Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
HEIDEGGER
***1NC***................................................................................................................................................................................................ 2
Heidegger 1NC ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
***Links*** .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 6
Link – Agriculture ................................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Link – Alternative Energy ....................................................................................................................................................................... 8
Link – Coal ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 9
Link – Cost-Benefit Analysis ................................................................................................................................................................. 10
Link – Economy ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 11
Link – Environment/Warming ............................................................................................................................................................. 12
Link – ET Observation .......................................................................................................................................................................... 13
Link – Guilt/Morality ............................................................................................................................................................................ 14
Link – Hegemony ................................................................................................................................................................................... 15
Link – Hydropower................................................................................................................................................................................ 17
Link – Mining ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 18
Link – Surveillence ................................................................................................................................................................................ 19
Link – Scientific Research ..................................................................................................................................................................... 20
Link – Security ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 22
Link – Space ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 25
Link – Terrorism ................................................................................................................................................................................... 27
***Impacts*** ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 28
Internal Link – Loss of Being ............................................................................................................................................................... 29
Impact – Environment ........................................................................................................................................................................... 31
Impact – Laundry List........................................................................................................................................................................... 32
Impact – Being ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 33
Impact – Genocide ................................................................................................................................................................................. 34
***Alternatives*** ................................................................................................................................................................................. 35
Alternative – Meditative Thought ........................................................................................................................................................ 36
Alternative – Solidarity With Nature ................................................................................................................................................... 37
Alternative – Critical Intellectuals Solve ............................................................................................................................................. 38
***Answers And Misc*** ..................................................................................................................................................................... 40
AT: Cede The Political .......................................................................................................................................................................... 41
AT: Heidegger Was A Nazi ................................................................................................................................................................... 43
AT: Evolutionary Realism .................................................................................................................................................................... 45
AT: Permutation .................................................................................................................................................................................... 47
AT: Ontology Is Infinitely Regressive .................................................................................................................................................. 48
AT: Inaction ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 51
Ontology First ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 52
Reps Matter ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 53
***Aff Answers*** ................................................................................................................................................................................ 54
Aff – Cede The Political ......................................................................................................................................................................... 55
Aff – Evolutionary Realism ................................................................................................................................................................... 57
Aff – Perm............................................................................................................................................................................................... 59
Aff – Inequality ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 60
Aff – Nazism ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 61
Aff – Inaction.......................................................................................................................................................................................... 63
Aff – Nihilism ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 64
Aff – Value To Life ................................................................................................................................................................................ 65
Aff – Reason/Rationality Good ............................................................................................................................................................. 66
Brought to you by Brendan, Bryant, Chris, Jason, Leah, Leena, Parth, and Sham-wow.
1
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
***1NC***
2
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
HEIDEGGER 1NC
The exploration, exploitation, and colonization of space engages in a process of Enframing that reduces the world
to standing reserve and destroys humanity’s connection with Being
Jerkins, 09 (Jae from Florida State University, Professor of religion, writes for Florida Philosophical review. Heidegger’s Bridge: The Social and
Phenomenological Construction of Mars. Technology as Revealer—the problem of enframing
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.philosophy.ucf.edu/fpr/files/9_2/jerkins.pdf&safe=active)
people in the 20th century falsely view technology as a Kantian “means to an end”—when in reality,
Heidegger maintains, technology is not a means but rather “a mode,” or “a way of revealing.”42 This revealing that modern
technology is responsible for is a challenge, a “demand” to nature “that it supplies energy that can be extracted and stored as
such.”43Heidegger uses the river Rhine as an example of the demands of modern technology. The Rhine has been dammed up in
order to provide hydraulic pressure for a hydroelectric power plant. This use oftechnology changes our phenomenological perception
of the Rhine. A vast ecological system, the ancient source of legends and songs, the home of lush forests and breathtaking castles, has
been relegated to a “water power supplier.”44This modern ability to take nature out of its original context of being and reassign it within ause-value
Martin Heidegger also claims that
technological context is known as enframing. In the modern age, we have begun to reorganize everything around us into technological frames of reference and usage;
Heidegger warns that the river Rhine is now a power source, the once mystical German soil is now a mineral deposit,and the refreshing mountain air is simply a supply
of nitrogen.45 The objects that make up our world have become resources—subjects for us to master, purchase, and own. We have
alienated ourselves from all things and placed them into a standing reserve, a standbymode in which “whatever stands by…no longer
stands over us as object.”46 Our general disregard for the meaningfulness of the world is precisely what causes objects to lose any
coherent status for us. Heidegger finds that the consequence of enframing, whereby the entire natural world inevitably becomes
“orderable as standing reserve,” is that “man in the midst of objectlessness is nothing but the orderer of the standing-reserve… [who
inevitably] comes to the point where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve.”47 We may shape the world, but the world inevitably
shapes us. This is a central point of concern I have over the issue of colonization. When Modernity’s gaze upon the world calls forth the
project of colonization, this causes the process of enframing to begin, whereupon we mark the world for our own usage until the day
comes when humanity itself may be commodified as a standing-reserve. Heidegger explains, “Man becomes that being upon which all that is, is
grounded as regards the manner of its Being and its truth. Man becomes the relational center of that which is as such.”48 As objects in nature are
relegated to standing-reserve, Heidegger explains, “everything man encounters exists only insofar as it has his construct.”49 Since
nothing exists outside of humanity’s construction, we end up only ever encountering ourselves. Yet because we do not realize that the
phenomena before us are of our own construction, a distortion caused by enframing, Heidegger contends that we fail to grasp an
important existential truth—we can never truly encounter ourselves, our world, or Mars for that matter.50 When humanity gazes out at
the world, “he fails to see himself as the one spoken to.” 51The dizzying rise in modern technology has precipitated a fundamental change in our
perception of objects and, inevitably, in ourselves. By turning the world into technology, human kind turns itself into the world’s technicians. We reassemble and
reconfigure the natural world for ourown use, playing the part of the self-made, frontier-forging individual—the modern man.
