the atrocity paradigm a theory of evil sep 2002

THE ATROCITY PARADIGM This page intentionally left blank The Atrocity Paradigm A Theory of Evil CLAUDIA CARD 1 2002 3 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and an associated company in Berlin Copyright © 2002 by Claudia Card Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Card, Claudia. The atrocity paradigm : a theory of evil / Claudia Card. p. cm. ISBN 0-19-514508-9 1. Good and evil. I. Title. BJ1401 .C29 2002 170—dc21 2001036610 987654321 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To my teachers, whose example and encouragement have elicited my best efforts: Ruby Healy Marquardt (1891–1976) Marjorie Glass Pinkerton Marcus George Singer John Rawls Lorna Smith Benjamin This page intentionally left blank Preface Four decades of philosophical work in ethics have engaged me with varieties of evil. It began with an undergraduate honors thesis on punishment, which was followed by a Ph.D. dissertation on that topic, essays on mercy and retribu- tion, and a grant to study the U.S. penitentiary system. Besides “Crime and Punishment” courses, I also teach or have taught Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietz- sche, and the philosophy of religion, all with a central focus on evil. The mid-1970s brought an encounter with the radical feminist essays of Marilyn Frye, which worked a revolution in my approaches to everything. I affiliated with Women’s Studies and developed three courses in feminist phi- losophy. My research interests expanded to take in rape, atrocities of domestic violence and child abuse, histories of slavery, lynching, and segregation, and, thanks to pioneering work by Andrea Dworkin and Mary Daly, histories of witch burnings, foot binding, sati, and the imposed female genital surgeries of clitoridectomy and infibulation. For a decade I taught a multicultural Women’s Studies course on lesbian culture from Sappho to the present. (One could do that in the late ’70s and early ’80s before research in the field mushroomed.) I began work on horizon- tal violence in my Lesbian Choices (1995) and on the impact of social institu- tions and intimate relationships on moral character development and was struck, even more than in my work on mercy, by the pervasiveness of what Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel taught us to call “moral luck.” My book The Unnatural Lottery: Character and Moral Luck (1996) initiated a struggle to come to terms with the idea of moral responsibility under oppression. That struggle continues in this book, especially in chapters 3, 4, 9, and 10. When a colleague who taught environmental ethics left my department in the late 1980s, I affiliated with the university’s Institute for Environmental Studies. For a decade I taught a large cross-listed course that included atten- tion to environmental racism, pesticides, factory farms, global warming, and destruction of natural habitats. Evils, I became convinced, are done to many living beings, not just people or even just sentient beings. The theory of evil offered in this book is intended to accommodate that idea, although I do not here develop the wider applications. This coming fall I will teach for the second time my newest course, “Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust,” cross-listed with Jewish Studies. This course returns me to issues of punishment and such related matters as restitution, reparations, apology, forgiveness, and mercy. But now they are contextualized in large-scale international atrocities rather than in the more manageable framework of a single state or institution dealing with simpler deeds and remedies. After years of reflecting on different evils, it seemed finally time to con- front the concept of evil head-on. I wanted to articulate an ethical analysis of what makes deeds, people, relationships, practices, intentions, and motives evil and use that analysis to begin a more general pursuit of ethical questions regarding what to do about evils and how best to live with them. These are the ambitious projects of this book. As the reader can see by now, my background for undertaking them, besides decades of work in ethical theory, is acquain- tance with issues raised by particular sets of evils: crime and punishment, past and present misogyny and anti-Semitism, some forms of racism and of slavery, hatred of homosexuals, violence in the home, cruelty to animals, environmen- tal assault and neglect, war rape (and other torture and terrorism), and geno- cide. Atrocities from that list have become my paradigms of evils. A similar acquaintance with other evils might expand my paradigms and possibly lead to modifications in my theory. Many kinds of support eased the writing of this book and helped greatly with its completion. I thank the University of Wisconsin Graduate School Re- search Committee for summer salary support in 1999 and 2000 and a sabbatical leave during the spring of 2001. The sabbatical is especially appreciated, since