also the case concerning crime. For example, in her mature work she will not condone a legal system that strives to prevent all cruelty, on the grounds that, although this would reduce injustice significantly, we prefer liberty to this prospect. Her argument seems to be that, were the state to be so powerful as to make each individual perfectly safe from the cruelty of others, then the state itself would become the greatest threat to individual freedom. But

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how can she, as a monist, make this argument? Pluralists have no trouble concluding that even when it is legitimate law is always a fetter. For Berlinian pluralism, freedom from interference is one moral claim, it may come into conflict with others (such as the avoidance of cruelty), and we have no general rule for the resolution of such conflicts. But, as the mature Shklar conceptualises freedom as liberty of action in accordance with the avoidance of cruelty, how can she argue that the state, in reducing cruelty, nonetheless violates liberty? One possibility is to argue that, were a state to be so powerful as to make each individual perfectly safe from the cruelty of others, then it would not only be cruel, its cruelty would be greater than the cruelty it saved us from (the cruelty of other citizens), and therefore on that ground the state would become a (bigger) threat to liberty. Shklar does allow for the use of cruelty on one ground only, namely when it is necessary to prevent greater cruelties, and so this argument limiting state power seems to be in line with her value monism. And in some senses cruelty as a concept allows for these distinctions of greater and lesser, and so, for example, we can see that the cruelty of the Soviet interrogator and torturer is, simply, without much room for controversy, greater (worse) than the cruelty of law enforcement in a legitimate, non-tyrannical polity. However, when the differences are not so stark, how then do we distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable forms or levels of cruelty? For example, Shklar seems to assume that the cruelty of an educative state, a state that attempts to shape our beliefs and attitudes and in that way prevent us from acting cruelly, is greater than the cruelty of the crime it prevents. Yet reasonable people might disagree with her here, and if such reasonable disagreement is possible, the principle of the avoidance of cruelty will not decide the issue one way or the other. And if that happens, surely we must then appeal to other relevant considerations, such as whether the prevention of crime not only limits cruelty but also, for example, violates Berlinian negative freedom and/or undermines what Nagel calls our personal commitments, and so on. Then we could try to come to a decision about which activities should be criminalised, not by appealing to what is supposed to be the general rule for resolving moral conflicts, but instead by taking on board what is demanded of us by a variety of potentially conflicting moral claims. And if that is the case, we have moved far away from Shklar’s mature value monism, and indeed are back, and decidedly so, with her earlier value pluralism, where we are faced with the actuality of inner moral conflict, created by a multitude of valid claims.

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I said I would develop the pluralist arguments of Shklar’s early work in directions she did not take. In her early work she makes the pluralist case for a conception of crime that, although normative, is not based on what is thought to be the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. What Shklar does not provide at this time is a pluralist conception of freedom, as we know. Thus, although she examines a wide range of moral conflicts in Legalism, she does not consider the moral conflicts that arise when the socially accepted limits on individual freedom are enforced; that is, when people are prevented from doing as they please. However, although Shklar does not do so, Berlin does provide a pluralist conception of freedom, according to which freedom from interference is one value among others and may come into conflict with others. Law is always a fetter for Berlin, even laws that prevent crime. And it is on the basis of this pluralist conception of freedom that we have examined the moral conflicts that may arise for the criminal. This is a line of argument in keeping with the pluralist spirit of Shklar’s early work, while advancing it into areas she did not suggest herself and, indeed, given her holding to a nascent value monist interpretation of Rousseau’s conception of freedom at this time, would not have been fully happy with even in her early work. What is this pluralist position on crime? It is that there is no reason why we cannot freely engage in crime, why it cannot be at the centre of our personal commitments, or why we should be willing to be indifferent when asked to sacrifice such commitments. Now, it may be argued that this is a highly permissive position. The implication would seem to be that anything goes. And it is indeed true that, for this Berlinian conception of freedom, we are free to do as we please, and any restriction on that freedom is a wrong. At the same time, what I have argued is that criminals may be faced with real moral conflicts, that is, conflicts between independent moral values. I have not tried to condone criminality on non-moral grounds. In fact, this is a comprehensively or exclusively normative argument, appealing as it does to normative considerations. And it also provides a moral argument against the value monist approach to crime. Value monists assume that we are not free to engage in crime, and so that punishment (or the threat of punishment) does not restrict freedom. In sharp contrast, value pluralism requires that we recognise and acknowledge the wrong done when we remove options from others, even when we are justified in doing so. Punishment, and the threat of punishment, is always a prima facie wrong, and it is a wrong that value monists remain ignorant of.

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Nonetheless, it may also be argued that, if the pluralist position is also a normative one, it cannot be applied to all crimes. It may make sense when considering ordinary crime, which must surely refer only to crimes without identifiable victims, or crimes without the use or threatened use of violence, and so on. That is, I must be operating with an implicit distinction between ordinary and extraordinary crimes. However, that is not the case either. When we consider whether certain acts are part of a person’s personal commitments, it is inappropriate to exclude those acts that, for example, violate the rights of others. This is the case because to do so simply confuses one fundamental source of value with another. Of course, when we decide whether or not as a society we should criminalise certain acts, say violent physical assault, and what punishments are justified for those actions, then it is perfectly right to consider the rights of others, given that criminal law should, inter alia, provide protection against such acts. But whether or not projects or undertakings violate the rights of others is irrelevant in the first instance in deciding whether they can be personal commitments. That is the case unless the sources of value in fact are not independent of each other. But why should we believe this to be the case? For example, why believe that only those projects that contribute to utility can be considered personal commitments in the normative sense? We could make that argument only if we had shown that we must give priority, as a general rule, to utility. Value monists have of course made such claims, but there is nothing close to agreement about the validity of such claims. Finally, it could be argued that my value pluralist position is sceptical in a particular, and unacceptable, way, namely that it calls into question the reality of moral values. But that is not the case either. As a value pluralist I have argued that, when faced with conflicting moral values, we have not identified the general rule for their resolution. But none of this calls into question the reality of moral values themselves. It is true that pluralists doubt our intellectual capacity to resolve such conflicts by appeal to the one correct general rule, but such conflicts arise, for pluralists, because of the great significance of the moral values in question. Arguably this also has important implications for the moral and political status of criminals. If criminals are faced with real moral conflicts concerning their political obligations, they cannot be treated simply as the enemy: ‘a foreign “element,” a barbarian horde’ (Elkins 2010, p. 225). If crime is part of people’s projects or undertakings, then it matters to them, and we cannot expect criminals to be indifferent to those personal

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commitments. Criminals sometimes have good reasons to do what they do, although such reasons may not be so strong as to always trump their political obligations. Like anyone else, criminals need to be convinced to follow their political obligations, and to be shown that it is rational to do so. Let us continue this line of argument to its logical conclusion. What happens if we apply this value pluralist line of argument to the worst possible political scenario, namely tyranny? Will we still be able to talk about real moral values and their demands on us? For example, will the value of justice still have binding force? And if we think that ordinary criminals may have good reasons to break the law in a legitimate polity, could there be any reasons for anyone to accept political obligations under tyranny?

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6 Tyranny

We have seen how Shklar is, in various ways, a widely acknowledged and significant influence on the approach to political thinking that we have called political non-moralism. Like many political non-moralists, hers is a sceptical approach that focuses on protection against the greatest political evil, namely cruelty, and arguably tyranny is its apotheosis. Nonetheless, scepticism is not the only characteristic of her mature political thought, and it may not even be the most important when it comes to the question of how she understands radically non-ideal political situations, including the specific focus of this chapter: the moral norms that apply under tyranny. As a sceptic, Shklar is alive to the limitations of any moral theory, including a theory of justice, as she makes clear, for instance, in her critique of the normal model of justice. But at different points in her career she gives sharply diverging answers to the question of whether obligations of justice survive at all under conditions of tyranny. She is consistent throughout in her characterisation of tyrannies as lawless, arbitrary, oppressive, and cruel (Shklar 1957, p. 97; 1964a, p. 169; 1989a, p. 30; 1993a, p. 183). However, in her early work she maintains that we owe obligations of justice even in such circumstances, and we can be faced with moral conflicts precisely in relation to these demands. In contrast, by the time of her mature work, in the 1980s and 1990s, she concludes that tyranny cancels obligations of justice. There are a number of distinct strands of argumentation evident in Shklar’s mature position on tyranny. As we saw in the last chapter, she maintains that tyranny makes exiles of its subjects. In addition, as we shall see here, she contends that tyranny is incompatible with ‘the most important political and personal aim’, namely to live without being forced to choose between betrayal and heroism (Shklar 1984, p. 156), and also

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that tyranny makes a certain kind of freedom, political liberty, ‘impossible’ and ‘unimaginable’ (Shklar 1989a, pp. 28, 29). What I will try to show here is that lying behind each of these arguments is a value monist approach to moral conflict, one that is dramatically at odds with the value pluralism of Shklar’s early work. Now, as we know, her commentators have not noticed this radical transformation in her arguments. In this chapter I try to show the importance of that transition in shaping how Shklar, as a political non-moralist, understands tyranny. Addressing this issue also brings us back to wider debates on the nature and role of political thought. Since the early 2000s there has been an ongoing clash between moralist and non-moralist approaches to political theory. My argument is one that instead stresses the importance of the distinction between value monism and value pluralism. Of course, we should also remember that, as value pluralism is a meta-ethical position, we cannot simply read off from it any one fully worked-out normative or conceptual system. Value pluralists will disagree about many things and, for instance, will give different answers to the question that is the focus of this chapter, namely whether the victims of tyranny still have obligations of justice. Value pluralism is not by itself the solution to the problems of political practice and it is not by itself the answer to the questions raised about the nature, limitations, and role of political thought. Nonetheless, what we can say is that, because it is free from the problems afflicting value monism, there are very good reasons to adopt value pluralism, and this is made clear when we consider extreme non-ideal situations, as is the case with tyranny. Tyranny and betrayal One of the characteristics of life under tyranny is that friendship becomes dangerous. Friends trust each other, and this is something tyrants hope to exploit, coercing their victims into acts of betrayal. In this way, friendship becomes one of the means by which the power of the totalitarian state seeps into the otherwise relatively inaccessible private sphere of intimate relations. This is a sphere of moral claims, where individuals can be said to owe things to each other for moral reasons. In this chapter I focus on the obligations of justice that we owe to friends. Of course, this is not the only thing to be said about either friendship or justice. Obligations of justice arise also in connection with the wider society and the state. And it is not only justice that we owe to our friends, as friendship itself places other and at times greater demands on us as well. Nonetheless, I

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want to focus here on betrayal of friends as a violation of obligations of justice. It is admittedly a narrow focus, but it is chosen so as to better tackle a specific question: whether obligations of justice survive at all under tyranny. The following example will, hopefully, illustrate much of what is at stake in posing this question. It is taken from the first volume of Nadezhda Mandelstam’s memoirs, Hope Against Hope (1999 [1970]), which covers her involvement in the twin Russian revolutions of 1917 and deals with her own period of exile as well as the arrest, imprisonment, exile, and then death of her husband, the poet Osip Mandelstam, at the hands of the Soviet regime. In an earlier chapter we examined utopianism, and we looked at the twin reasons why utopias can be said to demand too much of us: that is, because they lack epistemological justification and because they violate other moral norms. Given the tendency of utopias to demand too much, they can become dystopian. Yet Mandelstam shows why the utopian ideals of the revolution initially had such a strong appeal to the Russian intelligentsia (herself and Osip included): In the pre-revolutionary era there had already been this craving for an all-embracing idea which would explain everything in the world and bring about universal harmony at one go. That is why people so willingly closed their eyes and followed their leader, not allowing themselves to compare words with deeds, or to weigh the consequences of their actions. This explained the progressive loss of a sense of reality – which had to be regained before there could be any question of discovering what had been wrong with the theory in the first place. (Mandelstam 1999 [1970], p. 162)

The communist revolutionary idea was appealing precisely because it was a utopian vision, and so it claimed to explain everything by its unifying worldview and, as a result, promised to transform society accordingly. But in what ways did that theory go wrong, to use Mandelstam’s term? How did it become a dystopian tyranny? Mandelstam describes how, in 1934, the secret police (the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or NKVD) arrested her husband, Osip, because of a poem he had composed the previous year about the then Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin. The original version contains the following lines: All we hear is the Kremlin mountaineer, The murderer and peasant slayer.

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And concludes as follows:

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And every killing is a treat For the broad-chested Ossete. (Mandelstam 1999 [1970], p. 13)

After Osip’s arrest, both he and Nadezhda were sent into internal exile, first in Cherdyn and then in Voronezh. Finally, Osip was re-arrested in 1938 and died that year in a transit camp near Vladivostok, on his way to Siberia. The crucial fact about this episode, in terms of what it tells us about how Soviet utopianism had gone wrong, is that Osip had never published the poem in question: indeed, the authorities had prevented him from publishing his work since the 1920s. It was merely recited to a small number of friends, on a very few occasions. At some point, someone informed the NKVD, and provided them with a written copy of the poem. The Mandelstams were, therefore, betrayed by someone they knew and trusted. Nadezhda cannot say who, among that circle of acquaintances, informed the secret police, and she refuses to speculate on their identity. This is, partly, because such betrayals were so commonplace. As one study of everyday life under Stalin puts it, Meetings of writers, composers, scientists, and professors – particularly off-the-record discussions in the corridors – were the subject of detailed, almost verbatim reports by informers. (Fitzpatrick 1999, p. 166)

Nadezdha herself notes that, given the prevalence of informers, it was always possible that one was being observed: ‘By their [NKVD] whole behaviour they seem to be saying: You have nowhere to hide, you are under surveillance, we are always with you’ (Mandelstam 1999 [1970], p. 17). Thus, for Nadezhda, Stalin’s Russia was a society where betrayal was pervasive. And the betrayal of the Mandelstams forces us to ask what, if anything, did Stalin’s victims owe those who were their fellow subjects and their friends? In particular, did they have obligations of justice to their friends? Shklar, in her mature work, concludes that, under tyranny (and she uses the term to refer both to Stalinism and to Nazism), ordinary subjects are freed from such obligations (as well as other moral claims), and for that reason should not be condemned for betraying their friends. Why is that the case? Justice requires that we give to others what they are due. Now, one way in which we betray others is ‘to prove false’ to them, ‘to disappoint [their] hopes or expectations’ (Shklar 1984, p. 139). When we disappoint legitimate expectations, our betrayal is also an injustice. And, Shklar maintains, we should not condemn those who,

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from fear of a tyrannical regime, betray those who were once their friends: Who is to condemn the Soviet citizen who shuts his door and heart to a dissident who once was his friend? Public fear […] makes us treacherous; and it also excuses us, because danger summons us to look out for ourselves and our families. Heroism is very rare, and no one is obliged to reach such heights. When someone does, he is praised precisely for being more than merely good. (Shklar 1984, p. 148)

Shklar is posing and answering a question here. Who is to condemn those who betray others because they fear the consequences of not doing so? Well, public fear excuses such acts of betrayal. There are the beginnings of an explanation for why this should be so. She says that our fear of tyranny excuses us when we betray those with whom we were once friends; that to do otherwise would require heroism; and of course heroism is supererogatory: it is above and beyond duty. But that is not the full explanation. Shklar is not just saying that heroism is not obligatory: that is true as a matter of definition. She is also saying that we are excused when we betray others under tyranny. Why should that be the case? As we shall see in this chapter, in her mature work Shklar is assuming that obligations of justice are cancelled under tyranny, and she advances a number of distinct lines of argument on this point. To start with, let us consider the contention, already examined in the last chapter, that tyranny makes exiles of its subjects. As we know, Shklar distinguishes three types of exile: (i) exiles created by governments who betray them; (ii) exiles denied membership and basic rights because they belong to a group that is thought to be inherently unfit for membership; and finally (iii) internal exiles, namely those who exile themselves without moving by escaping into themselves, as it were, because their world is so politically evil. Her argument is that exile cancels obligation, along with loyalty, friendship, and other sources of moral claims. For example, because of Nazi rule, Shklar believes that German Jews were made into exiles in the first two senses of the term. Their situation was worse than that of others exiled by Nazi rule. For instance, the labour leader Willy Brandt, who was forced to leave Germany during the Nazi era, nonetheless believed that he could remain loyal to the ‘better possibilities’ of the German people, and although his obligations to the state ‘lapsed’ under Nazism, he could return in post-war West Germany (Shklar 1993a, p. 192). In contrast, the treatment of German Jews under Nazi rule freed them from the demands of both the state and also their fellow

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subjects, and this was a rupture that continued even in post-war West Germany: The German Jews, however, could retain no conceivable obligation to Germany, even after the destruction of the Nazi state, and only a handful returned. They also had no grounds for loyalty, since their erstwhile fellow citizens had abandoned them with such alacrity. One can look at their condition in Lockean terms. Both contracts had been broken, the first between members of society as well as the second between citizens and the state. (Shklar 1993a, p. 193)

Hence, Nazi rule made exiles out of German Jews in the first two senses of the term, that is, by betraying them and by denying them membership and basic rights. As we know, there are also internal exiles. And Shklar believes that there were internal exiles within Nazi Germany: for example, ‘the opponents of Nazism who remained in Germany cut off from their exiled friends by war, and utterly alone among their Nazified countrymen’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 194). And she equates their experience with that of abolitionists in a slave-owning society, the situation of Thoreau, for example: ‘Abolitionists lived not in the midst of ideological struggles but in a moral vacuum and their agony was being implicated in an evil they abhorred’ (Shklar 1993a, p. 194). For the mature Shklar, tyranny makes exiles of its victims, then. At this point in her life Shklar also appears to understand her own childhood experience in precisely these terms. In her autobiographical sketch from 1989, ‘A Life of Learning’, she talks about her early childhood in 1930s Riga, where, with the onset of the Second World War, Latvia was facing inevitable conquest by either Stalinism or Nazism. Her own account suggests that she and her family were internal exiles, for they were ‘a family with high personal standards [in] an utterly depraved external world’; but also, given that, as German Jews, ‘almost everyone around us wanted us to be somewhere else at best, or to kill us at worst’, they were exiles both in the sense that they were likely to be betrayed and in the sense that, regardless of who eventually conquered Latvia, they would be thought inherently unfit for full membership (Shklar 1996 [1989b], p. 264). Shklar and her family managed to escape Latvia before it came under the control of first the Soviets, then the Nazis, and then the Soviets again. And her argument is that such an experience of exile erodes not only obligations to the wider society and the current (or future) political regime, but also the just claims of friends and fellow subjects: ‘ties of loyalty and fidelity may be eroded along with political obligation’ (Shklar

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1993a, p. 195). Thus, in Shklar’s recollection, her family’s perspective on life in Riga was one of ‘wariness’ and ‘cynicism’ (Shklar 1996 [1989b], p. 264). They existed in a moral vacuum, surrounded by evil, and the overriding consideration was to save themselves by fleeing. In Shklar’s mature work, therefore, tyranny cancels a whole range of moral claims, including obligations of justice to friends and fellow subjects. However, there is another line of argument that we must consider, according to which such obligations in fact may not be cancelled at all by tyranny. Indeed, it is evident in Shklar’s own early pluralism, and I turn to that presently. But we can also see this line of argument in Berlin’s work, and indeed it is evident in what he himself has to say about the Mandelstams’ betrayal, so let us start there. On a visit to the Soviet Union in 1945, just after the ending of the Second World War, Berlin met the poet and novelist Boris Pasternak, who spoke about the part he had played in the Mandelstams’ story. At the time when Osip’s poem was reported to the secret police, Pasternak received a telephone call from Stalin, who wished to speak to him about the case. In Berlin’s account, Stalin asked Pasternak whether Osip was, as a poet, a ‘master’. When Pasternak replied that he ‘felt no affinity’ with Osip’s poetry but that ‘this was not the point at all’, Stalin cut him off, saying: ‘If I were Mandelstam’s friend, I should have known better how to defend him’ (Berlin 2011 [1980], p. 63). The very same incident is related in Nadezhda’s memoirs as well, but she gives Stalin the following words: ‘If I were a poet and a poet friend of mine were in trouble, I would do anything to help him’ (Mandelstam 1999 [1970], p. 146). It may be tempting to think that Pasternak owed nothing to Osip under Stalinism, because tyranny reduces its subjects to a condition where they must merely fight for survival. Indeed, Pasternak himself, in his novel Dr Zhivago, says as much about the civil war period after the revolution: [It] confirmed the ancient proverb, ‘Man is a wolf to man.’ Traveller turned off the road at the sight of traveller, stranger meeting stranger killed for fear of being killed […] The laws of human civilization were suspended. The jungle law was in force. Man dreamed the prehistoric dreams of the cave dweller. (Pasternak 2002 [1958], pp. 340–1)

This passage may suggest that, as was the case during the civil war period, so too in Stalin’s regime Soviet subjects owed nothing to anyone else. And yet, what is clear from Berlin’s telling of this story is Pasternak’s sensitivity to and even preoccupation with the question of his own culpability in Osip’s demise. To Berlin, Pasternak says, ‘I know what you think – that