Technology unlocks the energy in nature, transforming the rushing water of the Rhine into energy, storing up that energy, distributing
it to German power outlets, and thus revealing the concealed power in nature . This challenge to nature, to stop being and to become a
resource/commodity for modern human beings, is how modern technology serves as revealer. For Mars, the prospect of enframing is extremely
problematic, given its phenomenological nature. As interpretive discourse directs the narratives of Mars (scientific and otherwise),
enframing comes rather easily and often appears as a benign force in the media and public discourse, asking, “What can Mars do for
us?” Because the interpretation of Mars precedes any objective knowledge , as illustrated by Lowell’s once popular canal theories, we must
proceed in the awareness that Mars is, in the public mind, what is said of it. Heidegger warns, “The rule of Enframing threatens man
with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing,” adding his somewhat romantic call to
modernity, “and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth .”52Heidegger’s point is well-taken—what is damaging to our participation in the
world is the exclusivity technology brings to bear as a form of modern revelation. Heidegger explains that when technological enframing takes place,
“it drives out every other possibility of revealing.”53 When technological ordering comes to be the only way we perceive the world,
then the world becomes revealed to us only through the banal act of securing natural resources, no longer allowing what Heidegger
calls the “fundamental characteristics” of our resources to appear to us.54 The Earth becomes minerals, the sky becomes gases, and
the Martian surface becomes whatever those with means will it to be. When we gaze at Mars with an eye toward technologically
enframing it, we deny ourselves the possibility of other forms of revelation which, given the great passage of time, may come to make
our generation appear quite near-sided and audacious—or worse, cause permanent damage to a planet we are far from grasping in its
sublime entirety. Heidegger describes the enframing of a tract of earth as “a coal–mining district”; can the enframing of Mars as a natural resource be far from
Heideggerian thought?55 To appreciate fully the meaning in this world and of the “red planet,” we must come to terms with our modern predilection for technological
enframing and be accepting of other, more long-term, open-minded and inclusive perspectives of place-making.
