The Unnoticed Monism of Judith Shklar’s Liberalism of Fear ABSTRACT: Judith Shklar’s liberalism of fear, a political and philosophical standpoint that emerges in her mature work, has ostensibly two defining characteristics. It is a skeptical approach that puts cruelty first among the vices. For that reason, it is considered to be both set apart from mainstream liberalism, in particular the liberalism of J. S. Mill and John Rawls, but also an important source of influence for political realists and non-ideal theorists. However, I argue here that, in putting cruelty first among the vices, Shklar also offers a value monist approach to political thought, one that she shares with Mill and Rawls as well. Each claims to have identified the general rule for the resolution of moral conflicts, although they disagree about what that rule is. Therefore, Shklar’s mature work combines skepticism with value monism. As such, it represents a radical departure from the value pluralist (and skeptical) approach to moral conflict evident in her early work. Her commentators have not noticed either her mature monism, or the move away from her earlier value pluralism, and this is explained by a tendency to see her mature work as offering simply a skeptical alternative to mainstream liberalism. Key Words: liberalism, skepticism, Judith Shklar, value monism, value pluralism Judith Shklar’s liberalism of fear has ostensibly two defining characteristics that are thought to set it apart from the liberalism of her contemporaries. In the first instance, it is an approach to political thought that ranks the vices in a particular way. As she says in ‘Putting Cruelty First,’ the liberalism of fear is a ‘mentality […] that regards cruelty as the summum malum, the most evil of all evils’ (2006 [1982]: 81). While her fellow liberals will readily agree that cruelty is a wrong, not everyone is happy to put it first in this way. For other liberals, what matters most is not whether acts or people are cruel, but whether they cause harm to others and for that reason diminish utility (Mill 1989 [1859]: 68), or whether they violate the system of equal liberty that guarantees each person’s rightful freedom (Rawls 1971: 42–3), and so on. However, Shklar’s liberalism of fear is distinctive not only because it ranks the vices in this way. Her putting cruelty first represents, in addition, a skeptical approach to political thought. There are various ways in which her work is skeptical. For now I want to emphasize the fact that it ‘closes off any appeal to any order other than that of actuality’ (2006 [1982]: 81). On this point, again, her work differs significantly from that of her fellow liberals. The latter do appeal to an order other than that of actuality, whether it be utility as the summum bonum, ‘the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable’ (Mill 1991 [1861]: 142), or what rational and autonomous individuals would agree to in an ideal situation of choice, the ‘original position’ (Rawls 1971: 17–22), and so on. Such non-skeptical work, Shklar maintains, lacks ‘intellectual modesty:’ while it represents the ‘party of hope,’ in contrast, the liberalism of fear is aligned with the ‘party of memory’ (1989: 26). There therefore appears to be two distinguishing characteristics of the liberalism of fear: it is a skeptical approach that puts cruelty first among the vices. And these features of her work have been an important source of influence for recent critics of mainstream liberalism, including non-ideal political theorists, as well as political realists (Williams 2005; Hall and Sleat 2017). Nonetheless, arguably putting cruelty first among the vices is, despite her skepticism, evidence of a not insignificant level of epistemological ambition. After all, Shklar is claiming to have identified the summum malum, the most evil of all evils. And although she is offering a skeptical alternative to the liberalism of hope, in one important respect Shklar’s work is not all that different. In fact, like Mill and Rawls, her liberalism of fear is offering a value monist position on moral conflict. Value monists maintain that, when there is conflict between moral claims, we give priority, as a general rule, to one of them, what we have identified as the higher norm. Although monists disagree about what the general rule is, they agree that there is such a rule, and that it has been identified (see Galston 2005; Gray 2013 [1996]). In addition, monists conceptualize freedom as liberty of action in accordance with the general rule for resolving moral conflicts, such that we are not free to do what violates that rule (see Berlin 2004 [1958]). Hence, Mill contends that we are not free to harm others (1989 [1859]: 71), while Rawls maintains that we are not free to violate the principle of equal liberty (1971: 202). And for Shklar’s liberalism of fear, we are not free to treat others cruelly (1989: 29). My argument in this paper is that the liberalism of fear represents a value monist approach to moral conflict and to the conceptualization of freedom. Shklar’s value monism is not incompatible with her skepticism. As we shall see, it is as a skeptic that she puts cruelty first, and in putting cruelty first she adopts a monist approach to moral conflict (2006 [1982]). However, the liberalism of fear is a product of Shklar’s publications in the latter part of her career. And the skeptical monism of her mature work represents a sharp departure from the value pluralist (and skeptical) approach to moral conflict evident in her early work. And this transformation is most clearly evident when we consider her changing views on the issue of paternalism. In her early work, she maintains that we are left with unresolved conflicts between the requirements of justice, on the one hand, and the requirements of paternalism, on the other (Shklar 1964; 1966; 1967). In contrast, in her mature work, her liberalism of fear, she concludes that paternalistic infringements of liberty are unjustifiable as a general rule (Shklar 1989; 1990). In this paper I argue that her mature monism, and the move away from her earlier value pluralism, has remained unnoticed in the literature on her work (see Rosenblum 1996; Whiteside 1999; Forrester 2011, 2012; Moyne 2014; Ashenden and Hess 2016; Misra 2016; Thaler 2017; Yack, 2017; Gatta 2018). As a result, nor has it been understood that her objection to paternalism in her mature work arises not only from her skepticism but also from her value monism (Hoffmann 1996; Yack 1996; Whiteside 1999; Misra 2016). In putting forward this argument, I follow John Gray in distinguishing skepticism from value pluralism (2013 [1996]: 77). We can see the importance of this distinction when we consider that, while Isaiah Berlin, for example, combines value pluralism with non-skepticism, Shklar, at different points in her career, combines skepticism first with value pluralism and then value monism. It is by making this distinction that we are in a position to, firstly, pick out the monist characteristics of her mature work, and then secondly, assess whether Shklar is able to provide a satisfactory justification for the highly ambitious claim that is so central to her mature work, namely that the avoidance of cruelty is the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. 