Shklar Political PDF

Copyrighted material 9781137032492
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Peculiarity of the Kind of Refugee I Was
vii
1
The Formative Years: From Riga to Montreal
23
In the Aftermath of Totalitarianism
39
The Making of a Political Theorist
75
Transatlantic Encounters of a Different Kind
135
Returning to the Theme of Exile
177
Notes
203
Bibliography
217
Index
227
THE POLITICAL THEORY OF JUDITH N. SHKLAR
Copyright Andreas Hess, 2014.

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Introduction: The Peculiarity of the

Kind of Refugee I Was
Judith Shklars Intellectual Legacy Shklar as Fox Shklars
Coinage of Words and Use of Unusual Terms: The Attempt to
Bring Theory and Political Practice Closer Together The
Theme of Exile in Shklars Life and Work Shklars
Exile from Exile in Context Outline of the Book
Judith Shklars Intellectual Legacy

On September 19, 1992, the New York Times carried a short piece on
the death at the age of 63 of Harvard Professor Judith Nisse Shklar.
The Times noted that Shklar was originally from Riga and that she
had fled with her family first to Sweden and then, in 1941, to Canada.
The article mentioned her major academic qualifications, awards, and
distinguished career and made a short reference to Shklars interest in
political theory and intellectual history, chiefly from the eighteenth,
nineteenth, and twenieth centuries. It was also noted that she had
served as President of the American Political Science Association
between 1989 and 1990, the first woman to head this large professional organization. As the Times further reported Shklar was survived by her husband, two sons, and a daughter.
While the reader of this brief article might detect a successful professional career, one that had led an immigrant from Riga to become
a distinguished professor at one of Americas leading academic institutions, the New York Times did not acknowledge Shklar as an iconic
thinker nor did the deceased seem to have left any noticeable intellectual traces. In the articles brevity and sobriety but also in its obvious
omissions lay an odd reluctance fully to acknowledge Shklars considerable achievements; not one of her eight books was mentioned and
neither could one encounter a reference to her unique contributions

2
The Political Theory of Judith N. Shklar
to political theory, such as her defense of an illusion-free barebones

liberalism.
With the hindsight of more than 20 years, it is now even more evident that Shklar was indeed an iconic thinker, although in an unusual
waya story too complex perhaps to be fully reflected in a short New
York Times obituary. Shklar formed the minds of generations of students. She had a huge impact on her colleagues, intellectual acquaintances, and friends. Her influence reached far beyond the Ivy League
institution to include quite a few outstanding thinkers in the Western
academic community. Looking at the list of those who paid tribute
to Shklar one can clearly detect an intellectual network that speaks a
common language and in which the reference to or the dialogue with
Shklar and her work played and continues to play an important part.
Some of the most distinguished minds of the later twentieth century
were part of Shklars orbit: Bruce Ackerman (Yale), Seyla Benhabib
(Yale), Isaiah Berlin (Oxford), John Dunn (Cambridge), Amy Gutmann
(Harvard, Pennsylvania), Albert O. Hirschman (Institute for Advanced
Study, Princeton), Stanley Hoffmann (Harvard), Stephen Holmes
(NYU), Isaac Kramnick (Cornell), John Rawls (Harvard), Nancy
Rosenblum (Harvard), Quentin Skinner (Cambridge), Dennis F.
Thompson (Harvard), and Michael Walzer (Institute for Advanced
Study, Princeton). The list is by no means exhaustive; there are many
more renowned individuals who knew Shklar and surely remembered
her. Some of them were part of Shklars postgraduate student cohort
at Harvard who later opted for political careers, for example, Henry
Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Her own academic training and intellectual formation was influenced particularly by Frederick Watkins at McGill (a Rousseau
specialist from Harvard who had moved to Montreal) and later, at
Harvard, Carl Joachim Friedrich, Shklars supervisor and mentor
(a political scientist who was known for analyzing totalitarianism
and its main features and threats, and who introduced Shklar to the
study of modern ideologies). When Shklar became a lecturer some
of her former teachers became colleagues, such as Harvard historian
Bernard Bailyn (who introduced Shklar to American intellectual history), Rupert Emerson (who had always been protective of her, particularly in her early Harvard years), or political scientist Louis Hartz
(who helped promote the notion of American exceptionalism and the
role that Lockean liberalism played in Americas intellectual formation, something that Shklar was not impressed by but nevertheless
learned from).

Introduction
Shklar was passionate about arguments. She generally adopted a

Socratic approach. Students and colleagues admired her for speaking
out, although she sometimes did so in a challenging manner and tone.
Despite this, she was held in high esteem, not least because she had
the kind of personality that combined integrity with honesty. Yet she
did not easily fit into Harvardan institution where speaking ones
mind was not always appreciated. She believed that to command intellectual authority and to perform as a teacher demanded a clearheaded
and uninhibited skepticism. By all accounts, Shklar played that role
well, mixing her psychological insights with a unique capacity to
detect intellectual nonsense and sloppy thinking. As a teacher Shklar
sought to inculcate intellectual sensibility, curiosity, and, crucially,
the courage to use ones own mind. Many former students who now
hold academic positions have acknowledged how much they benefited
from her intellectual guidance.
Despite having exercised such influence Shklars legacy still
remains somewhat in the shadow when compared to, let us say,
Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, or John Rawls. One can find hundreds of citations, references, and, additionally, numerous reviews
in academic and nonacademic journals and magazines, yet it is rare
to encounter really comprehensive analyses or accounts of her work.
Even in the posthumous essay collection dedicated to Shklars work
and life, Liberalism without Illusions (Yack 1996), most of the contributors used her insights, ideas, and concepts to advance their own
approaches rather than face Shklar as a thinker in her own right.
It is true that some scholarly attempts to promote Shklars work
have been made. A posthumous two-volume collection edited by
Stanley Hoffmann and Dennis F. Thompson, Political Thought and
Political Thinkers and Redeeming American Political Thought (1998
and 1998a), has made her essays, which had been dispersed across
many journals, more easily accessible.1 Yet, despite such attempts to
popularize Shklar and her writings, very few systematic attempts have
been made to look at her entire oeuvre, including the collected papers
and notes that are now housed in the Harvard Archives. Of those few
attempts to provide a general account three are noteworthy: One is
a PhD dissertation from the Central European University, supervised
by former Shklar student Bernard Yack (Stullerova 2005), which
tries to reconstruct the core ideas of Shklar mainly by focusing on
her unique conceptualization of a barebones liberalism. There exists
also a short introductory book by a Belgian scholar, Paul Magnette,
with the somewhat unfortunate title Le libralisme des opprims

4
(Magnette 2006). The book is a helpful overview but says little about
the making of Judith Shklars thought. Compared with the two
aforementioned studies a recent Cambridge PhD dissertation is more
ambitious. Its author, Katrina Forrester, tries to trace the development of the liberal political thought of John Rawls, Michael Walzer,
and Judith Shklar in the context of debates that took place between
1950 and 1990 (Forrester 2012a). Together with two longer articles
(Forrester 2011 and 2012) this dissertation is perhaps the most comprehensive attempt so far to discuss the development of Shklars
thought historically.
Besides the three studies mentioned there exist half a dozen other
articles whose authors have tried to identify various patterns in Shklars
thought (Hoffmann 1993, Allen 1998, Berkowitz 1998, Strong 1999,
Whiteside 1999, Miller 2000, Young 2007). Finally, we should mention those studies that have taken their lead and inspiration from one
or another of Shklars unique coinages of terms, such as Levys The
Multiculturalism of Fear (2000). To that group also belongs Tony
Judts conceptualization of a social democracy of fear, an appraisal
that takes its main inspiration from Shklars stripped-down version of
liberalism (Judt 2009).
Shklar as Fox
Judith Shklars legacy remains a puzzle from which parts are still
missing. To be sure, there are reasons for this. First of all, there simply
is no Shklar school of followers who work endlessly to safeguard
the reputation of the master thinker. This lack of systematic appreciation may not be an accident; as she herself remarked once (I) do not
like disciples ([Shklar 1989]; Yack 1996, 277). Second, and perhaps
more important, Shklar never was a fashionable systems thinker, or,
to use Berlins distinction, a hedgehog. There is simply no single
identifiable masterpiece out there that disciples could mine for years.
Shklar always remained a fox, somebody who shifted position
and sought new observation points, somebody who was curious but
also took great care when dealing with ideas and intellectual history.
Third, Shklar always gave thinkers and ideas their historical due and
remained skeptical as to whether it was possible to use political ideas
without referring first to the historical context within which they were
conceived. As she puts it, her attempt has always been to preserve the
canon by expanding it (278). This makes the analysis of her writings
a complex, double hermeneutical task: one has to comprehend how

