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Ethics described Judith Shklar as “a towering presence” at Harvard for decades, an “influential teacher and mentor to many of the best known political theorists working today in the United States.” One of this century’s most important liberal scholars, she is remembered for her “sharp intellect, forceful personality, and passionate intellectual honesty and curiosity.” Political Thought and Political Thinkers makes startlingly clear her role in the reinvigoration of liberal theory that has been taking place over the last two decades. This second volume of Shklar’s work—which follows the 1997 publication of Redeeming American Political Thought—brings together heretofore uncollected (and several unpublished) essays on a number of themes, including the place of the intellect in the modern political world and the dangers of identity politics. While many of these essays have been previously published, they remain far from accessible. In collecting the work scattered over the past forty years in journals and other publications, noted political theorist Stanley Hoffmann provides an essential guide to Shklar’s thought, complemented by George Kateb’s comprehensive introduction to her work. Hoffmann’s selection, which includes Shklar’s classic essay “The Liberalism of Fear,” showcases her distinctive defense of liberalism and follows her explorations in this history of moral and political thought as she engages with Bergson, Arendt, and Rousseau. Political Thought and Political Thinkers displays one of the century’s most compelling and flexible intellects in action and is the definitive collection of her work on European history and thinkers. 

Contents: I. Learning about Politics: 1. The Liberalism of Fear. 2. Political Theory and the Rule of Law. 3. Obligation, Loyalty, Exile. 4. The Bonds of Exile. II. Learning about Thought: 1. Squaring the Hermeneutic Circle. 2. Politics and the Intellect. 3. Learning without Knowing. Subversive Genealogies. 4. The Political Theory of Utopia: From Melancholy to Nostalgia. 5. What Is the Use of Utopia?. III. Learning about Thinkers: 1. Poetry and the Political Imagination in Pope’s An Essay on Man. 2. Ideology Hunting: The Case of James Harrington. 3. Montesquieu and the New Republicanism. 4. Reading the Social Contract. 5. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Equality. 6. Jean D’Alembert and the Rehabilitation of History. 7. Bergson and the Politics of Intuition. 8. Nineteen Eighty-Four: Should Political Theory Care?. 9. Rethinking the Past. 10. Hannah Arendt as Pariah. 11. The Work of Michael Walzer.