1. Shklar’s Early Value Pluralism Let us begin with Shklar’s early work, and the value pluralist approach to moral conflict she adopts at that time. But before doing so we must clarify what we mean by the term value pluralism itself. For value pluralists, we may be faced with conflicts between incompatible moral claims and we have not identified the general rule for their resolution. As Gray puts it in his discussion of Berlin’s work, we may be faced with ‘conflicts among the ultimate values’ of a ‘morality or moral code;’ conflicts within any one of these ‘internally complex and inherently pluralistic’ values or goods; and conflicts that arise between ‘different cultural forms [that] generate different moralities and values’ (2013 [1996]: 79–80). And when faced with such conflicts, we do not have to hand the general rule for their resolution. What then are we to do, and what guidance does political theory provide? For Berlin, although we can offer reasons to justify the way in which we resolve a moral conflict in a specific situation, crucially, the reasons ‘cannot always be clearly stated, let alone generalised into rules or universal maxims’ (2004 [1958]: 172–3). Hence, according to value pluralism, political theory does not provide us with general rules to resolve moral conflicts. Shklar adopts just such a value pluralist approach to moral conflict in her early work. And we can see this most clearly in her second published book, Legalism (1964), along with two related articles published over the following three years. Her overriding aim in Legalism is to offer a pluralist understanding and defense of justice, along with what she refers to as the legalistic ethos. According to Shklar, justice is but one instance of rule-based (i.e. legalistic) morality, and rule-based morality is but one of the many forms that morality takes. She thus distinguishes moralities ‘of obligation – of rights and duties clearly resembling law’ from moralities ‘of service and mutual aid;’ the ‘morality of the “inner light” – the morality of sentiment, of authenticity, and of self-realization;’ ‘irrationalist moralities, the various moralities of the heart;’ and the morality of ‘the saint and the hero’ (1964: 57). Not only are we faced with distinct moral values, as well as the cultural forms associated with them, in addition, the same moral value can be conceptualized in different ways, as happens, for example, with the diverse conceptions of justice derived from distinct criteria of merit or desert (ibid., p. 114). The plurality of moral claims also can come into conflict, demanding different and incompatible things from us. For example, we may be ‘faced with […] the difficult choice among a variety of equally valid obligations’ (ibid., p. 73). In such situations, ‘it is not a matter of “to be or not to be” moral, but of which of several moral claims one shall honor’ (ibid., p. 75). And what is more, we cannot identify the general rule for the resolution of such conflicts: ‘Neither our conscience, our superego, our capacity (if any) to predict the results of our action, nor any moral law can deliver us from the actuality of inner moral conflict, created by a multitude of valid claims’ (ibid., p. 73). Of course, political theorists often do try to avoid the anxiety caused by moral conflict. For example, some appeal to ‘the natural,’ including natural rights, as a basis for the resolution of such conflicts; some claim to have discovered what ‘true desert’ is, and so on (ibid., p. 65, p. 116). However, as such an approach ‘hides the facts of moral life,’ then, even if it does assuage our anxieties, the ‘comfort’ offered is a ‘false’ one (ibid., p. 75). In any event, we can do without it: ‘although it is philosophically deeply annoying, human institutions survive because most of us can live quite comfortably with wholly contradictory beliefs’ (ibid., p. x). Perhaps she goes too far in saying that we can live quite comfortably with value conflict, as in fact our situation can become socially problematic. In particular, the legalistic ethos of justice can be in conflict with perfectionist, educative, and paternalistic principles: ‘On the political level it is thus the manipulative state that is the real rival of the legalistic state, and the policy of inducement, whether by propaganda or by terror and related pressures, competes with the policy of legalism’ (ibid., pp. 56–7, p. 120). Despite the evidently critical tone here, we know that, as a pluralist, Shklar is not claiming to have discovered the general rule to resolve this conflict. Her defense of justice, and the legalistic ethos, can only be a pluralist one. As she says, it is an attempt ‘to account for the difficulties which the morality of justice faces in a morally pluralistic world’ (ibid., p. 123). Although she defends the legalist ethos of justice, she is also aware of, and draws attention to, its limits. Shklar further elaborates on these limits, and the conflicts raised by the issue of paternalism in particular, in two papers appearing in the three years following Legalism’s publication. First, ‘In Defense of Legalism’ maintains that the limits of rule-based morals ‘become readily apparent’ when ‘such sore issues as the problems of racial peace and the salvation of the poor emerge’ (1966: 56). Legalism is limited because it acts to conserve the status quo: law is ‘a stabilizing force in society;’ it is ‘designed to promote the security of expectations’ (ibid., p. 57). It is understandable therefore that the ideal of education, ‘the development of each person to his fullest possibilities, is impatient of rules and their limits’ (ibid., p. 54). That is, when confronted with poverty and racial inequality, as she herself was in 1960s America, there is a moral requirement to do something for the worst off, even if this means doing something wrong. The wrong done is not just to break what are understood to be the rules of justice (to violate people’s long-standing, legitimate expectations). There are also the wrongs done to those treated paternalistically in order to ensure the development of each person to his fullest possibilities, that is, the wrongs of, as she puts it, inducement or manipulation and, at its extremes, propaganda or terror. We should note that what Shklar says here about paternalism has very clear parallels with Berlin’s value pluralist approach to the same issue. Although he maintains that it is a prima facie wrong to take away options from others, nonetheless as a pluralist he also insists that freedom is simply one value among others, and it can come into conflict with others. And one reason why we may be justified in limiting freedom is so as to promote the good of those whose freedom has been restricted: It is one thing to say that I may be coerced for my own good, which I am too blind to see: this may, on occasion, be for my benefit; indeed it may enlarge the scope of my liberty. It is another to say that if it is my good, then I am not being coerced, for I have willed it. (Berlin 2004 [1958]: 180) Berlin’s aim here is admittedly a negative one, namely to emphasize that, even when paternalistic infringements are justified, for example for those who lack competence (those too blind to see their own good), they still count as violations of freedom. But what that assumes is that paternalism can be justified and that, at the same time, paternalists may be faced with moral conflicts, including the conflict that arises when they ought not to violate the freedom of others, they ought to promote the good of others, they can do either, and they cannot do both. What role can and should political thought play in response to moral conflicts like these? What is the nature of theoretical reflection for the value pluralist? Shklar says that, in emphasizing ‘the