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I have done something for them’ (Berlin 2011 [1980], p. 67; emphasis in original). As it happens, Nadezhda absolves Pasternak of any wrong-doing in this episode: she believes not only that Pasternak did not refuse to vouch for Osip, but also that Stalin had already decided to spare Osip, at least for the time being (Mandelstam 1999 [1970], p. 148). Nonetheless, Pasternak was consumed by the question of his own guilt, and this may be explained in part by his enjoying far greater freedom under Stalin’s rule than Osip did. While Osip was forbidden from publishing his work, Pasternak continued to earn a living from writing. Pasternak also feared that one of his collections of poems, On Early Trains, could be seen as a ‘gesture of conformity’, an ‘effort to placate the authorities’ (Berlin 2011 [1980], p. 65). For these very reasons, moreover, Berlin’s account of the Mandelstams’ betrayal uncovers an aspect of life under Stalinist tyranny that is highly illuminating for our purposes. It strongly suggests that the tyrant’s victims can still retain a sense of justice: certainly, obligations of justice still had prescriptive force for Pasternak. He clearly believed that he should not betray either his friends or his fellow subjects, and that if he had done so, this was a terrible wrong. This is the case even though, as Nadezhda says, Pasternak’s relations with Osip were not ‘covered by the term “friendship”’ (Mandelstam 1999 [1970], p. 146), and even though the tyrant (Stalin) held his (Pasternak’s) life and livelihood in his hands. What we have seen is that, in Berlin’s account, obligations of justice are not simply cancelled under tyranny. Not only that, but, despite going on to hold the diametrically opposed view in her mature work, in her early writings Shklar advances a line of argument that is almost identical to Berlin’s. Specifically, in her second published book, Legalism, she maintains that those forced to decide whether or not to resist tyranny are faced with ‘the prospect of making an awful choice’, and this is so because they are caught on the horns of a dilemma (Shklar 1964a, p. 73). Not only are they faced with a variety of obligations, but each one is equally valid, and they are valid even though the regime in question is tyrannical. That is why she believes that deciding whether or not to resist tyranny represents a genuine moral conflict. Shklar is here rejecting both the idea that tyranny frees us from many of our moral claims, including those of justice, and also the notion that, as a result, there is no moral conflict under tyranny. She focuses in particular on natural law theory, concluding that it has been ‘singularly unhelpful’ in addressing the question of resistance to tyranny, and this

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is the case, she argues, because it sees it as a simple conflict between morality, on the one hand, and mere law (namely the laws of an illegitimate regime), on the other. That is not how we should understand the situation, she says: [T]he main issue is that what is involved is not a confrontation of law and morality at all, but a choice between competing moral values and a decision to resist or obey an entire political system, whatever part legal activity may play in it. (Shklar 1964a, p. 74)

What natural law theory fails to account for is the possibility that tyrannies may satisfy some of the requirements of a legal system, and yet that we could be morally required to resist that very regime. There can be moral considerations on each side of the argument, but natural law theorists can only incant generalities (‘platitudes’) that are ill-suited to the reality of pluralism in modern, complex societies: To promote the ‘common good,’ to do what ‘the public order’ requires, or to resist when it is clear that these are being destroyed reflects a view of society as an integrated whole. At best these phrases are reminders of the moral unity of smaller and more simple societies; at worst they reduce to mere platitudes the infinite difficulties of those who must face the prospect of contemporary tyranny. (Shklar 1964a, p. 74)

What Shklar is objecting to is a monist approach according to which our obligations are justified by appeal to a ‘basic norm’: Once the ‘basic norm’ is valid, once the obligation to obey a political order and the legal system within it is accepted as a natural one, there is no more to be said. As long as subordinate rules are formally consistent with superior norms, as long as they issue from ‘legitimate’ authority, there is nothing more to say. (Shklar 1964a, p. 74)

She is rejecting natural law theory because it tries to simplify what is in fact a highly complex situation. Natural law tells us to obey when the basic norm is valid, and that we have no such obligations when that norm is violated. But things are not this simple: The actualities of moral and political life are, however, a matter of limited choices – of specific decisions made by legislators, administrators, judges, and citizens within a political system – and here again it is not a matter of ‘to be or not to be’ moral, but of which of several claims one shall honor. (Shklar 1964a, p. 75)

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Natural law can offer only false comfort, the younger Shklar maintains. This is the case because of its value monism: what is problematic is the assumption that there is a basic norm, and that we resolve moral conflicts by appeal to that norm. This is simply unsatisfactory, given the reality of moral conflict. Indeed, the victims of tyranny are forced to decide whether or not to obey the regime, and the monist idea of a basic norm reduces their infinite difficulties to mere platitudes. The victims of tyranny are placed under terrible pressure to betray each other, but they continue to have obligations of justice. Not only that, those obligations may come into conflict with other, equally valid, demands. Pluralism, tyranny, and justice So far we have considered two very different ways to think about tyranny: that tyranny cancels our obligations of justice, and that those obligations persist under tyranny and may result in real moral dilemmas. We have also seen that, between her early and mature work, Shklar’s position on tyranny changes, categorically, from the latter to the former. Why does this transformation occur? How is it explained? My argument is that the explanation lies in her rejection of the value pluralist approach to moral conflict that is evident in her early work. And, as a stepping-off point in making that argument, I want to focus on just one aspect of the value pluralist position that she puts forward in Legalism. Shklar devotes a significant amount of the first half of this book to the task of highlighting not only that different conceptions of justice are incommensurable but that justice itself is incommensurable with other moral values. Justice is one instance of what she calls the morality of rules, the morality of obligation – of rights and duties clearly resembling law, and, as we have already seen, it is (for Shklar) sharply distinguished from other moralities, including, inter alia, moralities of service and mutual aid and the morality of the saint and the hero. She has no desire to escape the anxiety caused by such diversity. Hers is an approach that ‘obviously accepts the diversity of moral and political traditions and beliefs as something given’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 63). In addition, Shklar deploys this value pluralist approach to moral conflict in making sense of tyranny. As we have seen, she maintains that those deciding whether or not to resist tyranny are faced with a diversity of obligations that are equally valid. These are obligations to one’s family, friends, associates, profession, countrymen, and political convictions (to name but a few).

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Arguably, Shklar’s value pluralism provides a distinctive way in which to understand and evaluate situations like that of the Mandelstams’ betrayal. In such a scenario, justice may demand one thing; heroism another; and obligations of mutual aid, in particular to our family, something else again. What is more, there is no moral authority simply there to decide the case for us: for example, it is not true that we no longer have obligations of justice to our friends when to perform them will put ourselves and/or our families at risk. That is, a value pluralist like the younger Shklar can examine whether the Mandelstams’ betrayers were faced with a genuine moral conflict of the following kind: 1 they ought not to betray their friends, the Mandelstams, to the tyrannical regime; 2 they ought to protect themselves and/or their families from the harm threatened by the tyrannical regime; 3 in the given circumstances, they can do either of these; but 4 in the given circumstances, they cannot do both.

When the victims of tyranny are faced with such a dilemma, they sometimes do what is wrong in order to do what is right. This in turn suggests that the real merit of value pluralism lies in its sensitivity to the nuances and complexities of these real-world decisions. In sharp contrast, monists believe that they have resolved whatever moral conflicts arise. For that very reason they are in danger of providing overly simplistic or one-sided interpretations of the situation: whether that all informers are simply guilty of a terrible wrong that could never be justified, or that there is no moral judgement at all to be made of informers in such cases. Pluralism is open to counter-arguments as well, of course. Perhaps the most significant for our purposes is that it descends into mere relativism, where moral conflicts are mapped onto cultural differences. However, arguably this is a danger that arises for some forms of value pluralism and not others, as can be seen for example in Gray’s work. It should be noted that Gray explicitly rejects relativism, asserting that ‘in conflicts among incommensurable values incompatible choices can be right’ (Gray 2000, p. 48). That is, there can be ‘rational choices among incommensurable values’; and this is the case insofar as we do not assume that ‘a rational choice is one that adopts a single solution as being right’ (Gray 2000, p. 48). Yet he also maintains that incommensurable values arise in part

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from the ‘conventions that govern moral life in particular cultures’ (Gray 2000, p. 35), and indeed that a given community may ‘crowd […] out’ or ‘exclude […] altogether’ certain values (Gray 1998, p. 20). Thus, not only may justice be interpreted in ways that are incommensurable in different cultures, in some countries (for example, where justice can be ‘bought’) we can say ‘there is no justice’: it is a good that has ‘been destroyed’ (Gray 1998, p. 26). This line of argument certainly is suggestive of relativism, in that it seems to follow that, if in culture C moral conflicts are resolved in a given way, then this is right for culture C, but not necessarily for other cultures. However, pluralists are not compelled to accept these conclusions. Indeed, the danger of relativism is mitigated insofar as it remains possible to offer reasons justifying (or criticising) any particular resolution of a conflict (which, to be fair to Gray, is what he says himself ); although, because of value incommensurability, we cannot do so by applying a general rule of theory, we can through the exercise of practical reason: that is, we can try to find agreement with others about which value ‘has more weight’ in a given ‘set of circumstances’ (Berlin and Williams 1994, p. 307). What is more, in her early value pluralist work Shklar makes a considerable effort to ensure that she herself does not acquiesce in cultural relativism, although it may also be fair to say that, ultimately, she is not fully successful here either. On the one hand, she assumes that we can call into question the ways in which certain regimes, including the worst, resolve value conflicts. In considering the trial of Nazi leaders at Nuremberg, she thus stands up for ‘the rigorous attribution of guilt for specific acts’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 171). Therefore, despite significant cultural differences between societies (as we see, for example, with liberal democratic societies passing judgement on German Nazism), it is possible to seek out a common ground on which to make and defend such judgements. Shklar notes that this was the approach taken at the end of the Second World War in establishing political trials in order to prosecute tyrannical leaders for their alleged crimes, as was the case in 1945 with the trial of the major war criminals at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. On the other hand, Shklar insists that we must not simply impose moral standards and principles that are alien to the people and the culture to which we are referring. That is why it was, for her, wrong to offer a natural law justification for the trial of Japanese war-time leaders, given that the Japanese people did not share this tradition (Shklar 1964a, p. 179). In contrast, it was, she believes, perfectly legitimate for liberals

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at the time to approach the political trials of former Nazis with the following two concerns: [Firstly, is] a policy of persecution being pursued in these trials, even the fair ones, which endangers freedom? Secondly, is the trial a fair one, and hence a contribution to the legalistic ethos, assuming that the object of prosecution is a justifiable one? (Shklar 1964a, p. 151)

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That is, in judging Nazis, and in acting on those judgments, liberals are bound by, inter alia, liberal and legalistic considerations of freedom, fairness, and rule-based justice. And whereas the Japanese people did not share the values of natural law, in contrast legalism and liberalism were not alien to the German people. Indeed, they provide the basis for claims made against those who lived in and led the Nazi regime, just as they do when we evaluate the war record of the Allies (although Shklar has to exclude the USSR here when referring to the Allies and their commitment to liberalism). Hence, it is on the basis of such shared values that Shklar judges the comparative guilt of Allied and Nazi powers. For example, while Allied forces were guilty of conventional war crimes, including the bombing of civilian targets (Shklar 1964a, p. 162), it was the Nazis who were guilty, she argues, of crimes against humanity: ‘The concentration camps, the shooting of civilian hostages, the erasing of villages, the forced labor deportations’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 164). What this suggests is that, in her early value pluralist work, Shklar does assume that cultural differences limit our capacity to form judgements about what has happened in other societies. At the same time we should emphasise that, for Shklar, the Allies were able to judge the war record of the Nazis without imposing alien values on the German people. Not only that, she also assumes that, just because the Nazi regime was tyrannical, it does not follow that those who lived in the Nazi regime were freed from the duties of justice owed to those who were subject to that regime. In making these judgements Shklar does not appeal to a monistic moral doctrine, such as natural law, as to do so would be, as we have seen, a vain effort to evade the anxiety caused by moral conflict; it would offer only false comfort. Nor does she approach such judgements with the utopian, forward-looking consideration that the Trial would be part of a radical re-education and transformation of the populace: ‘Certainly total re-education of millions was not feasible’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 169). Rather, political trials are justified by considering their shortto-medium-term consequences. And what could be hoped for from the Nuremberg Trial was, she concludes, for it to help to reintroduce and

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reaffirm a commitment to legalism among the German elite, a commitment that the Nazi regime never fully succeeded in extinguishing. The Trial bolstered legalism because it ‘was internally fair […] the guilt of each was independently established’; but also because ‘something deserving punishment had been committed. That something was crimes against humanity’ (Shklar 1964a, pp. 168–9). The Allies were right to judge Nazi leaders on the basis of the legalistic ethos because it was one shared on both sides. Of course, Shklar’s approach here does raise concerns about cultural relativism, as we have seen. For we are left to wonder, what if anything can we hope to say about what is done in regimes that differ from our own in some marked way culturally? This is the scenario of Japanese war-time leaders, as we saw (never mind Soviet leaders among the Allies). That is one aspect of Shklar’s early approach to tyranny. The other side to it is the fact that this is a value pluralist understanding of justice and legalism. That is why Shklar ‘sees trials not as guarded from political life by a fence marked “law,” but as part of a continuing process of political development’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 165). Hence, she approaches legalism, and therefore justice, as a pluralist, where even legal judgments cannot be fenced off from the moral conflicts that characterise political life. In judging the Nazi regime we do appeal to legalistic moral standards, such as those of justice, but we do so as value pluralists, with the awareness that there is no general rule to resolve our moral conflicts, that is, conflicts that arise between values, within values, and between social structures and cultural forms expressing those values. There is a justifiable concern that Shklar herself has succumbed to relativism, given that it is only a matter of the accidents of history that the Allies might rightly judge the actions of the Nazis as they did. However, value pluralism need not necessarily go down that particular route. And I think this is clear from the fact that pluralists can, and do, appeal to the idea of universal evil (and universal goods). We saw this in Hampshire, Gray, and Berlin, and perhaps it is something that can act as a corrective against the tendency towards relativism in the early Shklar. In any case, it is an issue that we must address when we consider both the role and the limits of political theory. The question is, how much can we expect from political theory? There are dangers in pushing theory beyond its proper limits, and there are dangers if we do not extend theory as far as it should go. These are questions we will grapple with again in the final chapter. What we have seen is that, in her early work, Shklar adopts a value pluralist approach to moral conflict generally, and to the conflicts arising under tyranny specifically. However, we also now know that she sets

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value pluralism aside in her mature work. Thus her mature writings offer exactly what, in her early work, she rejects as false comfort: just like the natural law accounts of resistance that she rejects out of hand in Legalism, in the 1980s and 1990s she concludes that we have no claims of justice against us under tyranny. In addition, in her mature writings, Shklar also claims to do precisely what she herself in her early work says has totalitarian implications: namely, to identify the general rule for resolving moral dilemmas. But this leaves two questions to consider. Is it her newly embraced monism that leads her to conclude that tyranny cancels obligations of justice? And does her monism provide an adequate justification for those mature arguments on tyranny? That tyranny cancels obligations of justice In her mature work Shklar concludes that tyranny cancels obligations of justice, and she does so by advancing a number of related lines of argument. One such argument, explored above (and in the previous chapter), is that tyranny turns its victims into exiles, cancelling their obligations along with other moral claims arising from their ties with others. Why is this the case? According to one interpretation, to adequately explain her mature arguments on exile we need only consider Shklar’s scepticism. This is Andreas Hess’s thesis, as we have seen. According to this reading of her work, it is from a sceptical concern with what can realistically be achieved that Shklar, in her mature work, highlights how tyranny generates non-compliance with (that is, conscientious rejection of ) obligations of justice. What can be said of this interpretation? It is indeed true that, as Hess says, Shklar’s mature work highlights the challenges of realistically achieving certain aims or implementing certain ideals under tyranny. This can be seen when, for example, she highlights the ‘ambiguity’ of betrayal under tyranny: Danger and habit: both create environments in which the climate of betrayal is so pervasive that individual acts of betrayal, however simple and pure, acquire an uncertain meaning and make judgment doubtful. (Shklar 1984, p. 149)

Therefore, her mature work does adopt a sceptical approach to tyranny: we do not know enough to have absolute certainty about who is guilty of betrayal under tyranny. Nonetheless, it does not follow that this scepticism is sufficient to explain her mature account of exile. For a start, we know that in her early work, Shklar does not see the victims of tyranny as exiles. In fact, she assumes that there are many

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equally valid obligations pressing on them. This is the case despite her scepticism at this time, in particular concerning how difficult it is to implement any one principle of justice. As we know, in Legalism she observes that even when we all accept that a given principle of justice should be applied (say, the principle of work), it will affect different people in different ways: no two cases are really so alike that equal treatment under a rule can be realized to everyone’s satisfaction. Her early work is clearly sceptical, therefore, and yet at this time she is explicit in stating that moral demands are pressing on us and that there is no general rule to resolve moral conflicts between those demands, including in the situation of tyranny where those deciding whether or not to resist are faced with conflicts between what is owed to their family, friends, associates, profession, countrymen, and political convictions (to name but a few). What of her mature work? Is her position on tyranny explained simply by her scepticism? At this time she does note that, in situations of tyranny, the meaning of betrayal can be unclear and, as a result, judgements can be doubtful. Yet, we know that her mature argument on tyranny is not just the sceptical one that it is difficult to be sure about who owes what to whom, and therefore difficult to ascertain whether betrayal has in fact occurred. Rather, in her mature work Shklar is saying something quite definitive about such situations: i.e. obligations of justice have been cancelled. This is explained by the fact that, although she is still a sceptic, she nonetheless also claims to have identified the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. As we saw in the last chapter, she assumes that tyranny turns its subjects into exiles because it violates the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. Her reasoning can be reconstructed as follows: political obligations have legitimacy insofar as there are reasons for us to accept them; the basic norm of political practice and prescription is the avoidance of cruelty; political obligations have legitimacy only insofar as they do not violate this basic norm; tyranny goes beyond what is minimally acceptable in terms of the cruelty of the regime; and for that reason, its subjects have no good reasons to accept their obligations as legitimate. Hence, it is not primarily for sceptical reasons that the tyrant’s cruelty is an evil that cancels obligations but, rather, because it violates what Shklar, as a value monist, maintains is the basic norm of politics. Therefore, Shklar’s scepticism is not sufficient to explain the conclusion of her mature work, that the victims of tyranny are turned into exiles. However, she does advance other arguments to justify the claim that tyranny cancels obligations, so let us turn to these now. When considering how children are encouraged to inform on their parents in Soviet Russia,

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she notes that ‘the most important political and personal aim must always be to live under laws that do not force us to make intolerable choices’ (Shklar 1984, p. 156). She makes this point in reflecting on E. M. Forster and his stated hope that he would always have the bravery to betray his country rather than betray a friend. As we know, one part of Shklar’s objection here is that Forster fails altogether to consider what type of state is in question: specifically, he ‘does not even seem to recognise the difference between governments that try to avoid these intolerable choices and those that force them upon people’ (Shklar 1984, p. 156). This is the choice between betraying our friends and heroically resisting the tyrannical regime. In her mature work, the choice is intolerable and its avoidance is our most important aim. But let us recall what she has to say on this very question in her early work. She there maintains that we can be faced with unresolved conflicts between, inter alia, the demands of heroism and the demands of justice. In her mature work, in contrast, she says that in situations where one must be heroic simply to be just, then the requirement to be just itself is cancelled. To reverse what she says in her earlier work, we have to choose whether or not to be moral. It is an intolerable choice, yes, but she is also assuming that no one can be condemned for choosing betrayal. Why is that the case? Her reasoning would seem to be that, because there are no limits placed on the cruelty of the tyrant, then those who perform their obligations of justice under tyranny, for example those who refuse to betray others, simply expose themselves to the tyrant’s cruelty. And, as our first principle is the avoidance of cruelty, no one can be obliged to be just when living under tyranny, for the reason that no one can be obliged to expose themselves to cruelty. Of course, heroism may require us to expose ourselves to the tyrant’s cruelty in this way, but the requirements of heroism are, for the mature Shklar, secondary to the avoidance of cruelty: the avoidance of cruelty is the basic norm, as we have seen. But there is something else going on here in addition. For Shklar is also clearly assuming that a tyrannical society is not a genuine political community. The avoidance of cruelty is the basic norm of politics, for her; and when it is not respected we no longer live in a political community, properly understood. Williams, under Shklar’s influence, will later say that The situation of one lot of people terrorizing another lot of people is not a political situation; it is, rather, the situation which the existence of the political is in the first place supposed to alleviate (replace). (Williams 2005, p. 63)

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For this doctrine there is little difference between tyranny and war. And for the mature Shklar, war is outside of ‘normal rule-governed activity’: But if one puts cruelty first, one will follow some version of Kant’s doctrine and see war as beyond the rules of good and evil, just and unjust. It falls in the realm of pure necessity, where the impulse to self-preservation extinguishes the very possibility of justice. It is the world of kill or be killed. In war the moral law as a set of binding rules is as silent as all other laws. (Shklar 1984, p. 80)