Loss of Being outweighs nuclear war – the enslavement of humans to technological thought destroys human dignity
and freedom
Rojcewicz, 06 (Richard- [Prof of philosophy at Pont Park University, translator of 3 Heidegger books], The Gods and Technology; A Reading of Heidegger
p.141-142)
3
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
Heidegger now launches an extended discussion of the danger inherent in modern technology. It needs to be underlined that for Heidegger the threat is not
simply to human existence. The prime danger is not that high-tech devices might get out of hand and wreck havoc on their creators by way
of a radioactive spill or an all-encompassing nuclear holocaust. The danger is not that by disposing of so many disposables we will
defile the planet and make it uninhabitable. For Heidegger the danger—the prime danger—does not lie in technological things but in the essence of
technology. Technological things are indeed dangerous; the rampant exploitation of natural resources is deplorable; the contamination of
the environment is tragic. We need to conserve and to keep high-tech things from disposing of us. Yet, for Heidegger, conservation, by itself, is not the
answer. Conservation alone is not radical enough. Conservation is aimed at things, technological things and natural things, but it does not touch
the outlook or basic attitude that is the essence of modern technology, and it is there that the danger lies. It may well be that
conservation will succeed and that technology will solve its own problems by producing things that are safe and nonpolluting;
nevertheless, the prime danger, which lies deeper down, will remain. For the danger is not primarily to the existence of humans but to their essence: “The
threat to man does not come in the first instance from the potentially lethal effects of the machines and devices of technology. The genuine threat has already affected
humans—in their essence” (FT, 29/28). In a sense, the threat inherent in modern technology has already been made good. Though we have thus far averted a nuclear
disaster, that does not mean the genuine threat has been obviated. Humans still exist; they are not yet on the endangered species list. It would of course be tragic if
humans made that list. Yet, for Heidegger, there could be something more tragic, namely for humans to go on living but to lose their human dignity,
which stems from their essence. Here lies the prime danger, the one posed not by technological things but by the disclosive looking
that constitutes the essence of modern technology. The prime danger is that humans could become (and in fact are already becoming)
enslaved to this way of disclosive looking. Thus what is primarily in danger is human freedom; if humans went on living but allowed
themselves to be turned into slaves—that would be the genuine tragedy. The danger in modern technology is that humans may fail to see themselves
as free followers, fail to see the challenges directed at their freedom by the current guise of Being, and fail to see the genuine possibilities open to them to work out their
destiny. Then, not seeing their freedom, humans will not protect it. They will let it slip away and will become mere followers, passively imposed on by
modern technology, i.e., slaves to it, mere cogs in the machine. For Heidegger, there is an essential connection between seeing and freedom. The way out of
slavery begins with seeing, insight. But it is the right thing that must be seen, namely, one’s own condition. The danger is that humans may perfect their
powers of scientific seeing and yet be blind to that wherein their dignity and freedom lie, namely the entire domain of disclosedness
and their role in it. Humans would then pose as “masters of the earth,” and yet their self-blindness would make them slaves.
The alternative is meditative thought.
Rejecting the affirmative’s technological thinking in favor of meditative thought allows unconcealment of alternate
ways of being
Joseph, 00 (Duquesne University, and editor for the Janus Head, Speaking Differently: Deconstruction/Meditative Thinking as the Heart of "the Faculty of
Observing" http://www.janushead.org/3-1/ajoseph.cfm)
From a Heideggerian perspective, the phrase, "the faculty of observing" has significant implications for meditative
thinking/deconstruction. If as Cicero says, "Eloquence is wisdom spoken wisely," then observation facilitates the rhetor to speak wisely so as to be able to
persuade and stir up a disposition amidst the audience. Heidegger (1953/1996) alludes to this in his phenomenal work, Being and Time, when he writes, "Publicness as
the kind of being of the they not only has its attunedness, it uses mood and 'makes' it for itself. The speaker speaks to it and from it. He needs the understanding
of the possibility of mood in order to arouse and direct it in the right way" (138-139). Hence, to be persuasive a rhetor needs first of all
to observe. It could then be said that "observation" is the condition upon which choosing the appropriate means of persuasion rests. But
we may ask, "Is this not common sense?" It reminds us of the English proverb, "Look before you leap." Yet what is to be borne in mind is that because the
rational-scientific framework has permeated common sense so much, it cannot be taken for granted that observing or looking is merely
a commonsensical activity. The technological and commercial Enframing of this epoch has such a powerful grip over every aspect of
human life that common sense has lost its place as conventional wisdom. Besides, in trying to make human life comfortable and highly efficient,
technology has succeeded in creating a desensitized human world. Looking or observing loses its passion in such a world that
prioritizes distant, dispassionate and objective observation. Hence, from a rationalistic and technological perspective, observation or
looking is detached seeing. The goal of detached seeing is to arrive at certain knowledge and truth. The observer through detached
seeing abstracts the essential qualities of a thing in the effort to understand and interpret it. This leads to clear and valid knowledge.
But from an existential-phenomenological perspective, such an approach is impoverished. First of all, such a disengaged (detached seeing) activity robs a thing of its
concreteness and its embodiment. Second, this process of abstraction/detached seeing (however convincing and certain it is) is oblivious to the context which makes the
thing what it is. These two aspects make observation as detached seeing, in the rational-scientific system, a barren and passionless activity. But observation in a radical
sense is respect for the phenomena. In his essay, "The Thing," Heidegger (1971b) points to this radical sense of observation which can be
characterized as the "essence" of meditative thinking. He writes, "If we let the thing be present in this thinging from out of the
worlding world, then we are thinking of the thing as thing" (p. 181). Observation as meditative thinking is radical because the rhetor
lets the thing be thing in the way it shows itself -- in its concreteness ("thinging") and its situatedness ("worlding world"). But for the rhetor who affiliates
with the rational-scientific tradition, an abstract, passionless and decontextualized observation has its payoffs. The persuasion that arises out of such an affiliation is
commercially viable given the profit-oriented and competitive socio-cultural arena that every discipline (arts and sciences) has unwittingly bought into. Within such a
structure, the skilful and persuasive speaker is one who possesses the skill to convince the listeners to concede to truth irrespective of its concreteness and situatedness.