Introduction
Shklar understood the canon in the first instance before being able
to detect how her own argument emerged from Sherlock Holmes-like
historical reconstruction.
The following examples may best illustrate what I mean. When
Shklar wrote a book about Hegels phenomenology, she did so from a
position that remained highly skeptical of the Prussian philosophers
system-building attempts and grand theory in general. Yet, despite
the fact that her Hegel book appeared to have been written with no
great empathy for the larger idea behind it, it is still one of the best
works on the subject. This is so because Shklar remains critical to the
system-building attempt while at the same time giving the text of the
philosopher its due. Her attempt at understanding Hegel was both
modest and ambitiousmodest because it appeared like one more
interpretation of a classic text, and ambitious because of the attempt
to make sense and to use plain English in place of Hegels notoriously
complicated German style. She brought Hegel all the way down to
earth, not by turning him on his head as Marx claimed to have done,
but in the sense of humanizing his political theory by reading the phenomenology as a masterpiece of political and social psychology.
Another example that reveals Shklars sensitive treatment of ideas
relates to concepts used outside the context in which they were first
conceived. When she refers to Montaigne and uses his ideas to discuss
modern moral dilemmas as she does in Ordinary Vices, she does so
with an historical awareness and sensibility that one rarely finds in
political theory. In effect, Ordinary Vices is Montaigne applied to
America. The particular task consists of building a bridge between
the classic discussion of vices and the somewhat timeless surplus
meaning that remained of value to the contemporary reader and
which is of use in understanding present dilemmas.
Context and contextualization mattered a great deal to Shklar,
independently of how systematic the ideas were and whether or not
she favored them personally. One had to give the text its due and giving it its due meant developing a certain sense for its specificity and
its unique historical dimension. Alluding to the various psychological,
biographical, sociological, and political dimensions actually helped
to humanize both text and thinker. It is this textual practice that
clearly distinguishes Shklars argumentation from that of many contemporary social and political theorists; in fact, it puts her almost into
the camp of the so-called Cambridge School of Intellectual History.
At the same time her approach is distinguished from the Cambridge
School by her inclination to look not only for a meaning that a text

6
might reveal in a given historical constellation but also for the additional value a text can still transmit beyond the specific context in
which it was first conceived.
Shklars Coinage of Words and Use of Unusual

Terms: The Attempt to Bring Theory and
Political Practice Closer Together
Shklars unusual and surprising coinage of terms and concepts has a
humanizing effect on her work. For example, when writing about the
American Founding Fathers, she used the terms party of memory
(mainly but not exclusively associated with Adams and Madison)
and party of hope (mainly associated with Jefferson and Paine),
terms that were first coined by Emerson. Shklars unique contribution
consists in having given these entirely new meanings: the first term
explained the psychological inclination and the attempt to bear in
mind past sufferings and how to learn from them, while the second
referred to the Jeffersonian idea of having a revolution every 15 years,
thereby putting all hope into future liberations. The effect was to
show the Founding Fathers and their developing political factions in
a different psychological light. The changed vantage point and the
change of perspective reveal differences or details that another interpreter might have missed.
Inventive and novel conceptualizations also elucidate her idea of the
liberalism of fear. For Shklar the liberalism of fear had its origins
in postReformation Europe. Its most basic and perhaps only aim is to
avoid cruelty. Yet, from its early conceptualizationMontaigne and
Montesquieu come to mind, although they would certainly not qualify as being liberals in the modern sense of the wordit would still
take a very long time for the liberalism of fear to turn into a political
idea that could inform real institutional practices. Since its inception
in late medieval times the record has been uneven. During the course
of the nineteenth century France experimented with liberal ideas in
two republics, yet even at the beginning of the twenty-first century
and after another three republics it is still far from being a secure tradition. In Britain where it had its longest history it was never applied
to the rest of the Empire, nor indeed closer to home in Ireland. In the
United States it made obviously little sense in the context of slavery
and legal segregation. Yet, despite the United Statess uneasy history
in this regard, it was here that the liberalism of fear really took root

Introduction
and liberal reforms and policies were successfully introduced. There

was, as Shklar explained, a collective political memory at work that
reminded people of the summum malum that needed to be avoided.
On occasion, such remembrance would metamorphose into political
ideas and opinions. At various historical moments it helped to promote rights and to secure legal protection, be it through demanding
full civil rights or defending liberal immigration policies. To be sure,
progress was not unilinear, and liberal achievements were always
under threat or remained challenged; even in the course of the twentieth century they were never safe and did not prevail automatically.
In coining the term liberalism of fear Shklar manages to follow a
thin thread through historical time. Her conceptualization never uses
broad historical strokes but is always sensitive to the ups and downs
of particular historical circumstances. There is never anything selfevident or automatic in the way she describes the historical process.
She knew that the liberalism of fear was a vulnerable achievement.
There was nothing complacent in her use of the term. This is unusual
when compared to other definitions and notions of liberalism, which
often have lost their fighting potential or have degenerated into a
defense of the status quo.
The overall purpose of such imaginative and psychologically
insightful conceptualizations was always to bring philosophy and
theory closer to real-life experiences. Shklar was a realist, yet without
wearing the realism badge of any particular school of thought. She
was interested in the relevance of ideas and intellectual thought and
at the same time aware that there always remained an irreconcilable
gap between theory and practice. She rejected grand theoryin contrast, for example, to John Rawls. At the same time she encouraged
her Harvard colleague and friend to work out his arguments about
justice and liberalism despite remaining skeptical about such generalizing attempts.
Shklar held political theory in such esteem that she believed that to
popularize it meant to run the risk of watering it down or losing its
critical substance. In her writings we thus encounter not only an opposition to grand theory but also a reluctance to pander to the general
public. She was the antithesis of an intellectual pop star. She made a
conscious decision to exercise her intellectual influence through teaching. In seminars, far removed from the limelight of public addresses
and radio or TV shows, she exercised her most remarkable intellectual power and influence. The jazz world includes the figure of the
musicians musician, top-notch professional musicians who work

8
hard and sometimes brilliantly, but who enjoy making music more
than the prestige of being at the top of the bill or in the spotlight. Like
a musicians musician, Shklar does not make the cover, nor did she
seek that sort of acclaim. Instead, she had the ability to spot higher
forms of nonsense and winced at superficial performances and said
so publicly or in privatejust as a brilliant musician might spot the
imperfections of those in the spotlight. While it would be to go too far
to label Shklar a marginal thinker, there is something about her reluctance to put herself in the limelight that is exemplary, particularly
when compared to the intellectual pop stars of today whose output
seems often to resemble comets or fireworksshiny and sparkling for
a moment but hardly lasting. Shklars conscious and often self-sought
marginality and the writings it produced still trigger real intellectual
curiosity and debate. In other words, her success should not be measured by the applause of a broad public but by having stimulated and
encouraged others to think further.
Shklar considered those former academics who went on talk shows
or who walked the corridors of power to have not so much betrayed
the profession as to have lost the plot. For her the medium of power
was one thingacquiring knowledge that contributes to thinking
about liberty and justice was quite another. Even at the zenith of her
career, in an address she gave in 1989 to the American Council of
Learned Societies titled A Life of Learning, she did not present herself as a public intellectual or defender of certain political ideas and
ideals. Instead she identified herself, very much to the surprise and
amusement of the audience, first and foremost as a bookworm. In
this confession and in the context of the event lay a story: here was
a thinly veiled message about the role and task of those who were
directly involved in teaching and learningparticularly for those
whose subjects were political theory and the history of ideas. Their
job was not to wander the corridors of the Pentagon or the White
House or become excessively fashionable, gurus, or substitute
parents ([Shklar 1989]; Yack 1996, 277f).
For Shklar there was no difference between the role of academic
and that of intellectual; the two were inseparable. Today, such convictions are no longer widely shared. Furthermore, the language of
political philosophy has become extremely academic and is full of
technical terms, often amounting to pure jargonperhaps a price
that philosophy and political theory may have had to pay in order to
become academically acceptable. While there are exceptions, the tendency toward completing and making theory ever more perfect seems

Introduction
unstoppable. Everything has to be contradiction-free and watertight.

This, as Shklar knew, is foolhardy. In turn, she reminded us not only
of the deeply held values, convictions, and contradictions that political
theorists had held in the past but also of their unique rhetoric and style
of writing. She thus made these thinkers and ideas come to life again.
Shklar was not slow to criticize human imperfection and flaws that
marked a given thinker or text. She was convinced that this was part
of bringing political theory back to life. Interpreting and dissecting
a text should be stimulating and exciting. Such thinking is directly
opposed to the attempts to fill the last gap or hole to achieve the
perfect or supercritical political philosophy. Shklars skepticism and
critical psychological insights prevented her from going down such
routes of perfectionhence her numerous interventionist articles
and essays with her clarifications or comments attempting to reclaim
a classic humanist tradition yet without sermonizing about it. The
task of political theory as Shklar understood it is to decipher potentially complex psychological meanings and messages. Her political
theory is simply not interested in academic newspeak or soulless
academic perfectibility and certainly not in the senseless jargon that
often accompanies it.
The Theme of Exile in Shklars Life and Work

There is another, very important element or theme in Shklars life and
work that is crucial when discussing her contribution and legacy. It
is the theme of being an outsider, which in her case is linked to the
experience of having been a peculiar type of refugee. One could of
course question this interpretation of Shklars life, given her academic
position and accomplishments. So one may ask: how much and what
kind of an outsider was Shklar really? And, did her experience of
having been a refugee contribute to such self-perception and stylization? A life in exile and emigration can lead to the rejection of mainstream attitudes and positions, but is it indeed possible to spend an
entire academic life at Harvard, among the worlds most prestigious
institutions, and yet remain an outsider? The answer to these questions might give us some clues and hints about how to gain a deeper
understanding of Shklars life and theoretical legacy. So before outlining the main steps and chapters of the present book, let me briefly
elaborate on these themes of refugee and outsider status, because a
meditation on these issues will form the backbone of my reconstruction of Shklars political theory.

