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Reviewed by:
  • Confronting Evils: Terrorism, Torture, Genocide
  • Peter Böhm
Confronting Evils: Terrorism, Torture, Genocide, Claudia Card (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), xix + 329 pp., paperback, $35.00, electronic version available.

"Increasingly since 9/11," Claudia Card writes near the beginning of her recent study Confronting Evils: Terrorism, Torture, Genocide, "philosophers are giving sustained attention to that precise secular sense of 'evil' in which it refers to especially heinous wrongs" (p. 3, emphasis added). 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. 46ff). Within the discussion of this distinction, she works toward a conclusive understanding of the logical essence of the idea of evil. 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. 17). Another is her fear that, in light of true or merely presumed heinous wrongs, "common-sense" judgment (p. 36) may all too quickly assume the role of some "moral agency" (p. 38), justifying retaliation, thereby causing further evil (p. 3). Card expresses her hopes "that atrocity victims and governments can learn to respond without doing further evil" (p. 3). 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. 204) and the values of humanity (p. 294).

In Confronting Evils, Card "follows up on work that [she] began in The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil" (2002) (p. xi). In the earlier work, she identified evils as "reasonably foreseeable intolerable harms produced by culpable wrongdoing" (p. 5). In her new book, she substantially modifies her Atrocity Paradigm concept of evil and explains: "Evils are reasonably foreseeable intolerable harms produced by inexcusable wrongs" (p. 16). 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 wrongdoing" 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 159] dignity and humanity, or the "major deprivations of basics that make a life possible and tolerable or decent" (p. 105).

The shift of interest within the triad of evildoer/evil deed/object of perpetration and the emphasis on the concerns of the victim (and his/her moral right to a decent life and death [p. 105]) allow Card in the second part of her study to present much-needed insights into (and clarifications of) the meanings of terrorism, torture, and genocide. Card convincingly demonstrates that terrorism, torture, and genocide—as paradigms of evil—are not only trademarks of dictatorial regimes, but surprisingly often can also be detected in policies and institutions of democratic governments. Card observes that governments otherwise deeply rooted in sound democratic traditions resort to political and legal justifications or definitions (p. 176) to legitimize their "lawful policy" (p. 183) despite those policies' moral dubiousness. As an example, she notes that "the U.S. administration of G.W. Bush sidestepped issues of justification to focus on definition. Its argument was that although certain forms of coercive interrogation may be cruel, inhuman, or degrading, they fall short of torture, and so...

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