Abstract
One is hard-pressed to find a concept to match, let alone surpass, autonomy in its status as the crowning glory of liberal political philosophy. Variants of liberalism associated with its major thinkers engage in a drawn-out quarrel over how best to honor this amazing “invention” of autonomy.1 This dispute is over the accenting of the autos or the nomos: the self as the giver of, or the given to, law; or the law, the giving or givenness of which makes possible the self. The former corresponds to a liberal politics invested in creating the potential “lawgivers” capable of valuing and deploying this right; the latter, to the premise of rights as ends in themselves prior to the virtues and capabilities of individuals.
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Notes
J. B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Judith N. Shklar, “A Life of Learning,” in Liberalism Without Illusions: Essays on Liberal Theory and the Political Vision of Judith N. Shklar, ed. Bernard Yack (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 273, 279.
Judith N. Shklar, Legalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 5.
Judith N. Shklar, “The Liberalism of Fear,” in Political Thought and Political Thinkers, ed. Stanley Hoffmann (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 3.
Stanley Hoffmann, “Preface,” in Liberalism Without Illusions: Essays on Liberal Theory and the Political Vision of Judith N. Shklar, ed. Bernard Yack (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), x.
Compare Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism Before its Triumph (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668, ed. E. M. Curley (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994), part I, chap. 5, 22.
Sheldon S. Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Boston: Little Brown, 1960), 328.
See also John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C. B. Macpher-son (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980)
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995).
David Hume, Four Dissertations. i. The Natural History of Religion, ii. Of the Passions. iii. Of Tragedy, iv. Of the Standard of Taste (London: Printed for A. Millar, 1757).
Páll S. Árdal, Passion and Value in Hume’s Treatise (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 1989).
Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 71, Ak. 249.
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in Selected Writings, ed. Lawrence Hugh Simon (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994), 1–26 (especially 15–18).
Tracy B. Strong, Jean Jacques Rousseau: The Politics of the Ordinary (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994), 15.
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 62, 142.
John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 59.
Iris Murdoch, Sartre, Romantic Rationalist, 1st ed. (New York: Viking Press, 1987), 31;
Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason: Theory of Practical Ensembles, trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith (New York: Verso, 2004), 815.
Joel Feinberg, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law: Harm to Others, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 33–34.
Judith N. Shklar, Ordinary Vices (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1984), 44.
John Kekes, “Cruelty and Liberalism,” Ethics 106 (1996): 837.
See also Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989);
Annette C. Baier, “Moralism and Cruelty: Reflections on Hume and Kant,” Ethics 103 (1993): 436–57;
William A. Galston, “Two Concepts of Liberalism,” Ethics 105 (1995): 516–34;
William A. Galston, “Liberal Virtues,” American Political Science Review 82 (1988): 1277–90;
Seyla Benhabib, “Judith Shklar’s Dystopic Liberalism,” in Liberalism Without Illusions: Essays on Liberal Theory and the Political Vision of Judith N. Shklar, ed. Bernard Yack (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 57.
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© 2010 Asma Abbas
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Abbas, A. (2010). Incorporating the Victim. In: Liberalism and Human Suffering. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230113541_2
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