10
Just before her death Shklar was working on a larger project in

which she attempted to demonstrate that it was not only intellectually
profitable but also indeed possible to write the entire history of political thought from the perspective of exiles. It ranged from the role that
exiled philosophers and involuntary sojourners had played in classic
Greek thought to the modern phenomenon of exile and refugee status
of entire populations. The leading idea was linked to an earlier argument about barebones liberalism, which was based not on an assumption of what could be best for all (the summum bonum) but which, in
contrast, was based on the experience or realistic threat of what she
called the summum malum, cruelty. As the argument goes, to appreciate basic liberal conditions one does not need to know what is best
but only to have had one existential experience such as having been
thrown out of a country, having lived as a refugee, having possessed
no rights, or having been a dissident whose voice has been silenced.
Remembrance plays a crucial role in this respect. Experiences of cruelty and fear will never be entirely forgotten, even when one might
have had the luck to escape and find a new home in a democratic
country in which liberal institutions are still valued.
To put it slightly differently and using the language of Albert O.
Hirschman, in functioning institutions and in modern democracies loyalty presupposes the right to voice ones concerns or to dissent. Yet, loyalty is not easy for those who have experienced exile or
who have been threatened, persecuted, or treated cruelly in the past.
Psychological scars remain. Fear, or the remembrance of it, does not
just evaporate or disappear. Yetand this is Shklars genuine contribution to the argument about exile and obligationwhat looks like a
negative in one sense can also be turned around to become a positive.
What Shklar identifies here is that the experience of exiles and immigrants can have a positive impact on how liberal democracies conceive
themselves. In other words, they can serve as permanent reminders of
the limits of loyalty and the preconditions for voice. This holds even
more true for an immigrant nation like the United States that is built
on the exit of citizens from other countries and the voice it promises
to its newcomers (Hirschman 1972, Hess 1999).
It does not take much to see how the arguments in relation to fear
and exile have some basis in Shklars own experience. Having been
forced to leave Riga as a young girl, her experience of exile, first in
Sweden, then on the familys long odyssey to Canada, had a profound
impact on her psychological make-up. With time, the wound would
heal to some extent. But it seems that she never forgot what had

Introduction
11
turned her life upside down, despite having later had a distinguished
career at Harvard and, by all accounts, a happy life surrounded by
family, friends, and close colleagues. Once existentially threatened,
that experience might eventually be overcome in terms of immediate pain levels; however, it can never be entirely forgotten. At a later
phase in life, as is the case with Shklar, such experiences can be channeled productively. It was, as I will argue, Shklars greatest personal
achievement to have used her experiences exactly in this vein. For her,
it became a habit of thought.
What made Shklar so passionate was not always easy to understand,
not even for her closest colleagues and friends. There are numerous
accounts that Dita (as her friends called her) could be fearless and
ferocious when it came to argument. I suspect that this sense of passion for argument and ideas was a creative way of dealing with that
migr experience from her childhood and early adolescent years,
the fear that had accompanied the exit from Riga and Sweden, and
the self-made life and independent learning that followed the refugee
odyssey. Later experiences of independent learning may have confirmed such preexisting feelings of strong individual independence.
We all know of cases of people who have had similar experiences:
the sense of being thrown back onto ones own resources, having no
fallback position and no security but that which constitutes the true
homo sacer. Having felt existential fear and being threatened with
cruelty, such experiences can later potentially be turned into strong
opinions in which defending ones argument passionately and firmly
becomes crucialeven long before the official arguments may have
been stated or become clear to others. It is a latent response mechanism, both defensive and creative as it fashions an environment in
which one can feel safe and secure. In Shklars case the experience
not only of having to live with fear and exile at a young age but also
of learning a lot quickly on her own, mainly due to the absence of real
parental influence in the times of existential crisis, later turned into
an adult habitus which impacted on her work and publications.
Shklar had a privileged upbringing and an excellent private education, yet her formative experiences included rampant anti-semitism in
Riga and the loss of a beloved sister at the crucial moment of having
to leave Latvia and having to change countries and languages. All
this had an impact and might serve as an explanation of Shklars own
personality and for a considerable part of her early and later writings.
Other experiences such as being blocked for many years from promotion to full professor must be seen in the light of these earlier events.

12
Shklar clearly cultivated her role as an outsider to a certain extent; she

always considered herself to be intellectually from Harvard without
actually being part of the universitys establishment. In an interview
she gave in 1981, by which time she had been promoted to full professor, she confessed that maintaining an outsider status after many
years at Harvard was perhaps not quite appropriate (Walzer, 1981,
Session III, Part 1, 4 of transcript). However, in the same interview
she also pointed out that she understood her role still very much in
those termsalthough the function had changed somewhat and the
energy appeared now to have been channeled into the intellectual
realm. Thus, the role of outsider first helped Shklar to prevail against
adverse institutional circumstances such as starting an academic
career and surviving as the only woman at Harvards Department of
Government while also fulfilling other important roles such as being
a wife and a mother of three. Later in life such struggles were reflected
upon and used imaginatively and creatively, mainly in the context of
her distinct and idiosyncratic way of dealing with intellectual history
and political theory.
Gaining autonomy and being in control of her own life were important to Shklar. That her research themes were linked to her experience
of exile seems beyond doubt; yet many aspects of Shklars teaching
and writing cannot be reduced to early biographical circumstances
alone. At Harvard and throughout most of her adult life Shklar was
exposed to numerous influences and contacts, and it would be unfair
to link them all to the refugee and outsider experience. Having said
this, the theme of exile and her self-perception of being on the margins or as an outsider (although in a peculiar way that I will discuss
further down), form an important thread that runs through her life
and it is not by chance that toward the end of her life Shklar planned
a book on the experiences of exile and obligation. She was, after all,
making explicit a theme that had preoccupied her all her life.
The main task of an intellectual portrait of Shklar is to tease out
these various connections between her experience of life and her
teaching and writing. In contrast to some works that have been published in recent times it remains important to have a sense of proportion when it comes to the history of ideas. It seems to me problematic
to have an over-socialized conception of man in which everything is
reduced to social and cultural circumstances. 2 Particularly when it
comes to rich experience and lives that are not limited purely to the
academic realm, we must always ask how individuals have managed
to succeed, despite earlier hindrances, hurdles, and often traumatic

Introduction
13
experiences. Individual creativity, individual autonomy, and the psychological capacity to be the maker of ones own fortune are crucial
when fighting against adverse conditions. I maintain that this was
certainly the case with Shklar. It shows in her writings: she attempted
to humanize the history of political theory by always giving credit to
individual effort and almost existentialist notions of self-creation.
At the same time an intellectual portrait cannot limit itself to the
view that a person is entirely self-made. While we try to make sense of
the world as individuals we also learn, struggle, fight, and take issue
with the world and the people around us. For a portrait of an intellectual, it is crucial to get the proportions right. Certainly intellectual
networks and influences matter, but so do individual perception and
digestion of information in the light of lived experiences. In Judith
Shklar we encounter a person who preferred to set or choose her own
intellectual agenda and who was extremely self-reliant in pursuing
her epistemological interests. Although she took note and on occasion
responded to intellectual currents of the time she would never become
a follower, joiner, or networker. Neil McLaughlin has termed such
a creative way of making use of outsider status, of being a stranger,
of belonging to what Tony Judt has called edge people, optimal
marginality (Judt 2010, McLaughlin 2001). It is an alternative way
of explaining how individual thinkers and ideas have moved from
the creative margins to the center by using their outsider status to
optimal effect. Such a view does not deny the role of socialization
or the importance of belonging to a network, of being a member in
some established organization or professional association; but instead
of using these as the only explanation for an individual intellectuals
success, optimal marginality gives more credit to the creative and
innovative subject who keeps his or her critical distance from both
established orthodoxies and from sectarian minority positions.
However, optimal marginality is not just out there, it is a process that needs to be described in greater detail. This means that it
is only by looking at the making of Shklars political theory that we
can gain a deeper understanding of her work. In other words, when
trying to make sense of her political theory we should attempt to treat
her teaching and writing with the same respect and detective spirit
that she devoted to her favorite thinkers. We must try to pay the same
attention to psychological, biographical, sociological, and political
detail that mattered and continued to matter in her writings. Only
then will we be able to identify Shklars optimal marginality and
benefit from Shklars genuine insights and unique achievements.

