Books like Confronting evils by Claudia Card

In "Confronting Evils," Claudia Card revisits and extends the theory of evil first articulated in her 2002 work, the Atrocity Paradigm. She redefines evil as a secular concept, emphasizing its inexcusability rather than culpability, and applies this framework to both perpetrators and victims of collective atrocities. Card explores how the moral tensions involved in responding to terrorism, torture, genocide, and other mass crimes intersect with core humanitarian values. By drawing parallels between these extreme acts and more everyday injustices—oppressive regimes, racism, domestic violence, prison brutality, hate crimes, and animal cruelty—Card offers conceptual tools that help distinguish genocide from other forms of mass slaughter and assess the moral justifications of controversial tactics. The book presents a rigorous philosophical examination rooted in ethics and moral philosophy, with a keen focus on how understanding extreme evils can sharpen our recognition of routine injustices in society.

First publish date: 2010