Like war, tyranny is outside of normal rule-governed activity, according to the mature Shklar. Some regimes force intolerable choices upon us; and such regimes are therefore incompatible with our most important political and personal aim. It is the unchecked cruelty of the tyrant that forces us to make intolerable choices. At the same time, unchecked cruelty ensures that this is no longer a moral dilemma, because it frees us from the requirement not to betray others. More generally, it places us outside the obligations of politics, of normal rule-governed activity. As we have seen, Shklar’s mature position is that tyranny cancels obligations of justice. Firstly, tyranny turns us into exiles; and secondly, it is incompatible with our most important political and personal aim. Tyranny, therefore, brings politics to an end. To this she adds a Rousseauian argument, namely that tyranny makes a certain kind of freedom impossible. Indeed, her mature position on tyranny reflects a value monist interpretation of Rousseau that is radically at odds with her earlier views on his work. More specifically, we can see her mature work as an attempt to resolve the conflict between the moral ideals (and the associated conceptions of freedom) that Rousseau outlined in Émile and The Social Contract, respectively. In her early work, as we have seen, she assumes that the conflict is unresolvable. The upshot of her mature turn towards value monism is that, under conditions of tyranny, the moral ideals of Émile have priority over, and cancel, those of The Social Contract. Rousseau says that we can be forced to be free in a genuine republic. He also assumes that this is not so under despotism: ‘the ordinary citizens’ then have no moral obligations to obey; they ‘are compelled by force’ (Rousseau, SC, III:10). The victims of despotism nonetheless are, Rousseau maintains, still bound by some moral considerations, but this is the morality of the family and the household, as outlined in Émile. Similarly, for the mature Shklar, those living under tyranny cannot enjoy political

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freedom and also have no obligations of justice, but they do have moral claims arising from a more restricted sphere of freedom. This is clear in one essay from her mature work, where Shklar talks in these terms about friendship under despotic and tyrannical regimes: Friends form their private polity which protects them against the state and gives them an alternative moral universe. Here freedom and spontaneity reign, while oppression and hypocrisy are the universal rule in the larger society. (Shklar 1998 [1987c], p. 14)

She is here talking about the fact that, under tyranny, the bonds of friendship can remain strong, such that they protect one against tyrannical rule. Therefore, she is pointing out that friends can form this bond under tyrannical rule, even though in other mature publications she has said that we are free to betray our friends under tyranny. Nonetheless, there is a consistent argument here. Her point throughout is that there has been a rupture between two spheres of genuine freedom: one that is private and intimate, and one that is political. Under tyranny, only the former is possible, whether it be freedom among family alone or whether it also includes freedom among friends. She is consistent in her mature work in claiming that political freedom is not possible under tyranny. To be faced with such a division is to lose a great deal. To renounce citizenship is to give up ‘half of a full life’ (Shklar 1998 [1987c], pp. 16–17). But the argument of her mature work is that tyranny forces us to renounce citizenship, and to fall back on a restricted sphere of freedom. To understand this line of argument we need to focus more closely on what Shklar says about freedom. Her mature (monist) argument is that tyranny makes a certain kind of freedom impossible. As we have seen, at this point she conceptualises political liberty as the freedom from cruelty: it is not independence, which is just doing as one pleases, but, rather, the condition that causes people to feel that their person and property are secure. However, she has also said that such freedom is unimaginable without limited government and the control of unequally divided political power. And what she calls systematic fear, which is aroused by the expectation of institutionalised cruelty as by nothing else, makes such freedom impossible. We can now see how Shklar brings together these various strands of argument in her mature work on tyranny. She maintains that tyranny turns its victims into exiles, and is incompatible with the most important personal and political aim, namely to not be forced into choosing between

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betrayal and heroism. She is also saying that the tyrant’s cruelty makes political liberty unimaginable and impossible. And these arguments are connected and internally consistent: exiles are those who lack both political freedom and political obligation. But some moral demands are appropriate to the victims of cruel tyrants, namely ‘fortitude and pride […] Pride may be a deadly sin for those who preach meekness, but it recommends itself to those who put cruelty first’ (Shklar 2006 [1982], p. 86). As we know, tyranny and war present us with comparable difficulties. She thus says of war that ‘it is wholly devoid of any moral compensation save personal courage’ (Shklar 1984, p. 80). Shklar is fully aware that hers is an inward-looking response to a social and political phenomenon: ‘It leads to an ethic for isolates’ (Shklar 2006 [1982], p. 87). As with Rousseau’s Émile, therefore, when faced with tyranny, we can and should fall back on the moral considerations appropriate for a more restricted sphere of freedom. And again, this is an argument that owes everything to Shklar’s value monism. If the avoidance of cruelty is the basic norm of society, then in tyrannical societies we cannot be politically free and we have no political obligations; but, at the same time, in such circumstances we do owe something to ourselves and our loved ones within a more restricted sphere of freedom. Romanticism and tyranny Before leaving this topic I want to note how these changes in Shklar’s views on tyranny also involve a profound reappraisal on her part of romanticism, on one important point at least. In advocating an ethic for isolates in her mature work, Shklar is returning to familiar ground, but doing so with a radically altered viewpoint. To see that, we need only consider what she says in her first book, After Utopia. There she rejects the romantic ethic of authenticity, and the claim that, in modernity, we are faced with a decision between the conformism of society, on the one hand, and an ethic for isolated individuals, on the other. For romantics like Arendt, all modern societies, those dominated by the masses and by the imperatives of technology, are a threat to individual freedom, understood as freedom from all social control, from law as much as from arbitrary regulation. There is therefore no meaningful distinction in the modern world, for romantics, between arbitrary tyrannical violence and the rationally justified decisions and procedures of a law-like regime. While modern mass society is merely an alien imposition, the highest value for the romantic is authentic selfhood.

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This is the romantic ethic of authenticity, and Shklar’s response to it in After Utopia is (as we know) an ambivalent one. At one point she appears to concede that romanticism cannot be rejected: And who is to say that they are ‘wrong’ […] [T]he strangeness of ‘the world’ is constantly pressed upon us […] All that the unhappy consciousness can do now is preserve its own integrity against the encroachments of a hostile world. (Shklar 1957, p. 163)

However, elsewhere in After Utopia she explicitly rejects the romantic argument equating modernity with tyranny. She does not accept that the citizen and the subject are alike, and that law is indistinguishable from arbitrary rule. She is also critical of the romantic ethic of authenticity. According to Shklar, it denies the reality of all those human relationships upon which systems of morality are explicitly or implicitly based. Nor is Shklar a romantic in her mature work. At this time she does not equate modernity with social conformity. In fact, she offers the liberalism of fear as an alternative to, as protection against, illegitimate forms of power, including tyranny. And yet, like the romantics she is so critical of in After Utopia, in her mature work she concludes that, as tyranny extinguishes justice, it leaves its victims with nothing else but an ethic for isolates. When considering romantic thought, Shklar has focused on Arendt’s work more than that of any other. It is also true that, in her mature work, she remains highly (indeed, sharply) critical of Arendt, and in particular of what the latter has to say in Eichmann in Jerusalem. Shklar characterises Arendt’s line of argument there as follows: ‘Why, [Arendt] asked, had the East European Jews not behaved like Homeric heroes? Why had they not resisted the Germans more courageously?’ (Shklar 1998 [1983], p. 372). Shklar, in response, insists that Arendt ‘knew perfectly well that, while Eastern Jews might have made minor difficulties for the Germans, they never could have averted their doom’ (Shklar 1998 [1983], p. 372). The only option was to flee to safety, but this was a privilege enjoyed by only a minority, including Arendt herself and Shklar’s family. Only those who were ‘educated, rich, or at least have connections like Arendt (and my parents)’ could ‘get out of Europe’ (Shklar 1998 [1983], p. 372). Not only that, but to have benefitted from one’s privilege in escaping Nazism and to then turn around and bemoan the lack of heroism among those left behind is, Shklar believes, ‘shocking’: For one of the happy few, in the comfort of New York and in the pages of the New Yorker, studded with ads for luxury goods, to ask these ‘questions’

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was shocking. The articles, moreover, displayed an extraordinary ignorance. (Shklar 1998 [1983], p. 372; emphasis in original)

What does this show us? Shklar clearly disagrees with Arendt about what is required of the victims of tyranny. However, what Shklar does not address here is the fact that, in her mature work, she now agrees with Arendt that, whatever else can be demanded of the tyrant’s victims, it is not justice. They agree that those victims are left with nothing but an ethic for isolated individuals. It is now a question of fortitude and pride for the isolated individual. This convergence with Arendt in her mature work is just one unexpected side-effect of Shklar’s turn towards value monism. To recap, we have seen that Shklar is highly critical of the romantic ethic for isolates in her first book, although that book remains ambiguous on the merits of romanticism, and then in her mature work she embraces that very ethic in situations such as tyranny, although she remains highly critical of Arendt. However, these are not the only ways in which Shklar deals with romanticism and the ethic for isolates. For she also adopts a value pluralist approach to these issues in her early work. In her value pluralist period she treats the ethic for isolates as one among a variety of potentially conflicting forms that moral thinking can take. This is clear in Legalism, but also in her essay from the same year, ‘Decisionism’. In the latter she refers to ‘the individualism of those who feel that they have no place to go, of those who are self conscious “outsiders”’ (Shklar 1964c, p. 5). Her examples are Alexander Herzen and Albert Camus, both of whom maintain that the ‘free man creates his own morality’ (Shklar 1964c, p. 5). The romantic outsider rejects legalism, on the basis that in fact there are no genuine moral rules for the free person to follow. Nonetheless, true to her value pluralism at this time, Shklar will not say that decisionism ‘should not have been tried’ (Shklar 1964c, p. 17). Rather, she believes, there is ‘a fundamental historical reality’ at the heart of decisionism, namely that the formal concepts of traditional thought no longer serve any descriptive or prescriptive purpose in a social world that has for decades defied the inherited categories of political theory. (Shklar 1964c, p. 17)

What this shows is that there is a value pluralist approach that we can take to romanticism. Not only that, it is one that Shklar herself adopts in her early work. As she says in another article from this time, we should face up to the pluralism of political ideas that do not individually or

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together constitute a political philosophy. This, she says, follows directly from value pluralism. Romanticism is one among a plurality of equally valid approaches to politics now, a plurality that can result in unresolved moral conflict. And, of course, this balancing of diverse and conflicting values and ways of thought is just what her value monism, in her mature work, rejects. In critique of monism I have argued so far that it is not her scepticism that explains the direction taken in Shklar’s mature work, and specifically her coming to believe that tyranny cancels obligations of justice. The explanation lies rather in the transition from her earlier value pluralism to a later value monist position. What I want to do now is evaluate her monism, and in particular determine whether it justifies her mature view on tyranny. This issue has important implications for current debates, and in particular the turn towards scepticism in recent non-moralist work. Shklar is an important influence shaping that movement. However, given the significant differences between the pluralist and monist versions of her scepticism, we need to pay more attention to, and to critically examine the validity of, the monism of Shklar’s mature work. Non-moralists start by considering what we owe to others in real-world, that is, non-ideal, conditions (Galston 2010; Valentini 2012). These are situations where, inter alia, others around us do not fully comply with the demands of justice, and certain facts about ourselves and the world we inhabit make it more difficult to realise the demands of justice. We can therefore ask, if our regime is pressuring us to betray our friends (for example, by threatening to harm us and our families if we do not comply), what do we really owe as a matter of justice to those whom we are being asked to betray? Non-moralists approach such questions as sceptics. However, not all sceptics are value pluralists, as we have seen. We have also seen that pluralists can develop their arguments in quite different ways. Gray, for example, is a political realist and a value pluralist (Gray 1998, p. 26; 2000, p. 3). However, in what I have referred to as a relativistic position, he also assumes that certain goods, including justice, will be crowded out and excluded altogether in some cultures or regimes. But not all pluralists will reach the same conclusion. While Shklar was not completely successful in avoiding the suggestion of relativism in her early work, she did not assume that justice was crowded out or excluded

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by tyranny. Even under tyranny we can be faced with conflicting moral values, she says, where the demands of justice are as valid as any others. At the same time, there is also an argument against relativism suggested by value pluralism itself. One reason to object to cultural relativism (say, of the type where a certain value is crowded out in a given culture) is on the grounds that it is incompatible with value pluralism at the level of the individual decision maker. If a culture can crowd out a value, this is a type of moral simplification that value pluralism should be opposed to: in removing a specific value it takes away one possible source of moral conflict. Therefore, not only must we distinguish between scepticism and pluralism, in addition, we must be mindful that widely divergent arguments can be developed from similar pluralist starting points. But can we defend pluralism over monism? Many reasons can be put forward as to why monism is objectionable (see Gray 2000; Galston 2005). One such argument, one that I have made previously, addresses the inconsistency of value monists. They each insist that one value has priority as a general rule, but in fact they are unable to proceed on that basis. I have already tried to show that the same inconsistency is evident in Shklar’s mature monism, and what we can see now is that this is true concerning her arguments about tyranny as well. In order to appreciate that fact, we should first note that her conclusion (that tyranny cancels obligations of justice) need not follow from what she insists is her first premise (the avoidance of cruelty). Let us consider a situation where we have a very strong motivation to betray our friends; let us say we have good reason to fear that if we do not do so we ourselves or our families will be the next victims of tyranny. This is the situation where the Mandelstams were betrayed. It is nonetheless possible that the best way to avoid cruelty is by refusing to betray our friends. This may lead to self-sacrifice and the sacrifice of our families. Nonetheless, it may be that through such acts of brave resistance, repeated over and over by fellow victims, the tyrannical regime will be weakened, and finally eliminated, and the cruelties that would have been meted out in its name will never be experienced. (Of course, whether or not this is the case is largely an empirical matter, a question of the strength of the available evidence about the likely consequences of such acts of resistance.) If we maintain that the avoidance of cruelty is the general rule for resolving moral conflicts, then it is possible that, under certain propitious circumstances, we would be required when faced with tyranny to not betray our friends, and instead to accept and act on

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our obligations of justice. This conclusion can follow when the first premise of our deliberations is the avoidance of cruelty. Therefore, we must ask why Shklar, in her mature work, assumes that this cannot be the case. The only possible answer is that she is appealing to some moral consideration that, as it blocks her from inferring that conclusion, she has given priority to over the avoidance of cruelty. This is not an argument that is never spelled out explicitly in her work, and that I suggest is evidence of a suppressed assumption. What principle does her argument presuppose? One possible way to conclude that we should not sacrifice ourselves (leaving aside for now the question of what we owe to our family) is to argue from a deontological principle. Such a principle will demand that we not sacrifice individuals so as to bring about good outcomes. A principle of this sort could support Shklar’s conclusion that, when self-sacrifice is the surest way to prevent greater cruelties, nonetheless, no one can be required to act in that way. Although Shklar has not made such an argument explicitly, it alone makes sense of the conclusion she has drawn about tyranny. The problem is that, in making such an argument, she is no longer giving priority to the avoidance of cruelty. As a result, her argument rests on questionable (i.e. unjustified) assumptions, and it is for that reason seriously weakened. Of course, in addition, she has not stuck consistently to her version of monism. Yes, it is as a monist that Shklar comes to the conclusion that tyranny cancels obligations of justice. However, as a monist she must be consistent: she must always give priority to the one value. And Shklar has not attained such consistency. If Shklar is unable to stick consistently to value monism, does value pluralism provide a viable alternative approach? Arguably, value pluralism would be free from the problem of inconsistency and would not rest on questionable assumptions. A value pluralist can appreciate that there are various moral considerations relevant to the issue of whether the victims of tyranny should perform their obligations of justice. These include the deontological principle discussed above, and Shklar’s principle of the avoidance of cruelty, but also the requirements of heroism, consequentialist principles (such as utility, for example), and so on. Perhaps we can make a case for the deontological principle in certain circumstances, but we do so, as Berlin and Williams (1994) point out, through the exercise of practical reason. There is no general rule to decide the issue one way or another. One benefit of value pluralism is that it avoids the inconsistency of value monism and it does not proceed from unjustified premises.

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A further benefit is that value pluralism is able to recognise and acknowledge the harms committed in situations of moral conflict. As a monist, Shklar argues that we are freed from obligations of justice under tyranny, and that no one can be condemned for betraying their friends in such circumstances. In contrast, value pluralism keeps to the fore the wrongs done in such dilemmatic situations. Yes, it is wrong to be forced to accept these dilemmas. Yes, we should work to fight against those who would force others to betray their friends in these ways. But these situations do in fact arise, and it is this reality that we must deal with, and not what we wish were the case. Perhaps betrayal is justified, all things considered, in a given situation. But, when the wrong has been done, even when it is justified, all things considered, it is still a wrong. The benefit of value pluralism is that it does not diminish that wrong. Where does this line of argument leave non-moralism? The latter rightly calls attention to the fact that our political reality is one of non-compliance. Ideal theory arguably is distorting, presenting a picture of morality as something imposed on a recalcitrant reality. Whatever moral norms we appeal to must be ones that are feasible. It is also the case that under tyranny serious questions are raised about the feasibility of justice. In order to be just, we may have to risk our own life or the lives of our loved ones. It does not follow that justice has been cancelled, however. This is evident when we reflect again on Pasternak and his preoccupation with the question of his own guilt in Osip Mandelstam’s demise. This also brings us back to recent debates about non-moralism, and Shklar’s place in that turn towards a more sceptical form of political theory. What we have seen in this chapter is that those whose nonmoralism is influenced by Shklar need to acknowledge the value monism of her mature work, but also to critically evaluate the validity of that monist position on tyranny. Notable exceptions notwithstanding (Philp 2012; Horton 2017), there has been little acknowledgement that deciding between pluralist and monist strands of non-ideal (and realist) theory makes a difference one way or the other. And yet, the distinction is important, for a start, because, as we saw, Shklar’s mature monism is highly problematic. She cannot stick consistently to her version of monism, and in any case, it does not even support the conclusions she reaches about tyranny. Of course, her earlier pluralism is free of these problems. We should also remember that, as value pluralism is a meta-ethical position, we cannot simply read off from it any one fully worked-out normative or conceptual system.

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Nonetheless, what we can say is that there are very good reasons to adopt value pluralism, as it is free from the problems afflicting monism. And this has important implications for non-moralism, given that it can be based on either value pluralism or value monism. While non-moralism is focused on a sceptical critique of moralist theory, this analysis of Shklar’s work shows that greater awareness is needed of the pitfalls of monist versions of scepticism.

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7 Theory

Throughout this book we have seen Shklar adopting a distinctive approach to her work as a political theorist. To start with, there are very sound reasons to place her work in the same camp as so-called political nonmoralists. In putting cruelty first among the vices, she sees herself as offering a version of liberalism understood primarily as a protection against the worst abuses of power (Sagar 2016, p. 370). Hers is also a sceptical form of political theory, and so she endeavours to engage in political thought without having to rely on a whole series of highly contestable philosophical and moral claims (Hall 2014, p. 564). For both of these reasons it is correct to see the liberalism of fear as a key dimension of work calling into question the political moralism of mainstream liberalism (see also Farrelly, 2007; Gaus 2016; Sagar 2016; Hall and Sleat 2017). However, to focus on the non-moralist characteristics of the liberalism of fear risks missing the point of greatest interest. For what is of upmost importance to our understanding of Shklar as a theorist is the fact that in her mature work she abandons her earlier value pluralism so as to embrace value monism. This way of thinking about Shklar’s early and mature political theory also allows us to reflect on the role and limits of political theory more generally. We can see that, although her mature work stands opposed to political moralism, nonetheless the liberalism of fear is prescriptive. This is the case because, as I try to show below, her mature work takes a value monist approach to moral conflict. In contrast, in her early work (in particular, her second book and articles published around that time) she adopts an approach to political thought that is evaluative without being prescriptive. And this is explained not by her non-moralism at this time but, rather, by her value pluralist approach to moral conflict.