14
However, accounting for Shklars life and writing presents us with a

specific problem. Her life until she arrived at Harvard had a different
pace than the years that followed it. Retrospectively, the time leading
up to Harvard is marked by larger events and decisions that heavily
impacted on her life and her choicesadolescence in Riga, becoming
a refugee and exile first in Canada and then in the United States. In
contrast, Shklars life after her arrival at Harvard is marked by relatively
normal events, getting married, becoming a mother, struggling for a
permanent academic position, teaching, writing books, and so forth.
There is of course a connection between the early vita activa and the later
vita contemplativa, and it seems to me that an intellectual portrait needs
to cater to the two different paces and dimensions of survival and being
an outsider on the one hand and being a scholar, teacher and writer on
the other. A different form of presentation is needed to do justice to the
two different worlds and time periods. This is the reason why the first
two chapters of this book contain more detailed biographical information while the later chapters focus more on Shklars chief publications.
Only in the last chapter do I try to unite the two strands again.
Shklars Exile from Exile in Context

Before dealing with the development of Shklars political thought in
detail one last but very important qualification is necessary. Shklar
was, as noted in the previous paragraphs, an exile and a refugee, but
it cannot be stressed enough that she was also a very peculiar kind
of emigrant, something that had a profound impact on her habits of
thought and the way she wrote. In short, what I have called Shklars
optimal marginality needs some real legs to stand on. It is not
enough to call her an outsider, a stranger, a refugee, or an exile.
By way of introduction I would like briefly to discuss her particular
position in the context of three independent-minded European thinkers whose lives and works were also marked by a peculiar from of
exile. My hope is that such a discussion will reveal what was so different and special about Shklar, her way of thinking and writing, and
her optimal marginality.
The first thinker is Alexander Herzen, the Russian journalist,
critic, and writer. In his book on Russian exiles Isaiah Berlin discusses the cultural legacy and prime influence of those liberty-seeking
exiled Russians of 1848 for later generations (Berlin 2008). As Berlin
points out, Herzen belonged to the class of those who are by birth

Introduction
15
aristocratic, but who themselves go over to some freer and more radical mode of thought and of action (213). But Berlin also notes that
despite rejecting class privilege there is something singularly attractive about men who retain, throughout life, the manners, the texture
of being, the habits and style of a civilised and refined milieu. Such
men exercise a peculiar kind of freedom which combines spontaneity
with distinction. Their minds see large and generous horizons and,
above all, reveal a unique intellectual gaiety of a kind that aristocratic
education tends to produce (213f).
Berlin describes Herzen as a kind of thinker who was living near
the frontier that divides old from new, between the douceur de la vie
which is about to pass and the tantalising future, the dangerous new
age that they themselves do much to bring into being (ibid.). Herzen
became fascinated with German philosophy, particularly Hegel.
However, his study of Hegel and Hegelianism also convinced him
that it was a mistake to follow the logic of great systems and ideas.
No great system would ever be able to make sense of the complexity
of the modern life and the actions of humans. The project of perfecting the human race or to look for a better socialist world was but a
pipe dream (218). Herzen would remain highly critical of any system
or order that demanded perfection, no matter how noble the cause
might behence his life-long opposition to those who looked for perfection, whether they were socialists like Luis Blanc or liberty-seeking
thinkers like John Stuart Mill.
Having left Russia, Herzen would live the rest of his life in exile
but even there he would continue to challenge protototalitarian ideas,
often paying the price of finding himself isolated from fellow exiles or
those who sympathized with their cause. All his life he fought against
dictators and unelected rulers; he remained a defender of liberty, perhaps not so much in the traditional sense of the word liberal or as
we understand it today, but more out of a need to defend the individual and to protect him against fear, cruelty, or violence that seem
to be associated with the despotism of formulae (228). Berlin points
out that there are some remarkable parallels here between Herzen and
the thoughts of Montaigne and Montesquieu (230).
Shklars intellectual passion, preoccupation, and intellectual interests were not far away from those of Herzen, despite the huge generational gap and their different political and historical circumstances.
But before discussing the parallels and differences in greater detail,
I would like to first introduce the other two writers, Robert Musil and

16
Hans Sahl, whose experiences of exile both also overlap with but also
differ from Shklars.
Austrian-born Robert Musil, author of The Man without Qualities,
spent the last years of his life in Swiss exile. He was one of the few
continental Europeans who, after Hitler had come to power, remained
skeptical of the simplistic slogans of the anti-fascist, mostly communist-leaning Left that began to reassemble again in exile. Musils view
remained that of an anti-totalitarian thinker who argued against the
simplistic beliefs of the radical Left, which saw ideology as constant
and static, the outcome of a false consciousness produced by capitalism. Instead he argued for a real effort in understanding the plasticity
of the modern consciousness as it had emerged in twentieth-century
continental Europe, including its complications and contradictions.
Musil advocated intellectual independence and favored keeping a distance from any party or dogmatic group thinking. Firmly opposed to
Fascism, he had no illusions as to the promise of an earthly communist paradise, which was supposedly just around the corner.
Musil took particular issue with orthodoxies (Musil 1978; 1990).
He argued that Hitlers victory in 1933 and the defeat of the Left
were the outcome of a general lack of understanding. The dogmatic
lefts failure was that they focused too much on class and collective
dimensions and thus failed to understand the complex psychological
make-up of the modern individual (and voter). In his later years Musil
developed a keen interest in studying the psychological make-up of
the modern individual. The capacity and art of drawing distinctions
was crucial to this intellectual and aesthetic project, as one can easily
detect from the unfinished masterpiece The Man without Qualities
(1981) and some of the essays he wrote in exile (Musil 1978; 1990).
He would never become a joiner and remained a solitary yet original
thinker for the rest of his life. Although Musil never used the expression exile from exile, the term suggests itself as the most appropriate description of his life and work.
Hans Sahls life and work again differ from that of the Austrian
writer. Sahl belonged to that group of German-speaking exiled writers who, in the attempt to escape the Nazis, found themelves on an
odyssey through Europe before finally finding asylum in the United
States. Like Musil, Sahl kept a critical distance from his fellow writers
who sympathized with the Communist Party and its Stalinist agenda.
His dissident inclinations led him to estrangement from many former
friends and colleagues. He compensated for that by becoming increasingly self-reliant and developing an independent mind.

Introduction
17
Sahl began to reflect systematically about the conditions of exile

and its peculiar contradictions and demands. Like Musil and, as we
will see, like Shklar, Sahl became interested in the condition called
exile, particularly its psychological consequences. For him, the literature of exileby that he meant not only fiction but all attempts
to understand the difficult situation of having been forced to leave
home and find refuge somewhere elserestores the unity of author
and work, something that got lost in earlier works of modernist literature. The restoration of the unity between life and literature is, as
he stresses, one of sheer necessity. Exile literature is a literature full of
individual life stories. It represents the attempt to make sense of ones
life and fate, particularly defeat and the loss of individual agency
(Sahl 2008, 472). For Sahl, the literature of exile describes the psychological conditions of those who had to react to largely unforeseeable conditions, unexpected situations and forces beyond individual
influence or control.
Sahl argues that exile (and representing it and writing about it) will
never be regarded as comfortable, timely, or even fashionable. This is
so because more often than not the literature of exile involves reflection about difficult and delicate in-between positions in extraordinary
conditions and at times when everything that one usually takes for
granted is called into question. Exile literature expresses continued
discomfort and disquietude; nothing is ever safe or guaranteed; there
are no fallback positions. Exiles have to rethink everything; they constantly have to adjust to new challenges and situations and be prepared
for the worst. Living in exile means remaining skeptical and always
questioning what others regard as self-evident or as taken for granted.
Exiles live in constant anticipation and their mental make-up always
demands that they preserve the hut while building the house (474).
For his own autobiographical account Sahl used the title exile
from exile to describe a moral position that was unwilling to submit to ideologies, systems, or party discipline or other pressures that
would force the writer to compromise. Instead, he continued to defend
the critical judgment of the individual against all odds and circumstances, even at the price of losing friends and other acquaintances.
However, what seems like an often sad and disappointing loss on one
side could also be considered to be a gain on the other side, that is, the
principled openness to new experiences and situations, or the readiness to take chances that come with a new start in a new environment (in Sahls case the United States). For Sahl and similarly thinking
exiles such openness never meant to strive for total symbiosis or being