I had to reapply after declining it the year before in order to accept a Senior Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies and a Resident Fel- lowship at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin. These fellowships, for which I am deeply grateful, enabled me to produce a complete draft during 1999–2000, which I was then able to rework during 2001. Parts of many chapters draw on work begun in short articles. All previ- ously published material is thoroughly rewritten, rethought in the context of the theory developed in this book, revised in substance, and greatly expanded with completely new material. The Nietzsche chapter got a jump start from “Genealogies and Perspectives,” presented to the North American Nietzsche Society and published in International Studies in Philosophy (28, 3 [1996]). The last part of chapter 3 grew from “Stoicism, Evil, and the Possibility of Moral- viii Preface ity,” presented to the Illinois Philosophical Association and published in Metaphilosophy (29, 4 [1998]). Parts of chapter 5 draw on parts of “Evils and In- equalities,” presented at a Feminism and Law conference at the University of San Diego and published in the Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues (9 [1998]). Portions of chapters 6 and 7 draw on portions of essays published in Hypatia, “Against Marriage and Motherhood” (11, 3 [1996]), “Rape as a Weapon of War” (11, 4 [1996]), and “Addendum to ‘Rape as a Weapon of War,’” (12, 2 [1997]). An ancestor of part of chapter 10 appeared in the introduction to my edited collection On Feminist Ethics and Politics (University Press of Kansas, 1999) as “Groping Through Gray Zones” and another in Metaphilosophy (31, 5 [2000]) as “Women, Evil, and Gray Zones.” For permission to draw freely on these materials, I am grateful to the journal publishers and the University Press of Kansas. Many readers and audiences provided stimulating questions, comments, advice, and support. Marcus G. Singer, Van Rensselaer Potter, Paula Gottlieb, David Weberman, Robin Schott, Hilde Lindemann Nelson, and anonymous re- viewers read drafts of many chapters, commenting helpfully and in detail. The Nietzsche chapter benefited from suggestions also by Lynne Tirrell, Paul Eisenberg, Ivan Soll, and Lester Hunt and from discussions with audiences at the University of Copenhagen, Dalhousie University, and Washington Univer- sity-St. Louis. Chapter 4 on Kant was read and discussed helpfully by a faculty seminar at Colgate University. Chapter 5 benefited from comments by Ange- lika Krebs and discussions with audiences at Moorhead State University and the University of Wisconsin. Chapter 6 on war rape was improved by com- ments from Bat-Ami Bar On and Hilde Lindemann Nelson. Chapters 6 and 7 profited from discussions with audiences at the International Association of Women Philosophers Seventh Symposium in Vienna (1995), the Graduate Stu- dent Philosophy Conference at Washington University-St Louis (1996), the University of Chicago, and the University of Cincinnati. Chapter 10 benefited from discussions with audiences at the International Association of Women Philosophers Eighth Symposium in Boston (1998), the Feminist Ethics Revis- ited Conference in Tampa (1999), the Philosophy Institute at the Goethe Uni- versity in Frankfurt, the Economics Institute at the Albert-Ludwigs Univer- sity in Freiburg, Bryn Mawr College, Dalhousie University, Florida Atlantic University, the University of Georgia, the University of Wisconsin, Colgate University, and the Women in Philosophy Group at the University of Chicago, as well as from comments and suggestions by Lisa Tessman, Bat-Ami Bar On, Marilyn Friedman, Marcia Homiak, Paula Gottlieb, David Weberman, and many contributors to On Feminist Ethics and Politics. For bringing valuable materials to my attention or helping me track them down, I am grateful to Marcus G. Singer, Lorna Smith Benjamin, Carol Quinn, Angelika Krebs, Suzanne Solensky, Steven Nadler, Kenna Del Sol, Elizabeth Preface ix Heaps, and Maudemarie Clark. Support of many kinds also came from Martha Nussbaum, Sandra Lee Bartky, Michael Stocker, Norman Care, Axel Honneth, Alison Jaggar, Marilyn Frye, Wendy Lee-Lampshire, Virginia Held, Jean Rum- sey, Chris Cuomo, Victoria Davion, Kate Norlock, Tracy Edwards, Steven Whitton, David Concepcion, Ruth Ginzberg, William McBride, Dan Hausman, Steven Nadler, Robert Skloot, Fran Schrag, Terry Penner, Harry Brighouse, Dan Wikler, Bruce Suttle, Elton Tylenda, and Josephine Pradella, as well as graduate students in my seminars on evil and on Kant’s ethics. Shelley Glodowski, Nancy Le Duc, Patty Winspur, and Lori Grant in the philosophy department office provided a level of backup and support that made my own office a great environment for writing. For long-term support and inspiration by their example, I am forever in- debted to the teachers to whom I dedicate this book. Ruby Healy Marquardt, my seventh-grade teacher at Pardeeville High School (Wisconsin), never let me get away with “I don’t know” but insisted that I think until I found an answer. It got to be a habit. Often, when I’m not really sure, I still reach for an answer anyway. I could hardly have had the audacity to venture a book on so awesome a topic as the nature of evil without that old habit. Madison, Wisconsin C. C. May 2001 x The Atrocity Paradigm [...]