Abstract
One question raised by the political philosophy of Judith Shklar is whether the prevention of cruelty and injustice can be conceived in a purely negativistic manner. This paper shows, by critically reconstructing Shklar’s theory, that the attempt to identify cruelty and injustice in a negativistic way remains contradictory. Contrasting this theory with Ranciere’s concept of the political underscores this point (1). The avoidance of cruelty, which is partly based on political judgments, presupposes a specific skeptical attitude, namely one that is capable of affirming unregulated doubts (2). These unregulated doubts are inseparably aesthetic and political: not only making tangible the fractures within the given normative frame, but also keeping alive the sense for injustice, which always remains in need of renewal (3).
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