18
forgetful about ones own past but rather a willingness to be open to

the new society one has joined.
Discussing Shklar in the context of Herzen, Musil, and Sahl, and
doing so from the perspective of exile means abstracting to a certain extent from individual biographies and the concrete historical
circumstances that shaped them. For Jewish citizens like the Nisses,
Latvia under Russian rule and even during its short history of independence never resembled the movable feast that Russian culture was
for the exiled Herzen. And in relation to the situation further West,
Latvia in the 1920s and early 1930s never seemed as safe as Musils
Klagenfurt and Vienna or Musils and Sahls Berlin. 3
Despite these obvious differences, however, it is possible to detect
some fascinating parallels when we focus on the story of exile of each
of the writers. Herzen was one of the first intellectuals who fought an
anti-totalitarian struggle avant la lettre. Even in exile he would never
give up the struggle for individual liberty or juxtapose justice against
freedom. He hated systems, be they philosophical (Hegel) or political
(Marx). Like Shklar, Herzen admired Montaigne and Montesquieu.
He was a utopian anti-utopian, a person who defended personal liberty in the here and now. For him, freedom was not something to be
postponed until the just society would finally emerge. Most importantly, Herzen wrote passionately against cruelty and violence and
thus anticipates in many ways Shklars notion of the liberalism of
fear. Because of his stern defense of individual liberties and his insight
into the psychology and mental map of his contemporaries Herzen
often appeared as an isolated figure, a lonely prophet living a life of
exile from exile.
In a different way this description also applies to Musil and Sahl
with the important difference that both men came from the West.
Both belonged to the few liberal voices that stood up not only against
Fascism but also against the Soviet-inspired gospel of many of their
fellow exiles. In exile their critical and independent stances cut both
off from solidarity and support and led in both cases to relative isolation. In Musils case the end was tragic and led to death in exile;
in Sahls case the situation of exile from exile was a prolonged one
and would find a solution only very late in life when he returned to
Germany. Both Musil and Sahls work would reflect on the genuine condition of exile from exile, its psychological condition, and its
social consequences. In both cases their work would reflect this lived
experience and how it came about.

Introduction
19
Although Herzens, Musils, and Sahls writings show similar concerns, Shklars thinking differs from that of these three. Not only was
her life distinct in terms of generational cohort, gender pressures and
expectations, cultural belonging, and geographical origin, she was
also distinguished in the way her refugee experience found its intellectual expression in a peculiar approach to political thought. Becoming
increasingly self-reliant and intellectually independent from young
adolescence onwards, she began to see links that exist between political theorists and their writings. In a way she humanized political ideas
yet without ever personalizing them or reducing important questions
to biographical facts. Her preoccupation with totalitarian ideologies,
her conceptualization of the liberalism of fear, and, finally, being able
to build an intellectual bridge between America and Europe like few
others were able to, would have been impossible if she had remained
a backward-looking European refugee.
In the course of Shklars life there were many occasions and other
intellectual influences that made her curious and that led her to put
pen to paper or that forced her to take the positions that she would
eventually take. Having said that, I think there is still considerable
evidence that her work shaped up the way it did because she had developed an intellectual position, a habit of thought, that, as I argue, was
a creative way of responding to the condition of having been a peculiar refugee. Shklar was unwilling to submit to ideologies because for
her nothing should ever be taken for granted; the safety of ones life
and political arrangements that avoided fear and cruelty were crucial
to her work; last but not least, her humanist political thought tried to
defend the unity of writer and work.
In the last months of her life, just before her sudden death, Shklar
prepared a series of lectures for the University of Cambridge. The notes
and manuscripts that she left, in particular two pieces, Obligation,
Loyalty, Exile and The Bonds of Exile (published posthumously
in Shklar 1998, 3855 and 5672), reveal that she intended to do
more than simply give a brief outline of a proposed change in the
conceptualization of the history of ideas. Her intention was to call for
a complete paradigm shift. This paradigm shift consisted of a single
but powerful idea, namely that the history of ideas, particularly such
crucial concepts as obligation and loyalty, could be better understood
when interpreted from the perspective of exile. Following Shklars
proposal, I intend to reconstruct her own contributions to political
theory from this insight.

20
Outline of the Book

I try to trace Shklars intellectual development in five main chapters.
The first chapter, The Formative Years: From Riga to Montreal
deals with the period between 1928 and 1950. More specifically, it
describes Shklars upbringing and early education in Riga, the circumstances of the traumatic flight to Canada (193941), the familys
arrival and settlement in Montreal, and her early years as a philosophy undergraduate at McGill.
The second chapter, In the Aftermath of Totalitarianism examines Shklars interpretation of the state of modern political theory
and the function of political trials and legalism in the aftermath of
totalitarianism (1951 to 196768). This second chapter will take us
through the years of the Cold War, particularly postWorld War II
academia and intellectual life. A discussion of Shklars first two published books, After Utopia (1957) and Legalism (1964), will form the
main pillars here.
The third chapter, The Making of a Political Theorist follows
Shklar in her unique explorations of intellectual history and political theory from 196768 until 1987. It makes sense to look at this
long period as actually consisting of two different phases marked by
different concerns. On one side we find three major studies covering interests that resulted mainly from her teaching: on Rousseau
(Men and Citizens, 1969), Hegel (Freedom and Independence, 1976),
and Montesquieu (Montesquieu, 1987). I maintain that these three
studies, together with some key essays written in the same period,
are first and foremost attempts to understand the preconditions and
presuppositions of modern political liberty, one of the most complex
issues in political theory. More specifically, Shklar attempts here to
find her own voice by trying to understand the conceptual distinctions between passion and reason (Rousseau), freedom and necessity
(Hegel), and getting the balance right between state, law, and society
(Montesquieu).
On the other hand, her appointment as John Cowles Professor of
Government also marked the beginning of exciting new intellectual
advances. Shklars book Ordinary Vices (1984) and, in this context,
her conceptualization of the liberalism of fear, were no longer
merely reconstructive as her earlier work had been; so it makes sense
to speak of a shift and a second phase here. The notion of avoiding
cruelty, regarded as a summum malum and set against the usual liberal starting point of a summum bonum, allowed her to find her own

Introduction
21
theoretical voicea unique mixture between a newly conceived liberalism and themes that have classic liberal and republican undertones
but are now discussed in a modern context.
Shklar now steered more successfully through the history of ideas
by linking authors and their work to circumstantial, sociological, historical, cultural, and psychological evidence yet without forgetting
the potential surplus meaning of political theories. An excursion at
the end of the third chapter discusses her methodological contributions from this crucial period.
In the fourth chapter, Transatlantic Encounters of a Different
Kind, I address a second major paradigm shift in Shklars work.
This period covers the years 1987 until 199091. Between those
years lay what is perhaps Shklars most productive phase. What
emerged then was something completely new. What developed after
Shklars lectures at Yale (published as The Faces of Injustice, 1990),
is perhaps best described as a kind of self-realization, the unique
and almost personal insight that she had finally arrived in America
intellectually and that her arguments had to be worked out in the
American context. Shklar was aware, however, that this shift could
only be a successful intellectual maneuvre if she did not obliterate or
somehow play down the European experience. She had never made
a straightforward choice between Europe and America; rather, the
shift was one of emphasis. I will discuss those works of Shklar, which
are representative of that new preoccupation and that have American
society and politics as their main theoretical focus, such as her work
on American Citizenship (1991) and most of the essays that have
been published posthumously in the two essay collections, Political
Thought and Political Thinkers and Redeeming American Political
Thought.
In the fifth and final chapter, Returning to the Theme of Exile I
will cover the last 1 years of Shklars life in which she returned to
the theme that ran through her entire work but that was not always
disclosed, namely the suggestion that questions of loyalty and obligation, which are at the heart of political theory and political philosophy, are better understood if and when one bears in mind the radical
change of perspective that comes with the experience of having been
an outsider and exile. In this concluding chapter I will revisit the main
argument for such a change of perspective. I will argue that Shklars
call for a change of perspective constitutes a radical paradigm shift
and that this call for change is indeed one of her most challenging and
lasting intellectual contributions. I also discuss how Shklars work

22
compares and contrasts with the contributions of other twentiethcentury theorists whose work shows similar concerns.
For most of the reconstructive work I will draw on the Collected
Papers of Judith N. Shklar, which are available at the Harvard Library
Archives. The Harvard papers are the most important sources for a
reconstruction of her work; they include her teaching material, a great
number of published and unpublished papers and manuscripts, and
some of her professional correspondence. Additional information for
the reconstruction work will come from a long-unpublished interview
that Judith Walzer conducted with Shklar in 1981. While most of the
content of that interview is linked to the question of why women at
Harvard got tenure only very late (if at all), this interview probably
contains the most important autobiographical material on Shklar I
have come across (Walzer, 2001). It contains a more detailed account
than the autobiographical, A Life of Learning (1989a, reproduced
in Yack 1996). Any attempt to make sense of Shklars life and work is
unthinkable without this invaluable source. Additional biographical
information was acquired in a number of conversations I had with
individuals and colleagues who either knew Shklar and her work and/
or whose work has been influenced by Shklar. Their names and their
help are listed in the Acknowledgments.
Index
Ackerman, Bruce, 2
Adams, John, 105, 139, 145, 152
American
Bill of Rights, 159
citizenship, 10, 40, 41, 46, 138,
141, 143, 148, 158, 1725, 180
Civil War, 139, 148, 151, 158,
181, 194
Constitution, 64, 108, 121, 138,
139, 140, 141, 142, 156
Council of Learned Societies, 8,
204n. 1
exceptionalism, 2, 4, 136, 140,
147, 148, 152, 153, 160,
214n. 9
Founding Fathers, 6, 108, 121,
13841, 1423, 194, 213n. 5
intellectual tradition, 1357, 141,
145, 155, 160, 172, 198
political process, 141, 150, 153
political science, 42, 45, 1479,
1523, 160
Political Science Association
(APSA), 1, 42, 98, 147
political thought, 48, 136, 143,
153, 1601, 177, 178, 199
republic, 108, 116, 133, 13842,
147, 148, 153, 1567, 173, 174,
213n. 1, 5
Revolution, 126, 1378, 140, 194
Society for Political and Legal
Philosophy, 98
American Scholar, The, 54
Amnesty International, 114, 115,

