Fear and Freedom

Abstract

This article identifies a distinct strand of 20th-century liberal thought that was exemplified by Isaiah Berlin, Raymond Aron and, to a lesser extent, Karl Popper. I offer a stylized account of their common ideas and shared political sensibility, and argue that their primarily negative liberalism was a variety of what Judith Shklar called the `liberalism of fear' — which put the imperative to avoid cruelty and atrocity first. All three founded their liberalism on a `politics of knowledge' that was directed primarily against Marxist philosophies of history and less against the idea of bureaucratic planning, as, in contrast, was the case with Friedrich von Hayek's thought. Moreover, all three subscribed to more or less explicit versions of value pluralism, and claimed that, in the circumstances of modernity, Weber's `clash of values' was exacerbated and required a particularly prudential approach to politics; this prudential management of value conflicts in turn was best entrusted to cultivated bureaucratic elites. All shared an image of a tolerant and humane society — essentially an idealized version of Britain — but said perhaps too little on the question how societies without the appropriate traditions of moderation and compromise were to be liberalized.

New missions for universities in the era of innovation: European and global perspectives for excellence and sustainability

“…The current paper begins examining Higher Education recent « revolution» in the context of deepen individualism and the quest for security, century-old trends regarding political anthropology and political philosophy. (Müller, 2008(Müller, , 2011.…”

Hope Abjuring Hope: On the Place of Utopia in Realist Political Theory

“…Judith Shklar, who has inspired a great many contemporary realists, delivered one of the most vociferous indictments against utopianism in the 20 th Century. 20 Her main objection to utopianism has also been shared by several writers who have been collectively labelled -perhaps a bit heavyhandedly, but nonetheless accurately -"Cold War liberals" 21 To hope too much is to be guilty of forgetting the unspeakable, which happened in our lifetime, and will undoubtedly happen again, if it is not already taking place somewhere or other. 23 It is important to stress yet another factor that shaped the Cold War liberals' aversion to utopianism: their fierce anti-communism.…”

Anti-cosmopolitan liberalism: Isaiah Berlin, Jacob Talmon and the dilemma of national identity

“…To be sure, there is no single coherent theoretical statement of anything called Cold War liberalism. This should be regarded primarily as an umbrella concept or, as Jan‐Werner Müller noted correctly, as a term signifying a ‘particular sensibility’ (Müller 2008). We find this sort of sensibility in the work of thinkers who agreed on a very loose set of presuppositions that are best summed up by the well‐known expression coined by Judith Shklar: the ‘liberalism of fear’.…”

“…Building on Müller's suggestion, we may construct our description of Cold War liberalism using Shklar's framework. Indeed, liberal Cold War warriors combined an understanding of two kinds of fear: firstly the fear of utopia, fear ‘of ambitious programmes advanced by those who felt absolutely certain in their convictions and sure about their political prescriptions’ (Müller 2008: 48); and secondly the fear of fear itself, namely the understanding that intimidation and terrorisation of citizens – i.e. the creation of a situation in which the masses submit themselves to the yoke of political authority out of panic at the possibility of being sent to a gulag, a concentration camp or such like Kafkaesque penal colony – is an extremely potent and dangerous motivating force that should be morally condemned.…”