Volume 62, Issue 4

During World War I Nietzsche, on the one hand, was blamed for German militarism in Anglo-American and French writings, and, on the other hand, became celebrated as a spiritual hero of German culture and greatness. This essay delivers a critique of simplistic images of Nietzsche’s philosophy in the context of war by analyzing essentials of his mature work (“will to power” etc.). Additionally, the German intellectual scene is confronted with Nietzsche’s denouncement of nationalism, anti-Semitism, Christianity, socialism in order to deny the existence of a definitive Nietzschean war position. Finally, Nietzsche’s European idea is reflected in light of Max Weber’s comments on World War I and his political theory. The essay concludes that the problem of how to relate philosophical thinking to realities of historical development deserves further inquiry.

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.

In the reflections of Judith Shklar’s ‘Liberalism of fear’ we find the stimulating insight that a theory of freedom can find its main issue in the injury of the human individual. This concept also provides an opening to thinking of the political in general. I would like to elucidate this approach in my essay following the theory of ‘negative freedom’ in the thought of Isaiah Berlin. The reflections of Shklar make for an impressively consistent contribution to theoretical foundation of freedom. While a thorough comprehension evidences a lack of a socio-philosophical basis, it is necessary if we are to find a theory of freedom grounded in a deeply differentiated social and political practice.

Judith Shklar’s “negative” politics made her a vigilant critic of other modes of liberalism. In what she called her “favorite” book, Legalism (1964), Shklar took up legal philosophy, and it remains one of the most neglected corners of her oeuvre. And yet it is highly relevant today, because she took as her test case for legal philosophy the inter¬national political trials that took place after World War II at Nuremberg and Tokyo. This essay reconstructs her narrow and instrumentalist theory of law, which led her to be a profound critic of Hans Kelsen’s positivism but also of its traditional rival, which has now taken the form of a jurisprudence of moral principle (and which Shklar ultimately associated with Ronald Dworkin). The contemporary pertinence of her thought lies perhaps most of all in the realist strictures that it places upon internalist accounts of law (whether positivist or normative) and especially in the much-debated current return to international justice, in the form of the International Criminal Court and related institutions. Her remarks on Nuremberg show why her negative politics deserve a place of honor in current debates about international justice.

One question raised by the political philosophy of Judith Shklar is whether the prevention of cruelty and injustice can be conceived in a purely negativistic manner. This paper shows, by critically reconstructing Shklar’s theory, that the attempt to identify cruelty and injustice in a negativistic way remains contradictory. Contrasting this theory with Ranciere’s concept of the political underscores this point (1). The avoidance of cruelty, which is partly based on political judgments, presupposes a specific skeptical attitude, namely one that is capable of affirming unregulated doubts (2). These unregulated doubts are inseparably aesthetic and political: not only making tangible the fractures within the given normative frame, but also keeping alive the sense for injustice, which always remains in need of renewal (3).

In my paper I reconstruct J. Shklar’s arguments against legalistic positions which try to reduce the moral point of view to a model of legitimizing and applying rules. I emphasize in particular the relevance of her arguments for current metaethical debates. The paper shows that Shklar’s thought comes close to some arguments of S. Cavell, who locates the problem of how to define the relation between a rule and a case at the very center of ethical reflection. Finally I discuss how Shklar’s scepticism about any objective moral point of view corresponds with two other negativistic motives of her philosophy: a) her accusation that traditional theories of justice make invisible the perspective of the victims of injustice, and b) her thesis that injustice cannot be reduced to “a prelude, a rejection, and a collapse of justice.”

The article’s main focus is education in the field of philosophy in the Middle East, exemplified by the situation in the United Arab Emirates. The specific frameworks for teaching philosophy in the region are highlighted along with how to practically deal with ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of nature, and the gender issue. It is recommended also for ‘Western’ philosophers to engage in curriculum development for the Middle East, thereby taking regional values into account.