Power and powerlessness: the liberalism of fear in the twenty-first century

In this book, Edward Hall asks if the liberalism of fear—the negative and cautionary vein of liberal thinking articulated by Judith Shklar, which urges us to prioritize the avoidance of public cruelty—can effectively orient our political thinking in the twenty-first century. Hall systematically engages with Shklar’s writings to offer a defence of liberalism in these terms, and also methodically works through a variety of practical political issues—torture, policing, immigration control, and hate speech—to illustrate how focusing on the minimization of public cruelty can reorient liberal thinking in the twenty-first century. In so doing, Hall upends the suggestion that the liberalism of fear is an outdated species of Cold War Liberalism, arguing that as long as some people are invested with coercive power to exercise over others, there is a likelihood for public cruelty to emerge. Moreover, by examining some central features of politics in the twenty-first century, he offers a series of vital and original recommendations about how we can respond to public cruelty, here and now.