216n. 4
anti-intellectualism, 61, 97, 106
anti-semitism, 11, 24, 25, 27, 29,
31, 37, 43, 62, 97, 203n. 3
Arendt, Hannah, 3, 49, 50, 53, 65,
13742, 193, 199, 213n. 1, 6,
216n. 3
Eichmann in Jerusalem, 65, 68
On Revolution, 13740, 194, 199
Aristotle, 60, 178, 184
Augustine, 164
Austria, 16, 29, 39, 40, 41, 43
Bailyn, Bernard, 2, 213n. 7
Baltic republics, 29
Barber, Benjamin, 175, 198
Becket, Thomas, 179
Benhabib, Seyla, 2, 197
Bentham, Jeremy, 85, 104
Berlin, Isaiah, 2, 3, 14, 49, 50, 115,
155, 172, 191, 198, 199, 200
hedgehog and fox, 4
Two Concepts of Liberty, 155
Bildung, 33, 80, 92, 194
Blanc, Luis, 15
Bok, Derek, 94
Bonhffer, Dietrich, 178
Borkenau, Franz, 42
Bourdieu, Pierre, 203n. 2
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 2, 45, 61,
205n. 8, 2067n. 12
Burckhardt, Jacob, 53

228
Index
Calhoun, John, 151

Cambridge (Boston), 37, 59, 204
Cambridge (UK), 19, 99, 178, 195,
213n. 5
Seeley Lectures, 195
Cambridge Law Journal, 69
Cambridge School of Intellectual
History, 5
Cambridge University Press, 88
Canada, 1, 10, 14, 20, 312, 37,
40, 46, 204n. 1, 205n. 8,
206n. 6
Carnegie foundation, 42
Carr, Edward Hallett, 55
Carter, Stephen S., 1756
Catholic tradition, 127
Catholic thought, 116, 194
Cavell, Stanley, 62, 100
Ceaser, James, 148
charisma, 82, 109, 150, 206n. 7
Chicago, 40, 42
Cicero, 163, 166, 178, 184
citizens, citizenship, 52, 75, 78, 79,
82, 83, 86, 87, 93, 105, 107,
111, 116, 123, 139, 150, 159,
163, 165, 166, 169, 173, 176,
178, 185, 186, 190, 194.
See also American citizenship
civil rights, 7, 72, 94, 152, 185,
194, 211n. 22. See also rights
Cold War, 20, 51, 52, 57, 61, 155,
177, 207n. 12
Columbia University, 28, 2067n. 12
communism, 51, 61, 211n. 22
communist party, 16, 25, 48, 155
communitarianism, 172, 173, 199,
201
Conant, James Bryan, 58, 61
Coser, Lewis A., 206n. 6
Coward, David, 122
creativity, 13, 74, 125, 108, 188,
206n. 11
Crick, Bernard, 153, 214n. 8
cruelty, 6, 10, 11, 15, 18, 19, 20,
84, 99, 100, 1014, 108, 109,
110, 111, 112, 11315, 117,

118, 119, 120, 123, 158, 159,
162, 164, 167, 172, 173, 177,
182, 193, 196, 198, 200, 201,
211n. 21. See also vices and
liberalism of fear
Czechoslovakia, 29, 207n. 12
Daedalus, 100, 197
David Copperfield, 27
democracy, 25, 43, 52, 61, 67, 77,
105, 109, 120, 136, 143, 144,
150, 152, 153, 154, 157, 163,
165, 166, 173, 214n. 10
Jacksonian, 105, 150, 157,
213n. 5
liberal, 52, 54, 100, 101, 102,
104, 105, 111, 113, 165
social, 4, 126
Deutsch, Karl W., 42
Dewey, John, 152
Diggins, John Patrick, 122
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 1278
Disraeli, Benjamin, 192
Doyle, Michael, 197
Dreyfus affair, 185
Dunlop, John, 947
Dunn, John, 2
Dworkin, Ronald, 215n. 11
earning, 1745. See also voting
Elite Chocolates, 27
Elshtain, Jean Bethke, 11213,
211n. 23
Emergency Committee in Aid of
Displaced German/Foreign
Scholars, 42
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 6, 139,
1504, 145, 146, 190
Emerson, Rupert, 2
emigration, 9, 25, 324, 39, 62, 98,
1812, 1878, 191, 204n. 1.
See also exile(s)
England, 49, 82, 118, 11921, 142,
158, 205n. 7

Index
Enlightenment, 34, 52, 55, 73, 76,
88, 90, 126, 158, 166, 208n. 1,
211n. 26, 212n. 28
French Enlightenment, 75, 76, 84,
115, 121, 208n. 1
equality, 79, 81, 83, 86, 104, 105,
106, 132, 137, 138, 141, 144,
157, 159, 173, 198, 208n. 8,
214n. 7
Ethics, 54, 171
Europe, 6, 16, 19, 21, 26, 29, 32, 34,
36, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 59, 110,
118, 121, 141, 142, 144, 145,
158, 187, 195, 203n. 1, 211n. 22
exceptionalism. See American
exceptionalism
exile(s), 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18,
19, 21, 26, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34,
36, 42, 446, 59, 878, 91, 98,
123, 176, 178, 18191, 1945,
196, 198, 199, 201, 204n. 1,
205n. 8. See also emigration
exile from, 14, 16, 17, 18, 36, 56,
99, 123, 160, 1878, 191, 193,
201
internal, 182, 184
ostracism, 184
Willy Brandt as exile, 1856
Existentialism, existentialist, 10, 13,
53, 114
Fascism, 16, 18, 48, 126, 211n. 22
fear, 4, 10, 11, 15, 19, 27, 84, 100,
108, 114, 115, 117, 119, 120,
123, 177, 196, 200, 214n. 7.
See also liberalism of fear
Ford, Franklin, 63
Forrester, Katrina, 4, 1712, 2001,
215n. 17
Fraenkel, Ernst, 42
France, 6, 29, 40, 117, 118, 120,
122, 140, 141, 144, 158
Frankfurt School, 53
French Revolution, 56, 90, 92, 93,
126, 1378, 140, 145
229
Friedrich, Carl Joachim, 2, 42, 45,

47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 58, 59, 60,
62, 63, 64, 66, 206n. 7, 213n. 1
Fuller, Lon, 65, 66, 70
Germany, 18, 29, 33, 39, 40, 43, 92,
185, 207n. 12
Nazi dictatorship, 50, 178, 185
GI bill, 37, 46
American veterans, 58, 59, 72
Canadian veterans, 44
Gilbert, Alan, 197
Gilmore, Myron, 49
Giotto, 215
LIngiustizia, 215n. 14
Graubard, Stephen, 1978
Greek classics, 110
Greek thought, 10, 127
Gross, Neil, 203n. 2
Guggenheim Fellowship, 62, 63
Gular, Keith, 49, 206n. 9
Gurian, Waldemar, 42
Gutmann, Amy, 2, 197
Habermas, Jrgen, 57
Hamilton, Alexander, 121, 145, 149
Hart-Fuller controversy, 656, 70
Hart, Herbert Lionel Adolphus, 65,
66, 70
Hartz, Louis, 2, 49, 136, 137, 154,
208n. 17, 21213n. 1
Harvard Law Review, 65, 69
Harvard University, 3, 12, 36, 43,
45, 51, 58, 63, 713, 88, 94,
978, 106, 178, 197, 2067n. 12,
213n. 1
Archives, 3, 204n. 1, 216n. 1
Department of Government, 12,
95, 97
Department of Social Relations, 71
Faculty of Arts and Sciences,
59, 95
Kennedy School of Government, 72
Widener Library, 49, 59
Harvard University Press, 63, 66