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Shklar does not become any less liberal or any less sceptical over time, and yet there is a fundamentally important shift in her approach to political theory, and that is the shift from value pluralism to value monism. Shklar does not become an ideologue, needless to say, but her work does become prescriptive, and it is this that creates difficulties for the rigour and cogency of her theoretical arguments. In this chapter I also make the case for an evaluative but non-prescriptive political theory, my argument being that, because of value pluralism, political theory cannot avoid being evaluative but it need not (and should not) slip into the untenable prescriptiveness to be found in value monist theories. At the same time, my argument is that the distinction between moralism and non-moralism is not as significant as some have thought. Indeed, insofar as a non-moralist theory also takes a value monist position on moral conflict it will be open to quite significant criticisms. Therefore, despite the increased attention given in the literature to the turn towards non-ideal theory as well as political realism, what matters most is the position adopted on moral conflict, and hence the distinction between value pluralism and value monism. Categories of political thought

I want to start with some quite general thoughts on how to categorise political theories. And to do so I begin with something Walzer says in his Tanner Lectures for 1985, Interpretation and Social Criticism. There he distinguishes what he calls three ‘paths’ in moral philosophy: discovery, invention, and interpretation. They are of particular interest to us in thinking about the distinction between political moralism and political non-moralism. In fact, the first two of these paths can be used to illuminate what Williams means by the term political moralism. The first path is discovery. The ‘philosopher who reports to us on the existence of natural law, say, or natural rights, or any set of objective moral truths has walked the path of discovery’ maintains Walzer (1985, p. 6). And it is indeed clear that many political philosophers do hope to discover what they take to be objective moral truths. This is the case with utilitarianism, and its discovery of happiness (or utility) as the summum bonum (Mill 1991 [1861], p. 142). However, it is also true of Berlin, despite the very important differences between his work and that of Mill. Berlin is an objectivist, it is argued, and so he assumes that values are matters of knowledge for us. Like Mill, he seeks to discover objective moral truths, and so on that basis we can say that they both walk the same path. So

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we have one path in political thought that we call discovery. Others, in contrast, set about to construct, or invent, an entirely new moral world, and they might undertake the construction because they thought that the actually existing moral world was inadequate or that our knowledge of it could never be, as knowledge, sufficiently critical in character. (Walzer 1985, p. 9)

Many political philosophers set out to invent the moral world in this way. For example, social contract theorists, like Rawls and Habermas, claim to provide a procedure for agreeing on norms or values or principles that, whatever it is we agree on, have legitimacy because they have been arrived at (i.e. invented) in the correct manner. The Rawlsian account of the original position can be seen in this light (Rawls 1971, p. 18) as can Habermas’s ideal speech situation (Habermas 1990, p. 89). Therefore, some political theorists set about to discover objective moral truths, and others aim at inventing the moral world. In both instances, they are engaging in a type of political theorising illustrative of what Williams calls political moralism. For political moralism, the role of theory is to set before us (whether through the paths of invention or discovery) the moral precepts that are to guide and to govern politics. Morality is separate from, and has priority over, the messy work of politics, where we try to persuade others or we exercise power over others. Of course, the process by which moral principles are discovered or invented may itself be seen as political in one sense or another. Indeed, Habermas assumes that his ideal speech situation cannot be ‘monological’, and so it itself is a type of political engagement (Habermas 1990, p. 68). But the point remains that the latter is the morally acceptable form of political engagement, against which we contrast normal or everyday politics that falls short of such moral standards: this is the case, for example, when certain individuals (contrary to the requirements of an ideal speech situation) are not free from coercion, whether internal or external (Habermas 1990, p. 92). The point remains, that through engagement in the ideal speech situation we invent distinctively moral principles that we then employ in guiding and governing the everyday world of political life. I am also placing Berlin’s work in the political moralism category, and this makes sense because he sees himself as attempting to discover objective moral truths. Of course, Berlin also says that the theorist cannot discover one specific thing that, were it to be discovered, would be of central importance to politics: namely, the general rule for resolving moral conflicts.

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He says that we resolve conflicts instead by exercising practical reason. Political theory itself is not engaged in the messy work of actual politics. For Berlin, there is a clear division between the work of the theorist (which follows the path of discovery) and the practical reasoning required to resolve moral conflicts. Placing Berlin in this camp also illustrates that we cannot simply equate political moralism with what Rawls calls ideal theory. Political moralists need not assume strict compliance with moral ideals as Rawls does with respect to what he calls a well-ordered society, for example; and, indeed, it is not something that Berlin would assume. Berlin does aim to discover objective moral truths, but he does not assume that in doing so he is painting a picture of a world of perfect compliance with those values. After all, his work emphasises how moral values can and do come into conflict, where the conflicts themselves are unresolvable at the level of theory. Non-compliance with some values, some of the time, is unavoidable for a value pluralist. We have set the paths of discovery and invention under the umbrella of political moralism. Not everyone is willing to follow either one of these paths, as we know. Some, including Walzer himself, choose to take what he calls the path of interpretation: We don’t have to discover the moral world because we have always lived there. We don’t have to invent it because it has already been invented – though not in accordance with any philosophical method. (Walzer 1985, p. 19)

The moral world already exists, and our job is to interpret its meaning. For example, Walzer himself does so with respect to the moral principle of justice: the just distribution of social goods is, he says, ‘patterned in accordance with shared conceptions of what the goods are and what they are for’ (Walzer 1983, p. 7). This is a communitarian political theory, according to which theoretical reflection does not involve invention or discovery of moral truths but, rather, interpretation of the shared meaning of the (already existing) social goods of some specific community. We see something similar in Williams’s non-moralist approach to political thought, in particular when he says that ethical conviction is a matter of confidence. Because ethical conviction is more a question of how we live (our deeds) than how we think, it follows that the job of political thought cannot be to invent or discover moral truths, and then enforce them on an indifferent or resisting reality. Theory does have some role to play here. While philosophy ‘cannot tell us how to bring it [confidence] about’, such a social state ‘can be affected, one way or another, by rational

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argument’ (Williams 1985, p. 170). The important question is how we come to have confidence in a specific conceptual scheme, for example, liberalism: One question we have to answer is how people, or enough people, can come to possess a practical confidence that, particularly granted both the need for reflection and its pervasive presence in our world, will come from strength and not from the weakness of self-deception and dogmatism. (Williams 1985, p. 171)

Political theory takes the path of interpretation when, like Williams, it sees ethical conviction as a social state, one that, although it can (and should) come from reflection rather than self-deception and dogmatism, nonetheless is not something that is either invented or discovered by philosophical reflection. Therefore, the path of interpretation is one possible option for political non-moralism, but it is not the only one. It is a form of scepticism, in that it says that we engage in political theory from within a social and historical context that in effect limits what can be thought. But this is not the only side to scepticism. Another focuses on how difficult it is to implement our ideals in practice. And this is the case with non-ideal theory. We should remind ourselves that Rawls engages in both ideal and non-ideal theorising. But he clearly assumes that the former has priority over the latter. The role of theory is to identify principles suited to an ideal scenario of full compliance, and on that basis we work out what is required of us in real-world, non-ideal situations. In contrast, non-ideal theorists insist that the reality of non-compliance with the principles of political theory should be our starting point (rather than an afterthought) in political theory (Farrelly 2007, p. 844). It is an approach infused with a sceptical spirit, one that emphasises both the limits of our theoretical knowledge and also the difficulties of implementing theoretical ideals in practice. For example, if people are unwilling to comply with what is required of them by the normative principles that political theorists put forward, this fact itself needs to be given full consideration when we reflect on what exactly is (morally speaking) owed by our fellow citizens. Of course, there is a danger of being overly sensitive to such empirical facts, as we said when discussing utopianism. The danger is that we will simply acquiesce and accept as unchangeable reality what we should instead think of as an injustice to be tackled through political action. But this must be set alongside the equally pressing danger of extreme fact-insensitivity, something that ideal theory is, arguably,

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guilty of. This matters, according to non-ideal theorists, because if a theory is insufficiently fact-sensitive it ‘fails to function as an adequate guide for our collective action’ (Farrelly 2007, p. 846). What we have seen is that we can categorise approaches to political theory in the first instance in terms of the distinction between political moralism and political non-moralism. The former may see its role as being one of discovery or of invention. The latter may be concerned with the interpretation of the social meaning of our values and/or with the project of determining what is feasible and how such feasibility constraints affect what we ought to do. However, as we know, there is also a further distinction in categorising political theories: that between value monism and value pluralism. By way of building towards a discussion of monism and pluralism, let us consider why it is that some theories are prescriptive and others are not. Prescriptive political theories provide a guide to action in politics and/or a procedure for making decisions about what political actions to take. This is the case with a utilitarian calculus, and Rawls’s outline of the original position for the choice of principles for the basic structure of society, and so on. These are examples of political moralism. However, as we know, both Mill and Rawls also take a value monist approach to moral conflict. And my argument here is that it is on the basis of what they claim to be the general rule for resolving moral conflicts that they make such prescriptions: for example, Rawls concludes that extremist intolerant violence has no value in the first place, and this is the case because it will violate the principle of equal liberty, the principle to which Rawls gives lexical priority. However, it is not just political moralists who are prescriptive. Non-moralists can be prescriptive as well, and this is the case when they combine their non-moralism with value monism. This is the case with non-ideal theory. It is critical of ideal theory on the grounds that it fails to function as an adequate guide for our collective action. That is, non-ideal theory aspires to be prescriptive in ways that are adequate. Specifically, non-ideal theorists aspire to be adequately prescriptive by putting forward a general rule for resolving moral conflicts. For example, Farrelly’s argument is that any theory of what rights individuals may claim must be informed by considerations of feasibility, specifically the costs of implementing those rights. But his conclusion is the monist one that, if we are concerned with ‘how scarce resources could be best used to maximise the social primary goods of the least advantaged in a society with budget constraints’, then this ‘shifts things in favour of the principle of utility over Rawls’s two principles of justice’ (Farrelly 2007,

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p. 851). Utility becomes the general rule for resolving moral conflicts, according to this version of non-ideal theory. When rights are in conflict, and when we must make decisions between conflicting rights claims, the principle of utility determines what rights ought to be guaranteed. That, the argument goes, is the basis on which we as political theorists can be adequately prescriptive. Value monists engage in prescriptive political theory, whether or not they accept political moralism. At the same time, political moralists need not be prescriptive, and this is the case for those who are consistent value pluralists. Their theories will be evaluative, yes, but need not be prescriptive. As we shall see, this is true of Shklar’s early work, and I return to this point below. For now, we can note that Berlin’s political theory is unmistakably evaluative, and yet it is not prescriptive. He engages in a critical rational analysis of the values and principles that are at the heart of all political reflection and political action, for example, pointing out the dangers of both value monism and the positive conception of freedom (Berlin 2004 [1958]). However, as a theorist he does not himself make prescriptions. He believes that they are a matter of practical reasoning rather than theoretical reflection (Berlin and Williams 1994). When values are in conflict, and we must decide how to resolve that conflict, all we can hope to do is offer reasons to persuade others, and in so doing make the compromises required by that resolution. Theory cannot make those decisions for us because it does not provide us with the general rule to resolve moral conflicts. So, where does all this leave us? I think these introductory remarks provide one possible way in which to start to think about the role and limits of political theory. We have two dichotomous categories (value pluralism or value monism; and moralism or non-moralism). One thing that we found is that political non-moralism can be combined with value monism, but also, when that happens, the resulting political theory will be prescriptive as well. In fact, this is what we have with Shklar’s mature work. Because of its value monism, it is prescriptive, again despite her non-moralism at this time. However, as we said, political moralism need not be monistic. For example, Berlin as a political moralist does aim at discovering objective moral truths, but as a value pluralist he insists on the unresolved nature of moral conflicts, and for that reason he does not assume that theory can be prescriptive. Nonetheless, despite rejecting both value monism and prescriptive theory, his is an evaluative political theory. It follows, therefore, that not all evaluative political theories will

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fall in the category of political moralism. As we shall see in more detail below, Shklar’s early value pluralist work is a type of political non-moralism, and yet it is also evaluative, but without being prescriptive. And all of this simply reaffirms something that we have seen throughout: the distinction between value pluralism and value monism has far greater significance (both intellectually and morally) than that between political moralism and political non-moralism. The prevailing view: the liberalism of fear is not prescriptive It is correct, I think, to view the liberalism of fear as an approach to political thought very much in line with political non-moralism. But what are the further implications of such a position, and in particular what follows for our understanding of the role and limits of political thought? We have already seen that, for her commentators, Shklar’s liberalism of fear is nonutopian or even anti-utopian. More precisely, Shklar, we are told, does not put forward a political or moral theory or prescription for social reform. She does not offer a moral system or decision procedure like utilitarianism or deontology. She is highly critical of theories of distributive justice that are too far removed from actuality. And, of course, she also rejects communitarian accounts of the predominant opinions in any society whose cogency has not been checked against the actual views of its least advantaged members. On this interpretation, the liberalism of fear gives to political theory a very restricted role. It stops short of prescription, as it does not offer a guide to action or a decision procedure. But it is also assumed that this is explained by her scepticism. The argument of her commentators amounts to the claim that the liberalism of fear rejects political moralism and for that reason cannot be prescriptive. There are two versions of that argument which I want to look at here. The first is that Shklar is not concerned with offering theoretical justifications for the best possible political regime but, instead, with the more practical, and negative, task of seeking ways to avoid the worst abuses of political power. The argument is that Shklar, unlike Rawls in particular, does not identify the liberal vision of politics with notions about public justification, that is, with what our fellow citizens can reasonably be expected to accept. Rather, in Shklar’s approach, liberal principles of political legitimacy are those ‘that constrain the way we exercise power rather than how we justify it’ (Yack 2017, p. 117). Rawls focuses on the positive objective of finding conditions under which a regime is ‘fully

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acceptable or legitimate’ (Yack 2017, p. 117). Shklar, again in contrast, is said to focus on a ‘negative formulation’ which takes it for granted that states will exercise power over individuals and seeks means of moderating, regularizing, and rendering more accountable our use of that power. It focuses our attention on the problems associated with the disruptive effects of coercive authority rather than the problems associated with making it justifiable to free people. (Yack 2017, p. 117)

That is, while other liberals engage in the largely theoretical exercise of devising rules of political legitimacy for the ideal regime, Shklar, it is said, emphasises the irreducibly practical, and negative, component of legitimacy, as ‘some aspects of injustice become apparent only to those who suffer from it’ (Yack 2017, p. 119). To put that in the terms we are using here, the argument is that, because it is not an example of political moralism, the liberalism of fear is not prescriptive. Shklar’s focus is not on the theoretical objective of devising rules for the best possible regime but instead on the practical and negative task of ensuring that we avoid the worst possible outcomes. We are discussing the view that the liberalism of fear gives to political theory a very restricted role, as it stops short of prescription. The second line of argument in support of this interpretation of Shklar’s work is that the liberalism of fear is, qua political theory, historically situated and historically constituted. Again, using the terms that we have introduced above, the argument is that the liberalism of fear rejects political moralism and for that reason is not prescriptive. Hence, although Shklar assumes that the avoidance of cruelty has universal application, Kamila Stullerova argues that the reality and the meaning of cruelty itself is, for Shklar, historically constituted. On this point, it is argued, there is ‘continuity across Shklar’s work’, specifically concerning ‘the worst evil of cruelty as a principle that – rather than being separated from it – emerges from Shklar’s complex engagement with the relationship of history and philosophy’ (Stullerova 2014, p. 24). In Stullerova’s reading, this shows how, for Shklar, ‘political knowledge requires both philosophy and contextual, situated knowledge produced by history’ (Stullerova 2014, p. 24). This is the way in which Shklar can put cruelty first as a universal principle and yet remain committed to a form of theorising that is historically informed: [C]rucial knowledge about who suffers from cruelty can be generated only through concrete political practices, that is, through history. Yet history produces a colossal amount of knowledge. Philosophy is needed to order historical knowledge and to identify connections that history

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does not make obvious. Shklar’s first evil primarily has such a function. It guides the theorist to look first for cruelty. To this purpose, ‘Putting Cruelty First’ must be read as a philosophical statement, one that does not depend on situational specifics but rather has a universal purchase. Once cruelty is ‘put first,’ however, it can be examined only in the instantiations in which history endows it with meaning. (Stullerova 2014, p. 24, p. 33)

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Yes, putting cruelty first has universal purchase, the argument goes, as it is a philosophical statement. But Shklar is also assuming that cruelty can be examined only in ways that do depend on situational specifics. Some maintain that, for these reasons, Shklar’s work has affinities with the post-modernism of Richard Rorty, given that both emphasise our worst experiences and also their historically situated character (Gatta 2018). Stullerova does not go that far. Rather, she sees Shklar’s arguments as being close ‘to more recent grappling with philosophical (anti-) foundationalism’, in particular Williams’s thesis about confidence (Stullerova 2014, p. 28). The liberalism of fear is anti-foundational, Stullerova believes, because it is a political theory that requires historically situated knowledge. Putting cruelty first has universal purchase, but not as a prescription. Political theory is not in a position to provide prescriptions of this sort because of the need for contextual, situated knowledge produced by history. Thus, according to Shklar’s commentators, the liberalism of fear is concerned with practical questions of how to avoid the worst evil, and this is an evil that in any case can be examined only in ways that are historically situated. There is of course much truth to this. The problem, however, is that this is only partly accurate as an account of the liberalism of fear. Nonetheless, it is also perfectly understandable that Shklar’s mature work should be viewed in this way. For, when she does explicitly reflect on the role and nature of political theory, she does so, in her mature work, in two different and ultimately incompatible ways. In one of her accounts she does say that political thought is historically situated and historically informed, and that it is not prescriptive. It offers a ‘tour of perplexities’, not a ‘guide for the perplexed’ (Shklar 1984, p. 226). As this is how she is understood by her commentators, let us begin with this version of her approach to political theory. A tour of perplexities Political thought, Shklar says, starts from the actuality of human experience, one that is socially and historically shaped and determined. As a political

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theorist living and working in America in the final two decades of the twentieth century, Shklar is thus writing from a certain historical vantage point, and she is writing with specific concerns and interests to the fore. This is what she has to say in Ordinary Vices about the role and limits of political thought: At most I have tried to do what I take to be the job of political theory: to make our conversations and convictions about our society more complete and coherent and to review critically the judgments we ordinarily make and the possibilities we usually see […] I have merely undertaken an exploration of some types of characters and manners that we often – ordinarily, in fact – condemn […] These are our ordinary vices and our commonplace thinking about them. Who are the ‘we’ of whom I seem to talk so confidently? I have assumed that I live among people who are familiar with the political practices of the United States and who show their adherence to them by discussing them critically. (Shklar 1984, pp. 226–7)

Here Shklar enumerates what she takes to be the job of political theory: to make our conversations and convictions about our society more complete and coherent and to review critically the judgments we ordinarily make and the possibilities we usually see. On that basis she undertakes an exploration of character traits that we ordinarily condemn. This is also political theory addressed to a specific audience, those who not only are familiar with American political principles and practices but also show their adherence to them by discussing them critically. We, she assumes, are engaged in an open-ended debate. As we have already seen, conflict among ‘us’ is both ineluctable and tolerable, and so she has tried to make ‘us’ even more aware of our incompatibilities and their consequences. Yes there is an us, and a we, a political community that she as a theorist addresses, but, unlike communitarians, in particular, she does not assume that political theorists will discover a moral consensus, an ‘“intersubjective” meaning’ (Shklar 1998 [1986], p. 81), a basis from which to offer prescriptions on how we ought to live. This is clearly a sceptical account of political theory. As is the case with other non-moralists, Shklar doubts that philosophers have easy access to moral truths or can determine how such principles are to be realised in practice. However, she also says that she is not offering advice: hers is a tour of perplexities, not a guide for the perplexed. Not only is theory limited for sceptical reasons. Political practice is similarly restricted, as we cannot expect to see the full implementation of our ideals. To take just one example, because we cannot ever achieve full compliance, a certain

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amount of hypocrisy is unavoidable, and indeed it is entailed and required by liberalism. We cannot base a liberal society on the expectation that all citizens will be sincere in their adherence to agreed moral truths, and this is the case because in a liberal society we cannot hope to attain consensus on (all) moral questions or to ensure complete conformity with those principles. Of course, we feel the need for sincerity; hence the charges of hypocrisy. And yet, hypocrisy is unavoidable in a liberal society because liberals must be willing to compromise with each other, and that is why our leaders cannot stick doggedly to their moral commitments. This she refers to as the ‘paradox of liberal democracy’, in that it ‘encourages hypocrisy because the politics of persuasion require, as any reader of Aristotle’s Rhetoric knows, a certain amount of dissimulation on the part of all speakers’ (Shklar 1984, p. 48). Hypocrisy is not just unavoidable, it is a positive virtue in a liberal society, for without it how could we protect either diversity or privacy? ‘It is not at all clear that zealous candor would serve liberal politics particularly well’ (Shklar 1984, p. 48). A sceptical political theory, Shklar is arguing, can offer merely a tour of perplexities and not a guide for the perplexed. But how can this be the case, how can this be true, if the liberalism of fear at the same time insists that cruelty is the worst of the vices, the summum malum? She is claiming to have ranked the vices, but nonetheless notes that ‘freedom demands that as a matter of liberal policy we must learn to endure enormous differences in the relative importance that various individuals and groups attach to the vices’ (Shklar 1984, p. 4). Why is there such disagreement on how to rank the vices? These different ranking orders are parts of very dissimilar systems of values […] Europe has always had a tradition of traditions, as our demographic and religious history makes clear. It is no use looking back to some imaginary classical or medieval utopia of moral and political unanimity, not to mention the horror of planning one for the future. Thinking about the vices has, indeed, the effect of showing precisely to what extent ours is a culture of many subcultures, of layer upon layer of ancient religious and class rituals, ethnic inheritances and sensibility and manners, and ideological residues whose original purpose has by now been utterly forgotten. With this in view, liberal democracy becomes more a recipe for survival than a project for the perfectibility of mankind. (Shklar 1984, p. 4)

Seeing American society in this light perhaps fits uneasily with the self-perception of those who shaped the first days of American political thought. As Shklar herself observes, for the early American thinkers ( Jefferson in particular) there was a desire to break not just with the

