Ezra's Bookshelf

Ordinary Vices

by Judith N. Shklar · 290 pages · ~5.5 hrs

PhilosophyPolitics & Government

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Judith Shklar examines what she calls the 'ordinary vices'—cruelty, hypocrisy, snobbery, betrayal, and misanthropy—through readings of literature from Moliere to Montaigne to Hawthorne to Conrad. Shklar, a political theorist who fled Nazi Germany as a child, is interested not in systematic ethics but in the specific textures of moral life. She argues that liberalism, properly understood, 'puts cruelty first'—that is, it recognizes cruelty as the worst thing humans do to each other and organizes political life accordingly. This places her at odds with philosophers who emphasize abstract principles or virtue ethics focused on character perfection. Shklar's method is literary: she treats novels and plays as thought experiments that reveal what morality looks like in practice. Her chapter on hypocrisy is particularly influential, distinguishing between hypocrites who know they are deceiving and those who have deceived themselves. Shklar writes with intelligence, wit, and moral seriousness, never reducing complex phenomena to simple formulas. The book is both a work of political philosophy and a reader's guide to thinking about character and conduct. It remains one of the most original contributions to liberal thought of its era.

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