Complacent and conservative? Redeeming the Liberalism of Fear

This article seeks to correct several prominent misreadings of Judith Shklar’s liberalism of fear in recent scholarship. By exploring and developing overlooked elements of Shklar’s thought, I argue that the liberalism of fear motivates a perspective on the political world that can spur more clear-eyed political reflection on concrete realities in order to improve the plight of the weak and the powerless. I illustrate that this fatally compromises the interpretative line recently defended by critics who position themselves to Shklar’s left which regards the liberalism of fear as a stifling and complacent form of cold war liberalism.