Judith Shklar, one of the most fascinating thinkers of twentieth-century political philosophy, develops in this book one of the central ideas of her thought, the "liberalism of fear." His argument is based on a negation: he does not propose a liberalism of the best good, but that of the lesser evil. According to the author, it is not possible to achieve good and history proves this: there are many cases in which populations suffer abuses and injustices by their governments. This generates fear in people, and from this experience of fear, which is a universally shared experience, their idea of ​​a non-utopian liberalism is born. In this lucid and forceful work, Shklar defends that -because there will always be situations of vulnerability- the State must offer sufficient guarantees that allow potential victims to protect themselves against abuses of power and, in this way, minimize the inevitable damage (physical or moral) that can be exercised on them.