Ugly Attachments: Judith Shklar and the Unattractive Face of Solidarity

Abstract

ABSTRACT Democratic politics constituted a challenging paradox for addressing international justice and injustice for Judith Shklar. It could be a primary source of redressing injustice in its capacity to mobilize international society against the worst kinds of cruelty suffered by international victims – refugees, exiles, immigrants, and victims of wars. Yet the link between democratic politics and nationalism also constituted a primary source of international injustice towards those, on either side of national borders, with whom democratic majorities did not identify and who became grist to the mill of democratic unity forged in entirely irrational hostility towards others. This was why Shklar strenuously criticised calls to highly participatory forms of democracy: the obverse of extreme democratic tightness was extreme hostility towards out-groups on either side of national borders. Shklar's aversion to nationalism had a status approaching her view of cruelty as the worst vice, for the irrational passions it unleashed were a great source precisely of that cruelty. A focus on international justice and injustice in Shklar's thought accordingly demands concertedexplorations of the part that domestic democratic politics, and especially democratic nationalism, plays in international politics.