About Judith Shklar
When constructing a new body of thought or ideological programme, what the most common route consists of is the establishment of a positive system that imposes a novel set of beliefs, tenets, principles, and ideas.
Traditionally minded philosophers and thinkers who are liable to such an approach, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, argue for the return to what might be described as the classical Greek conception of justice as found in Plato and the foundation of a prescriptive set of virtues, laws, rules and truths that everybody in a society abides by and believes in in order to bring about a renewal of a genuinely organic communitarian body politic of engaged citizens in societal solidarity and unity with each other.
But as much as it is tempting to identify with such a programme, it is practically impossible to institute such lists of universal propositions within a polity without becoming totalitarian or at the very least artificially enforced. Such an idealistic and lofty plan is inevitably going to remain null and void in our incompromisingly individualistic and pluralistic world.
Instead what might be a more helpful approach is the one suggested by the brilliant Latvian-American philosopher Judith Shklar, who was an ardent critic of mainstream liberal thought and advocated for the novel commitment to a skeptical liberalism based on fear. In other words, through its inverse, namely a thoroughly negative conception of reinforcing our core values and beliefs by defending them against what we most vehemently depise and reject, we can strengthen what we already affirm positively and thus create a sincerely deep-seated cultural bedrock of human rights, democracy and liberalism.
This line of thought may seem counter-intuitive and excessively defensive, but actually it’s embodied in a fierce attack on what our society hates, viz. the forces of fascism, Nazism and their related corollaries. By remaining vigorously belligerent towards the manifestations of what we do not like, we affirm our own beliefs and what we do like by remaining ever vigilant and alert of its slightest contestants.
Targeting the enemies and endemic problems of our society in such a way promptly and decisively arms us with an immediate sense of vision, belonging and societal cohesion, a united commitment towards some chief ideals that we so desperately long for in our troubled times.
The recently deceased French philosopher Bernhard Stiegler has argued for the necessity of a “European” motive of industrial civilisation i.e. not a reconstitution of exploitative colonialism, but rather a shared vantage point and vision of our own, if you will. That’s my interpretation of what he’s saying, and I think that’s why a reinvigorated negative liberalism could be put to good use for our holistic cause.
Various counter-currents and malignant forces such as radical right-wing politics, social unrest, ecological troubles, etc. in our societies must not go unchecked, and by stepping up by clearly stating what’s not acceptable we reinforce what we in beforehand deem to be true, and in this continous dialectic of sociopolitical discourse and development we make headway for progressive action and steady improvement, ultimately leading to a much-awaited better world.
Shklar’s approach applied in this way entrenches us most firmly in our shared set of universal principles, rights and obligations in society, and it is precisely this embeddedness that disoriented and disillusioned individuals need to cling to above all.
Without such a commitment they are sure to remain fragmented and without a place in the world of their own, which is a situation most ripe for estrangement, lack of purpose, political extremism and existential angst, which precisely lie at the heart of a great deal of worrying problems and trends in the present that must be combatted before they get out of hand.
