Giving Evil Its Due Judith Shklar’s (Ambiguous) Cosmopolitan Realism and World Politics

Cruelty, Injustice, and the Liberalism of Fear

“… 3. Shklar later defines cruelty as “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.” (LF, 11) Nothing in the present analysis turns on the differences between these formulations, although for criticism (of both), see Heins (2019, 182); Kekes (1996, 836–38); and Royer (2022, 708–10). …”

“…Yack (1991, 1999) has analyzed The Faces of Injustice in considerable depth on its own terms, without assessing the ways in which it either draws upon or departs from the liberalism of fear, while others have examined Shklar’s account of injustice in light of her skepticism (Misra 2016, especially 83–85; Whiteside 1999, 516–22). Nonetheless, the underlying relationship between injustice and cruelty as two distinct and potentially conflicting evils remains largely unexplored (see also Royer 2022, 709).…”