The monopoly over truth at which this approach arrives is gained through a process of elimination and exclusion such that the listeners are precluded from its multiple
and genuine alternatives and possibilities. Through such exclusionary means the speaker and all those who subscribe to such a prescriptive approach to truth thereby
become the sole owners of the truth by means of expropriation and exploitation. On the other hand, a rhetor (the one who observes with a passion)
enables/facilitates/shows how we live and move in truth through inclusive and non-reductionistic ways. This is truly pedagogical and educative for it persuades by
"bringing forth"; not because the speaker has a monopoly over truth, but because the listeners live and share in it already. The work of the rhetor is to awaken them to
4
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
what they already know. It is in this context that epideictic rhetoric is important. We have no new information introduced; rather, the quality of the phenomena is
amplified. From a Heideggerian perspective, observing takes on a different meaning as it is based on a radically different assumption. As Hoy (1993) writing on the
hermeneutic turn in Heidegger points out: Heidegger's strategy is different from the Cartesian strategy, which starts by assuming a basic ontological disconnection (e.g.,
between mental and physical substance) and then looks for instances of epistemological connection that cannot be doubted (e.g., the knowledge of the existence of a
thinking subject). Heidegger's strategy is to see Dasein as already in the world, which suggests that what needs to be explained is not the
connection, which is the basis, but the disconnection (p. 176). The disconnection or the disruption is that which is appealing to the eye of the rhetor who
observes by participating. Hence, observation as meditative thinking is to pay attention to the "disconnection" that shows itself in the
activity of hovering over as long as we can endure it. To take this a step further, we could say that when the rhetor can endure or stay persistent with this
unsettling experience, then the circularity of hermeneutics (through a persistent inhabitation of the phenomenon) gives way to an elliptical movement that is in
"essence" elusive and indeterminate. Derrida (1973) calls our attention to this radical difference in what can be called a "project" of deconstruction. He makes an
appropriate observation in this regard when he writes: There is then, probably no choice to be made between two lines of thought; our task is rather to reflect on the
circularity, which makes the one pass into the other indefinitely. And, by strictly repeating this circle in its own historical possibility, we allow the production of
some elliptical change of site, within the difference involved in repetition; this displacement is no doubt deficient, but with a deficiency that is not yet, or is already no
longer, absence, negativity, nonbeing, lack, silence. Neither matter nor form, it is nothing that any philosopheme, that is, any dialectic, however determinate, can
capture. It is an ellipsis of both meaning and form; it is neither plenary speech nor perfectly circular. More and less, neither more nor less -- it is perhaps an entirely
different question. (p. 128) On the part of the rhetor who endures, the latter movement allows for a "re-cognition" of this elusive and disruptive/displacing nature of that
which shows itself. In this sense, observation as meditative thinking/deconstruction is respect for the phenomena. In such a movement, we could contend with John D.
Caputo (1987) that the observer-participant rhetor is never in a privileged position or the sole owner in regard to what shows itself in meditative
thinking/deconstruction. He observes: In an a-lethic view, whatever shows itself, whatever comes forth, issues from hidden depths. We know we cannot touch bottom
here, that we cannot squeeze what stirs here between our conceptual hands, cannot get it within our grip, cannot seize it round about. The mystery is self-withdrawing,
self-sheltering. And that is what gives rise to respect. (p. 276) Hence, in Heideggerian terms, observation could be seen as akin to letting go or
"letting be," which is radical detachment or detached attachment. The genuine rhetor is one who cultivates a respectful disposition as regards the
"faculty of observing" and "the available means of persuasion" vis-à-vis that which needs to be spoken about.