230
Index
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 104, 145,

152, 1545, 178
The Scarlet Letter, 154
Hebrew, 23, 28, 40
Hebrew University, 192
Hegel, Hegelianism, 5, 15, 18, 20,
52, 60, 74, 86, 8894, 100, 101,
112, 115, 116, 117, 119, 122,
123, 135, 137, 178, 209n. 12,
210n. 1316
Lectures on the History of
Philosophy, 88
Phenomenology of the Spirit, 89,
914, 212n. 27
Heidegger, Martin, 53, 195
Heidelberg, University of, 45
Heine, Heinrich, 52
hermeneutics, 12733
explanation, 55, 68, 114, 117,
130, 131, 137, 172, 212n. 27,
214n. 7
intention, 114, 124, 127, 129,
130, 197
reading, 27, 36, 37, 44, 60, 62,
73, 76, 77, 78, 86, 93, 100,
114, 125, 130, 133, 137
understanding, 5, 16, 49, 61, 77,
87, 89, 90, 102, 103, 118, 119,
126, 1279, 131, 136, 141, 143,
149, 150, 153, 156, 157, 158,
172, 182, 201
Herzen, Alexander, 1415, 1819,
188, 190, 191
Hilberg, Raul, 66
The Destruction of the European
Jews, 66
Hirschman, Otto Albert, 2, 10
history of ideas, 4, 8, 12, 19, 21, 36,
71, 84, 85, 123, 124, 127, 132,
133, 206n. 7, 11
intellectual history, 4, 110, 133,
148, 154, 212n. 28
sociology of ideas, 203n. 2
Hitler-Stalin pact, 30, 31
Hobbes, Thomas, 65, 83, 173
Hoffmann, Stanley, 2, 3, 49, 62,

98, 100, 125, 196, 197, 198,
207n. 15
Holborn, Freddy, 49
Holcomb, Arthur N., 49
Holmes, Stephen, 2, 100
Holocaust, 50, 34
Hughes, H. Stuart, 205n. 4
Huntington, Samuel P., 61, 98,
2067n. 12
ideology, ideologies, 2, 16, 17, 19,
50, 51, 56, 67, 68, 74, 103,
125, 126, 155, 168, 173, 180,
186, 196, 197, 200, 208n. 17
injustice, 73, 76, 77, 81, 87, 94, 96,
102, 104, 158, 16171, 173,
178, 198, 212n. 29, 215n. 14
passive, 163, 166, 169, 170
Ivy League universities, 2, 106,
207n. 13
Japan, 31
Japanese Americans, 181, 185
Jerusalem trial, 65, 66, 68
Jews, 23, 26, 32, 36, 61, 103, 1914,
196, 211n. 26
community in Riga, 239
German-speaking, 289, 34, 35,
185
parvenu and pariah, 1934
refugees, 31, 32, 40, 43
Journal of European Studies, 122
Judt, Tony, 4, 13
justice, 7, 8, 14, 18, 67, 68, 69, 83,
84, 86, 120, 152, 157, 159,
16972, 177, 185, 200, 201,
215n. 16. See also injustice
Kant, Immanuel, 60, 65, 89, 91,
113, 166, 168
Kateb, George, 93, 197
Kennedy administration, 72, 207n. 12
Kent, Donald Peterson, 40, 43, 44, 47
The Refugee Intellectual, 43

Index
Keohane, Nannerl, 170
Kierkegard, Soren, 178
Kissinger, Henry, 2, 61, 72,
2067n. 12
knowledge, 8, 36, 49, 71, 8991,
93, 96, 106, 117, 118, 124, 127,
131, 186, 187, 189, 21112n. 26
Kramnick, Isaac, 2
Kraut, Richard, 171
Latvia, 11, 18, 246, 28, 30, 33, 35,
43, 204n. 4
Law and Philosophy, 171
laws, 20, 48, 646, 68, 6970, 76, 86,
93, 109, 111, 119, 1201, 123,
158, 164, 165, 170, 180, 184,
207n. 14, 214n. 7, 215n. 11.
See also Legalism under
Shklar, Judith Nisse
Mosaic Law, 26
rule of, 142, 156, 169
learning, 11, 32, 103, 105, 106,
1234, 172, 197, 198
liberalism, 3, 4, 67, 52, 77, 87, 88,
102, 114, 118, 120, 121, 123,
126, 147, 152, 155, 158, 162,
180, 200
American, 116, 136, 152, 159
barebones liberalism, 2, 3, 10,
197
liberalism of fear, 6, 7, 18, 19,
20, 69, 101, 104, 109, 121,
123, 158, 159, 160, 162, 170,
172, 198, 199, 201
pyrrhonic, 199, 216n. 4
Lilla, Mark, 197, 198
literature, 17, 28, 36, 43, 99, 112,
130, 132, 146, 152, 182,
207n. 14
Locke, John, 2, 123, 158
London Review of Books, 114,
211n. 24, 216n. 4
loyalty, 10, 19, 21, 107, 17681,
1836, 193, 195, 210n. 19,
214n. 7
231
Maas, Arthur, 206n. 7

Maccabee movement, 28
Machiavelli, Machiavellinism, 103,
104, 108, 109, 111, 112, 119,
142, 143, 167
Magnette, Paul, 3
Mannheim, Karl, 567, 208n. 17
Mansbridge, Jane, 197
Mansfield, Harvey, 98, 197
Manson, Sheila, 121
Marcuse, Herbert, 42
Marx, Karl, 5, 18, 77, 89, 137, 138,
191
Marxism, Marxist, 55, 129, 168
McCarthyism, 61
McCloskey, Robert, 49, 59
McGill, University, 2, 20, 367, 43,
44, 75, 205n. 8, 207n. 12
McLaughlin, Neil, 13, 34, 123
McNamara, Robert, 72
meaning, 5, 124
surplus meaning, 5, 21, 83,
124, 126, 132, 133, 136, 155
Melville, Herman, 60
Michigan Law Review, 176
Mill, John Stuart, 15, 158
Miller, James, 4, 199, 216n. 4
Montaigne, Michel de, 5, 6, 15, 18,
878, 99100, 101, 102, 103,
104, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113,
116, 117, 153, 164, 167, 168,
170, 178, 197, 199, 210n. 17
Montesquieu, Baron de, 6, 15, 18,
20, 60, 65, 74, 823, 86, 87, 92,
94, 102, 103, 104, 109, 112,
11523, 135, 1423, 178, 196,
197, 201, 208n. 6, 210n. 1516,
211n. 256, 21314n. 67
Montreal, 2, 20, 314, 367
moral reasoning, 178, 181. See also
obligation and loyalty
Morgenthau, Hans, 55
Moscow, 25, 30
Moynihan, Patrick, 72
Murphy, Jeffrey, 171

232
Index
Musil, Robert, 1519, 188, 191,

203n. 3
The Man without Qualities, 16
Myrdal, Gunnar and Alva, 94
Neumann, Franz, 50, 52
Neustadt, Richard, 98
New England, 144, 151, 154
New Left, 134, 115, 211n. 223
New Republic, The, 171, 209n. 9,
213n. 1
New School for Social Research, 41
New Testament, 179
New World, 34, 116, 123, 150, 160.
See also America and North
America
New York Times, 1, 2
New Yorker, The, 66, 70
Niebuhr, Reinhold, 55
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 53, 54, 89,
104, 110, 112
North America, 31, 33, 35, 43, 121,
128, 198, 206n. 6
Nuremberg Trial, 6670
Nussbaum, Martha, 171
obligation and loyalty, 10, 12, 19,
87, 107, 166, 17687, 193,
195, 216n. 2. See also moral
reasoning
Old Testament, 189
optimal marginality, 8, 13, 14,
34, 98, 125, 136, 153, 195
outsider, 9, 12, 14, 46, 62, 64, 71,
96, 98, 134, 176, 191, 193
status, 13, 21, 33, 87, 99, 123, 192
Oxford University Press, 114, 116,
122
Palestine, Israel, 26, 27, 1923
Parsons, Talcott, 71, 57
party of memory, party of hope, 6,
139, 146, 1589, 190
Pelczynski, Zbigniew A., 93, 209n. 11
Plato, 54, 76, 164, 178
Plutarch, 178, 184

Pocock, John, G. A., 122, 142, 143,
214n. 7
political philosophy, 8, 9, 51, 52,
53, 66, 111, 117, 130, 171
political theory, 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12,
13, 19, 20, 21, 35, 36, 37, 42,
43, 46, 48, 49, 50, 515, 568,
59, 60, 66, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74,
75, 76, 77, 83, 84, 85, 86, 93,
99, 100, 101, 110, 111, 114,
115, 120, 1236, 132, 133, 134,
136, 145, 148, 1523, 155, 160,
161, 163, 165, 168, 170, 1712,
177, 181, 182, 188, 190, 1957,
200, 201, 203n. 1, 206n. 11,
207n. 16, 210n. 14, 212n. 28
Political Theory, 199
political trials, 20, 6670, 207n. 16
Popper, Karl, 208n. 2, 209n. 12
positivism, 134
legal positivism, 66, 69
Princeton University, 2, 42, 46, 99
Princeton University Press, 51, 63
Protestantism, 116, 144, 179, 180
Calvinism, 180
Lutheranism, 180
psychoanalysis, 42
psychology, 18, 48, 65, 71, 76, 87,
89, 97, 101, 109, 111, 122, 149,
212n. 27
moral psychology, 78, 79, 154,
161, 197, 199, 200, 215n. 14
political psychology, 5, 93, 119,
146, 118, 201
Quebec, 31, 37, 43
Radcliffe College, 50
Radcliffe Prize, 50
Rawls, John, 2, 3, 4, 7, 57, 62, 162,
170, 171, 172, 197, 200, 201,
215n. 17
A Theory of Justice, 161, 162,
206n. 11

