The purpose of this article is to present a refined version of Judith Shklar’s liberalism of fear — namely: the liberalism of prudence. After having sketched the strengths and weaknesses of Shklar’s proposal, I give a rough outline of the liberalism of prudence and show how it satisfies Shklar’s minimalist program better than Shklar’s own version of liberalism. Then I show how the liberalism of prudence sets us free from the dilemma brought to us by the postrawlsian liberal tradition: either we justify liberalism on a moral basis, thus abandoning neutrality; or we justify it on a Hobbesian realistic basis, thus turning it into a hostage to changing power games. At last, I examine how the liberalism of prudence’s apparent main drawback — its programmatic asceticism — is in fact its main virtue.
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