ABSTRACT
Drawing on Shklar’s autobiography, her correspondence, a long conversation with her husband, and an interview she gave to Judith Walzer, this chapter reconstructs the most salient features of Judith Shklar’s life. Complementary to Andreas Hess’s lengthier biography, this chapter is meant to set the stage for Shklar’s unique re-articulation of liberalism as a liberalism of permanent minorities. Shklar fled Latvia as a child to escape Nazi and Latvian nationalists’ persecution of Jews, to become along with many others one of the distinguished Jewish émigrés who left a mark on the intellectual life of the United States in the aftermath of World War II.
