INTERP-The aff must read a topical plan and is
allowed to weigh advantages from its hypothetical
enactment by the United States federal
government. The NEG must read a competitive
policy option or defend the Status Quo.
key to fairness, otherwise they moot the 1AC and
policy-relevant education
(A) The role of the ballot is to maximize the lives saved—util gives equality to
all beings which preserves dignity and short circuits “value to life” claims.
Cummisky 96 (David, professor of philosophy at Bates College, Kantian Consequentialism, pg. 131)
Finally, even
if one grants that saving two persons with dignity cannot outweigh and compensate for
killing one—because dignity cannot be added and summed in this way—this point still does not justify
deontological constraints. On the extreme interpretation, why would not killing one person be a stronger obligation than
saving two persons? If I am concerned with the priceless dignity of each, it would seem that 1 may still saw two; it is just that my
reason cannot be that the two compensate for the loss of the one. Consider Hills example of a priceless
object: If I can save two of three priceless statutes only by destroying one. Then 1 cannot claim that saving two makes up for the loss
of the one. But Similarly, the loss of the two is not outweighed by the one that was not destroyed. Indeed,
even if dignity cannot be simply summed up. How is the extreme interpretation inconsistent with the idea that I should save as many
priceless objects as possible? Even if two do not simply outweigh and thus compensate for the lass of the one, each
is
priceless: thus, I have good reason to save as many as I can. In short, it is not clear how the extreme interpretation
justifies the ordinary killing'letting-die distinction or even how it conflicts with the conclusion that the more persons with dignity
who are saved, the better.*
FRAMEWORK:
(2) Violence is proximately caused so prefer specific scenarios. Treat their
slippery slope impacts with skepticism—their “one size fits all” theory is poor
scholarship and is abusive.
Sharpe and Goucher 10 (Matthew, lecturer, philosophy and psychoanalytic studies; and Geoff, senior lecturer,
literary and psychoanalytic studies – Deakin University, Žižek and Politics: An Introduction, p. 231-233)
We realise that this argument, which we propose as a new ‘quilting’ framework to explain Žižek’s theoretical oscillations and political
prescriptions, raises some large issues of its own. While this is not the place to further that discussion, we think its analytic force
leads into a much wider critique of ‘Theory’ in parts of the latertwentieth- century academy, which emerged following the ‘cultural
turn’ of the 1960s and 1970s in the wake of the collapse of Marxism. Žižek’s paradigm to try to generate all his theory of culture,
subjectivity, ideology, politics and religion is psychoanalysis. But a similar criticism would apply, for instance, to theorists
who
feel that the method Jacques Derrida developed for criticising philosophical texts can meaningfully supplant the
methodologies of political science, philosophy, economics, sociology and so forth, when it comes to thinking about
‘the political’. Or, differently, thinkers who opt for Deleuze (or Deleuze’s and Guattari’s) Nietzschean Spinozism as a new
metaphysics to explain ethics, politics, aesthetics, ontology and so forth, seem to us candidates for the same
type of criticism, as a reductive passing over the empirical and analytic distinctness of the different
object fields in complex societies. In truth, we feel that Theory, and the continuing line of ‘master thinkers’ who regularly
appear particularly in the English- speaking world, is the last gasp of what used to be called First Philosophy. The philosopher
ascends out of the city, Plato tells us, from whence she can espie the Higher Truth, which she must then bring back down to political
earth. From outside the city, we can well imagine that she can
see much more widely than her benighted political
contemporaries. But from these philosophical heights, we can equally suspect that the ‘master thinker’ is also always in
danger of passing over the salient differences and features of political life – differences only too evident to people
‘on the ground’. Political life, after all, is always a more complex affair than a bunch of ideologically duped
fools staring at and enacting a wall (or ‘politically correct screen’) of ideologically produced illusions, from Plato’s
timeless cave allegory to Žižek’s theory of ideology. We know that Theory largely understands itself as avowedly ‘postmetaphysical’. It aims to erect its new claims on the gravestone of First Philosophy as the West has known it. But it also tells us that
people very often do not know what they do. And so it seems to us that too many of its proponents and their followers are
mourners who remain in the graveyard, propping
up the gravestone of Western philosophy under the
sign of some totalising account of absolutely everything – enjoyment, différance, biopower . . .