... theory I take up three case studies, with a chapter on each First are the relatively public atrocities of mass rape as a weapon of war and related forms of sexual slavery (chap 6) Second are the private atrocities 6 The Atrocity Paradigm of domestic violence: severe, prolonged, and often fatal spousal battering and the comparably severe abuse, including sexual abuse, of children (chap 7) The last are... British to Native Americans of blankets infected with the smallpox virus was an atrocity The Black Death in fourteenth-century Europe was not (although anti-Semitic propaganda portrayed it as such).4 The point is not that it is more important to alleviate suffering initiated by human beings than to alleviate that caused by natural catastrophes Rather, human failure to respond can turn a natural catastrophe... regarding human nature are bound to be both psychological and philosophical Chapter 4 on Kant’s theory of radical evil, for example, draws on work in interpersonal psychology and attachment theory, a branch of psychoanalysis, to supplement and deepen Kant’s account of how ordinary people can become capable of great evils Although not quite a causal theory (if one retains, with Kant, belief in the agent’s... perpetrator questions that trouble me most are those that arise for victims who find themselves drawn into complicity with the very evils they have suffered As Kekes appreciates, a major evil is the corruption of the character of victims Chapter 10 of the present work treats the knowing or deliberate corruption of the character of 12 The Atrocity Paradigm victims as a case of diabolical evil, thereby... cludes evils done to animals who are raised on factory farms and butchered in mass-production slaughterhouses.25 I do not regard only human beings as victims of evil, although in this book I consider primarily human victims (and only human perpetrators).26 Why take atrocities as paradigms? Many evils lack the scale of an atrocity Not every murder is an atrocity, although murder is also a paradigm of evil. .. philosophers have given them so far), and (3) because the core features of evils tend to be writ large in the case of atrocities, making them easier to identify and appreciate Atrocities are both perpetrated and suffered There is no such thing as an atrocity that just happens or an atrocity that hurts no one These facts yield the two basic elements of my theory: wrongdoing and harm A focus on atrocities also... into an atrocity Much of the involvement of human agency in atrocities is a matter of aggravating the suffering brought about by nonhuman causes or tolerating it unnecessarily We need to be able to make judgments of right and wrong in order to apply the atrocity theory of evil, as harm is not evil unless aggravated, supported, or produced by culpable wrongdoing The atrocity theory is meant to be compatible... issue A theory of evil should be able to make sense both of degrees of evil and of the resistance we may feel to making the comparisons that degrees suggest The atrocity paradigm does this First, we can distinguish dimensions along which one atrocity may be worse than another, even though it may not be 14 The Atrocity Paradigm easy, or even possible, to reach an overall judgment about which was worse... proved theoretically less fruitful than the present one If evil means only “basic harm,” there is no reason for an atheist not to consider the devastation of cities by an earthquake an evil I also proposed, at that time, a theory of “basic evils,” inspired by Rawls’s theory of “primary goods,” which he initially defined as what everyone can be presumed to want, whatever else they might want.49 Analogously,... fields of Cambodia; the rape/death camps of the former Yugoslavia; and the threat to life on our planet posed by environmental poisoning, global warming, and the destruction of rain forests and other natural habitats Such a litany seems to confirm the view of Arthur Schopenhauer, (in)famous as the philosopher of pessimism, that human conduct produces far more suffering and harm than joy and happiness.23 . THE ATROCITY PARADIGM This page intentionally left blank The Atrocity Paradigm A Theory of Evil CLAUDIA CARD 1 2002 3 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es. Hypatia, “Against Marriage and Motherhood” (11, 3 [1996]), “Rape as a Weapon of War” (11, 4 [1996]), and “Addendum to ‘Rape as a Weapon of War,’” (12, 2 [1997]). An ancestor of part of chapter. have become my paradigms of evils. A similar acquaintance with other evils might expand my paradigms and possibly lead to modifications in my theory. Many kinds of support eased the writing of