Word: shklar
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Shklar's implicit message is just as interesting. Liberalism's opponents, she suggests, should not pretend to hold a monopoly on morality. While liberalism may suffer from its own delicacies, it is far from a moral free for all. She writes, "Liberalism is in fact extremely difficult and constraining--for those who cannot endure contradiction, complexity, diversity, and the risks of freedom...
...Shklar has little use for the transparent heroics of conservative rhetoric, we are left to our own political devices, honest and ordinary as they may be, Freed from nostalgia's extremism, we are asked to begin our "poor but epic battle" vice, Shklar's "liberal government for bad characters" is no sure thing; her virtue is no slouch. It has got to be fought for freely-and in spite of ourselves...
...PLAYWRIGHT Moliere, to whom Shklar often turns in her book, wrote that men die less from their illnesses than from the remedies prescribed. Amidst this age's fearful complexity, many of us look for the easier nooks of community, authority and perfectibility. We have neither the stomach, nor sensibility, for Shklar's patient subtlety. She survives her choice over cruelty, but the book lives as an ambiguous challenge to our certainties...
...frustration that nags us in the face of the book's skepticism may be indicative of our more general frustrations with liberalism's inconclusive relevancy--frustration heightened this election year. Shklar seems to revel in such feelings. In Ordinary Vices, she asks us to do the same--while we are still free...
...Judith Shklar, John Cowles Professor of Government, is learning how to type. Every word of Ordinary Vices was written in pencil--"six times over." Shklar was interviewed recently about her book and her work here at Harvard, a few of her responses follow...