Index
realism, 7, 52, 54, 56, 74, 104, 114,
172, 201, 206n. 7, 207n. 12
refugee(s), 9, 10, 12, 14, 19, 29,
303, 36, 3944, 45, 468, 52,
57, 73, 123, 160, 186, 189, 190,
194, 196, 199, 201, 207n. 12,
211n. 23. See also exile(s)
German-speaking, 40, 43
intellectuals, 47, 53, 187, 188
odyssey, 31, 11
scholars/migr scholars, 42, 46,
48, 205n. 4, 206n. 6
republic, republican
rideas, 84, 140, 142, 146
Rome, 119, 120, 184, 214n. 7
virtuous republic, 81, 84, 87,
101, 111, 119, 140, 143, 151, 173
republicanism, 87, 111, 140, 143,
213n. 7
Ricoeur, Paul, 12830
Riga, 10, 11, 14, 20, 249, 326,
43, 46, 62, 203n. 1
rights, 7, 18, 47, 67, 70, 94, 159,
111, 114, 120, 137, 139, 144,
150, 152, 1558, 165, 172, 173,
174, 175, 176, 198, 214n. 10,
215n. 11
Riley, Patrick, 112, 197
Rockefeller Foundation, 41, 42
Rosenblum, Nancy, 2, 100
Royal Dutch Shell, 26
Runciman, Walter Garrison G.,
1302
Russia, 15, 26, 33, 35, 37. See also
Soviet Union
Russian Invasion, 27, 29, 30, 34
Russian Revolution, 23, 25, 137, 138
Sahl, Hans, 1618, 19, 188, 191,
203n. 3
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 103
Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 127
Schtz, Alfred, 187
Seattle, 31
Sennett, Richard, 18791
233
Shakespeare, William, 60, 102, 178,

179
Coriolanus, 178
Richard II, 179
Titus Andronicus, 27
Shklar, David, 99
Shklar, Gerald, 37, 44, 512, 197
Shklar, Judith Nisse
A Life of Learning, 8, 22, 35, 47,
135, 204n. 1, 206n. 11
After Utopia, 20, 4857, 60, 66,
75, 83, 84, 85, 86, 93, 101,
177, 200, 206n. 11, 207n. 16,
211n. 22
American Citizenship, 21, 159,
1725, 178
on American exceptionalism, 2,
136, 140, 1478, 1523, 160,
214n. 9
childhood and upbringing, 11,
33, 188
The Faces of Injustice, 16272
Freedom and Independence, 20,
8894, 102, 122, 210n. 15
habit of thought, 11, 14, 19, 36,
160, 199, 201
as John Cowles Professor of
Government, 20, 98
legacy of, 1, 3, 4, 9, 181, 159
Legalism, 20, 59, 6470, 75, 76,
85, 101, 170, 177
Men and Citizens, 20, 856,
7883, 93, 208n. 1, 209n. 9
on method, 12334
Montesquieu, 20, 11523
Ordinary Vices, 5, 20, 10010,
11215, 116, 123, 162, 163, 170,
172, 178, 210n. 16, 215n. 12
as Pitt Professor of American
History and Institutions, 99
Redeeming American Political
Theory (APSA address),
14753
Shklar, Michael, 62
Shklar, Ruth, 63, 99

234
Index
skepticism, 3, 9, 57, 84, 88, 90, 118,

124, 153, 158, 168, 171, 177,
197, 199
Skinner, Quentin, 2, 1323, 1956
The Foundations of Modern
Political Theory, 132
social sciences, 42, 44, 55, 56, 57,
712, 73, 74, 129, 124, 127,
128, 131, 133, 134, 148, 200,
205n. 3
social theory, 77, 83, 134, 197,
208n. 7
sociology, 57, 65, 71, 112
Socrates, 89, 178
Socratic approach, 3, 125
Soviet Union, 30, 33, 43, 52,
206n. 12. See also Russia
Spencer, Herbert, 151
Spengler, Oswald, 53
Stalin, Stalinism, 16, 30, 48, 67,
126, 206n. 12
Starobinski, Jean, 87, 122
Storrs lectures, 161, 215n. 13
St. Petersburg, 24
Strauss, Leo, 42, 55
Strong, Tracey B., 85
student protest movement, 723, 77
Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS), 106
Stullerova, Kamilla, 3, 70
Sumner, William Graham, 151
Sunderland, Arthur, 49
Sweden, 1, 10, 11, 30, 204n. 1
Swift, Jonathan, 56, 102
Gullivers Travels, 56
Switzerland, 24, 25, 28, 30
Tabori, Paul, 181
An Anatomy of Exile, 181
Tanner Lectures, 173
Taylor, Charles, 93, 128, 212n. 27
terror, 138, 140, 145, 200, 201
Thompson, Dennis F., 2, 3, 113,
197, 198
Times Literary Supplement, 198
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 117, 137,

143, 144, 213n. 6
Tokyo trial, 66, 69, 70
torture, 11415, 117, 120, 150
The Body in Pain, 114
totalitarianism, 2, 20, 49, 51, 52,
56, 68, 100, 194, 200, 211n. 23
Tufts University, 37, 51, 63
United States of America, 6, 31, 39,
40, 73, 108, 116, 137, 156, 158,
159, 185
University of California at Berkeley,
172, 178
University of Wisconsin, 178, 195,
216n. 2
utopia, utopianism, 55, 56, 57, 78,
79, 81, 84, 86, 102, 120, 154,
157, 200
Veblen, Thorstein, 105, 151, 174
vices, 5, 84, 87, 99, 100, 101, 102,
104, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112,
113, 121, 162, 170
adultery, 102
arrogance, 101
betrayal, 99, 101, 102, 106, 107,
113
cruelty (see separate entry)
hypocrisy, 101, 104, 105, 113
snobbery, 105, 106, 113, 210n. 18
treason, 101, 102, 107, 108,
210n. 19, 211n. 20
victims, victimhood, 53, 81, 102,
103, 109, 115, 163, 1647, 168,
170, 171, 176, 193, 215n. 14
Lisbon earthquake (1755), 166
misfortune, 107, 162, 1668, 171,
215n. 14
Vietnam, 72
Vietnam War, 73, 211n. 22
virtues. See virtuous republic
under republic and
republican
vita activa, vita contemplativa, 14

Index
Vladivostok, 30
voting, 1736. See also earning
Walzer, Judith, 22, 47, 956, 191,
204n. 1, 205n. 8
Walzer, Michael, 2, 4, 100, 162,
170, 182, 201
Interpretation and Social
Criticism, 182
Ward, Lester, 151
Watkins, Fredrick, 2, 36, 37, 75
Webb, Beatrice and Sidney, 57
Weber, Max, 60, 67, 111, 124, 131,
132, 134, 206n. 10, 212n. 28
Weizscker, Ernst von, 178
whig history, 136
Williams, Bernard, 11314
235
Wills, Gary, 1323

Explaining America: The
Federalist, 132
Wolin, Sheldon S. 556
Wood, Gordon S., 161
The Radicalism of the American
Revolution, 161
World War II, 20, 29, 40, 51, 56,
57, 96, 125, 126, 147, 152, 177,
181, 185
Yack, Bernard, 3, 100, 170, 197,
198
Yale Law Journal, The, 112
Yale Law School, 161
Zionism, 193, 194

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The Formative Years: From Riga to Montreal

In the Aftermath of Totalitarianism

The Making of a Political Theorist

Transatlantic Encounters of a Different Kind

Returning to the Theme of Exile

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THE POLITICAL THEORY OF JUDITH N. SHKLAR

Copyright Andreas Hess, 2014.

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Introduction: The Peculiarity of the

Judith Shklars Intellectual Legacy

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The Political Theory of Judith N. Shklar

to political theory, such as her defense of an illusion-free barebones

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Shklar was passionate about arguments. She generally adopted a

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The Political Theory of Judith N. Shklar

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The Political Theory of Judith N. Shklar

Shklars Coinage of Words and Use of Unusual

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and liberal reforms and policies were successfully introduced. There

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The Political Theory of Judith N. Shklar

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unstoppable. Everything has to be contradiction-free and watertight.

The Theme of Exile in Shklars Life and Work

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The Political Theory of Judith N. Shklar

Just before her death Shklar was working on a larger project in

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The Political Theory of Judith N. Shklar

Shklar clearly cultivated her role as an outsider to a certain extent; she

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The Political Theory of Judith N. Shklar

However, accounting for Shklars life and writing presents us with a

Shklars Exile from Exile in Context

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The Political Theory of Judith N. Shklar