Ordinary Vices - Judith Shklar

Judith Shklar’s ideas are a great example of modern useable philosophy - easily understandable and readily applicable to real-life situations. It's about morality for individuals. Her philosophy is in the category of virtue ethics (as opposed to utilitarian and deontological ethics, in philosophy terms), but which basically means that it emphasizes common human characteristics rather than consequences or rules.

Shklar was a professor of political philosophy who taught at Harvard until her death in 1992. She is known for focusing on aspects of injustice rather than justice, which has the effect of subtly changing the objectives of her message and making it more intimate & personal. Her best known book is Ordinary Vices, in which she analyzes cruelty, snobbery, betrayal and hypocrisy. And she believes that cruelty is actually the worst of these.

Let’s listen to a podcast (45 mins) about Shklar’s ideas by David Runciman, Professor of Politics at the University of Cambridge until just this year. He produced this series of podcasts - Talking Politics: History of Ideas - during the Covid pandemic and the one we’ll use as our source is the last in that series (and his favorite, as he says):

https://shows.acast.com/history-of-ideas/episodes/shklaronhypocrisy

~Michael