Consent and Obligation

In this short chapter, which mainly consist of board notes which accompanied her lectures, the reader is given a hint at what Shklar intended to argue: the complex relationship between democracy, tacit consent, law-bound rule, justice, and public conduct.

The Positive State

In this chapter Shklar identifies the problems that arise with the development of industrial capitalism. She traces the emergence of social obligations to fellow citizens and the new concerns this raised, paying particular attention to the way the English idealist T.H. Green addressed these issues. She discusses the thinking behind the new welfare state and the rising popularity of social norms and obligations, often also expressed in terms of “the common good,” “positive rights,” and “the obligation to be just.”

Conscience and Liberty

The Berkeley lecture on Conscience and Liberty was given by Shklar as a talk to faculty and students in 1990. This was almost two years before she delivered the lectures on political obligation to her students at Harvard. This lecture offers a condensed version of the lectures and links them to Shklar’s own political-theoretical development at this moment in time.