Perhaps the time has come, we would argue, less for one more would- be global, allpurpose existential and political Theory than for
a multi- dimensional and interdisciplinary critical theory that would challenge the chaotic specialisation neoliberalism speeds up in
academe, which mirrors and accelerates the splintering of the Left over the last four decades. This would mean that we would have
shun the hope that one method, one perspective, or one master thinker could single- handedly decipher all the
complexity of socio- political life, the concerns of really existing social movements – which specifi cally does not mean
to
mindlessly celebrating difference, marginalisation and multiplicity as if they could be suffi cient ends for a new politics. It would be
to reopen critical theory and non- analytic philosophy to the other intellectual disciplines, most of whom today pointedly reject
Theory’s legitimacy.
Extinction > Nebulous Kritik
Extinction outweighs their K Impacts and Alt
Bok, ‘88
[Sissela Bok, received her B.A. and M.A. in psychology from George Washington University in
1957 and 1958, and her Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1970. Formerly a
Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University, Sissela Bok is currently a Senior Visiting Fellow at
the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard School of Public Health,
“Kant’s argument in Support of the maxim “do what is right though the world should perish,”
Applied Ethics and Ethical Theory, P. 203, 1988]
The same argument can be made for Kant's other formulations of the Categorical Imperative: "So act as to use humanity, both in
your own person and in the person of every other, always at the same time as an end, never simply as a means"; and "So act as if
you were always through your actions a law-making member in a universal Kingdom of Ends." No
one with a concern for
humanity in the person of himself and every other or to risk the
death of all members in a universal Kingdom of Ends for the sake of justice. To risk their collective death for
the sake of following one's conscience would be, as Rawls said, "irrational, crazy" And to say that
one did not intend such a catastrophe, but that one merely failed to stop other persons from bringing it about
would be beside the point when the end of the world was at stake. For although it is true that we cannot
be held responsible for most of the wrongs that others commit, the Latin maxim presents a case where we would have to
take such responsibility seriously—perhaps to the point of deceiving, bribing, even killing an
innocent person, in order that the world not perish.
humanity could consistently will to risk eliminating
Util – Most Ethical
Evaluation of consequences of policy is the utmost ethical act – their ethic allows infinite
violence. Their Ks are not util.
Williams ‘5
(Michael, Professor of International Politics at the University of Wales—Aberystwyth, The Realist
Tradition and the Limits of International Relations, p. 174-176)
A commitment to an ethic of consequences reflects a deeper ethic of criticism, of ‘self-clarification’,
and thus of reflection upon the values adopted by an individual or a collectivity. It is part of an attempt to make critical evaluation an
intrinsic element of responsibility. Responsibility to this more fundamental ethic gives the ethic of consequences meaning.
Consequentialism and responsibility are here drawn into what Schluchter, in terms that will be familiar to anyone conversant with
scepticism and
consequentialism are linked in an attempt to construct not just a more substantial vision of
political responsibility, but also the kinds of actors who might adopt it, and the kinds of social
structures that might support it. A consequentialist ethic is not simply a choice adopted by actors: it is a means of trying
constructivism in International Relations, has called a ‘reflexive principle’. In the wilful Realist vision,
to foster particular kinds of self-critical individuals and societies, and in so doing to encourage a means by which one can justify and
The ethic of responsibility in wilful Realism thus involves a commitment to both
autonomy and limitation, to freedom and restraint, to an acceptance of limits and the criticism
of limits. Responsibility clearly involves prudence and an accounting for current structures and their historical evolution; but it is
foster a politics of responsibility.
