The knowledge of suffering: On Judith Shklar’s ‘Putting Cruelty First’

Abstract

Judith Shklar's dictum, 'the worst evil of cruelty', is well known. What this means for her political theory and how such theory is construed are rarely explored. This article maintains that Shklar's turn towards cruelty/suffering has a specific role in the development of her political argument. It allows her both to curb her long-standing skepticism, and to use it creatively. This is because suffering must be examined from the perspectives of history and philosophy, which produce two sets of knowledge, each limiting the overbearing tendencies of the other. The way Shklar uses the tension between history and philosophy for progressive purposes, and her idea that politics can mediate between history and philosophy, makes her a very contemporary theorist, similar to those who critically engage foundationalism without wanting to dispose of it completely. Approaching Shklar's 'Putting Cruelty First' through her engagement with history and philosophy, and making use of the concepts of 'realism' (Bernard Williams) and 'weak ontology' (Stephen White) to do so are a more productive route to understanding her dictum than the usual one of examining it through the prism of her 'liberalism of fear'.

Judith Shklar ve Korku Liberalizmi

“…Shklar kuşkucu bir filozof olarak tanımlanır (Forrestr, 2011;Stullerova, 2014). Shklar'ın kuşkuculuğu konusunda hem fikir olunsa bile bu skeptizmi kinizme vardırmadığı ileri sürülür (Gatta, 2018: 1-2).…”

Richard Rorty and the Demands of Liberalism

“…It also puts the onus on individuals to present to their community instances of cruelty endured, which then makes it possible that those who feel humiliated and silenced by their experiences will remain unnoticed should others not hear and heed their voices. If accepted as politically sufficient, this juridical and institutional interpretation of cruelty might justify a rejection of Rorty’s liberalism as naïve—embodying what one critic alleges is his “blithe trust in existing democratic institutions to do the job of identifying suffering” (Stullerova 2014, 30)—and therefore too enfeebled to sustain solidarity except among the most privileged members of a community.…”

Political Liberalism: Political, not Philosophical

“… 7 The memorial volume that I edited, Liberalism without Illusions (1996), contained a mix of articles on Shklar and on themes that interested her. For some of the more interesting recent work on Shklar’s ideas about liberalism, see Forrester (2011), Misra (2016), Moyn (2014), and Stullerova (2014). …”