Obyčejné neřesti

The cardinal or chief sins, together with their contrasting virtues, were one of the starting points of moral and political thought of Western civilization. However, with the advent of modern politics some non-canonical distortions of human nature, for which Judith Shklar borrows Montaigne's term 'ordinary vices', have increasingly been emerging from their shadows. Cruelty, hypocrisy, snobbery, betrayal and misanthropy are not only straightforward evils; they demonstrate the ambiguity and demanding nature of liberal morality, willing to accept the contradictions and dangers flowing from personal freedom. Ordinary vices are interwoven into a wide variety of ways in which both rulers and subjects act, and in order to represent this multiplicity Shklar draws on a wide range of authors including Montaigne, Montesquieu and Nietzsche, as well as Shakespeare, Dickens, Hawthorne and Jane Austen. Instead of 'grand theory', these vices require an interest in apparent minutiae, revealing the real and often contradictory motivations of all those who participate in social life.