distinctive and, so conflicting, aspects of the various moralities,’ it ‘should be obvious that the aim of such self-recognition is to lessen, rather than to intensify, the tensions of practical life’ (1966: 54). How can political thought play any such role? As she says in ‘Facing up to Intellectual Pluralism,’ academic specialization has brought to an end the great tradition of political philosophy, the tradition of thought with ‘a cosmopolitan intent,’ ‘based on psychological, economic, and historical speculations’ (1967: 292). We must therefore ‘face up to the pluralism of political ideas that do not individually or together constitute a political philosophy,’ but nonetheless political thought retains an important function in a pluralist world: ‘The very prevalence and variety of political notions […] makes the need for critically judging unreasoned and uninformed opinion all the more pressing’ (ibid., p. 293). We cannot construct a systematic political philosophy. Indeed, we must challenge the unreasoned and uninformed opinions of those who think they can, whether, for example, they reject paternalism as a general rule or in contrast wish to press ahead with educative reforms without any regard for the wrongs committed in their name. Value pluralism is a bar to systematic political philosophy, but a pluralist political theory nonetheless has an active role to play in enhancing our understanding of, and in offering guidance on how to address, society’s major political challenges. 2. Shklar’s Mature Value Monism As we have seen above, those who adopt a value pluralist approach to moral conflict draw attention to the variety of potentially conflicting moral claims and the fact that we have not identified the general rule for the resolution of such conflicts. Thus, in her early work, when Shklar defends the legalistic ethos she also remains sensitive to the possibility of moral conflict, including conflicts with paternalistic, perfectionist, and educative principles. However, as we shall now see, in her mature work, starting with the 1982 essay ‘Putting Cruelty First,’ Shklar performs a dramatic about turn. She now adopts a value monist approach to moral conflict and to the conceptualization of freedom, and to paternalism more specifically. But what is value monism? Monists maintain that they have identified the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. We can see this with Mill’s specific formulation of liberalism, one that is constructed from what he calls the harm principle. In another publication, I show that, like Mill, Rawls also provides a monist approach to moral conflict, to the conceptualization of freedom, and to the understanding of paternalism (Author 2018). As a utilitarian, Mill believes that all conflicting values can be reduced to a master value, utility. As we saw, utility is for him the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable. He also maintains that the best way to promote utility is by adherence to the harm principle. For that reason, it is the ‘one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control’ (1989 [1859]: 68). The harm principle justifies the removal of options from individuals, that is, when to act on the options in question would lead to others’ harm. And Mill conceptualizes freedom as liberty of action in accordance with this general rule. An individual is free to do anything that ‘affects only himself […] directly, and in the first instance,’ and, of those things that affect others, only that which does not cause them harm (ibid., p. 71). The harm principle is thus the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. For instance, although we ought to promote the good of others, we must never infringe their liberty to do so. Mill accepts that at times paternalism is unavoidable, and he goes on to say that it can be justified. Nonetheless, as the harm principle leaves people free to harm themselves, paternalistic infringements of individual freedom are, as a general rule, impermissible. Paternalism is justified then only for those to whom the harm principle does not apply: those ‘incapable of self-government’ (ibid., p. 69, 147). As I have said, my thesis in this paper is that Shklar’s liberalism of fear represents a value monist position, and therefore it adopts an approach to moral conflict found in what she calls the liberalism of hope, including Mill’s utilitarianism as well as in non-utilitarian positions, such as Rawls’s social contract liberalism, for example. Indeed, Shklar makes clear that her decision to put cruelty first, her regarding cruelty as the summum malum, is also a decision to reject value pluralism: The liberalism of fear in fact does not rest on a theory of moral pluralism. It does not, to be sure, offer a summum bonum toward which all political agents should strive, but it certainly does begin with a summum malum, which all of us know and would avoid if only we could. That evil is cruelty and the fear it inspires, and the very fear of fear itself. To that extent the liberalism of fear makes a universal and especially a cosmopolitan claim, as it historically always has done. (1989: 29) Shklar’s argument differs from Mill’s, in part because she is not setting before us the summum bonum of politics. Nonetheless, she is clearly aware that, as she is claiming to have identified the summum malum, then she is no longer defending a value pluralist approach to moral conflict. Instead, as a monist, she sets out what she maintains is the general rule for resolving moral conflicts: What liberalism requires is the possibility of making the evil of cruelty and fear the basic norm of its political practices and prescriptions. The only exception to the rule of avoidance is the prevention of greater cruelties. (ibid., p. 30) Her decision to put cruelty first gives priority, as a general rule, to the avoidance of cruelty if and when it comes into conflict with some other moral claim. This is the case both because it is the basic norm of political action and moral judgment in politics, but also because cruelty is permitted only so as to prevent greater cruelties. I am arguing that Shklar adopts a monist approach in her mature work. This is the case even though she continues to highlight the various ways in which we can be faced with moral conflict. As she says in Ordinary Vices, for example, ‘as social actors, we all have unclean hands some of the time’ (1984: 243). One such conflict arises from the fact that, although we ought to avoid cruelty, nonetheless, in certain circumstances cruelty may be permitted or even obligatory. Indeed, in ‘The Liberalism of Fear’ we see that ‘any government must use the threat of punishment,’ and so ‘the liberalism of fear does not dream of an end of public, coercive government’ (1989: 29, 30). Therefore, she is indeed highlighting the pervasiveness of moral conflicts. Nonetheless, she also claims to have identified the general rule for their resolution: the avoidance of cruelty. That is why ‘the threat of punishment’ is, for her, ‘an unavoidable evil, to be controlled in its scope and modified by legally enforced rules of fairness, so that arbitrariness not be added to the minimum of fear required for law enforcement’ (ibid., p. 30). It is also the case that her mature work is characterized not only be her monism, but also by the combination of value monism with skepticism. As John Gray argues, in his discussion of Berlin’s work, what is distinctive of a ‘sceptical and subjectivist’ position on ethics is found in ‘the denial of moral knowledge, the