Judith Shklar
| Judith N. Shklar | |
|---|---|
| Born |
September 24, 1928 Riga, Latvia |
| Died | September 17, 1992 (aged 63) Cambridge, Massachusetts |
| Citizenship | American |
| Fields | Political science |
| Institutions | Harvard University |
| Alma mater |
McGill University Harvard University |
Judith Nisse Shklar (September 24, 1928 – September 17, 1992) was a political theorist, and worked at Harvard University as the John Cowles Professor of Government.
Judith Shklar was born in Riga, Latvia to Jewish parents who fled there from World War II when she was thirteen. She graduated from McGill University and received B.A and M.A. degrees in 1949 and 1950. She received her Ph.D degree from Harvard University in 1955.
After graduation, Shklar became a faculty member at Harvard University and spent her entire academic career there. She was the first tenured woman in Harvard's Government Department. She was also president of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy and the first woman president of the American Political Science Association (1989 - 1990).
She was a renowned teacher and advisor, and many of her former students contributed to a volume of essays on her thought, Liberalism Without Illusions, edited by Bernard Yack. Among her celebrated former students are Amy Gutmann, Patrick T. Riley, Nancy Rosenblum, Bernard Yack, and Tracy Strong.
Shklar's thought centered on two main ideas. The first being that cruelty is the greatest evil, which she touches on in her essay The Liberalism of Fear (1989) and elaborates more fully in Putting Cruelty First, an essay in Ordinary Vices. Her second main idea concerns the "liberalism of fear" and is founded on her view that cruelty is the greatest evil and that governments are prone to abuse the "inevitable inequalities in power" that result from political organization. Based on these views she advocates constitutional democracy, which she sees as flawed, but still the best form of government possible, because it protects people from the abuses of the more powerful by restricting government and by dispersing power among a "multiplicity of politically active groups"
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