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history of the European past but with history as such. This seemed to follow from the majoritarian principles of democracy: all that mattered was what the majority wished for in the present moment, as ‘every generation was new and unburdened with obligations to the past’ (Shklar 1998 [1988b], p. 174). This is not how Shklar sees her role as a theorist, however. As she says, we have much to gain from seeing our present work as a continuation of the history of political thought in America. There is no unanimity waiting to be discovered from our past, never mind created through revolutionary utopian change (see also Shklar 1998 [1978b], p. 94). However, political theory involves engagement with the history of political thought and practice in a specific culture and tradition. Shklar’s understanding of political theory is evident when we consider her unequivocal rejection of the communitarian (and hermeneutic) idea of a ‘hermeneutic circle’. Hermeneutic thinkers represent the process of interpretation as a ‘fusion of horizons’, a fusion between the past and the present, and between the horizons of the present, a process whereby each part is understood in relation to the whole (Taylor 1985 [1971]; Gadamer 1989). Shklar notes how modern hermeneutics arises with Protestantism, and its struggle to find an interpretation of the Bible free from tradition. Here the idea of a ‘circle’ of understanding makes sense: ‘Every part of the divine scripture is related to every other and to the whole, as in a circle, of which the author, God, may be found’ (Shklar 1998 [1986], p. 76). However, while the Bible may be thought of as a ‘known closed whole’, that is not the case when we consider the interpretation and explanation of social phenomena in the social sciences (Shklar 1998 [1986], p. 77). Not only that, but hermeneutics is built on a number of troubling assumptions. One is that ‘historians must be concerned with the recovery of a tradition (the “a” is important; there is only one)’ (Shklar 1998 [1986], p. 79). Another is that the task of social interpretation is […] to show beyond any possible doubt that there is an ‘intersubjective’ meaning that actually does in truth inform the practices of a society, even though none of its agents or social scientists seem to be aware of it. (Shklar 1998 [1986], p. 81)

This ‘substrate’ of shared meaning is to be uncovered through ‘consciousness raising’ (Shklar 1998 [1986], p. 81). What is ‘not considered’, what Shklar evidently believes to be far more likely, is ‘That there may be no substrate of meaning and that intellectual differences may be at many levels irreconcilable’ (Shklar 1998 [1986], p. 81). The work of political theory, for Shklar, is not to situate each part in its relation to the whole; its aim is not to uncover a hidden substrate of

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intersubjective meaning. Not only must we account for a diversity of cultural and historical residues, but the original purpose of each of these has now been utterly forgotten. We cannot hope to harness and channel those cultural residues, and from them form a new cultural consensus. All we can expect now, given our historical reality, is a liberal project of survival, a liberalism of fear. That is what Shklar says. Nonetheless, we must pause to consider Shklar’s line of argument here. When we do, it becomes clear that she is moving from an empirical observation (the fact of diversity) to a normative judgement (her commitment to the liberalism of fear). This raises concerns in itself, of course, as further premises are required in order to justify her normative conclusion. In addition, what she is committed to is not simply toleration of the diverse ways in which people do, in fact, rank the vices. Although Shklar is calling on us to tolerate those who rank the vices in different ways, including those focused on ‘the seven deadly sins, with their emphasis on pride and self-indulgence’ (Shklar 1984, p. 4), she herself does insist on ranking the vices in one specific way. Indeed, her ‘self-restraining tolerance’ is not a tolerance of cruelty: in fact, it ‘fences in the powerful to protect the freedom and safety of every citizen’ (Shklar 1984, p. 5). By insisting that the fear of cruelty is the greatest evil, she offers a glimpse of a type of political theory that is far more than and even quite distinct from a mere tour of perplexities. As we shall now see, the liberalism of fear is an exercise in political theory that is both prescriptive and utopian, and this is explained by its value monism. A guide to political practices In the essay on utopianism that she wrote in the mid-1980s, Shklar makes clear how much her theorising has changed since the 1950s and 1960s. She is now calling for a normative, even prescriptive, approach to political thought, although one that is opposed to transformative, prophetic utopianism. She says that there has been ‘a revival of normative thought’ in the era after ‘the decline of the great ideologies of the nineteenth century’ (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 188). Of great importance for Shklar at this point is the decline of what she calls ‘historical theories’, most notably Marxism: And it did seem for a while that we had nothing more to say, as I had once thought. I should have remembered that political thinking before the age of revolutions was not driven by history and that it might well overcome its phase of cosmic excess, as indeed it has. (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 188)

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Hers is a normative political theory, even though she once thought such a theory no longer feasible. And she believes that there are at least two alternatives now for normative political thought. The ‘best political theory’ has been, she concludes, ‘either skeptical, as in the case of Michael Oakshott and Isaiah Berlin, or devoted to setting up normative models of the just state’ (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 189). Shklar is pointing up two possible ways in which to engage in normative political thought in the last two decades of the twentieth century. In talking of a political theory devoted to setting up normative models of the just state, she has in mind the work of both Rawls and Habermas: In both cases we have models to judge actuality, to bring the existing states of Western Europe and the United States before the bar of their own professed values of political freedom, justice, and equality, and to find them wanting. These are not fictions but formal and critical models immanent in constitutional democracy, embedded in it but not realized. They are pictures not quite of a good state but of the conditions that such a state would have to meet. (Shklar 1998 [nd1], p. 189)

Shklar here is aligning herself with utopianism of one sort, as we saw in Chapter 4. It is not a prophetic but, rather, as we know, a normative utopianism. Therefore, it is also prescriptive. For example, as we have seen, her utopian vision gives priority to the avoidance of cruelty, and on that basis she calls for, inter alia, the right to earn a living from paid work, a discursive approach to welfare entitlements, and, more generally, a reduction of social and economic inequalities so as to prevent the intimidation of the defenceless as well as the right to fight for one’s rights. These are normative utopian prescriptions. Indeed, in ‘The Liberalism of Fear’ she is happy to say that, as a political theorist, she is providing ‘a guide to political practices’: It might well seem that the liberalism of fear is radically consequentialist in its concentration on the avoidance of foreseeable evils. As a guide to political practices that is the case, but it must avoid any tendency to offer ethical instruction in general. No form of liberalism has any business telling the citizenry to pursue happiness or even to define that wholly elusive concept. (Shklar 1989a, p. 31)

She is rejecting the idea that liberal thought can be based upon or emerge from a philosophical theory that aims to offer ethical instruction in general, as utilitarianism does, for example. But this should not blind us to the fact that, like utilitarians (and indeed many non-utilitarians), she is offering

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a guide to political practices, whether or not it is completely adequate to call that guide radically consequentialist. This of course goes beyond a mere tour of perplexities. Indeed, arguably we could apply to Shklar precisely the terms she uses in describing Nathaniel Hawthorne: as she says, he was ‘undeniably a devastating critic of utopia in all its forms, but this in no way reconciled him to the prevailing order’, and he ‘illuminated both the ambiguity of utopia and the faults of its foes’ (Shklar 1998 [1991b], p. 28). She is rejecting prophetic utopianism and ideology, but at the same time prescribing solutions to what she sees as the problems of her times. True, she is not claiming to operate from an Archimedean vantage point. Hers is an approach to political thought immersed in the social and philosophical history of the people and society about which she is writing. Nonetheless, on that basis she builds her own version of normative utopianism: for example, it is because of what she calls the undeniable actualities of modern tyranny and warfare that she places cruelty first among the vices; just as it is what she calls the antiquity and continuing prevalence and relevance of the Jacksonian faith that, she maintains, creates a presumption of a right to work as an element of American citizenship, and so on. Shklar does not only identify with the normative utopianism of Rawls and Habermas, as we saw, but also with what she calls the scepticism of Berlin and Oakshott. She uses the term scepticism here in a very specific way, one that designates a non-ideological approach to political theory. However, in other publications from her mature period she uses the term scepticism to refer to an approach that is non-ideological but nonetheless (normative/reformist) utopian. We can see what this entails by first considering what she has to say about history as an academic discipline. For a start, she observes, ‘Every form of skepticism is the denial of some specific form of certainty’ (Shklar 1998 [1980b], p. 116). At different points in time, scepticism among historians took distinct forms, depending on what specific type of certainty was being denied: for example, the philosophes of the eighteenth century denied that history could attain the type of certainty possible in mathematics and religion; later writers – such as Henry Adams, in his later years (Shklar 1998 [1974], p. 89) – saw it as incapable of providing reliable (scientific) predictions, and so on. Those who bemoan history’s lack of certainty often turn instead, as compensation, to the purported usefulness of history in the pursuit of some political, that is ideological, end. But this is something that Shklar warns against, and in doing so shows the limits to her own scepticism: ‘To trade off accuracy for usefulness’, she says,

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only ‘seems worthwhile when one thinks that the alternative is an unattainable certainty sought at the cost of social irresponsibility’ (Shklar 1998 [1980b], p. 127). She emphasises the importance of ‘detachment in the interest of accuracy’, and notes that even the ‘primarily useful historians also make a claim to accuracy. Otherwise they would not be believed and would cease to be effective’ (Shklar 1998 [1980b], p. 127). Shklar here insists on the distinction between accurate knowledge and mere manifestations of ideology. She is not so sceptical as to think accuracy unattainable. Accuracy is what we strive for, no matter how difficult it is to achieve. And she is warning that we sacrifice accuracy if we simply make history serve the interests of some specific ideology. There is no way an ideology can justify ‘a deliberate bending of the facts in one direction or the other’; and that is why she believes ‘radical historians’ are at fault: because of ideological certainty ‘the spirit of doubt does not afflict their labors. They do, however, live on the brink of dishonesty’ (Shklar 1998 [1980b], p. 127). At the same time, Shklar is not completely hostile to the idea that history has a use or purpose. This is the case when she considers Jean D’Almbert’s ‘history of the human intellect’, which he thought ‘embraced all knowledge’ (Shklar 1998 [1981], p. 311). Such a history ‘could not just preserve the whole past as equally precious’ (Shklar 1998 [1981], p. 311). However, if one knows, as d’Alembert did, what the uses of history are, then one can choose information that is worth remembering and periodically eliminate the worthless from the scholarly memory. (Shklar 1998 [1981], p. 312)

Notwithstanding her evident scepticism concerning such grand historical claims, she is willing to entertain the notion that d’Alembert was able to show why the history of ideas ‘has a special function in the world of knowledge’ (Shklar 1998 [1981], p. 312). This suggests that, in her mind, he was unlike ideologists, for he was not guilty of living on the brink of dishonesty. The line dividing the ideological from the non-ideological may be less than self-evident, and yet it remains as a guiding principle. Shklar rejects ideological approaches to political science for the same reasons advanced against ideological history. For example, she admits to an ‘intense admiration for Alexander Hamilton’, in part ‘because he proves how shallow ideological analysis can be’ (Shklar 1998 [1991c]), p. 97). He (like her) is a ‘fact-minded thinker who fully knows the difference between basing one’s policies on always-incomplete information and lusting after certainty’ (Shklar 1998 [1991c]), p. 97). She also sees Hamilton as perhaps the most important figure for the subsequent

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development of political science as a discipline in America, and this is the case because of his scepticism. On the one hand, he emphasised that American democracy created a demand for a certain kind of empirical information that would make ‘human behavior relatively predictable’, namely psychological information about ordinary voters (Shklar 1998 [1987c], p. 7). What is needed is information about actual human motivations (in particular, human ambition, avarice, and vindictiveness), not ideals about how individuals should behave in some perfect utopia (Shklar 1998 [1987c], p. 7). On the other hand, as this is clearly a scientific approach to politics, it stands opposed to the various ‘sources of irrationality in politics’, including ‘passion and self-interest’ as well as ‘conspiratorial explanations of political events’ (Shklar 1998 [1987c], p. 10). Turning to political theory itself, as we know, Shklar’s is the party of memory, not of hope. She believes that Jefferson spoke for the party of hope, ‘for those who looked to a new kind of public-oriented aristocrat, republican and decent as few had ever been before’; an aristocracy, or elitism, based on education (Shklar 1998 [1978b], p. 96). In contrast, Adams remembered how ‘power had depraved and been abused by the learned, no less than the ignorant’ (Shklar 1998 [1978b], p. 96; see also Shklar 1998 [1987d], p. 25). Shklar believes that Adams (not unlike Jean d’Alembert) is following Montesquieu’s lead in assuming that all power corrupts, and the power of an intellectual elite would be no less corrupt than that of, say, a religious one: When the watchmen at the gate of the new age warned the men of letters to retreat to what is now often sneered at as the ‘ivory tower,’ they were not telling them to forget their obligations to society, but rather to assume them in a more respectable way. We might also ask ourselves, as some of them did, whether we really matter all that much. It is, after all, an open question. (Shklar 1998 [1978b], p. 104)

Political theorists have a role to play, but it is not as the vanguard of an ideological movement. Not only would an academic elite become corrupt (like any other elite does), it is only by withdrawing from such a political role ‘that the men of learning could hope to advance either knowledge or its beneficial influence’ (Shklar 1998 [1978b], p. 103). Shklar’s comments on accuracy and ideology in the discipline of history, and more generally on the role of intellectuals or academics, including both political scientists and political theorists, help to clarify what she, in her mature work, takes to be the job of political theory. Political theory must not be ideological, as there is no justification for bending the facts

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in the name of some prophetic utopian purpose (never mind a supposed telos of history). It must be shaped by the spirit of doubt; and it cannot live on the brink of dishonesty. Nonetheless, hers is a political theory that, clearly, provides normative guidance and is prescriptive: it focuses on damage control not just because humans cannot be perfected but also because our reality and actuality demands that we put cruelty first among the vices. She does of course maintain that ideology is incompatible with an appropriately sceptical political theory. But she is also saying that the specific form of normativity driving forward the liberalism of fear, one that combines scepticism with value monism, does not undermine the accuracy and honesty of political theory as a discipline. What conclusions can we draw about the liberalism of fear as a distinctive approach to political thought? The first concerns how it is to be characterised. It is not simply or solely sceptical. Although sceptical, it does also claim to offer normative guidance. Hence, it is not sufficient to see Shklar’s mature work simply as a sceptical rejection of the normativity of political moralism. She is, as a sceptic, opposed to political moralism. But in putting cruelty first, she is also providing a prescriptive political theory. This brings us to the second conclusion, which concerns how we should evaluate the liberalism of fear. Shklar warns against ideology on the grounds that it will undermine accuracy and honesty. But her value monism is open to criticism on comparable grounds. And the problem is not that she leaves behind liberalism, in order to pursue some revolutionary transformation. She remains a liberal. However, as we have seen throughout this book, she cannot stick consistently to her value monism, and, as a result, her arguments rest on unjustified and therefore questionable premises. We have also seen that she is unable to recognise and acknowledge the moral wrongs done in pursuing her normative prescriptions. Why does Shklar’s liberalism of fear face these problems? The explanation is its value monism, which is the basis for her prescriptions. Of course, at the same time there are important differences between the political theory of the liberalism of fear and, say, Rawls’s ideal theory, never mind the transformative utopianism of critical theory. Because she is a sceptic, Shklar is attuned to many of the ways in which the accuracy and honesty of political theory may be sacrificed. It is as a sceptic that she struggles to avoid the hubris of those who claim to know enough about others to devise rules for them. Nonetheless, her scepticism is deeply, intractably, entangled with the specific form of value monism that she develops: she maintains that our experience of the worst evil makes us sceptical; and those who are not sceptical pose the greatest

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danger to the vulnerable. We cannot separate her monism from her scepticism. This fact should be a cause of great concern for all those who assume that political theorists need merely follow Shklar in offering a sceptical alternative to political moralism. An end beyond what is known to exist

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I am calling into question the liberalism of fear as an approach to political theory. My argument has focused on the precise way in which it combines normativity with scepticism. At the same time, I do not wish to suggest that normativity as such is the problem, and that political theory should, if it could, cast off all normativity. Perhaps some forms of normative political theorising can be defended. But in order to get to the point where we can make that distinction between better and worse normative political theories, let us start by considering why it proves so difficult (impossible, perhaps) for those who wish to eschew normativity as such. Shklar’s first book, After Utopia, is ideal for this purpose. It illustrates the problems with a type of scepticism that seeks to be completely free from normativity. In After Utopia Shklar adopts a position of reasoned scepticism, as we have seen. Her thesis is that Enlightenment utopian political thought is no longer feasible, and that this conclusion follows, for her, given where she is, socially, culturally, and historically: ‘the urge to construct grand designs for the political future of mankind is gone. The last vestiges of utopian faith required for such an enterprise have vanished’ (Shklar 1957, p. vii). The alternative is romantic existentialism. And while Shklar is deeply critical of existentialism as a body of thought, she also appears to concede that, at the midway point of the twentieth century, it is unavoidable. ‘[I]t is asserted that […] because I desire my freedom, I at once desire the freedom of all mankind. Actually, however, it is hard to see that this responsibility can mean anything but a subjective sensation’ (Shklar 1957, p. 140). As she goes on to say, ‘Logically and ethically this new discovery of mankind is nonsense. It does, however, correspond to a real experience’ (Shklar 1957, p. 140). Thus, quoting Simone de Beauvoir, Shklar says that ‘Freedom as “absolute solitude (and) total responsibility” was a sensation felt by many intellectuals in the resistance movement’ (Shklar 1957, p. 140). It appears that Shklar is, to all intents and purposes, unable to reject existentialist thought: ‘Its shortcomings, both political and intellectual, are obvious enough, but one question remains. Is anything else possible?’ (Shklar 1957, p. 163). Shklar’s reasoned scepticism is a

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response to her social, historical, and cultural situation. Given what has happened, given the experience of the first five decades of the twentieth century in particular, how can she say that anything other than the unhappy consciousness of existentialism is possible? Yet, she is clearly not content to leave things there. While she believes that existentialist ideas of responsibility can mean nothing more than a subjective sensation, she herself calls for personal and political responsibility. For example, she rejects theories of historical determinism, in particular conservative claims that both the ideas of Rousseau and the political structures of democratic regimes will, inevitably, lead to totalitarianism. ‘Perhaps the most serious objection to all theories of historical inevitability is that they make it impossible to hold individuals responsible for political actions or, indeed, to exercise any moral judgment at all’ (Shklar 1957, p. 263). And this is objectionable, because to ‘absolve Hitler and his cohorts as mere pawns of higher historical forces is neither sensible nor morally acceptable’ (Shklar 1957, p. 263). What is evident here is a profound tension in Shklar’s political theory. On the one hand, she maintains that our historical experience is such that existentialism does correspond to a real experience; and yet she also insists that it is neither sensible nor morally acceptable to absolve humans of their political responsibilities – responsibilities that existentialism is unable to make sense of. We must take responsibility in politics, and yet seemingly we are prevented from doing so by our historical experience. The only possible response, Shklar is saying, is a type of scepticism that has become unavoidable: Skepticism, however rational, tends to be an attitude of expectation; at worst it leads to the unhappy consciousness. But what other state of mind is possible when one is philosophically marking time? […] [W]e know too much to fall into even the slightest utopianism, and without that grain of baseless optimism no genuine political theory can be constructed. (Shklar 1957, p. 271)

There have been two traditions in political theory, one focused on power and the other on justice. We have already seen that, at this time, she rejects the former as both unrealistic and not morally particularly attractive. The latter, a normative political theory concerned with justice, demands a utopianism that is simply unavailable today: To speak of justice has become intellectually hazardous. Moreover, the very notion of political justice implies a moral imperative – and as such an end beyond what is known to exist. Unless we admit that the very

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notion is senseless, it demands at least an ounce of utopianism even to consider justice, and this utopianism, as we have amply seen, is absent today […] Relativism, Marxism, the era of ‘debunking’ have left no one in an intellectual condition to write about justice. (Shklar 1957, pp. 271–2)

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Justice implies an end beyond what is known to exist; and so, for a sceptic, it is intellectually hazardous to write about justice anymore. For the same reasons, the ‘urge’ to deal with politics in ‘moral terms’ also has been ‘silenced’: On the one hand there is a good deal of eagerness to deal with politics in moral terms; on the other, the insights of psychology and anthropology and of political observation have silenced the urge. It is again a matter of knowing too much to be daring […] A reasoned skepticism is consequently the sanest attitude for the present. For even skepticism is politically sounder and empirically more justifiable than cultural despair and fatalism. For neither logic nor history is in accord with these, and this even when no happier philosophies flourish. (Shklar 1957, pp. 272–3)

Shklar is wondering whether there is any basis on which to reject existentialism, at the specific point in history from which she is writing, given what has been experienced. She wishes to do so, and to do so in the name of our personal and political responsibilities. And she clearly believes that both history and logic warrant her doing so. For example, in an essay on Henri Bergson from the following year she states categorically that romantic ‘intuition’ is no basis for political thought: ‘an inner apprehension of truth that is ineffable, unobstructed by the bonds of logic or communal expression can hardly be called philosophy’; too often, indeed, ‘the demand for “intuition” is only a desire to indulge in emotional outbursts or in senseless activism’ (Shklar 1998 [1958], pp. 320, 335). Romantic intuition is not the basis for political thought, but what is? Shklar’s approach is one of reasoned scepticism, but she sees this as a response to the fact that the urge to deal with politics in moral terms has been silenced. So we are left wondering, how can she justify this decision to reject existentialism now? What basis is there for a political theory that is separate from and opposed to existentialism? The problem that she faces in After Utopia is one we can expect to see repeated for anyone who wishes to advance a sceptical political theory free from all normativity. Her scepticism at this point is one according to which we cannot appeal to moral principles, including justice, given that they imply an end beyond what is known to exist, and a sceptic like her must not appeal to anything other than actuality. The insufficiency of

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that approach to political thought is made evident by the fact that Shklar cannot adhere to it herself. She is pulled, unavoidably, into normativity, in particular when she talks about the importance of individuals taking responsibility for themselves and their society. It may be that normativity is somehow unavoidable for a political theory, and it is this fact that her first book comes up against. But if that is the case, how can we engage in normative political theory and nonetheless avoid the problems that arise in Shklar’s mature work? How can a political theory be normative and yet at the same time both internally consistent and in addition able to recognise and acknowledge the moral costs of even the best possible political projects? I believe that the answer lies in a value pluralist understanding of normativity, and it is to this that I turn now. Face up to the pluralism of political ideas Shklar remains a sceptical political theorist throughout her career, as we know. And yet, dramatic changes in her approach to political thought are evident as well. So far, I have focused on and emphasised the transformation that occurs following her value pluralist work of the 1960s and early 1970s. But there is also an evident transformation between her first book in 1957 (After Utopia) and her second in 1964 (Legalism). As we have just seen, in After Utopia she announces that normative political theory, political thought concerned with moral issues generally and justice in particular, is no longer feasible for a sceptic, and this is the case because normativity implies an end beyond what is known to exist. In Legalism, however, she takes a quite different approach to political thought. Here, because of her value pluralism, she sees herself as a normative but not a prescriptive political theorist. A helpful place to begin is her objection to natural law theory at this time. She believes that it is problematic not because it is normative but, rather, because its normativity takes a value monistic form. It is its ‘greatest merit […] that it assumes that law must be examined in terms of a comprehensive political theory. It is the nature of such political theory which is really at stake’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 67). Like natural law theorists, she rejects positivism, and the assumption of a value-free approach to legal and to political thought. Nonetheless, she objects to natural law theory on the grounds that, because of its value monism, ‘it is a theory that hides the facts of moral life in the interests of false comfort’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 75). Shklar’s understanding of political thought in her second book is thus quite different from what it was in her first.