5
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
***LINKS***
6
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
LINK – AGRICULTURE
Mass annihilation is analogous to modern agriculture—both use technological thought to produce things, either
human bodies or food
Athaniasou, 03 (Athena-, Technologies of Humanness, Aporias of Biopolitics, and the Cut Body of Humanity, A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 125-162
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/differences/v014/14.1athanasiou.html)
Let us consider the question of taking up a sign—in particular, the injurious possibilities of iterability—in Heidegger’s writings on technology. Heidegger delivered a
cycle of four lectures on the subject of technology at Bremen in 1949. In the only one that remains unpublished, he wrote: Agriculture is now a motorized
food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same
thing as blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs. (qtd. in LacoueLabarthe 34) 6 Several things deserve notice in this gesture of repudiation, wherein Nazi death emerges in the consciousness of the Heideggerian text as a paradeigma
(etymologically associated with what is para- [beside or amiss], what is subsidiary to diction [pointing out in words], -deiknynai [to show, to prove]). This oblique
reference to the extermination camp—as an example, an instance, and a paradigm—relates mass annihilation to industrial agricultural production, and
both to a certain indirect sense of Enframing that underlies the essence of modern technology for Heidegger. The “now” that serves to connect
temporally the two realms of the formulation signals a point in time that heralds the Other of human finitude’s time, the “brink of a precipitous fall,” the advent and
event of the regime of calculative-representational thinking: in a word, the time of Technik. What concerns me in this scene of being-in-technology is precisely this: that
Heidegger’s language manifests the camp in the context of calculative and objectifying technology and in its ambiguous proximity
with technologies of agricultural production; at the same time, as Heidegger turns his attention to the problem of technology his text comes to be haunted by
a force arguably exceeding its author’s writerly intention and control, namely, the historical specificity of the dead other. Heidegger’s fugitive illustration of the bodies
of the camp à propos of his meditation on the loss of “the human” and its originary authenticity in the time of modern technology may be seen as a hint but also as a
symptom or signal as well as a symbolic lapse. Is Heidegger putting into play his own notion of the hint? “A hint can give its hint so simply,” he writes, “[. . .] that we
release ourselves in its direction without equivocation. But it can also give its hint in such a manner that it refers [End Page 132] us [. . .] back to the dubiousness
against which it warns us” (“The Nature of Language” 96). Heidegger’s “hint” (der Wink) emerges as a shadowy trace that inscribes itself in the precarious flickering
between presence and nonpresence, evidence and nonevidence, and above all, revelation and dissimulation in the topos of textual representation. This opening up of
present phenomenal actuality by and to proliferating suggestion alludes to the very spectral nature of referential representation, its incomplete and dismembered texture
and structure. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of Heidegger’s writings on technology is the conviction that the question concerning technology cannot be posed or
thought apart from the question concerning the tradition of Western metaphysics. Heidegger’s questioning of technology should be seen within the
context of his critique of the way in which metaphysics has construed—or not—the problematic relation between Being and beings,
between Being and time. And yet, Heidegger’s questioning appears to be indelibly marked by a residual investment in a particular metaphysics whereby the
determination of essence is knotted together with authorial disengagement; the disarticulation of the thematized “production of corpses” from any authorial or political
response becomes the very condition under which the extermination becomes posable and nameable in the Heideggerian textual body. In a text that asserts the
preeminence of the question, the camp and the author’s relation to it remain unarticulated, unasked, unaddressed, and unquestionable, the very limit to (Heidegger’s
own) questioning. Questioning, then, the piety of thinking in Heidegger’s terms (“Question” 3–35) becomes not only a master modality but also an authoritative means
of avoiding the politics of address. 7 In a similar vein, it is instructive to read Heidegger’s deployment of the trope of analogy through the lens of his special relation to
metaphoric language (which he mixes with technical language), a relation consisting both in identifying metaphor with metaphysics and in putting metaphor into play.
On the one hand, there is an experience in language and with language that entails the tropological reinscription and disinscription of metaphor; on the other is
Heidegger’s ambivalent elaboration on the divestiture and overcoming of metaphysics as an alternative mode of conceiving the real, beyond the calculativerepresentational frame incited by modern Technik. The role of metaphor in envisaging or creating a novel reality through redescription signals
the point at which motorized agricultural production and the mass obliteration of lives in gas chambers and concentration camps are
posed in tandem. [End Page 133] But what makes the extermination camp a site of meaning in Heidegger’s critique of technology? What logic of originary familiar
and familial linearity between the natural and the political generates this textual carrying-over? And further, because metaphoricity is not merely about
translating between already given meanings, but also about reformulation , or displacement, what is it that the application of this textual technique
redefines or conjures here? In Heideggerian terms, what does this unveiling dissimulate? The metaphoric gesture of embedding the camp in the ground
of technological mass production along with that of industrial agriculture sets in play an uncanny convergence, a point of resonance and
transposability between two disparate inflections of “production” —a production, indeed, embedded, through analogy and difference, in the dystopic realm
of Technik. The passage fuses the massive and motorized technical production of human food with the massive and motorized technical
production of dead human bodies. Mass annihilation is articulated in terms of mechanical economy in the age of technical
reproduction; the concentration camp is cast, at a stroke, as an assembly-line of decorporealization, a technological project whereby
the natural world is reduced to a “standing-reserve” of raw material. In Heideggerian terms, both these realms attest to an apotheosis of the
instrumental and objectifying technics of Enframing (Ge-stell); they both stand for a technologically mediated and mass-produced eventuality of
thingness (ultimately broken organicity: the processed animals and crops, the “produced” corpses ) enclosed—or thrown—within the mastery of a
moribund “thereness.” The neuralgic point (or cathected spot) that Heidegger’s formulation discloses is a certain politically neutral conception of technology as a
paradigm of the modern condition of Being, a paradigm a priori inimical to humanity. To the instrumental and dehumanizing use of technology, he opposes the classical
Greek techne and its relation to poiesis, the bringing forth of truth (aletheia) and essence. An essential synonym of physis, poiesis connotes a “bringing-forth” of what is
present for human encounter and handling. Heidegger, we should bear in mind, distinguishes technology—its various actual manifestations—from what he calls its
“essence,” which is not itself technological, not a bringing-forth in the sense of the ancient Greek techne.
