When Weber insists that scholars must choose between Stories, he is promoting what he calls an ethics of responsibility. Nowadays, liberal scholars are hard pressed to make such choices, because they do not share Stories of their own. They are humanists but, unlike the Founders, they are not united by commitment to, for example, a framework of natural law principles. In these circumstances, Judith Shklar proposed that instead of favoring a particular Story, liberals should make common cause by opposing instances of cruelty and tyranny. In this sense, they should be “philosophes” rather than philosophers.