rejection of anything akin to moral belief or moral judgement, and in the consequent assimilation of morality to the expression of preference’ (2013 [1996]: 77). Shklar does not go so far as to deny moral knowledge outright, but in various ways she does highlight the limits of our capacity to judge between right and wrong. For example, as a skeptic she is a critic of the ‘normal model of justice,’ which equates justice with the fair application of rules of justice. Instead, she ‘doubts that we can ever know enough about each other to devise rules for each other’ (1990: 26). But if it is the case that, as a skeptic, she doubts we can devise rules for each other, how can she be a monist, and hence claim to have identified the general rule for the resolution of moral conflicts? I will try to show here that there is no inconsistency between Shklar’s skeptical critique of the normal model of justice and her claim to have identified the summum malum. To start with, Shklar thinks of her skepticism as inseparable from her value monism. She maintains that the decision to put cruelty first forces us to be skeptical: When it [cruelty] is marked as a supreme evil, it is judged so in and of itself, and not because it signifies a rejection of God or any other higher norm […] By putting it irrevocably first – with nothing above it, and with nothing to excuse or forgive acts of cruelty – one closes off any appeal to any order other than that of actuality. (2006 [1982]: 81) Why must we eschew appeal to a higher norm or an order other than that of actuality? It is by experiencing cruelty that we are compelled to be skeptical in this way. It is because human cruelty is so pervasive that we are forced to doubt what we know: This kind of skeptic may well begin the journey away from the common understanding because he or she is overwhelmed by the evil of the times […] [I]t is reasonable to ask: “Why do we do these appalling things?” and then, “What do we know about ourselves and each other? And finally, “What can we know at all?” (1990: 20) In addition, those who ignore these skeptical warnings will simply make cruelty worse; and so adopting a skeptical attitude is one important obstacle to the worsening of cruelty: There is also a purely psychological skepticism that not only doubts that we can ever know enough about each other to devise rules for each other but also suspects that our efforts to do so may do us a lot of harm. (ibid., p. 26) Therefore, not only does our experience of cruelty force us to doubt what we know, we can also see that is those who are free from such doubts who risk causing ever greater harm. Thus, it is as a skeptic that she puts cruelty first, and it is by maintaining this skepticism that, she believes, we can act on the commitment to avoid cruelty. Shklar’s mature work is combining skepticism with value monism. And her skepticism does set the liberalism of fear apart from what she calls the liberalism of hope. As we have seen, in judging cruelty to be the supreme evil, Shklar does not appeal to theological norms but nor does she appeal to any other higher norm. Hence, she does not appeal to higher secular norms, such as utility, autonomy, consent, liberty, and so on, in order to excuse or forgive acts of cruelty. In contrast, less skeptical liberals do appeal to what each considers to be a higher norm when judging acts to be right or wrong, for example, Mill’s principle of utility and also his harm principle. But as I have said, in one important respect Shklar’s approach is not all that different. They each maintain that, when dealing with conflicting moral claims, they have identified the higher norm applicable to political practice. After all, Shklar is contending that cruelty is the summum malum. Yes, she refuses to excuse or forgive acts of cruelty by appeal to some other, supposedly higher, norm, but she does so precisely because, for her, cruelty is the higher norm: it, and nothing else, is the supreme evil. When there is conflict between moral claims, we give priority, as a general rule, to one of them, what we have identified as the higher norm. While they disagree about what that norm is, they agree that there is such a norm, and that it has been identified. And it is in adopting this position on moral conflict that Shklar’s approach can be at once skeptical and yet put cruelty first. It is as a sceptic that she puts cruelty first, and in putting cruelty first she adopts a monist approach to moral conflict. What we have seen is that, for Shklar, skepticism is intimately bound up with the decision to put cruelty first. However, there is one further side to her skepticism that may seem to be incompatible with value monism, namely her commitment to toleration in the face of social diversity. For example, in Ordinary Vices, she notes that snobbery, or ‘the habit of making inequality hurt,’ is condemned in a democracy ‘as an obnoxious violation of the public ethos,’ but nonetheless, we should at the same time see it as unavoidable where there is social mobility, and also that it is ‘the consequence of any sort of pluralism [i.e. social diversity]’ (1984: 87, 88, 117). Therefore, while we ought to treat others as our equals, we ought also to tolerate those who are snobs and who make inequality hurt. Now, in response to this very situation, the paternalist will urge us to strive to improve these snobs, for their own good. The paternalist would have us cure them of their snobbery. Shklar instead maintains that we should simply tolerate their vice, and so she rejects the paternalist position (see Galston 1988; Yack 1996: 5; Dunn 1996: 46). But toleration of diversity does not amount to value pluralism. For a start, there is nothing standing in the way of value monists defending toleration as a moral virtue and a moral obligation, as can be seen by considering those who have attempted to do so on the basis of Mill’s and Kant’s arguments (see Mendus, 1989). And in fact this is precisely what Shklar does in her mature work. She calls on us to tolerate such vices as snobbery, but does so because cruelty is first among the vices. That is, if we do not tolerate snobbery, if instead we strive to stamp out the snobbery of others in the name of democratic equality (and use whatever threats of force are necessary to achieve this end), this will permit cruelty in situations other than to prevent greater cruelties, and so it will be, as a general rule, unjustified. According to the arguments of her mature work, cruelty cannot be justified in the name of such ‘noble’ ‘causes:’ this rules out, as a matter of principle, paternalistic or perfectionist or educative politics, or, as Shklar puts it, an ‘educative government that aims at creating specific kinds of character and enforces its own beliefs’ (1989: 32, 33). 3. An Unnoticed Monist What we have seen is a most dramatic about turn in philosophical argumentation between Shklar’s early and mature work. From having been a value pluralist, she has become a monist, and from having accepted that paternalism presents us with unresolved moral conflicts, she has come to insist that paternalism is unjustified as a general rule. However, I must address the fact that my interpretation of her work above is a novel one. While I am arguing that in her later publications she adopts a monist position on moral conflict and freedom, this fact has remained unnoticed by those who have studied her work. Why this is the case is to be found in her skepticism. It is true that the skepticism of Shklar’s mature work marks it out as different in important respects from the monism of other liberals, such as Mill, for example. That does not make her work any less monist, but it does help explain why her monism has gone unnoticed up until now. Shklar sets out her mature position on Berlin’s value pluralism in ‘The Liberalism of Fear.’ There she is explicit that her mature work does not, in her words, rest on a theory of moral pluralism. But what is the significance of this statement? It has importance for a start because she is here rejecting her own early value pluralism, in particular as set out in Legalism, and yet this fact goes unnoticed among those examining her work. Some do see Legalism both as arguing for the importance of social diversity and for that reason as expressing doubt about the chances of securing consensus on questions of justice (Yack 2017: 118). Nonetheless, her commentators do not see Legalism as offering a value pluralist approach to moral conflict. Some do note that she is here rejecting natural law arguments, but nonetheless fail to appreciate the value pluralism she is putting forward in its place (Moyne 2014: 720; Ashenden and Hess 2016: 525; Gatta 2018: 112). Indeed, Katrina Forrester goes so far as to say that Shklar was a critic of value pluralism: unlike Berlin, she ‘was not interested in the monism of utopias. Her suspicion of grand critiques with their all-encompassing claims also,’ according to Forrester, ‘extended to pluralism and anti-utopianism’ (2011: 602). In contrast, Kerry Whiteside does appreciate that Shklar’s early work is pluralistic in one sense, but even he does not see it as a form of value pluralism. This is the case because he employs the arguments of Shklar’s first book, After Utopia (1957), to characterize what he calls the pluralism of Shklar’s early work, and mentions her second book, Legalism (1964), only once and only in passing, and then only with reference to Shklar’s rejection of natural law theory. For that reason, his description of her early work ignores altogether what we have referred to as its value pluralism. Hence, for Whiteside, the Shklar of After Utopia is a pluralist in the sense that her work reflects the decline of utopian faith, and specifically faith in the power of ‘reason’ to ‘lead citizens to a “natural harmony”’ (1999: 503). It is true that After Utopia reflects a decline of utopian faith, but that is so because its defining quality is a skeptical critique of utopianism. In that book she does not (as she does in Legalism) talk about moral conflicts and our not having identified the general rule for their resolution. Instead, Shklar puts forward the skeptical argument that we lack the utopian faith necessary for radicalism to be ‘meaningful’ (1957: 219). Not only do her commentators not recognize the value pluralism of her early work, nor do they see the monism of her mature work. For example, Shefali Misra concludes that Shklar does not offer ‘a moral system or decision procedure like utilitarianism or deontology’ (2016: 86); while Nancy Rosenblum, in addition, maintains that the liberalism of fear is ‘not a political or moral theory or prescription for social reform’ (1996: 43; see also Forrester 2012: 260; Yack 2017: 116; Thaler 2017: 12). For these thinkers, Shklar is simply a skeptic, and it is because of this skepticism that she does not offer a decision procedure or prescription for social reform. It is also argued that her skepticism explains her mature position on paternalism. As we have seen, her skeptical critique of the normal model of justice is that we do not know enough about each other to devise rules of justice for each other. As a result, people’s experiences of injustice often will not be captured by our rules of justice. In response, Shklar maintains that we should listen to the voices of those who claim to be the victims of injustice, revise our principles of justice on that basis, and in that way aim at attaining ‘consent as a continuous process under conditions of personal freedom’ (Shklar 1990: 122). This has important implications for how she understands paternalism, given that paternalism is an exercise of power over others, for their own good, but (crucially) without their consent (Fives 2017: 12). For her commentators, it is simply this skeptical critique that explains ‘her dislike of paternalism, however well meaning’ (Hoffmann 1996: 87), and it is why she herself ‘deftly avoids’ paternalism by requiring that those in power discern ‘the facts’ and respect people’s judgments ‘about their own affairs’ (Misra 2016: 90). In contrast, paternalism will result when we ignore these skeptical doubts, whether we do so because of a liberal theory of distributive justice that is too far ‘removed from actuality’ (Whiteside 1999: 251) or a communitarian account of the ‘predominant opinions in any society’ whose cogency has not been checked against the views of the least advantaged members of that society (Yack 1996: 8–9). For her commentators, Shklar objects to paternalism because of her skepticism, which requires listening to the voices of the victims of injustice. I am of course not calling into question the skeptical character of Shklar’s mature work. What I am arguing is that, in her mature work, she combines skepticism with value monism. It is true that because of her skepticism there are reasons why Shklar objects to the political theories of other monists. This is evident in some of her criticisms of Mill’s utilitarianism in particular. Nonetheless, there is one sense in which Shklar, like Mill, is offering a decision procedure and a prescription for social reform. This is the case as she makes the evil of cruelty and fear the basic norm of liberalism’s political practices and prescriptions. What she is claiming to provide is a procedure for deciding between alternative courses of action and thus a basis for normative prescription. Its being negative, in being based on a summum malum rather than a summum bonum, does not change that fact. This is of course a crucial point for my interpretation of Shklar’s work, but in fact one that, on consideration, should not be considered controversial. I am arguing that value monism does not necessarily entail either identification of the summum bonum or the rank-ordering of virtues. In fact, although Mill does claim to have identified the summum bonum, nonetheless the norm that he gives priority to as a general rule is a negative one (the harm principle). Rawls, for his part, does rank-order principles of justice (but not the virtues), but at the same time he does not claim to have identified the summum bonum. Turning again to the mature Shklar, what we see is a form of value monism based on a negative morality, a claim to have identified the summum malum. And on that basis, she does offer prescriptions, and does so as a monist. Specifically, when she rejects paternalism, she does so not just because of skeptical doubts, but also because paternalism violates the principle of the avoidance of cruelty. This becomes clearer still when we consider her conception of freedom. Some maintain that, like Berlin, the mature Shklar not only is a value pluralist but also endorses a (Berlinian) negative conception of liberty: What she remained firmly opposed to were theories of what Berlin had identified as the opposite of negative liberty – positive liberty, with its exalted visions of how one ought to use one’s freedom. How they used their freedom was up to individuals to decide. (Misra 2016: 87–8) At first it may seem that there is some support in Shklar’s mature writings for this