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She is now calling for, and engaging in, normative political theory. At the same time, she remains a political non-moralist. Hers is still a sceptical approach to political thought, one that is historically situated and historically informed, as well as one concerned with the feasibility of moral principles. At the outset of Legalism, she emphasises that her reality, at that point in time, is one where ‘most of us can live quite comfortably with wholly contradictory beliefs’ (Shklar 1964a, p. x). On the one hand, ‘Most thoughtful citizens know that the courts act decisively in creating rules that promote political ends – to name only civil rights – of which they may approve’ (Shklar 1964a, p. x). On the other, ‘They also insist that the impartiality of judges and of the process as a whole requires a dispassionate, literal pursuit of rules carved in spiritual marble’ (Shklar 1964a, p. x). The specific aim of her argument here is to highlight a tension between, firstly, a commitment to judicial impartiality and, secondly, a commitment to a politically motivated judiciary. More generally, however, this is an argument for a value pluralist normative political theory. As Shklar says, ‘if we value flexibility and accept a degree of contradiction, this paradox may even seem highly functional and appropriate’ (Shklar 1964a, p. x). And yet it is not an argument made in the abstract, divorced from the actualities or realities of historical experience. Value conflict is part of the reality of that experience, she is saying, and one that is functional and appropriate. Because that is the reality, what she cannot accept is a type of political theory that claims to provide a way to put order on our distinct, and at times conflicting, values, interests, and institutions: ‘Much as all might long for agreement, for an end to doubt and multiplicity, there is no way of evading the actuality of diversity’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 104). To sum up, Shklar is now engaging in normative political theory, while nonetheless her work is still sceptical. She remains alive to the limits placed on the implementation of our normative ideals. For example, in what she calls a ‘skeptical politics’, she contends that to evaluate political and legal decisions (her specific focus in this book is political trials) we must look to their likely consequences in the ‘immediate political future, to the likely results a decision will have among one’s contemporaries and in circumstances that are still like those of the familiar present’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 165). This is all we can hope to either influence or predict: ‘Beyond this lies madness, while fixing our eyes on the past may doom us to inactivity, sterility, and, as often as not, pretence’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 165). Along with legalism itself (i.e. rule-based morals and laws) the ‘approach that matters’, she says, is ‘skeptical politics, which

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sees trials not as guarded from political life by a fence marked “law,” but as part of a continuing process of political development’ (Shklar 1964a, p. 165). Legal decisions are not made in a vacuum. They are not separated from politics, and so, nor are they cut off from the moral commitments, and moral conflicts, of politics. But the implication of all this is to alter the precise meaning of Shklar’s scepticism. The scepticism of her first book, After Utopia, is such that it silences the urge to deal with politics in moral terms. The scepticism of her second book, Legalism, requires a type of normativity that accepts the reality of value pluralism. A sceptical political theorist asks what is possible now, and here. We can see her scepticism when, in the year after Legalism was published, Shklar makes the case for a normative political theory, but one that it is not utopian. Her argument is that the classical utopias of More, and of those who followed him, combine both melancholy and nostalgia: there is melancholic reflection on the great distance between humans as they are and humans as they could be; and there is nostalgia for the classical past, of Greece and Rome, when humanity was allegedly at its best, a past that is immeasurably far removed from the contemporaneous reality of these writers. She is also eager to remind us that classical utopians do not offer blueprints for the future. Instead, theirs is a critical role: they offer a critique not only of ‘some specific institutions of their own time and place’, but also of the idea of ‘“original sin” which regarded natural human virtue and reason as feeble and fatally flawed impaired faculties’ (Shklar 1998 [1965], p. 164). The classical utopians call into question their own societies, without assuming that their utopian visions can ever be fully realised. Shklar contrasts these classical utopias with what she calls the ideologies of the nineteenth century. Ideologists assume that their visions can be realised, and they do claim to provide a blueprint for that future society. As a sceptic, Shklar maintains that the experience of the first half of the twentieth century has rendered all such ideological work both futile and dangerous. As we have seen, all political theorists can hope to do is look to the immediate political future, to the likely results a decision will have among one’s contemporaries and in circumstances that are still like those of the familiar present. She believes that we have left behind the ideologies of the nineteenth century. What will take their place? What shape can political theory take in the second half of the twentieth century? She concludes that it is not possible simply to ‘return to classical-critical theory, of which utopia was a part’ (Shklar 1998 [1965], p. 172). Why is this the case?

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‘It is not that political theory is dead’, she says, ‘but that so much of it consists of an incantation of clichés which seem to have no relation to social experiences whose character is more sensed than expressed’ (Shklar 1998 [1965], p. 172). Classical utopian political theory merely ‘acts as a chain upon our imagination’ (Shklar 1998 [1965], p. 173). This is the case because of where Shklar and her readers are, historically, socially, and culturally. Such utopian ideals can no longer play the role they once did, namely as the basis for the normative critique of existing social institutions along with the idea of original sin. We must therefore ask, what alternatives are there for the political theorist? For a start, we should not, as theorists, attempt to imitate the natural sciences: it would be ‘ill-considered’ to engage in the ‘metaphorical or analogical use of words drawn from biology or physics’ (Shklar 1998 [1965], p. 173). Nor is analytical philosophy of much use, ‘for it does not address itself to concerns which are more nearly felt than spoken and which involve not so much what can be said as the difficulty of saying anything at all’ (Shklar 1998 [1965], p. 173). Utopian political theory is no longer possible, Shklar is saying. But we can engage in normative political theory insofar as we do so as value pluralists. This is so because what is no longer possible is what she refers to as the ‘great tradition’ of ‘political philosophy’: Instead of regretting the end of the great tradition or pretending that it is still alive or that something like it is just around the corner, one might just as well face up to the pluralism of political ideas that do not individually or together constitute a political philosophy. To be sure, one might wish to return to classical philosophy with the same joy of discovery and the same sense of mission that Plato inspired among humanists of the early modern era. It does not seem possible; for its history is not new to us. Theory today can only keep alive memories of the great tradition. This is by no means a contemptible task. In interpreting and reliving the intellectual past, one fulfils at least one of the functions of political mythology: to remain in touch with the past and to experience the present as part of a continuity. The very prevalence and variety of political notions, moreover, makes the need for critically judging unreasoned and uninformed opinion all the more pressing. And this is something that the skeptical intelligence is eminently qualified to do. Lastly, the far from satisfactory performances of the specialized sciences cry out for scrutiny by the theoretically trained mind. Beyond that, facing up to pluralism suggests an attitude of resignation and tolerance. One cannot be a philosopher without a philosophy, but surely one can be a critic without a cause. (Shklar 1967, p. 293)

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Shklar is here assigning to a value pluralist and normative political theory three interrelated functions. By facing up to pluralism, political theory can enable us to remain in touch with the past and to experience the present as part of a continuity; it can be a critical judge of unreasoned and uninformed opinion; and it can provide the theoretical scrutiny required of the specialised sciences. This is not ideology, or utopianism, or even analytic philosophy. Instead of a political philosopher, she is a critic without a cause. These are sceptical arguments, and so Shklar’s work here falls under our heading of political non-moralism. As we know, non-moralists do not seek to invent or discover moral truths but, rather, assume that the moral world already exists and our job is to interpret its meaning; and they also doubt that theorists have easy access to moral truths or can determine how such principles are to be realised in practice. Shklar’s early work fits this description. Nonetheless, our tour through Shklar’s early writings has also uncovered two quite different approaches to political theory at this time. Her first published work, After Utopia, represents a form of non-moralism guided by the assumption that, given the weight of historical experience, it is no longer possible to engage in normative political theory. If it had been successful, it might stand as an exemplar for non-normative political theory. And yet it was far from being a success. As an exercise in political theory, After Utopia is deeply ambivalent, as it flirts with normative commitments that should really have no place there at all. Shklar then changes her approach to political theory and does so quite dramatically. Legalism epitomises a value pluralist but sceptical approach. She assumes at this time that, given the historical reality of value conflict, we can engage in normative political theorising so long as it is neither utopian nor ideological. Therefore, we can say that Legalism provides a way for Shklar to combine political non-moralism with normativity. What are the broader implications for our understanding of the role and limits of political theory? If we build on what Shklar has developed here in her early work, what type of political theory is possible? This is what I want to consider next. And my argument is that, because of value pluralism, political theory has a normative role but there are limits to its normative work. Specifically, a value pluralist political theory should be evaluative, but not prescriptive. At the same time, a value pluralist political theory need not also be sceptical. Indeed, it could instead come under the heading of political moralism, as is the case with Berlin’s work. This is one of the issues that value pluralism leaves undecided, as indeed it should, given its limits. Value pluralism provides an overarching approach

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to political theory without claiming to have answered all our questions for us. There is still much about which we can expect value pluralists to disagree, including epistemological, conceptual, and normative questions. Why a value pluralist political theory?

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In this book I have been arguing for value pluralism in political theory. But what are the reasons to take a pluralist rather than a monist approach to moral conflict? What precisely can be said in defence of value pluralism? Let us start by reminding ourselves of the weaknesses of value monism, weaknesses that we can be sure pluralism will avoid. In her mature work Shklar engages in normative political theory of a particular sort. The liberalism of fear is normative in the specific sense that it sets out to offer guidance on political matters, and specifically it is prescriptive and utopian. Yes, it is true, it does not claim to offer guidance or prescription on all ethical questions, unlike comprehensive moral and philosophical doctrines. It does not claim to identify the summum bonom of human life, the one aim that we should all be striving to attain. It is tolerant and sceptical and liberal. Nonetheless, Shklar does claim that, on political matters, she has identified the greatest evil, and so the liberalism of fear can resolve the dilemmas that arise in politics, and on that basis she can make normative prescriptions. And what I have argued is that, because of its value monism, the liberalism of fear is open to the same two very serious charges facing all other monist political theories: Shklar is unable to stick consistently to her avowed monism and, as a result, her arguments rest on questionable and therefore unjustified assumptions; and she is unable to recognise and acknowledge the moral wrongs that would result, were we to act on her normative prescriptions. Value pluralism is free from these shortcomings. As it does not rest on the untenable claim to have identified the general rule for resolving moral conflicts, it does not set itself the unattainable goal of always giving priority to one value. For that reason it will not be forced into inconsistency, and, as a result, it will not have to proceed on questionable premises. Also, as value pluralists do not assume that there is no moral loss arising from the resolution of moral conflicts, they are uniquely well placed to acknowledge and recognise the wrongs we are guilty of when we resolve conflicts. This is the case when we give the claims of justice priority over those of friendship, or when we let obligations trump the claims of conscience, or pursue paternalistic policies, and so on. In addition,

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Berlin has argued that we do wrong when we prevent people from doing as they please, even when we do so for justifiable reasons. This is an argument I have advanced here as well. However, we have also seen that not all value pluralists are happy to go this far in regard to negative freedom. Many find Berlin’s conception of freedom unsettling, and this is true of the younger Shklar as well as of contemporary pluralist thinkers, in particular Galston, Crowder, and Gray. How do we explain this particular disagreement among value pluralists? I think that the disagreement itself is not in any way a problem for value pluralism, and indeed there are reasons to think of it as evidence of its strengths. Arguably, the great merit of value pluralism is that it allows us to distinguish between those substantive moral and philosophical differences that are compatible with a shared value pluralist starting point and those that are not. That is, while value pluralism opens up a considerable degree of space for reasonable disagreement on such matters, it also provides a standpoint from which to identify those developments that are rightly objected to, given that they are incompatible with value pluralism itself. And specifically, as I will try to show below, I think that value pluralists fall into incoherence when they do not accept that we are, as Berlin says, free to do as we please, whatever it is we please to do. That being so, this is an important factor shaping our account of a value pluralist political theory. To reiterate, my argument is that a value pluralist political theory is preferable on epistemological as well as normative grounds. However, given that it is a normative political theory, how is that it is neither prescriptive nor utopian? Surely a normative political theorist will claim to provide a guide to action (or perhaps a decision procedure) for politics? In fact, value pluralism is a bar to prescriptive and utopian theory. Now, we need to be careful about what that means. This is an argument about what is possible from theory, not what is possible in politics. Specifically, I do not mean that value pluralism is a bar either to moral prescription or to utopianism in politics. When people are committed to certain values, and when they resolve conflicts between values, they will have moral reasons for their decisions, and on that basis they will have reasons justifying the prescriptions they make, including utopian prescriptions. But, crucially, when we prescribe what ought to be done in a given situation where values are in conflict, we are not acting as political theorists. This is the case because when we attempt to resolve a moral conflict we do not do so as theorists: we cannot appeal to a general rule of theory for its resolution. Resolving conflicts is instead something that we do through practical reasoning, both as individuals and by engaging with others.

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There is a division of labour between political theory and the practical reasoning of political practice. And this is a division that Williams and Berlin point to in defending their value pluralist version of liberal politics. When faced with value conflict, what is needed is not a ‘debate about logical possibilities’, they say, but instead a ‘practical decision’, which ‘could not in principle be made completely algorithmic’: a ‘concrete decision’ about ‘social and historical reality’ (Berlin and Williams 1994, pp. 307, 309). We can offer reasons to justify the way in which we resolve a moral conflict in a specific situation, although they ‘cannot always be clearly stated, let alone generalised into rules or universal maxims’ (Berlin 2004 [1958], pp. 172–3; see also Nagel 1979 [1977], p. 135). And we can offer these reasons to others, so that the answer to the question of which value has more weight in a given set of circumstances ‘could be the subject of discussion and potential agreement by reasonable people’ (Berlin and Williams 1994, p. 307). Of course, it is not nearly satisfactory to say that we must and can resolve moral conflicts in practice through reflection and discussion. The problem is that real-world situations of reflection and practice are at the same time sites of power relations. Shklar herself is alive to the danger that what some present as the shared interests of a group reflect nothing but the interests of the dominant members of that group. For these reasons, some try to identify the criteria to distinguish genuine dialogues from those exchanges which are characterised by mere domination, as with Habermas’s ideal speech situation, for example (Habermas 1990). And a value pluralist position can and, I think, should be informed by such considerations. If practice is to play such an important role in resolving moral conflicts, we need some confidence that what happens in practice comes close to (or as close as possible to) a genuine and meaningful dialogue. This is not necessarily a forlorn hope either, as I have tried to show elsewhere concerning the issue of decision making between parents and children. Despite the evident differences in power, it is possible to devise and put in place strategies of meaningful joint decision making between children and their parents (Fives 2017). Thus, it may be possible to buttress value pluralism with the arguments of critical theory, among others, in an effort to ensure that when moral conflicts are resolved in practice this is not merely a result of domination. A related concern is that, because value pluralism accepts that there is no one correct way to resolve moral conflicts, it will have no way to avoid moral relativism. If a moral conflict is resolved in one way in culture X, then this is right for culture X. And indeed, as we said earlier, Gray’s

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version of value pluralism seems open to this charge, concluding as he does that a given community may crowd […] out or exclude […] altogether certain values. There are two lines of argument in response to this criticism. The first is that the danger of relativism is mitigated insofar as it remains possible to offer reasons justifying (or criticising) any particular resolution of a conflict. This is something we discussed earlier, in Chapter 6. The fact that conflicts are not resolved by theoretical rules does not mean that any specific conflict resolution is immune to rational criticism. The second line of argument is that value pluralism is not incompatible with universalism. Indeed, we saw already how a number of pluralists account for universal evils and/or a universal minimal morality. If certain value commitments are universal, they cannot be crowded out or excluded altogether by a specific community. At the same time, there is no one correct way to resolve conflicts between values (including when those values are universal). We should therefore expect to see a variety of different and incompatible ways to resolve similar conflicts. And, while we can challenge the rationality of any one such resolution, we cannot presume that there should only be one correct way in which to do so. What Berlin and others are doing is engaging in a type of political theory whose normativity is restricted in its scope. This effort to identify the proper limits of normative political theory has deep resonance in the current climate, where political moralism is being called into question by those who see themselves as sceptics and/or as engaged in a process of historically informed interpretation. And yet, arguably it is value pluralism (rather than, say, non-ideal theory, hermeneutics, or political realism) that is best placed to explain why those limits are required and where they are to be placed. Indeed, as previously suggested, the distinction between value pluralism and value monism is the most significant one for political theory, in particular as Berlin’s specific version of political moralism tells us something that remains hidden to many non-moralists. What I mean is that Berlin’s discovery of the truth of value pluralism sets limits on political theory, limits that sceptics (and others) are required by the force of the better argument to accept. Let us start with a recent political non-moralist argument for restrictions on political theory. John Horton notes that no political theory can completely escape normativity. Because politics is itself bound up with normativity, then it is seemingly impossible for the theorist to be entirely disengaged from some degree of evaluation of the normative claims that are part of politics. One cannot, so to speak, stand outside or above absolutely all normative claims:

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there is no place which is that cool. (Horton 2017, pp. 499–500; emphasis in original)

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Political theory is always normative to some extent, therefore. But there is no reason to think that political theorists are in the business of providing a guide to action. Horton, rightly I think, points out that many political realists do aim to provide a guide to action, and for that reason they are much closer than they think to the mainstream theorists whom they claim to reject (the ideal theorists, the theorists of justice, and so on). Horton is also again, I think, right in what he takes to be the proper role and purpose of a type of normative political theory that stops short of providing a guide to action: Moreover, not only should political theory not be expected to authoritatively determine what is just, it should not either aim to prescribe any particular political actions or institutions. […] [I]t can help us see the complexities and obstacles involved, articulate the values that are at stake or inform different possibilities and explore these matters from a variety of perspectives. And in doing so it may also clarify some issue for political agents, but again what use political agents make of it is a matter of their political judgements, and in particular will involve a practical, contextually-sensitive assessment of many factors, and crucially what is politically possible. A political theorist may have opinions about such matters, too, but those opinions again have no special claims to guide or judge political practice. (Horton 2017, p. 498)

Normative political theory stops short of providing a prescriptive guide to action. However, it does quite a lot: it helps us to see what is at stake, it articulates the relevant values, and it explores different possibilities. But when political agents make use of political theory they do so by making a practical and contextually-sensitive assessment. This is a conclusion that others have reached as well, including Berlin. However, I believe that what is missing from Horton’s argument is a rationale for the restricted role that he is assigning to political theory. And what value pluralism provides is that missing rationale. For Berlin’s value pluralism in particular, political theory is normative because its subject matter is normative, and its most important focus is the moral conflicts that arise when political agents are faced with difficult decisions. However, political theory is restricted in its role because it has not identified the general rule to resolve those moral conflicts. To start with, Berlin makes very clear why political philosophy (or theory) is itself an evaluative enterprise. Among the topics of philosophy ‘are some that in their very essence involve value judgements’ (Berlin

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1999 [1961], p. 147). They include such questions as ‘Why should anyone obey anyone else?’ and in posing such a question ‘we are asking for the explanation of what is normative in such notions as authority, sovereignty, liberty, and the justification of their validity in political arguments’ (Berlin 1999 [1961], p. 148). The topics of political philosophy include value judgements, therefore. Not only that, for Berlin, political philosophy as a discipline is engaged in the philosophical analysis of questions that themselves have universal or near-universal application. One of the hallmarks of ‘philosophical’ questions, he maintains, ‘is that we are puzzled from the very outset, that there is no automatic technique, no universally recognised expertise, for dealing with such questions’ (Berlin 1999 [1961], p. 146). That is why the questions cannot simply be answered by appeal to empirical evidence or logic alone. We are concerned also with precisely what it is we would be gathering evidence about and also how to conceptualise those phenomena that we are investigating. For example, when we reflect on freedom it is not sufficient to look for empirical evidence concerning the extent of freedom and the extent of the infringements of freedom. We are also required to reflect on what it is that explains what is normative in the idea of freedom itself. Despite such philosophical puzzlement, however, philosophy does not descend into relativism, for Berlin. Rather, the questions themselves are universal or near-universal, and therefore their ‘subject matter’, which is the most general characteristics of men as such, that is beings engaged in moral or social or spiritual activities – seems to present problems which preserve a considerable degree of continuity and similarity from one age and culture to another. (Berlin 1999 [1961], p. 169)