7
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
LINK – ALTERNATIVE ENERGY
Storing energy from alternative sources is simply exploiting nature at our every whim
Beckman, 00 (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Humanities and Social Sciences at Harvey Mudd College
Tad Beckman, “Martin Heidegger and Environmental Ethics.” http://www2.hmc.edu/~tbeckman/personal/Heidart.html)
Perhaps it is not difficult to understand the separate paths of the fine arts, craftsmanship, and modern technology. Each seems to have followed different human
intentions and to have addressed different human skills. However, while the fine arts and craftsmanship remained relatively consistent with techne in the ancient sense,
modern technology withdrew in a radically different direction. As Heidegger saw it, "the revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging
[Herausfordern], which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such." {[7], p. 14}
Modern technology sets-upon nature and challenges-forth its energies, in contrast to techne which was always a bringing-forth in harmony with nature.
The activity of modern technology lies at a different and more advanced level wherein the natural is not merely decisively re-directed; nature is actually
"set-upon." The rhetoric in which the discussion is couched conveys an atmosphere of violence and exploitation . To uncover the essence
of modern technology is to discover why technology stands today as the danger. To accomplish this insight, we must understand why modern technology
must be viewed as a "challenging-forth," what affect this has on our relationship with nature, and how this relationship affects us . Is there really a
difference? Has technology really left the domain of techne in a significant way? In modern technology, has human agency withdrawn in some way beyond
involvement and, instead, acquired an attitude of violence with respect to the other causal factors? Heidegger clearly saw the development of "energy resources"
as symbolic of this evolutionary path; while the transformation into modern technology undoubtedly began early, the first definitive signs of its new
character began with the harnessing of energy resources, as we would say. As a representative of the old technology, the windmill took energy from the
wind but converted it immediately into other manifestations such as the grinding of grain; the windmill did not unlock energy from the wind in order to store it for later
arbitrary distribution. Modern wind-generators, on the other hand, convert the energy of wind into electrical power which can be stored in
batteries or otherwise. The significance of storage is that it places the energy at our disposal; and because of this storage the powers of
nature can be turned back upon itself. The storing of energy is, in this sense, the symbol of our over-coming of nature as a potent
object. "...a tract of land is challenged into the putting out of coal and ore. The earth now reveals itself as a coal mining district, the soil as a mineral deposit." {[7], p.
14} This and other examples that Heidegger used throughout this essay illustrate the difference between a technology that diverts the natural
course cooperatively and modern technology that achieves the unnatural by force. Not only is this achieved by force but it is achieved by
placing nature in our subjective context, setting aside natural processes entirely, and conceiving of all revealing as being relevant only
to human subjective needs.
The aff mindset leads us to view nature as a standing reserve of resources placed solely for our benefit
Beckman, 00 (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Humanities and Social Sciences at Harvey Mudd College
Tad Beckman, “Martin Heidegger and Environmental Ethics.”
http://www2.hmc.edu/~tbeckman/personal/Heidart.html)
The essence of technology originally was a revealing of life and nature in which human intervention deflected the natural course while
still regarding nature as the teacher and, for that matter, the keeper . The essence of modern technology is a revealing of phenomena, often
far removed from anything that resembles "life and nature," in which human intrusion not only diverts nature but fundamentally
changes it. As a mode of revealing, technology today is a challenging-forth of nature so that the technologically altered nature of things is always a situation in which
nature and objects wait, standing in reserve for our use. We pump crude oil from the ground and we ship it to refineries where it is fractionally distilled into volatile
substances and we ship these to gas stations around the world where they reside in huge underground tanks, standing ready to power our automobiles or airplanes.
