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Terrorism, Torture, Genocide , "philosophers are giving sustained attention to that precise secular sense of 'evil' in which it refers to especially heinous wrongs " p. Card's own understanding of evil , as she presents it, is not limited to yet another analysis of heinous wrongs as the sole or most significant instances of evil.
Instead she attempts—successfully—to develop a concept of evil that allows us not only to speak to the differing degrees of evil, but also to include within its theoretical confines various kinds of evil. Of course, Card examines the meaning and extension of degrees of evil, as well, and analyzes lesser wrongs, radical evils , and diabolical evils for each of which she offers clear definitions and illustrative examples ; her main interest, however, revolves around the analytical investigation into the distinction between evil and lesser wrongs pp.
Within the discussion of this distinction, she works toward a conclusive understanding of the logical essence of the idea of evil.
Considers application of the theory of evil to environmental issues Applies the concepts of terrorism and torture to women's experiences with rape and domestic violence Revisits the controversy over the death penalty in the US. But a reviewer argues that we need to explain the famine, rather, in terms of a "collision of disasters" in wartime Joseph Lelyveld, "Did Churchill Let Them Starve? Philosophy of social science Philosophy texts Political philosophy Renaissance philosophy Twentieth-century philosophy. Science Logic and Mathematics. Poverty and Morality Religious and Secular Perspectives.
One of Card's motivations to search for the meaning of evil beyond the discussion of its degrees is her observation that "when an evil is [too] common, it is easy for many not to perceive it as an evil" p. Another is her fear that, in light of true or merely presumed heinous wrongs, "common-sense" judgment p.
Card expresses her hopes "that atrocity victims and governments can learn to respond without doing further evil" p. Her intention, therefore, is to develop a philosophical concept of evil that, in its practical application, is apt to curb misguided enthusiasm, and—once its theoretical extension is accepted as a secular, yet moral criterion for action—is capable of strengthening democratic values p.
A Theory of Evil " p. In the earlier work, she identified evils as "reasonably foreseeable intolerable harms produced by culpable wrongdoing" p. In her new book, she substantially modifies her Atrocity Paradigm concept of evil and explains: This change from the culpability of the wrongdoing to its inexcusability advances her model beyond her already impressive findings in The Atrocity Paradigm.
The expansion of evil as "culpable wrong doing " to evil as an "inexcusable wrong " allows Card to shift her attention from the evildoer and his motives to the completed evil feat and its victim. Card explains the meaning of "inexcusability" in terms of the victim's complete loss of [End Page ] dignity and humanity, or the "major deprivations of basics that make a life possible and tolerable or decent" p.
Does this leave much space for excuses to operate in? If an event is intolerable, can those who bring it about have any excuse at all? One relevant case discussed here is that of a choice between terrible options, so that bringing one of them about may be preferable to bringing about the other -- enslaving prisoners of war might be better than killing them We are then said to be "tolerating" an evil, excusably or justifiably.
This leads to the seemingly odd result that we are said to be tolerating the intolerable. But is the enslavement of prisoners still to be counted as an evil, on Card's own definition? If those who propose it are indeed motivated by the consideration that it is better than killing, they have a good if tragic excuse, and so enslavement does not meet the twin criteria of intolerableness and inexcusability; if it is still an evil then intolerableness, it would seem, is sufficient for its definition. Card denies, however, that the agent's perspective can be set aside in this way.
She rejects the view that people who perform the same action for different reasons are equally blamable because culpable for the same thing, for they are culpable in lacking an excuse and blamable in light of "their reasons, objectives, circumstances, faults" I am not sure that we can vary blame on the basis of circumstances and faults, on Card's own argument cited above that human weakness does not count. As for reasons and objectives, these Card says affect degrees of blameworthiness.
They do so, but may they not do more than that? I am not sure that we can always identify things that "no one should have to suffer" without knowing the reasons for their suffering. Here is an example: That, of course, would make it indisputably evil. But a reviewer argues that we need to explain the famine, rather, in terms of a "collision of disasters" in wartime Joseph Lelyveld, "Did Churchill Let Them Starve? Can we say that "no one should have to suffer" the effects of a collision of wartime disasters?
We would of course say that if we thought that war itself was evil in the full Cardian sense. But that only makes the point that we may not always know how to describe the "intolerability" of outcomes independently of our explanations of them and of our moral assessment of the various agents' reasons.
There is at least one case, however, in which both agential and consequential tests are met -- interestingly, it is the case that comes closest to the vulgar understanding of evil. This is the case of "diabolical" evil.
Card rejects Kant's view that it applies only to people who act for the sake of acting evilly. There is no evidence that history's moral monsters acted for the sake of being evil, Card rightly says 57 , and she substitutes "doing one evil for the sake of another" ibid.
So it is essential to the diabolical evilness of an act that what it aims at should be intolerable in itself, that is, intolerable independently of the motive for bringing it about. One notable classical point of reference, St Augustine's youthful episode of trivial theft -- "the pleasure lay not in the pears; it lay in the evil deed itself" Confessions , II. But even if we insist that we stop well short of including juvenile thefts of fruit, would there not be some interaction between the wrong done and the wrong for the sake of which it is done?
Card may hint briefly at such an interaction in noting, in connection with the "Nero" version of diabolical evil that she isolates, the "wildly disproportionate" relation between means and ends This bears little weight in her account, but perhaps it should bear more? Proportionality may be a morally relevant feature in that our assessment of what is intolerable may have to depend on the reasons for subjecting people to it, and, conversely, whether or not the reasons are good may have to depend on the costs, to others, of acting on them.
Even though we have a partial list of things that mustn't be done to anyone -- and rape would be high on that list -- we don't have a complete one, nor do we have any sort of a list of things that can be pursued at any cost, as opposed to things that it would be good to do if the cost were not excessive.