not limited to this, for it seeks ultimately the creation of responsible subjects within a philosophy of limits. Seen in this light, the
Realist commitment to objectivity appears quite differently. Objectivity in terms of consequentialist analysis does not simply take
the actor or action as given, it is a political practice — an attempt to foster a responsible self, undertaken by an analyst with a
Objectivity in the sense of
coming to terms with the ‘reality’ of contextual conditions and likely outcomes of action is not
only necessary for success, it is vital for self-reflection, for sustained engagement with the
practical and ethical adequacy of one’s views. The blithe, self-serving, and uncritical stances of abstract
moralism or rationalist objectivism avoid self-criticism by refusing to engage with the intractability of
the world ‘as it is’. Reducing the world to an expression of their theoretical models, political platforms, or
ideological programmes, they fail to engage with this reality, and thus avoid the process of selfreflection at the heart of responsibility. By contrast, Realist objectivity takes an engagement with this intractable
commitment to objectivity which is itself based in a desire to foster a politics of responsibility.
‘object’ that is not reducible to one’s wishes or will as a necessary condition of ethical engagement, self-reflection, and selfcreation.7 Objectivity is not a naïve naturalism in the sense of scientific laws or rationalist calculation; it is a necessary engagement
A recognition of the limits imposed by ‘reality’ is a condition for a
recognition of one’s own limits — that the world is not simply an extension of one’s own will.
But it is also a challenge to use that intractability as a source of possibility, as providing a set of
openings within which a suitably chastened and yet paradoxically energised will to action can responsibly be pursued. In the
wilful Realist tradition, the essential opacity of both the self and the world are taken as limiting principles. Limits upon
understanding provide chastening parameters for claims about the world and actions within it. But they also provide
challenging and creative openings within which diverse forms of life can be developed: the
limited unity of the self and the political order is the precondition for freedom. The ultimate
opacity of the world is not to be despaired of: it is a condition of possibility for the willful,
creative construction of selves and social orders which embrace the diverse human
potentialities which this lack of essential or intrinsic order makes possible.8 But it is also to be aware of the less salutary
with a world that eludes one’s will.
possibilities this involves. Indeterminacy is not synonymous with absolute freedom — it is both a condition of, and imperative
toward, responsibility.
First they do not adequately provide a framework that explicitly explains how the K comes
before the Plan. Even if you buy they do, their cards do not aline particularly well with their
taglines.
Prefer our epistemology to theirs – Policy framework (not philosophical debate) is the most
effective way to affect institutional change and is the best training for debaters
Lepgold and Nincic 2K1
(Joesph, associate professor of Government at Georgetown and Miroslav professor of Poly Sci at
UC-Davis, Beyond the Ivory Tower: International Relations Theory and the Issue of Policy
Relevance pg. 2-4)
For many reasons, connections between scholarly ideas and policymakers’ thinking in international
relations are less common today, and the gap may grow unless we rethink carefully our
approach to policy relevance. Deep, often ritualized rivalry among theoretical schools makes
it unlikely that future officials will leave their university training in this subject with a clear,
well-formed worldview. Such intellectual competition, of course, could be stimulating and useful, especially if it led officials
to question their basic causal assumptions or consider rival explanations of the cases they face. More commonly" officials seem to
remember the repetitive, often strident theoretical debates as unproductive and tiresome. Not only is much international relations
scholarship tedious, in their view; it is often technically quite difficult. Partly for this reason, much of it is so substantively arid that
even many scholarly specialists avoid trying to penetrate it. From a practitioner's perspective, it often seems as if university scholars
are increasingly withdrawing… behind a curtain of theory and models that only insiders can penetrate. In addition, for many
observers, the end of the cold war has made it harder to find models providing a compelling link between the international
environment and manipulable policy instruments. One exception to this growing split between scholars of international relations
and policymakers is the work on the inter-democratic peace, which we discuss in chapter 5. This work, as we will show, has deeply
influenced many contemporary ; policymakers. But, for the most part, it remains the exception;
the professional gap
between academics and practitioners has widened in recent years . Many scholars no longer
try to reach beyond the Ivory Tower and [political] officials seem increasingly content to
ignore it . According to much conventional wisdom, this situation is unsurprising. International relations scholars and
practitioners have different professional priorities and reflect different cultures. Not only is it often
assumed that good theory must sacrifice policy relevance; but also those seeking guidance in diagnosing policy situations and
making policy choices, it is often thought, must look for help in places other than contemporary social science research. This book
challenges much of the conventional wisdom on these issues. It argues that lR theorists and foreign policy practitioners have
important needs in common as well as needs that are different. Social science theory seeks to identify and explain the significant
regularities in human affairs. Because
people's ability to process information is limited, they must
perceive the world selectively in order to operate effectively in it; constructing and using
theories in a self-conscious way helps to inject some rigor into these process. For these
reasons, both theorists and practitioners seek a clear and powerful understanding of cause
and effect about policy issues, in order to help them diagnose situations, define the range of
possibilities they confront and evaluate the likely consequences of given courses of action. At
the same time, a deep and continuing concern for the substance and stakes involved in real world
issues can help prevent theorists’ research agendas from becoming arid or trivial .