interpretation. ‘Every adult,’ Shklar contends, should be able to make as many effective decisions without fear or favor about as many aspects of her or his life as is compatible with the like freedom of every other adult. That belief is the original and only defensible meaning of liberalism. (1989: 21) The emphasis here is clearly on individual freedom of choice. This seems very far removed from a positive conception of freedom in the sense that Berlin describes, and warns against, in particular a Kantian conception according to which I can be free only with respect to ‘my “real,” or “ideal,” or “autonomous” self, or […] my self “at its best”’ (Berlin 2004 [1958]: 179). Rather than proposing some account of our true selves, and conceptualizing freedom on that basis, Shklar in fact stresses that conflicts are unavoidable, and even necessary for our freedom: After all, Aristotle said “we,” frequently […] And he did not seem to ask his audience of “we” to necessarily agree with him […] What distinguishes this book, however, is my consciousness of conflict among “us” as both ineluctable and tolerable, and entirely necessary for any degree of freedom. Indeed, I have tried to make “us” even more aware of our incompatibilities and their consequences. (1984: 227) Not only is there no one account of our true selves, nor can we rank-order the virtues. Rather, we simply should accept that we must tolerate people as they are: It is by keeping its hands off our characters that governments provide the setting and conditions in which we just might begin our poor but epic battle against vice. To create such a government, however, demands no particular virtues at all. It is a government for men as they are, not as they might be. (ibid., p. 235) Thus, what we have seen is that Shklar defends individual freedom of choice, while also insisting that conflict is unavoidable, and necessary for freedom, and that we should also tolerate difference. Nonetheless, hers is not, in her mature work, a value pluralist argument: she is not saying that we lack a general rule for resolving moral conflicts. Nor is she arguing that negative freedom is made necessary by value pluralism, as Berlin does. In fact, there are two ways in which she departs clearly from Berlin’s conception of freedom. The first is to note that ‘Berlin’s negative liberty of “not being forced” and its later version of “open doors” is kept conceptually pure and separate from “the conditions of liberty,” that is, the social and political institutions that make personal freedom possible’ (Shklar 1989: 28). Shklar is not a value pluralist in her mature work, but she is a committed institutional pluralist. She thus calls for a dispersion of power among a plurality of politically empowered groups, pluralism, in short, as well as the elimination of such forms and degrees of social inequality as expose people to oppressive practices. (ibid.) Therefore, she believes that Berlin’s negative freedom is insufficient, as freedom requires certain background conditions. However, the second way in which Shklar departs from Berlinian negative freedom is of far greater significance for our purposes. Following Montesquieu, she believes that freedom is ‘not independence, which is just doing as one pleases, but rather the condition that causes people to feel that their person and property are secure’ (Shklar 1987: 86). Yes, freedom requires a wide sphere of non-interference, but, crucially, we are rightly free from interference only insofar as our actions are not cruel. According to Shklar’s interpretation of Montesquieu, a legitimate polity should not use coercive force to control ‘religious belief and practice, consensual sex and expressions of public opinion,’ and so it should guarantee an ‘extensive sphere of personal liberty,’ but also it may rightly punish ‘any act of violence against the person or property of the individual’ (ibid., p. 90). Thus, pace Misra, in her mature work Shklar is saying that how we use our freedom is not up to us to decide; we are, in fact, not free to do as we please when what we please to do is in violation of the general rule for resolving moral conflicts, that is, the avoidance of cruelty. Yes, Shklar objects to paternalistic infringements of liberty. She does not accept that freedom may be infringed in the name of our higher or better self, so as to make us autonomous, or virtuous, or happy, and so on. And in that way her understanding of freedom is distinct from many positive conceptualizations of freedom. But nonetheless, in her mature work Shklar is offering a value monist conception of freedom. Freedom is not just doing as we please. It is, rather, liberty of action in accordance with the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. The implication is that if we are prevented from treating others cruelly (say, by the threat of punishment) this does not restrict our freedom, as we are simply being prevented from doing something we are not free to do in the first place. 4. Against the Normal Model of Justice My argument so far is that, as a value monist, the mature Shklar conceptualizes freedom as liberty of action in accordance with the general rule for resolving moral conflicts. I have also argued that, unlike many other monists, Shklar is also a skeptic. And while many of her commentators notice her skepticism, her monism remains unnoticed. However, so far I have proceeded on the assumption that, beginning with her 1982 essay ‘Putting Cruelty First,’ Shklar is more or less consistent in the position she puts forward. Others, in contrast, maintain that Shklar’s work underwent a further significant change at a later point, a change that breaks apart the two characteristic features of her mature work: her skepticism and her putting cruelty first. Specifically, the argument is that her 1990 book The Faces of Injustice represents a form of skepticism that is incompatible with the notion that, as elaborated at length in Ordinary Vices (1984), cruelty is the summum malum of politics. We have already seen that Shklar’s objective in The Faces of Injustice is to throw into question the normal model of justice. She maintains that ‘although the purpose of justice in general is abstract, every unjust act is particular, as is the sense of injustice’ (1990: 110). In turn, principles of justice should be revised based upon these subjective, individual experiences of injustice, in order to pursue what she calls consent as a continuous process under conditions of personal freedom. She contrasts this with Mill’s understanding of injustice, which, Shklar maintains, shows ‘only that it is unjust to break the rules of normal justice’ (ibid., p. 19). This is clearly, in the first instance, a skeptical critique of the normal model of justice: her point is that we do not know enough about each other for this conception to be acceptable. However, my argument, as already outlined, is that Shklar’s objection is not only a skeptical one, for it is also informed by her monism. And on this point, my interpretation of Shklar stands opposed to that of Kerry Whiteside, in particular. He maintains that Shklar cannot be a skeptic, in this sense, and at the same time maintain that cruelty is first among the vices. Indeed, he maintains, the arguments of The Faces of Injustice challenge the claim (made in Ordinary Vices) to know the summum malum, which had ‘egalitarian implications because it applies to all,’ whereas, in contrast, to ‘listen to victims means to lend some degree of credence to their complaints, whatever they may be’ (Whiteside 