Technology has intruded upon nature in a far more active mode that represents a consistent direction of domination. Everything is
viewed as "standing-reserve" and, in that, loses its natural objective identity. The river, for instance, is not seen as a river; it is seen as a source of
hydro-electric power, as a water supply, or as an avenue of navigation through which to contact inland markets. In the era of techne humans were relationally involved
with other objects in the coming to presence; in the era of modern technology, humans challenge-forth the subjectively valued elements of the
universe so that, within this new form of revealing, objects lose their significance to anything but their subjective status of standingready for human design.
8
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
LINK – COAL
Coal mining has redefined the earth as a standing reserve
Heidegger, 77 (Martin-, Basic Writings, p.296-297, http://www.aoni.waseda.jp/sidoli/Heidegger_QCT.pdf)
In contrast, a tract of land is challenged in the hauling out of coal and ore. The earth now reveals itself as a coal mining district, the soil as a
mineral deposit. The field that the peasant formerly cultivated and set in order appears different from how it did when to set in order still meant to take care of and
maintain. The work of the peasant does not challenge the soil of the field. In sowing grain it places seed in the keeping of the forces of growth and watches over its
increase. But meanwhile even the cultivation of the field has come under the grip of another kind of setting-in-order, which sets upon nature. It sets upon it in the sense
of challenging it. Agriculture is now the mechanized food industry. Air is now set upon to yield nitrogen, the earth to yield ore, ore to
yield uranium, for example; uranium is set upon to yield atomic energy, which can be released either for destruction or for peaceful
use. This setting-upon that challenges the energies of nature is an expediting, and in two ways. It expedites in that it unlocks and exposes. Yet that expediting is always
itself directed from the beginning toward furthering something else, i.e., toward driving on to the maximum yield at the minimum expense.
The coal that has been hauled out in some mining district has not been produced in order that it may simply be at hand somewhere or
other. It is being stored; that is, it is on call, ready to deliver the sun’s warmth that is stored in it. The sun’s warmth is challenged forth
for heat, which in turn is ordered to deliver steam whose pressure turns the wheels that keep a factory running.
9
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
LINK – COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS
The aff’s cost-benefit analysis is exactly the type of technological thought that leads to our impacts
Shrader-Frechette, 97 (O’Neill Family Professor at Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame; Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the
University of Windsor. Technology and Values, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing.)
As his thinking develops, however, Heidegger does not deny these are serious problems, but he comes to the surprising and provocative conclusion that focusing on loss
and destruction is still technological. “All attempts to reckon risking reality…in terms of decline and loss, in terms of fate, catastrophe, and
destruction, are merely technological behavior.” Seeing our situation as posing a problem that must be solved by appropriate action
turns out to be technological too: “The instrumental conception of technology conditions every attempt to bring man into the right
relation to technology…The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control.”
Heidegger is clear this approach cannot work. “No single man, no group of men, no commission of prominent statesmen, scientists, and
technicians, no conference of leaders of commerce and industry, can brake or direct the progress of history in the atomic age.” His view
is both darker and more hopeful. He thinks there is a more dangerous situation facing modern man than the technological destruction of nature and civilization, yet a
situation about which something can be done—at least indirectly. The threat is not a problem for which there can be a solution but an ontological
condition from which we can be saved. Heidegger’s concern is the human distress caused by the technological understanding of being, rather than the
destruction caused by specific technologies. Consequently, Heidegger distinguishes the current problems caused by technology—ecological
destruction, nuclear danger, consumerism, etc.—from the devastation that would result if technology solved all our problems. “What
threatens man in his very nature is the…view that man, by the peaceful release, transformation, storage, and channeling of the energies of physical nature, could render
the human condition…tolerable for everybody and happy in all respects.” The “greatest danger” is that “the approaching tide of technological revolution in the atomic
age could so captivate, bewitch, dazzle, and beguile man that calculative thinking may someday come to be accepted and practiced as the only way
of thinking.”
10
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
LINK – ECONOMY
Viewing the world through an economic lens reinforces the exploitation and inequalities of technological thought
Ball, 05 (Assistant professor at the University of Alberta, 05. Karyn, “Paranoia in the Age of the World Picture: The Global ‘Limits of Enlightenment,’”
Cultural Critique No. 61, p. 122-123)
Heidegger failed to address the implications of the Nazi movement's genocidal narcissism and, apart from scattered dark hints, he largely avoided a specific
reflection on the effects of capitalist modes of rationalization. Such realities point to the function of an unconscious ego abiding in the logic of capital in an
international arena. To the extent that half-awake citizens of industrialized nations insist on acting as if they know not what it does (by definition),
this ego sometimes induces paranoia among them because it allows them perpetually to disavow or veil the trespasses committed by their
governments and corporations on their behalf while advancing destructive and exploitative geopolitical economic interests. If
recoded from this standpoint, Heidegger's analysis might prompt a consideration of how the confluence of financial and research
capital in conjunction with neoliberal ideology contributes to grievous bioeconomic asymmetries.
