Claudia Card

Claudia Falconer Card (September 30, 1940 – September 12, 2015) was an American philosopher who held the Emma Goldman (WARF) Professor of Philosophy position at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with additional teaching affiliations in Women's Studies, Jewish Studies, Environmental Studies, and LGBT Studies. She earned her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, where her doctoral dissertation was supervised by John Rawls. Card's academic career at the University of Wisconsin began immediately after her doctoral studies. She also held visiting professorships at institutions including The Goethe Institute, Dartmouth College, and the University of Pittsburgh. Her prolific career included four books, six edited collections, and nearly 150 articles and reviews. She was a frequent speaker at conferences and universities, presenting almost 250 papers and appearing in 29 radio broadcasts. In 2008, she delivered the prestigious John Dewey Lecture to the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association (APA), and in April 2011, she assumed the presidency of the APA's Central Division. Her presidential address was titled "Surviving Long-Term Mass Atrocities: U-Boats, Catchers, and Ravens." In 2013, she was invited to deliver the Paul Carus Lectures, a series of three lectures for the APA. Card received the University of Wisconsin's Hilldale Award in 2011 for her outstanding contributions to teaching, research, and service. Her department chair described her work as essential to feminist thinking. Card's research was centered on ethics and social philosophy, encompassing normative ethical theory, feminist ethics, environmental ethics, and theories of justice, punishment, and evil. She drew heavily on the works of Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, and was well-versed in history and sociology. A pioneer in lesbian feminist philosophy, she was a founding member of the Midwest Society for Women in Philosophy and a consistent supporter of LGBT research and activism. Card was known for her realistic approach, notably in her critique of marriage and her articulation of dangers within lesbian relationships. Her work consistently championed the oppressed, beginning with her essay "On Mercy." Later, she focused on the nature of evil, developing theories of genocide as "social death," militarism, and punishment, and advocating for the recognition of rape as a weapon of war. Her trilogy on evil, including "The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil" and "Confronting Evils: Terrorism, Torture, Genocide," explored these themes. The final volume, "Surviving Atrocity," dealt with poverty, global misogyny, and surviving long-term mass atrocities. Card's introduction of Orlando Patterson's concept of "social death" into genocide studies was significant, linking genocidal violence to the erosion of a group's social vitality and meaning, and defining genocide as the enactment of social death, which might not always involve mass murder. Card passed away on September 12, 2015, after a battle with lung cancer, 18 days before her 75th birthday.