Geschichte, Negativismus und Skepsis als Herausforderungen politischer Theorie: Judith N. Shklar

Abstract

Abstract This introduction to the special issue on Judith N. Shklar starts with a brief outline of her early life, her emigration, and the academic circumstances of and influences on her major works. A second part elucidates how the negativism and skepticism that constitute the central tenets of her political thought can best be described as a “phenomenology of the vulnerability of the Other.” Her emphasis on active historical remembrance, wariness towards communitarianism, and distrust of overly harmonious models of society puts her in the company of recent theories of political dissensus. A final look at the problems arising from her negativism identifies the weak spots in Shklar’s argument, drawing out the difficulty of institutionalizing such a position and the internal incoherence of a perspective that historically is aimed at the twentieth century and theoretically at the seventeenth.