1999: 522; emphasis in original). Do Shklar’s skeptical arguments in The Faces of Injustice call into question her contention that cruelty is first among the vices? She does insist on listening to the subjective experiences of injustice, whatever those experiences are, but, I argue here, we are required to do so precisely because the avoidance of cruelty is, she believes, our first norm. In fact, it seems more plausible to argue that she rejects the normal model of justice for the reason that it makes cruelty worse. First, her skeptical argument that we do not know enough about each other to devise rules for each other itself arises for those ‘overwhelmed by the evil of the times’ (1990: 20). It is in the midst of the evils of civil war that it is, as we have seen, reasonable to ask, What can we know at all? Thus, the skeptical doubts about the normal model of justice have their origin in an orientation that considers cruelty the worst evil. Second, her objection to the normal model of justice is that it itself, or more precisely its implementation, is cruel. She observes that ‘Most injustices occur continuously within the framework of an established polity with an operative system of law’ (ibid., p. 19). Law is cruel, it causes harm, when it represents a non-skeptical approach to justice. As we have seen, as a skeptic she not only doubts that we can ever know enough about each other to devise rules for each other but also, and more to the point here, she suspects that our efforts to do so may do us a lot of harm. We could ensure full compliance with the rules of justice, but only by unleashing terrific cruelty: ‘there is no possible way to reduce injustice significantly without a massive and effective education in civic virtue for each and every citizen,’ and, Shklar believes, ‘we prefer liberty to this prospect’ (ibid., p. 45). So there has been no evident departure here from the claim that cruelty is the summum malum, a claim that, in Whiteside’s words, does have egalitarian implications because it applies to all. She is objecting to the normal model of justice because of its cruelty. Her objection arises from an egalitarian concern for the fate of those who, a year earlier, in ‘The Liberalism of Fear,’ she refers to as the defenseless: ‘the basic units of political life are […] the weak and the powerful,’ and our primary concern is ‘freedom from the abuse of power and the intimidation of the defenceless’ (1989: 27). In The Faces of Injustice Shklar continues to combine skepticism with monism. There is, therefore, little difference between her argument here and the argument as it is developed earlier in her mature period, in particular, in Ordinary Vices. In the earlier book, she calls for both an approach that does not try to iron out the ‘indecision, incoherence, and inconsistency’ of real life, alongside an attempt to ‘establish general laws or models to explain and judge political conduct,’ which, she concludes, ‘is particularly necessary for assessing the rational consistency and consequences of specific decisions or policy choices’ (1984: 230, 231). Her skepticism explains why we are faced with indecision, incoherence, and inconsistency, including for the reason that moral values are in conflict. As we have seen, we can be faced with a conflict where we ought not to tolerate snobbery, because it is incompatible with the virtues demanded in a democracy, and yet at the same time we ought to tolerate snobbery. However, the reason why we ought to tolerate snobbery is, again as we have already seen, because cruelty is the worst vice: that is, there is a monist explanation for why we should not attempt to impose what we believe to be a rank-ordering of the virtues. Any such ranking of virtues will depart from actuality, and acting on such premises will threaten to make cruelty worse: if we impose one moral doctrine, for example, the moral doctrine of the public ethos in a democracy, we will simply unleash ever greater cruelty. Thus, in Ordinary Vices, Shklar is rejecting attempts to rank-order the virtues, on the skeptical grounds that they ignore the actuality of our particular and varied, conflicting and contradictory, dispositions, values, and ways of life. But as she places cruelty first among the vices, she is setting down a general law and offering a normative model. Although she does not accept Mill’s utilitarian model, for example, nonetheless, like him and other monists, she believes that such models are necessary. In The Faces of Injustice, her emphasis is on questioning the normal model of justice. In Ordinary Vices, her concern is with those who would rank-order the virtues. In both cases, however, her overall orientation is one that combines skepticism with value monism. Indeed, as we have seen, her skepticism is intimately bound up with her particular version of monism: those who insist on transcending the actuality of our lived experience are, she believes, guilty not only of ignoring skeptical doubts but also of making cruelty worse. What this suggests is that, across the various publications of her mature work, Shklar is more or less consistent in combining value monism and skepticism. It is this combination of skepticism and monism that also explains her opposition to paternalism. She objects to paternalistic infringements not only because they ignore these skeptical doubts, but also because they make cruelty worse: they violate the basic norm of the liberalism of fear and for that reason they also violate freedom. As she says in The Faces of Injustice, she objects to certain contemporary ‘theories of primary justice’ because they ‘involve troubling provisions for perpetual public moral education based on dubious psychological theories […] [These] ‘plans for reform of existing institutions often require remaking the citizenry as well. And who exactly is competent to do so?’ (1990: 118–9). Those who ignore these skeptical warnings (such as paternalists) will simply make cruelty worse: ‘we tend to become too sure of our competence and that makes us arrogant, cruel, and tyrannical’ (ibid., p. 27). And so it is by combining skepticism with monism that she hopes to reject paternalism. We are none of us competent enough to make such paternalistic decisions, and any attempt to implement paternalism simply makes cruelty worse and, as a result, violates freedom. 5. Is Cruelty First? In the previous two sections, I defended the novel interpretation of Shklar put forward in this paper, namely that her mature work is a combination of value monism and skepticism, and so it rejects the value pluralism of her early work. Now that we have identified the value monism of her mature work, in this the final section, I turn to a critical analysis of monism itself. Specifically, I ask whether Shklar’s attempts to put forward an argument defending her version of monism is successful. In one important passage from ‘The Liberalism of Fear,’ Shklar contends that the avoidance of cruelty ‘is simply a first principle, an act of moral intuition based on ample moral observation, on which liberalism can be built, especially at present’ (1989: 29–30). One point she is making here is that the avoidance of cruelty is not by itself a sufficient basis for political liberalism, as in addition it must be ‘universalized and recognized as a necessary condition of the dignity of persons’ (ibid., p. 30). But she is also saying that the avoidance of cruelty is a first principle in the sense that, as she argues in the same article, it is the basic norm of the liberalism of