On Political Obligation

by Judith N. Shklar, Samantha Ashenden (Editor), Andreas Hess (Editor)

A compelling set of lectures on political obligation that contributes to ongoing debates in political theory and intellectual history
 
This stimulating collection of lectures by the late Judith Shklar on political obligation is paired with a scholarly introduction that offers an overview of her life, illuminates the connections among her teaching, research, and publications, and explains why her lectures still resonate with us and contribute to current debates in political theory and intellectual history.

Contents

Introduction: Judith Shklar's Lectures on Political Obligation (Samantha Ashenden, Andreas Hess)

Berkeley Lecture: Conscience and Liberty

- Lecture 1: Weizsäcker and Bonhoeffer
- Lecture 2: Antigone
- Lecture 3: Crito
- Lecture 4: Friendship
- Lecture 5: The New Testament and Martin Luther
- Lecture 6: Divided Loyalties
- Lecture 7: Honor and Richard II
- Lecture 8: Tyranny
- Lectures 9-13 (On Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Kant)
- Lecture 14: Hegel and Ideology
- Lecture 15: The Positive State
- Lecture 16: Obedience
- Lecture 17: Military Obedience
- Lecture 18: Loyalty and Betrayal
- Lecture 19: Civil Disobedience in the Nineteenth Century
- Lecture 20: Civil Disobedience in the Twentieth Century
- Lecture 21: Conscientious Objection
- Lecture 22: Consent and Obligation
- Lecture 23: The Bonds of Exile

Appendix I: Why Teach Political Theory
Appendix II: A Note on Sources

Index

Genres: Politics, Philosophy

264 pages, Hardcover

Published March 26, 2019

About the author

Judith Shklar was born as Judita Nisse in Riga, Latvia to Jewish parents. Because of persecution during World War II, her family fled Europe over Japan to the US and finally to Canada in 1941, when she was thirteen. She began her studies at McGill University at the age of 16, receiving bachelor of art and master of art degrees in 1949 and 1950, respectively. She later recalled that the entrance rules to McGill at the time required 750 points for Jews and 600 for everyone else. She received her PhD degree from Harvard University in 1955. Her mentor was the famous political theorist Carl Joachim Friedrich, who, she later recalled, only ever offered her one compliment: "Well, this isn't the usual thesis, but then I did not expect it to be." Eventually she became his successor.

Shklar joined the Harvard faculty in 1956, becoming the first woman to receive tenure in Harvard's Government Department in 1971. During her first year in the job, the Department permitted her to stay at home with her first child while writing her first book. When it came time for her tenure decision, the Department dithered, so Shklar proposed a half-time appointment with effective tenure and the title of lecturer, partly because she had three children by then. In 1980, she was appointed to be the John Cowles Professor of Government. Her friend and colleague Stanley Hoffmann once remarked, “she was by far the biggest star of the department.” Hoffmann also called her "the most devastatingly intelligent person I ever knew here."

During her career, Shklar served in various academic and professional capacities. For example, she was active in the committee that integrated the American Repertory Theater into the Harvard community.

Throughout her life, Judith Shklar was known as "Dita." She and her husband, Gerald Shklar, had three children, David, Michael, and Ruth

Reviews

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Richard Daggerand David Lefkowitz's The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on political obligation (https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/s...), the subject is succintly introduced as:

To have a political obligation is to have a moral duty to obey the laws of one's country or state [...] But how does one acquire such an obligation, and how many people have really done what is necessary to acquire it? Or is political obligation more a matter of being than of doing — that is, of simply being a member of the country or state in question?

This book contains Judith Shklar's fascinating 1992 Harvard undergraduate lectures on political obligation, which were delivered just befor her death that same year. Most of the lectures were written out in full but some were just sketched out -in fact according to the editors who compiled and (briefly) annotated the lectures, Shklar would probably not have liked having her notes published at all -which would have been lamentable all of us who would have had no chance to attend her lectures.

Shklar kicks off with two contrasting, wonderful and thought-provoking cases from Nazi Germany:

I chose Weizsäckaer and Bonhoeffer because their backgrounds were just about identical [...One...] thought that Nazism was so evil that he ought not to cooperate with it, and once the war broke out that he should resist its war aims and destroy it. Weizsäcker, on the other hand, supported it to the last hour. ....When he was posted to Norway he considered resigning b]ut he decided not to do so because he wanted to act as a buffer between the Nazi government and the old, traditional Foreign Office {...H]e would as he put it “stay at his post” and try to do his best to maintain good relations between Germany and other nations.

Shklar closely follows and recounts Weizsäcker's arguments, as set forth in his memoirs, written after he was tried for war crimes. The dilemma both men confronted is still a very pertinent one for those who find themselves up against an unjust and despotical government and this is what makes the lecture so fascinating.

Once the reader is hooked by the first lecture, Shklar covers key Anciet Greek literature and philosophy relevant to the subject: Sophocles Antigone play, Plato's description of Socrates decision to abide by the athenian's decision to condemn him to death and Aristoteles ideas on the loyalty due friends especially when confronted with political obligations (lectures 2, 3 and 4). Shlar then carefully looks at what the New Testament has to say about political obligation and the changing relationship between the obligation to obey the Church, aristocratic honor and fealty due the King, that is to say the changing landscape of the (initially religiously based) loyalty to King and the law and its shift to a political justification. This leads her to examine the case of Thomas Becket's murder, Shakespeare's Richard II, and the trial against Charles I that led to his decapitation. Unfortunately, the chapter sketched out for Hobbes, the two page outlines for Locke, Hume and Rousseau the one page of keywords for her Kant lecture leave out key ideas of how political obligation underlies or derives or is problematic from the point of view of natural rights, social contract theory, utilitarianism or categorical imperatives. I found Chapter 14, Hegel and Ideology to be one of the best in the book, or at least one of the most enlightening on one of the most, if not the most, difficult to understand philosophers included in the book.

The rest of the chapters have a more contemporary ring to them -Shklar is fascinated by 19th century discussions and positions on political obligations in relation to slavery and, 19th and 20th century post-Civil Way, discrimination against Afroamericans in the USA. The historical thread in her lectures is tempered by a number of important related topics in political obligation, such as military obedience, obedience to a Church, civil disobedience, conscientious objection, betrayal, consent and the political obligation of exiles. Most of the last 8 chapters of the 23 chapters are, in my opinion clearly five star chapters worth reading, analyzing and re-reading.

Personal note: Judith Shklar's book make me wonder how many of her ideas or analysis could be applied to political, legal, social and economic obligations in the context of algorithmic injustice or Shoshana Zuboff's ideas about surveillance capitalism.

The book includes an appendix on Shlar's position on the teaching of political theory at the university level and, in her opinion, the mistaken emphasis in universities on research at the cost of teaching and on hiring star media performers at the cost of teachers to develop students' critical thinking skills.

In short, an outstanding book I am extremely grateful to have come across and which I recommend whole-heartedly to any reader interested in the subject.