Judith Shklar on democracy and citizenship

The tenth session of the EPLab Permanent Seminar will be led by Prof. Robin Douglass (King’s College London), who will talk about “Judith Shklar on democracy and citizenship” (pre-circulated paper). The session will take place on 14 September, at 10:30, in room A209 at NOVA FCSH (Berna Campus), at a venue to be confirmed, and will be held in English.

Abstract

In the Faces of Injustice, Judith Shklar argues that constitutional democracy is the best political response to the problem of injustice. She turns to Jean-Jacques Rousseau both to theorise a distinctively democratic sense of injustice and to explain how a process of continuous consent could mitigate the problems to which it gives rise. This invocation of Rousseau is somewhat puzzling, however, as elsewhere she repeatedly highlights the deeply illiberal implications of his republican vision. This paper reveals how Shklar’s analysis of the ways in which democratic institutions and citizenship can (and cannot) address the problem of injustice is shaped by her engagement with Rousseau. For Shklar, the only way of overcoming that problem entirely would be along the lines proposed by Rousseau, yet his solution is incompatible with the pluralism that characterises modern societies and would require a transformative politics that liberals have good reason to fear. One implication is that liberal societies must learn to live with a considerable amount of injustice.

The seminar will be followed by a session in the EPLab Masterclass Series, also featuring Robin Douglass, on “What can Judith Shklar teach us about how to do political theory?”. More information is available here.