fear. However, Shklar cannot simply mean that the avoidance of cruelty is a first principle, that is, one among many first principles. If that was all that was being asserted on its behalf, it would not follow that, when it came into conflict with some other claim, we would be required, as a general rule, to give it priority. If we have two moral claims, and each is merely a first principle (say, the avoidance of cruelty and the promotion of the good of others), nothing is settled about how we are to resolve a conflict between them. The question is whether monists like Shklar can show that a given moral claim is the first principle of moral deliberation, and, as such, will always have priority over other, conflicting claims. There are similar issues with the argument as it is developed in Ordinary Vices. Here she contends that the fear of fear does not require any further justification, because it is irreducible. It can be both the beginning and an end of political institutions such as rights. The first right is to be protected against the fear of cruelty. (1984: 237) There are two separate points being made here and, crucially, I do not think the second of these follows from (is entailed by) the first. The first is that the fear of fear is irreducible: it is an independent source of value, and therefore it cannot be reduced to some other source of value. That is, it is intrinsically wrong to be cruel; and its being wrong is not explained by some other wrong, such as our failure to promote the good of others, for example. Even if this is correct, and I think it is, it does not follow that our first right is to be protected against the fear of cruelty. This is so, firstly, because there are many things that are intrinsically wrong, and we cannot have a right to be protected against all of them. For a start, there are real-world restrictions on what can be guaranteed as a right. Secondly, there are many forms of cruelty, and, again, we cannot have a right to be protected against all of these. Indeed, Shklar herself acknowledges this point, for, as we have seen, her argument is that cruelty sometimes is justified, namely when necessary to prevent greater cruelties. As a monist the question posed for Shklar is, what makes cruelty, as a general rule, worse than other evils, and what makes some cruelties, again as a general rule, worse (greater) than other cruelties? One attempt to answer this question she derives from Montaigne’s thesis that cruelty is first because it explains all the other vices: Cruelty comes first, then lying and treachery. All, every single one, are the children of fear. Fear is not just a vice, or a deformity of our character. It is the underlying psychological and moral medium that makes vices all but unavoidable. (ibid., pp. 241–2) But we must ask, is this a plausible explanation of vice? The fear of cruelty may often explain why people commit some wrongs, such as when they betray others, for example, as Shklar brilliantly illustrates in regard to Stalinist Russia, where betrayal became ‘a habit, a way of life’ (ibid., p. 149). However, it is far from clear that the fear of cruelty explains other vices: in particular, the fear of cruelty does not explain our indifference to the suffering of those who are most vulnerable, the indifference that paternalism (when it is genuine paternalism) strives to overcome. Indeed, to claim that it does is just as questionable as the Christian argument that all vices are explained by pride, a thesis Shklar herself summarily rejects (ibid., pp. 240–1). In any event, attempting to explain all vices by reference to one underlying medium lacks the subtlety and nuance so evident in her skepticism, which, as we have seen, highlights instead the indecision, incoherence, and inconsistency of actual experience. How else can she hope to show that some cruelties are greater than others and that the avoidance of cruelty is the first principle of moral deliberation? A final line of argument concerns the effect that cruelty has on freedom. ‘Systematic fear,’ she argues, ‘is the condition that makes freedom impossible, and it is aroused by the expectation of institutionalized cruelty as by nothing else’ (1989: 29). Developing this point, perhaps she could argue that institutionalized cruelty is worse than other forms of cruelty, and so we have a right to be protected against it, because it makes freedom impossible. But we must remember that when Shklar refers to freedom in her mature work she is employing a monist conception that itself draws on the principle of the avoidance of cruelty. Her argument is that we are free only when freed from cruelty but also that we are not free to be cruel ourselves. Thus, she is not saying that systematic cruelty is abhorrent because it prevents us from doing what we please, but rather because it violates our freedom from cruelty. Arguably, therefore, this particular point adds nothing in defense of her decision to put cruelty first: her conception of freedom presupposes the latter and so cannot be appealed to as independent support for it. As a result, we are left without a compelling case in support of the most ambitious claim from Shklar’s mature work, namely that cruelty is first among the vices and, therefore, that the avoidance of cruelty is the general rule for the resolution of moral conflicts. Conclusions Shklar’s liberalism of fear is a skeptical approach to political thought that places cruelty first among the vices. It is also a highly influential body of work, informing the direction taken by many non-ideal theorists as well as political realists. And yet to see her work simply or solely under these headings is to pass over and to miss what is, arguably, its most important feature. This is the case because, in putting cruelty first among the vices, Shklar adopts a value monist approach to moral conflict and to the conceptualization of freedom. Drawing attention to her value monism is important for a number of reasons. The first is that in moving towards value monism in her mature work Shklar departs quite dramatically from her earlier, value pluralist work. As this shift in her thinking has not been noticed among her commentators, it is important to draw attention to it here. In particular, her early value pluralism provides what up until now has been a largely ignored resource that, in the future, can be harnessed in seeking an alternative direction to that offered by her mature value monism (see Author 2019). The second is that her mature work shows how monism can be combined with skepticism. While her commentators have drawn attention to her skepticism, they have failed to notice her monism, and have presented her work as being clearly opposed to that of other monists, such as Rawls and Mill. My paper has shown just how much the liberalism of fear has in common with what she calls the liberalism of hope. Finally, third, I have shown that Shklar fails to provide a satisfactory justification for her decision to put cruelty first, and so leaves a question hanging over her value monism and therefore also her liberalism of fear. Taken together these points should be a source of serious concern for those whose non-ideal theory or political realism has been informed and shaped by the liberalism of fear. Not only does the liberalism of fear presuppose the type of value monism that is at the center of ideal theory approaches, there is also significant doubts that a philosophical justification can be found for this version of value monism. 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