The topics of political philosophy include value judgements, therefore, and also they have universal or near-universal application. But what is the limit point of such philosophical work? For example, what is the connection between a philosophical examination of liberty, on the one hand, and value judgements we make in politics about liberty, on the other? Here I think Berlin may go too far in the role he ascribes to political theory. For he seems to assume that there will be a strong entailment between fundamental philosophical commitments, on the one hand, and the moral commitments of political practice, on the other. One place where this is evident is in his account of toleration, where he seems to assume that the moral commitment to tolerate difference follows

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from, is entailed by, the philosophical commitment to value pluralism; whereas, in contrast, from value monism we gradually reach the notion of absolute despotism: One belief, more than any other, is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the altars of the great historical ideals […] This is the belief that somewhere […] there is a final solution. This ancient faith rests on the conviction that all the positive values in which men have believed must, in the end, be compatible, and perhaps even entail one another. (Berlin 2004 [1958], p. 212)

Intolerance follows from, is entailed by, value monism, according to Berlin. This is not surprising, given Berlin’s belief that it is fundamental conceptions of man that determine political doctrines (and who will deny that political problems, e.g. about what men and groups can or should be or do, depend logically and directly on what men’s nature is taken to be?). (Berlin 1999 [1961], p. 167)

Berlin here is assuming a strong connection between political theory and political practice, but is that assumption itself something that is a necessary or even permissible feature of value pluralism? In fact, I would maintain that Berlin’s own arguments about value pluralism require a very different conclusion about the connection between theoretical arguments, on the one hand, and the normative judgements characteristic of politics, on the other. Berlin himself identifies a division of labour between theoretical reflection and practical judgement: he shows that the former has not been successful in its various attempts to identify the general rule for the resolution of moral conflicts, leaving that instead in the realm of practical reasoning and practical judgement. One area where practical reasoning and judgement is required is the decision to tolerate difference. I would say that toleration of difference is not logically entailed by value pluralism. Rather, whether or not we tolerate any specific practice (or person, or behaviour, or type of speech, etc.) is always something that we decide on in some specific political circumstance, and this is the case because when we decide to tolerate something we are also resolving a moral conflict. The conflict in question arises where we are opposed to a practice, and so have reasons to intervene in that practice, but where we should also tolerate it, and we can do either but we cannot do both. If you like, toleration as a phenomenon illustrates the pervasiveness of moral conflicts. But value pluralism itself does not require toleration as a political practice, because it is perfectly compatible

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for a value pluralist to conclude that, in this given case, we should not tolerate the practice we are confronted with. That is a practical decision for which there is no general rule of theory to make. So, Berlin is mistaken to assume that toleration is logically entailed by value pluralism. But Berlin is nonetheless right that, because of value pluralism, the freedom to do as we please is a value. Here he is not inferring a political practice or decision from fundamental theoretical arguments; rather, he is showing that a certain conception of freedom is logically entailed by a value pluralist approach to moral conflict. To show what is at stake here, we should remind ourselves of Shklar’s approach to the topic of freedom in her early pluralist work. Her thesis at the time is that, because there is no general rule for resolving moral conflicts, we are not free to act in ways that are intolerant. In one sense, her argument is very much like Berlin’s, but only in that she too makes the assumption that one’s position on theoretical fundamentals will entail a set of political convictions. That is, Shklar assumes at this time that monist approaches (such as deontological ethics) require totalitarian methods. Berlin would agree with that (although I think he is in error on that point, as I have said). Where they disagree (and where I think Berlin is right) concerns their understanding of freedom. Shklar’s argument at this time is like Galston’s, as she assumes that we are not free to do as we please when what we please to do is intolerant, and also that this follows from the fact that there is no general rule for resolving moral conflicts. I have said already that Shklar seems to be inferring what is the case from some idea of what ought to be. She starts from the claim that we ought to tolerate difference, but she goes on to say that we therefore are not free to act in ways that are intolerant of difference. Rather than infer an is from an ought, let us instead look at the evidence for what is the case. What we have seen so far is that negative freedom is a value, and one that is always restricted, as there is always some infringement of choice. Choices are restricted so as to protect liberty, promote autonomy, promote the well-being of the person concerned, radically reform social relations so as to reduce inequality, and so on, for many different reasons. However, the fact that options are removed does not take from negative freedom’s status as a value; indeed, it is because negative freedom is a value that the removal of options stands as a wrong. Therefore, even when we consider, say, those who are intolerant, their negative freedom is a value, one value among others, according to which they are free to do as they

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please. Berlin’s position is that legitimate restrictions of options rightly vary, depending on the conclusions of our practical deliberations, but also that such restrictions do violate freedom: they are prima facie wrongs. As we have seen, value pluralism requires us to accept that the freedom to do as we please is a value. This is not a normative judgement that resolves a moral conflict. It is, rather, a finding of theoretical or philosophical examination: the freedom to do as we please is one value among others, it may come into conflict with others, and any violation of that value is a wrong. Value pluralists should accept that conclusion insofar as they are value pluralists. To put it another way, this is a discovery of political moralism: it is a truth of our human situation. And if, in certain circumstances, decisions are made to violate the freedom to do as we please so as to promote some other value, value pluralism requires that we accept that this is prima facie wrong. Therefore, those who claim to be value pluralists but who nonetheless also conclude that there is no wrong committed in such circumstances are in error: their conclusions are incompatible with the reality of value pluralism. This is the case when Shklar, in her early work, assumes that we are not free to act in ways that are incompatible with the toleration of difference. And this is a shortcoming that is quite common among value pluralists, and is explained by the unsettling nature of Berlin’s insights regarding the freedom to do as we please. It is also a shortcoming that value pluralists can avoid and can do so simply by being more consistently pluralistic. So, normative commitments are not directly entailed by theoretical analysis. This is the case, value pluralism tells us, because normative commitments involve decisions about how to resolve moral conflicts, and theoretical reflection does not provide the general rule for the resolution of such conflicts. Nonetheless, there are reasons to question whether we can maintain this non-permeable boundary between political theory and political practice. The questions arise because even pluralist political thinkers (such as the younger Shklar) clearly have normative commitments. As Shklar herself says at the close of Legalism, that book has been ‘openly informed’ by what she terms the liberalism of permanent minorities, and her saying this is a simple facing-up to the perennial character of political thought. It is a purposive activity at any conceivable level of sophistication or simplicity. There appear to be only two ways of coping with that. Either one recognizes one’s moral impulses and their bearing upon one’s conceptions, or one does not. (Shklar 1964a, p. 224)

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Berlin is also (and also openly) a liberal. He concludes, for example, that

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pluralism, with the measure of ‘negative liberty’ that it entails, seems to me a truer and more humane ideal than the goals of those who seek in the great disciplined, authoritarian structures the ideal of ‘positive’ selfmastery by classes, or peoples, or the whole of mankind. (Berlin 2004 [1958], p. 216)

But how can a value pluralist nonetheless also be a liberal? It was on that question that I opened this book. How can a value pluralist political theory also have the characteristics or qualities of one specific political project and set of controversial and contestable moral beliefs? Surely this amounts to a contradiction, as such moral commitments are what is to be decided upon through practical reasoning rather than as a matter of theoretical reflection? We can put the same point another way, by asking whether one can be an illiberal value pluralist. And my argument would be that value pluralism does not and could not rule out the possibility of non-liberal resolutions to moral conflicts, but it would be a contradiction in terms to engage in political theory as both a value pluralist and an illiberal. And returning to Shklar, if her liberalism of permanent minorities is indeed based upon a series of decisions made when faced with conflicting moral values (how much equality to pursue when this conflicts with market freedoms, and so on), then we would have a contradiction. And yet it is also clear that Shklar hopes and believes that she has avoided any such thing. In her early value pluralist work Shklar offers us a liberalism of permanent minorities. This is a liberal theory committed to toleration, and she assumes that this normative commitment simply follows from value pluralism. I have challenged that assumption. When we are committed to tolerate some specific practice, this requires us to resolve a moral conflict: on some occasions it may be right not to tolerate a given practice, and this is a decision that we make in a specific context, rather than being a finding of theory. But, although the younger Shklar is not fully successful in combining value pluralism with normative commitment, it does not follow that such a combination is itself untenable. Like anyone else, pluralists will have moral commitments, values that inform and motivate their philosophical endeavours. But pluralists must be careful not to confuse their moral commitments for general rules of political theory. Many pluralists are also liberals, but is this justifiable? This normative commitment to liberalism can become problematic, and this is the case when it is taken as validating one specific approach to the resolution

T H E O RY 255

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of moral conflicts, say, a commitment to toleration. Consistency requires self-restraint on the part of the pluralist, a disciplined refraining from moral judgement when engaged in theoretical work. Political theory should be evaluative. Political theorists are endeavouring to explain what is normative in such ideas as freedom and authority, as Berlin says. A pluralist political theory should refrain from taking the further step of prescribing how much freedom, and what type of freedom, we should enjoy. We cannot decide a matter like this by applying a general rule of theory. This is, rather, one of the innumerable decisions that political actors are faced with, decisions that can be informed by theory, but which are made without recourse to the general rules of theory. This is a vision of political theory at once both limited and yet optimistic. It does not rule out the possibility of our discovering or inventing universal or general rules, and doing so through theoretical reflection. As theorists, we rightly hope to resolve philosophical conundrums about our normative principles. Indeed, this is the task set before us here, in this book, when considering how we should resolve moral conflicts and also how we should conceptualise freedom. And the arguments put forward here are offered as generally valid theoretical findings. Political theory is also limited in scope, and political theorists need to be aware of and to accept those limits. Specifically, political theory does not resolve moral conflicts for us. In one sense, this is a pessimistic stance concerning what is possible from theory. But nothing is gained by political theory setting itself an attractive yet unattainable goal. Indeed, the recent history of value monist political theory is a history of repeated failure, one that could easily lead to fatalism and nihilism. As Aristotle said, we should expect only the level of certainty appropriate to the subject matter. Political theory is limited because politics is marked by repeated experiences of moral conflicts, and moral conflicts do not admit of general rules for their resolution. This is a political theory limited in scope, but one that need not be apologetic for all that. A political theory more aware of its proper role and the limits of that role may well be better placed to take up a position alongside the other academic specialisms and in the wider world, and to do so with warranted confidence.

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References

Works by Judith N. Shklar referenced in the text Shklar, J. N. (1957) After Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith (New Jersey: Princeton University Press). —— (1998 [1958]) ‘Bergson and the Politics of Intuition’, in S. Hoffmann (ed.) Political Thought and Political Thinkers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 316–38. —— (1998 [1959]) ‘Ideology Hunting: The Case of James Harrington’, in S. Hoffmann (ed.) Political Thought and Political Thinkers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 206–43. —— (1964a) Legalism: Law, Morals, and Political Trials (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). —— (1964b) ‘Rousseau’s Images of Authority’, The American Political Science Review, 58(4), 919–32. —— (1964c) ‘Decisionism’, in C. J. Friedrich (ed.) Rational Decision (New York and Oxford: Taylor and Francis), pp. 3–17. —— (1998 [1965]) ‘The Political Theory of Utopia: From Melancholy to Nostalgia’, in S. Hoffmann (ed.) Political Thought and Political Thinkers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 161–74. —— (1966) ‘In Defense of Legalism’, Journal of Legal Education, 19, 51–8. —— (1967) ‘Facing up to Intellectual Pluralism’, in D. Spitz (ed.) Political Theory & Social Change (New York: Atherton Press), pp. 275–95. —— (1969) Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau’s Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). —— (1998 [1972]) ‘Subversive Genealogies’, in S. Hoffmann (ed.) Political Thought and Political Thinkers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 132–60. —— (1973) ‘General Will’, in P. P. Wiener (ed.) Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Volume 2 (Scribners), pp. 275–81.

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—— (1998 [1974]) ‘The Education of Henry Adams, by Henry Adams’, in S. Hoffmann and D. F. Thompson (eds) Redeeming American Political Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 80–90. —— (1976) Freedom and Independence: A Study of the Political Ideas of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) —— (1998 [1978a]) ‘Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Equality’, in S. Hoffmann (ed.) Political Thought and Political Thinkers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 277–93. —— (1998 [1978b]) ‘Politics and the Intellect’, in S. Hoffmann (ed.) Political Thought and Political Thinkers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 94–104. —— (1998 [1979]) ‘Reading the Social Contract’, in S. Hoffmann (ed.) Political Thought and Political Thinkers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 262–75. —— (1998 [1980a]) ‘Positive Liberty, Negative Liberty in the United States’, translated from the French by Stanley Hoffman, in S. Hoffmann and D. F. Thompson (eds) Redeeming American Political Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 111–26. —— (1998 [1980b]) ‘Learning Without Knowing’, in S. Hoffmann (ed.) Political Thought and Political Thinkers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 105–31. —— (1998 [1981]) ‘Jean D’Alembert and the Rehabilitation of History’, in S. Hoffmann (ed.) Political Thought and Political Thinkers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 294–316. —— (2006 [1982]) ‘Putting Cruelty First’, Democratiya, 4, Spring, 81–94. —— (1998 [1983]) ‘Hannah Arendt as Pariah’, in S. Hoffmann (ed.) Political Thought and Political Thinkers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 362–75. —— (1984) Ordinary Vices (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press). —— (1998 [1985]) ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four: Should Political Theory Care?’ in S. Hoffmann (ed.) Political Thought and Political Thinkers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 339–52. —— (1998 [1986]) ‘Squaring the Hermeneutic Circle’, in S. Hoffmann (ed.) Political Thought and Political Thinkers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 75–93. —— (1987a) Montesquieu (Oxford: Oxford University Press). —— (1998 [1987b]) ‘Political Theory and the Rule of Law’, in S. Hoffmann (ed.) Political Thought and Political Thinkers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 21–37. —— (1998 [1987c]) ‘Alexander Hamilton and the Language of Political Science’, in S. Hoffmann and D. F. Thompson (eds) Redeeming American Political Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 3–13.

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258 REF EREN C ES —— (1998 [1987d]) ‘A Friendship’, in S. Hoffmann and D. F. Thompson (eds) Redeeming American Political Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 14–27. —— (2019 [1988a]) ‘Why Teach Political Theory?’ in On Political Obligation, edited by Samantha Ashenden and Andreas Hess (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), pp. 213–19. —— (1998 [1988b]) ‘Democracy and the Past: Jefferson and His Heirs’, in S. Hoffmann and D. F. Thompson (eds) Redeeming American Political Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 171–86. —— (1989a) ‘The Liberalism of Fear’, in N. Rosenblum (ed.) Liberalism and the Moral Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), pp. 21–38. —— (1996 [1989b]) ‘A Life of Learning’, in B. Yack (ed.) Liberalism Without Illusions (Chicago: Chicago University Press), pp. 263–79. —— (1989c) ‘Rousseau and the Republican Project’, French Politics and Society, 7(2), 42–9. —— (1990a) The Faces of Injustice (New Haven and London: Yale University Press). —— (2019 [1990b]) ‘Conscience and Liberty’, in On Political Obligation, edited by Samantha Ashenden and Andreas Hess (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), pp. 1–14. —— (1998 [1990c]) ‘Emerson and the Inhibitions of Democracy’, in S. Hoffmann and D. F. Thompson (eds) Redeeming American Political Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 49–64. —— (1991a) American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). —— (1998 [1991b]) ‘Hawthorne in Utopia’, in S. Hoffmann and D. F. Thompson (eds) Redeeming American Political Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 28–48. —— (1998 [1991c]) ‘Redeeming American Political Theory’, in S. Hoffmann and D. F. Thompson (eds) Redeeming American Political Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 91–108. —— (1992a) ‘Rights in the Liberal Tradition’, in The Bill of Rights and the Liberal Tradition (Colorado: Colorado College), pp. 26–39. —— (2019 [1992b]) On Political Obligation, edited by Samantha Ashenden and Andreas Hess (New Haven and London: Yale University Press) —— (1993a) ‘Obligation, Loyalty, Exile’, Political Theory, 21(2), 181–97. —— (1998 [1993b]) ‘The Bonds of Exile’, in S. Hoffmann (ed.) Political Thought and Political Thinkers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 56–72. —— (1998 [nd1]) ‘What Is the Use of Utopia?’ in S. Hoffmann (ed.) Political Thought and Political Thinkers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 175–90. —— (1998 [nd2]) ‘The Work of Michael Walzer’, in S. Hoffmann (ed.) Political Thought and Political Thinkers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 376–85.

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—— (1998 [nd3]) ‘A New Constitution for a New Nation’, in S. Hoffmann and D. F. Thompson (eds) Redeeming American Political Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 158–70.

Works by other authors referenced in the text

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Alexander, M. (2019 [2010]) The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colourblindness (New York: Penguin Random House). Allen, J. (2001) ‘The Place of Negative Morality in Political Theory’, Political Theory, 29(3): 337–63. Anscombe, G. E. M. (1990 [1978]) ‘On the Source of the Authority of the State’, in J. Raz (ed.) Authority (New York: New York University Press), pp. 142–73. Archard, D. (1990) ‘Paternalism Defined’, Analysis, 50(1): 36–42. Arendt, H. (1998 [1958]) The Human Condition, second edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). —— (1993 [1961]) ‘What is Freedom?’ in Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Penguin Books), pp. 143–71. Ashenden, S. and Hess, A. (2016) ‘Totalitarianism and Justice: Hannah Arendt’s and Judith N. Shklar’s Political Reflections in Historical and Theoretical Perspective’, Economy and Society, 45(3–4): 505–29. Beauchamp, T. L. and Childress, J. F. (2009) Principles of Biomedical Ethics, sixth edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Benhabib, S. (1996) ‘Judith Shklar’s Dystopic Liberalism’, in B. Yack (ed.) Liberalism Without Illusions (Chicago: Chicago University Press), pp. 55–63. Berlin, I. (2002 [1952]) Freedom and its Betrayal, edited by H. Hardy (London: Pimlico). —— (1981 [1955]) ‘Montesquieu’, in H. Hardy (ed.) Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 130–61. —— (2004 [1957]) ‘Soviet Russian Culture’, in H. Hardy (ed.) The Soviet Mind (Washington: Brookings), pp. 130–65. —— (2004 [1958]) ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, in H. Hardy (ed.) Liberty (Oxford University Press), pp. 166–217. —— (1999 [1961]) ‘Does Political Theory Still Exist?’ in H. Hardy (ed.) Concepts and Categories (London: Pimlico), pp. 143–72. —— (2004 [1969]) ‘Introduction’, in H. Hardy (ed.) Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 3–54. —— (2011 [1980]) ‘Conversations with Akhmatova and Pasternak’, in H. Hardy (ed.) The Soviet Mind (Washington. DC: Brookings Institute Press), pp. 53–84. Berlin, I. and Williams, B. (1994) ‘Pluralism and Liberalism: A Reply’, Political Studies XLI: 306–9. Braddock, K. and Horgan, J. (2016) ‘Towards a Guide for Constructing and Disseminating Counternarratives to Reduce Support for Terrorism’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 39(5): 381–404.

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260 REF EREN C ES Brighouse, H. and Swift, A. (2014) Family Values: The Ethics of Parent-child Relationships (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Buchanan, A. and Brock, D. W. (1986) ‘Mental Capacity, Legal Competence and Consent to Treatment’, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 97(9): 415–20. Conly, S. (2013) Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Coppock, V. and McGovern, M. (2014) ‘“Dangerous minds”? Deconstructing counter-terrorism discourse, radicalisation and the “psychological vulnerability” of Muslim children and young people in Britain’, Children and Society, 28(3): 242–56. Crowder, G. (2004) Isaiah Berlin: Liberty and Pluralism (Cambridge: Polity Press). —— (2017) ‘Value Pluralism vs. Relativism in Bernard Williams’s “Relativism of Distance,”’ The Pluralist, 12(3): 114–38. Duff, R. A. (2005) ‘Theorizing Criminal Law: A 25th Anniversary Essay’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 25(3): 353–67. Dunn, J. (1996) ‘Hope Over Fear: Judith Shklar as Political Educator’, in B. Yack (ed.) Liberalism without Illusions (Chicago: Chicago University Press), pp. 45–54. Dworkin, R. (2006) Justice in Robes (Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard University Press). Elkins, J. (2010) ‘The Model of War’, Political Theory, 38(2): 214–42. Esping-Andersen, G. (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Farrelly, C. (2007) ‘Justice in Ideal Theory: A Refutation’, Political Studies, 55(4): 844–64. Farrington, D. P. et al. (2001) ‘The Concentration of Offenders in Families, and Family Criminality in the Prediction of Boys’ Delinquency’, Journal of Adolescence, 24(5): 579–96. Fitzpatrick, S. (1999) Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Fives, A. (2005) ‘Virtue, Justice, and the Human Good: Non-relative Communitarian Ethics and the Life of Religious Commitment’, Contemporary Politics, 11(2–3): 117–31. —— (2009) ‘Reasonable, Agonistic, or Good? The Character of a Democrat’, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 35(8): 961–83. —— (2013) Political Reason: Morality and the Public Sphere (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). —— (2017) Evaluating Parental Power: An Exercise in Pluralist Political Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press). —— (2018a) ‘Paternalism and Moral Conflict: A Pluralist Analysis of Parental Power’, The Journal of Political Power, 11(2): 151–64. —— (2018b) Review of Rethinking Liberalism for the 21st Century: The Skeptical Radicalism of Judith Shklar, by Giunia Gatta (New York and London: Routledge, 2018), Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 21(5): 1237–9.