This book
therefore has two objectives” to elaborate and justify the reasoning that leads to these conclusions, and to illustrate how
scholarship on international relations and foreign policy can be useful beyond the Ivory Tower.
We control uniqueness- depoliticalization has occurred through a host of cultural conditions.
Rejecting the antipolitics of the alt/framework is vital to actually solving social problems in
real life
Boggs 2000
(Carl, professor at National University, The End of Politics: Corporate Power and the Decline of
the Public Sphere pg. 245)
As the quagmire of political decay widens, urgent social problems go unsolved. Such problems,
from urban decline to technological displacement of labor to global ecological crisis, cannot be grasped, much
less acted on, without looking at the national and international context of markets, finance,
and communications. Yet, paradoxically, the widespread retreat from politics , so often inspired by localist
impulses,
comes at a time when social agendas that ignore these factors will be, more
than ever, reduced to impotence . Localist withdrawal is in fact powerfully reinforced by the
growing remoteness and devaluation of politics (especially state and federal politics) as
increasing numbers of people turn away from difficult, frustrating public concerns toward more
comfortable, manageable private ones. Of course, the private realm holds significance as a source of self-fulfillment
and as a bulwark against an assortment of outside encroachments. Yet, by diminishing the life of common
involvements, we negate the very idea of politics as a source of public good and social
transformation.' In the meantime, it may not be too hyperbolic to say that
in the balance.
The unyielding truth is that, even
the fate of the world hangs
as the mood of antipolitics encapsulates more
and more of American culture, it is still the vagaries of
political power that will
decisively shape the future of human societies .
Empiricism through policymaking first—Give their non-falsifiable philosophical
propositions zero weight. This is how political science and actual politics
functions. Thus we’re more real-world
Coyne 6 (Jerry A., reviewing FOLLIES OF THE WISE by Frederick Crews, September 6, 2006.
http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25347-2345445,00.html)
Crews includes three final essays on deconstruction and other misguided movements in literary theory. These also show “follies of
the wise” in that they involve interpretations of texts that are unanchored by evidence. Fortunately, the harm inflicted by Lacan and
his epigones is limited to the good judgement of professors of literature. Follies of the Wise is one of the most refreshing and
edifying collections of essays in recent years. Much like Christopher Hitchens in the UK, Crews serves a vital function as National
Sceptic. He ends on a ringing note: “The
human race has produced only one successfully validated
epistemology, characterizing all scrupulous inquiry into the real world, from quarks to poems. It is, simply, empiricism, or
the submitting of propositions to the arbitration of evidence that is acknowledged to be such by all of the contending parties.
Ideas that claim immunity from such review, whether because of mystical faith or privileged “clinical
insight” or the say-so of eminent authorities, are not to be countenanced until they can pass the same
skeptical ordeal to which all other contenders are subjected.” As science in America becomes ever more
harried and debased by politics and religion, we desperately need to heed Crews’s plea for empiricism.