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Index

Adams, H. 233 Adams, J. see scepticism agonism 26, 29, 99 Alexander, M. 165 Allen, A. 29, 56 ambiguity see scepticism American political thought, redeeming against hermeneutics 230–1 against majoritarianism 229–30 Anscombe, G. E. M. 178 Archard, D. 41 Arendt, H. see freedom Ashenden, S. 30, 48, 129–30 authority see freedom; J. J. Rousseau Beauchamp, T. L. 41 Beauvoir, S. de 237 Benhabib, S. 29, 124, 164 Bergson, H. 99, 239 Berlin, I. and freedom negative 2, 21–2, 28, 38, 52, 53–4, 77–9, 82–3, 92–3, 102, 112–3, 120, 133, 135, 152, 156, 171, 187–8, 253–4 positive 38, 53, 88, 93–6 on O. Mandelstam and B. Pasternak 197–8

and Montesquieu 84–6 and philosophy 62, 224, 248–55 and practical reasoning 202, 215, 220–1, 224, 247, 251–3 and J. J. Rousseau 86, 88, 94, 119, 133–4, 152 and scepticism 27, 44, 123, 126, 219–21, 233, 244, 248 and universal morality 57, 62, 204 and utopia 119–21, 133, 152 and value pluralism 2, 21–2, 32, 35, 47–8, 76, 94–6, 101, 120, 156, 171, 187–8, 247, 255 as unsettling to other pluralists 96–7, 111–15, 246 Braddock, K. 98 Brighouse, H. 73 Brock. D. W. 73 Buchanan, A. 73 Camus, A. 212 Childress, J. F. 41 coercion 21, 43, 54, 64, 74, 85, 88, 93, 112, 118, 125, 130, 133, 145, 149–52, 170, 178–9, 192, 220, 226

I N D EX 267

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Conly, S. 41 communitarianism 15, 26, 29, 51, 111, 150–1, 157–9, 161–5, 170, 173, 221, 225, 228, 230 conscience and exile 158, 163–4, 167–8 and freedom 78–9, 100–1, 126, 146–7 W. L. Garrison 146–7 H. D. Thoreau 146–7, 163–4 and moral conflict 73, 158, 163, 245–6 crime 3, 182–90 in Legalism, conception of 156, 176–82 moralistic jurisprudence, rejection of 179 voluntary acts and freedom, distinction of 180–2 in J. Shklar’s mature work, conception of 155–6, 160, 166, 168–76 Montesquieu, and 85–6, 171–3 war crimes 202–4 see also exile; freedom Coppock, V. 91 Crowder, G. 28, 62, 112, 119, 246 cruelty avoidance of the basic norm 2, 10, 17, 19, 43, 51, 55, 58–9, 63–4, 66–8, 74, 79–80, 91, 97, 117, 141, 144, 147, 149, 159, 167–8, 172–4, 199–200, 206–7, 210 and damage control 17–18, 25, 49, 236 the first right 2, 24, 26, 67, 135 irreducible 67 moral intuition 68

the summum malum 2, 7, 9–10, 16–17, 24, 42–4, 52, 56, 58–9, 63–5, 67, 84, 123, 229 see also freedom definitions of 7 Culver, C. M. 42 democracy and aristocracy 141, 235 and equality 136, 145 and political theory 230, 232, 235 and scepticism 46–7, 81, 123, 229–30 , 235 and slavery 81–2 and snobbery 46–7, 65, 97 and totalitarianism 125–6, 131–2, 202, 238 and voting 164–5 and welfare 139–40, 150 and work 152 dirty hands 73 Duff, R. A. 178 Dunn, J. 46 Dworkin, R. 120–2 Elkins, J. 185, 189 Emerson, R. W. see J. J. Rousseau; scepticism epistemology 1–2, 4, 9, 20–1, 27, 31, 74–5, 77, 92, 116, 193, 245–6 Esping-Andersen, G. 150 exile 17, 26, 155–6, 158 of African Americans 164–6, 174 betrayal, and 160–2 of German Jews (under Nazi rule) 195–6, 211 inherently unfit for full membership, and 164–6, 168, 174, 195–6 internal 162–4, 167–8, 175, 194–6 H. D. Thoreau 163

268 I N D EX

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involuntary emigrés, and 159–60 Japanese Americans 160–2, 166 ordinary crime (distinction) 155–6, 173–6 and scepticism 166–7 and value monism 167–8 extremism see toleration Farrelly, C. 12, 18, 97, 122, 218, 222–3 Farrington, D. P. 184 Fitzpatrick, S. 194 Fives, A. 2, 20, 23, 29, 41, 55, 73, 91, 96, 116, 247 Foot, P. 33–4 Forster, E. M. see political obligation Forrester, K. 2, 28–9, 48, 50, 124, 138–9 freedom Arendt and the cult of individuality 26, 29, 98–9, 125, 210–13 in diversity alone 49, 102–3, 180 comparison with W. E. Galston 111–15 and equality 54, 78, 81, 101, 104, 107–9, 111, 137, 144–5, 149, 232, 252, 254 forced to be free 23, 81, 86–8, 92, 98, 102, 106, 109, 115, 117–18, 134, 140, 152, 172–3, 208–9 authentic authority liberates 104, 106–7, 118, 140 from cruelty dispersion of power 53–4 limited government 57, 78, 130, 209 G. W. F. Hegel on 109–11 contra independence 21, 54, 82–6, 96–7, 104, 109–11, 171–3, 209 negative freedom of slave owners 79–81 see also I. Berlin

of ordinary criminals 84–5, 156, 170–4, 176, 180–2, 184–5, 187–90 positive freedom and constitutional rights 79–80, 144, 170–1, 232 the higher self in politics 55, 78–80, 111, 117, 138, 142, 146–7, 151 and republicanism 78, 80, 108–9, 111, 141, 146–7, 235 Gadamer, H. G. 230 Galston, W. A. 18, 20, 33–4, 46, 95–7, 112–4, 119, 182, 213–14, 246, 252 Gans, H. J. 184 Garrison, W. L. see conscience Gaus, G. 18, 122, 218 general will see J. J. Rousseau Gert, B. 42 Gray, J. 27, 32, 44, 57, 60–2, 95–6, 112, 119, 123, 201–4, 213–14, 246–8 Habermas, J. 136, 138–9, 145, 220, 232–3, 247 Hall, E. 18, 123, 218 Hamilton, A. see scepticism Hampshire, S. 57, 60–2, 204 Hare, R. M. 173 n.1 Hart, H. L. A. 90 Hegel, G. W. F. see freedom Herder, J. G. 125 hermeneutics 14–15, 29, 150–1, 230, 248 Herzen, A. 212 Hess, A. 2, 30, 48, 129–30, 166–7, 205 Hoffmann, S. 51, 77, 164 Hooker, J. 185 Horgan, J. 98 Horton, J. 161, 216, 248–9

I N D EX 269

injustice see justice

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Jackson, A. see rights Jaspers, K. 125 Jefferson, T. see scepticism Jubb, R. 123 justice commutative 127–8, 141 and injustice 3, 16–17, 22, 48, 51, 63–6, 71–2, 118, 128–9, 139–42, 148–9, 163–5, 168–71, 173, 176–8, 184–6, 194–5, 222, 226 and the legalistic ethos 36–8, 40, 48–9, 128, 181, 203–6, 212, 241–2 and decisionism 37, 212–13 merit (criteria of ) 36, 127–8 and conflicts between 36, 127–9, 177 the normal model of 16–17, 26, 44–5, 51, 63–6, 71, 169, 173, 191 and scepticism 63–6 and punishment 43–4, 55, 85–6, 90, 96–8, 146–7, 156, 164, 170–5, 178, 181–2, 188–9, 204 see also Montesquieu

Kant, I. 8–10, 26, 46, 84–5, 94, 111, 124, 133, 185, 208 Katzenstein, M. F. 185 Kekes, J. 20, 134–5 Latvia 196–7 law enforcement 13, 44, 102–3, 149, 174, 178, 185, 187 and the minimum of fear required 13, 44, 174 and voluntarism 51, 63, 71–2, 123–4, 139–40, 142, 157

rule of 67, 130–3, 170–2 see also justice legalism see justice liberalism barebones (liberalism of permanent minorities) 48–9 rights-based 24, 26 libertarian 5, 26 political 6 of the weak and the powerful 25–6 48–9, 58–9, 65 loyalty see conscience; political obligation Machiavelli, N. 19, 58 MacIntyre, A. 157–8 Mandelstam, N. 193–4, 197–8, 201, 214 McGovern, M. 91 Mendus, S. 46 Midlarsky, M. I. 96 Mill, J. S. 4, 8–10, 16, 20, 23, 30–1, 40–4, 46–7, 51–2, 63, 65, 70–1, 74–5, 77, 80, 90–1, 96, 219–20, 223 Misra, S. 2, 28–9, 50–2, 54, 77, 124 Montaigne, M. de 14, 19, 59, 67 Montesquieu (Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu) 8, 19, 23, 30, 47, 54, 57, 82–6, 96, 108–11, 140, 170–2, 235 Moyn, S. 28, 30, 48, 57, 127, 130, 178 More, T. 130–1, 136 Nagel, T. 13, 146, 148, 156–7, 183–4, 187, 247 natural law 48–9, 79–80, 130, 167, 178–80, 182, 186, 198–200, 202–3, 205, 219, 240

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270 I N D EX negative morality creation myths of Hesiod and J. J. Rousseau 58–9, 131–2 and evil 56–63 M. de Montaigne’s transvaluation of values 59 survivalism 57–8 and value pluralism 56–63 Nazism 15, 60, 164, 166, 168, 194–7, 202–4, 211 Nozick, R. 5–6, 26 Palmeri, A. 41 Pasternak, B. 197–8, 216 Pettit, P. 78 Philp, M. 216 Piquero, A. R. 184 political obligation and arbitrariness 44, 98–9, 125–6, 130, 158–9, 167–8, 170, 172, 174–5, 186, 191, 210–11 and claims of conscience 100, 126, 146–7, 158, 163–4, 168–9, 245–6 and friendship (E. M. Forster) 158, 207 legitimacy of 2, 11–12, 23, 25, 50, 54, 85, 103, 120–1, 127, 133, 142, 151, 156–7, 159, 161, 166–7, 169–74, 182, 187, 190, 199, 206, 211, 220, 225–6 and loyalty 157–64, 166–7, 195–7 see also exile; justice; law; J. J. Rousseau political realism see scepticism; B. Williams political theory see scepticism; value monism; value pluralism

power and intimidation 6, 25, 65, 143–5, 172, 232 see also freedom; J. J. Rousseau Putnam, R. 165 Rawls, J. 2, 4–8, 10–13, 17–18, 20, 22–3, 26–31, 42, 44, 47, 52, 61, 70, 72, 77, 86–92, 96, 111, 118–19, 122–4, 129, 136, 138–9, 145, 161, 163, 165–6, 186, 220–5, 232–3, 236 Raz, J. 20 rights and freedom (positive and negative) 81–2, 143–5 and the right to earn a living 142–4, 232 the Jacksonian faith 14, 143, 151, 233 and the right to fight for one’s rights 24, 26, 117, 142–5, 152, 232 and the right to vote 142 and welfare 24, 142, 152–3, 232 Rogers, M. 184–5 Rorty, R. 227 Rosenblum, N. L. 2, 29, 50, 124 Rousseau, J. J. authority and equality 101, 104–5, 107–8 personal authority and law 101, 104–5, 130, 132 conflict of ideals 30, 101, 108, 129 Corsica 109 creation myth 58–9, 131–2 and democracy and Hobbism 101, 105, 127–34 despotism 88, 92, 119–20, 130, 133, 152, 208–9 ethical paradox 131–3

I N D EX 271

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Émile 86–8, 100–1, 129, 208–10 and freedom and authority 88, 98–109 vacillating attitude to 101 and equality 106–8 not Romantic 100 and the general will 8, 23, 86–8, 94, 106–7, 117–18, 133 and the Great Legislator 9, 130, 132–3, 140–1 the map maker (R. W. Emerson) 141 The Social Contract 86, 101, 108–9, 129, 136, 208 scepticism of 100, 105–6, 108 tragic conflict 108–9 totalitarian implications of 88, 92, 118–9 and tyranny 88, 208–10 and utopia 117–18, 123–4 Golden Age 101, 132–3 Sparta 101, 117–18, 130, 132–3 Russia (USSR) 15, 68, 158, 193–200, 206–7 Sagar, P. 18, 27, 123–4, 218 Sartre, J. P. 125 scepticism and actuality 7–9, 11, 13–14, 16–17, 20, 22, 36, 45, 49, 51, 65–6, 108, 131, 138–9, 143, 145, 225, 227, 232, 236, 239, 241 ambiguity 15–16, 136, 138, 205, 233 and R. W. Emerson 46–7, 81, 123, 141 and experience of cruelty 44–5, 56–7, 64, 66, 227, 236–9 intellectual modesty 9, 123 and moral rules 16, 51, 63, 169–70, 177

and the party of memory 9, 14–15, 23–5, 46, 123–4, 143, 235 and the party of hope (T. Jefferson) 235 in political theory accuracy and honesty 236 free from normativity 237–40 and ideology 234 and J. Adams 235 and A. Hamilton 234–5 a tour of perplexities 135 Scheuerman, W. E. 48, 79–80, 142 Schmid, A. P. 96, 98 Shklar, J. N., WRITINGS OF (1957) After Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith 29, 49–50, 58, 98–100, 125–6, 191, 211, 237–40; (1998 [1987c]) ‘Alexander Hamilton and the Language of Political Science’ 209, 235; (1991a) American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion 14, 18, 24, 142–4, 146, 151, 164–5; (1998 [1958]) ‘Bergson and the Politics of Intuition’ 99, 239; (1998 [1993b]) ‘The Bonds of Exile’ 159; (2019 [1990b]) ‘Conscience and Liberty’ 23, 55, 79–82, 164; (1964c) ‘Decisionism’ 2, 36–7, 181, 212; (1966) ‘In Defense of Legalism’ 2, 31, 36–7, 39; (1998 [1988b]) ‘Democracy and the Past: Jefferson and His Heirs’ 165, 230; (1998 [1974]) ‘The Education of Henry Adams, by Henry Adams’ 233; (1998 [1990c]) ‘Emerson and the

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272 I N D EX Inhibitions of Democracy’ 47, 81, 123–4, 141; (1990a) The Faces of Injustice 16–18, 24, 26, 29, 31, 45–6, 51, 63–6, 71–2, 139–41, 164–5, 169–71; (1967) ‘Facing up to Intellectual Pluralism’ 2, 31, 36, 38–9, 243; (1976) Freedom and Independence: A Study of the Political Ideas of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind 109–11; (1998 [1987d]) ‘A Friendship’ 138, 235; (1973) ‘General Will’ 106–7; (1998 [1983]) ‘Hannah Arendt as Pariah’ 29, 211–12; (1998 [1991b]) ‘Hawthorne in Utopia’ 233; (1998 [1959]) ‘Ideology Hunting: The Case of James Harrington’ 57–8; (1998 [1981]) ‘Jean D’Alembert and the Rehabilitation of History’ 234; (1998 [1978a]) ‘Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Equality’ 106–7; (1998 [1980b]) ‘Learning Without Knowing’ 233–4; (1964a) Legalism: Law, Morals, and Political Trials 2, 22, 31, 35–7, 48–9, 101–3, 127–9, 132, 156, 177–81, 186, 191, 198–200, 202–4, 240–2, 253; (1989a) ‘The Liberalism of Fear’ 2–3, 7, 9–10, 13, 17, 24–5, 31, 43–4, 46, 52, 54, 68–9, 78, 123, 149–50, 191–2, 232; (1996 [1989b]) ‘A Life of Learning’ 125, 196–7; (1969) Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau’s Social Theory 101,

103–6, 118, 140; (1987a) Montesquieu 3, 21, 54, 83, 85–6; (1998 [nd3]) ‘A New Constitution for a New Nation’ 47, 171; (1998 [1985]) ‘Nineteen EightyFour: Should Political Theory Care?’ 139; (1993a) ‘Obligation, Loyalty, Exile’ 17, 155, 157–64, 167–8, 191, 195–7; (2019 [1992b]) On Political Obligation 147, 158, 160, 162, 164, 168; (1984) Ordinary Vices 2, 13, 15–16, 24, 43, 46, 53, 63, 65, 67–8, 73, 97, 135–6, 139, 157–8, 172, 191, 194–5, 205, 207–8, 210, 227–9, 231; (1998 [1987b]) ‘Political Theory and the Rule of Law’ 170, 172; (1998 [1965]) ‘The Political Theory of Utopia: From Melancholy to Nostalgia’ 130–1, 242–3; (1998 [1978b]) ‘Politics and the Intellect’ 230, 235; (1998 [1980a]) ‘Positive Liberty, Negative Liberty in the United States’ 24, 80–1, 143–5; (2006 [1982]) ‘Putting Cruelty First’ 2, 7–9, 14, 19, 29, 210; (1998 [1979]) ‘Reading the Social Contract’ 106, 108–9; (1998 [1991c]) ‘Redeeming American Political Theory’ 14, 234; (1992a) ‘Rights in the Liberal Tradition’ 24, 145–6; (1989c) ‘Rousseau and the Republican Project’ 109, 140–1; (1964b) ‘Rousseau’s Images of Authority’ 2, 23, 87, 100–2,

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105, 130–1; (1998 [1986]) ‘Squaring the Hermeneutic Circle’ 15, 29, 228, 230; (1998 [1972]) ‘Subversive Genealogies’ 2, 29, 58–9, 105, 132; (1998 [nd1]) ‘What Is the Use of Utopia?’ 14, 18, 22, 136–9, 231–2; (2019 [1988a]) ‘Why Teach Political Theory?’ 55; (1998 [nd2]) ‘The Work of Michael Walzer’ 164. Skinner, Q. 80 slavery see democracy Sleat, M. 123, 164, 218 Smith, M. B. E. 155 Stalin, J. V. 68, 159, 193–8 Stullerova, K. 50, 52, 226–7 summum malum see cruelty Swift, A. 73 Taylor, C. 230 Thaler, M. 2, 29, 50, 124, 137 toleration 113–14, 250–2, 254–5 and extremism 96–7 in J. Shklar’s early value pluralism 102–3, 181, 252–4 in J. Shklar’s mature value monism 4, 16, 18, 24, 42, 46, 53, 55–6, 65, 78, 134–5, 231 torture 17, 25, 47, 50, 60, 187 Thoreau, H. D. see conscience tyranny see N. Mandelstam; B. Pasternak; political obligation; J. J. Rousseau; Russia utopia see conscience; R. W. Emerson; J. Habermas; T. More; J. Rawls; J. J. Rousseau; scepticism

Valentini, L. 18, 213 value, sources of 146–8, 163, 183, 189 value monism critique of value pluralism as contradictory (P. Foot) 33–4 as danger to liberty (R. Dworkin) 120–2 extraordinary crimes, not applicable to 189 finality requirement 186 as permissive 188 reality of moral values, rejected 189 as relativistic 201–4, 213–4 prescriptive political theory decision procedure 50–1, 124, 137, 225, 246 a guide to political practices 135–6, 142, 145, 220, 223, 225, 228, 231–7, 246, 249 see also freedom; I. Kant; J. S. Mill; Montesquieu; J. Rawls; J. J. Rousseau; scepticism value pluralism critique of value monism consensus among monists, lack of 185–6 epistemological critique 2, 4, 20–1, 27, 74, 77, 90–2, 186–7, 214–15, 245–6 false comfort 199–200 normative critique 2, 4, 20–1, 27, 92–4, 97, 188, 216, 245–6 simplification 201 totalitarian implications 87–8, 92, 102, 118–21, 132–3, 148, 152, 205, 250–1 J. Shklar’s early value pluralist political theory 242–3 theory and practice divide 35, 202, 215, 220–1, 224, 246–7, 251–2, 254

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274 I N D EX and universals 35, 60–3, 179, 186, 204, 248–50 see also Montesquieu; J. J. Rousseau vice hypocrisy 56–7, 209, 228–9 lying 67–8, 96 ordinary 16, 18, 24, 97, 228 pride 8, 68, 210, 212, 231 snobbery 46, 65, 97, 136 treachery 14, 67 see also cruelty; toleration Waller, M. R. 185 Walzer, M. 11–12, 26, 29, 151, 155, 157, 163, 219–21

Whiteside, K. H. 29–30, 49–51, 63–5, 77, 129, 137, 169 Williams, B. viii and the basic legitimation demand 17, 50, 122–3, 207 and confidence 12, 122–3, 221–2, 227 and political non-moralism 7, 11–13, 16, 18, 123, 219–22 and value pluralism 2, 20, 27, 28n.1, 88, 121–2, 153, 202, 215, 224, 247 Yack, B. ix, 2, 29, 46, 48, 50–1, 57, 59, 77, 225–6