Assigning objects with monetary value is rooted in technological thought
McWhorter, 92 (Professor of philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 92. LaDelle, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter, p. 32-33)
A few years after the Americans landed on the moon, the Club of Rome published its famous computer predictions, titled ‘The Limits of Growth,’ which showed that if
things continued the way they had been, ‘spaceship earth’ would, in effect, die. Better researched and even more depressing was the study commissioned by President
Jimmy Carter, which appeared in 1980 under the title Global 2000 Study. Both studies are honest appraisals whose predictions, however cautious, are deeply unsettling.
However, since they take the basic approach of constructing ‘world-models’ or ‘spaceship earth,’ they also give weight to perceptions that the world is a machine.
Spaceship earth and the world model correspond to a world view that objectifies subjectivism and are snares along the descent from the throne of master and owner of
nature. Should we not be questioning this sort of objectifying reductionism? Which, by the way, can be detected in many ideas held by the ecological movement. For
example, however sensible it is to conserve energy, the very concept of energy is reductionist and ambiguous, because it reduces the light and warmth of the sun, the
waterfall along the mountain stream, the roaring of the wind, the burning of wood, and the power of the horse…reduces this whole world to kilowatt hours. It is worth
noting that the word energy—which was coined in the 18th century—has its roots in the Aristotelian term energia, that is, the ‘work-character of beings.’ Just as
problematic is the economic reduction of all beings to monetary values . Certainly the proposals for economic decentralization and for the development
of a ‘gentler’ technology made by the British economist E.F. Schumacher (author of Small is Beautiful) are as relevant today as ever. Certainly the provocative these of
an Ivan Illich are in many ways highly pertinent. And probably an ecological economy will some day develop, presumably in the direction of James Robertson’s
‘alternatives worth living.’ Despite all this, one cannot overlook that an ecological accounting still reduces things to monetary values and that
many of these authors’ concepts are characterized by the economy of objectifying subjectivism, by the world view of the
shopowners—as, for example, with the concept of ‘qualitative growth. ’
11
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
LINK – ENVIRONMENT/WARMING
The affirmative’s use of technological enframing that causes the impact of warming – this enframing makes the
impact of warming inevitable – refusing to use technology means that the alternative will solve
Irwin, 08 (Ruth, PhD Glasgow University in Women Studies Senior Lecturer in ethics with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Business Studies, Her Master's thesis on
Nietzsche and Heidegger received first class, first division honors, 23, December 2008, Heidegger, Politics, Climate Change: Risking it All, Pg. 30-31)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests a mean annual temperature increase of between 4°C and 6°C is probably still within the viable conditions for
mammalian life on the planet. Of course, the earth has had long periods when the temperature was outside of this range and inevitably, it will again - eventually.
However, with our technical industrial practices, modern humanity has altered the tempo and dynamics of the naturally unfolding cycle
of climate change (IPGC. 2001. 200?). Heidegger called the metamorphosis from a culture of subsistence to a modern culture of industrial
production ‘technological enframing.’ The enframing of technology exacerbates the modem tendency to the question of Being .’ One of
Heidegger's attempts to resist the ‘total mobilization’ of technology was a reviving of ‘home and hearth‘ in an effort to reconnect people with the immediate conditions
of our environment, rather than the 'decoupled‘ uber-consumption of globalized production and the eye widening scope of potential standing-reserve. He connects
‘poetic dwelling upon the earth wit regenerating the authentic relationship between humanity and environment or Being as the moment of reflective thinking than will
bring us back from the threshold of devastating meaninglessness. His philosophy is tinged with a sense of desperation that humankind is tapped in the momentum of the
history of Western metaphysics and this is mired in the depths of nihilism. Heidegger argues that it is modern technology that allows this shift in tempt that
characterizes modern industrial production. ‘Technological enframing’ has become the dominating horizon of disclosure through which we under stand all things.
Technological enframing arranges our understanding of all aspects of the world as potential resource or standing-reserve. That is,
Humanity as well as all other elements, of what is known, are either in use or waiting to be utilized in the process of consumption.
During this period of technological development, humanity has become increasingly knowledgeable about the earth. This knowledge
has lent us the false impression that we have mastery over nature - a mastery that was developed during the period of philosophical
Idealism where individual human subjects are understood it juxtaposed contrast to objects. Yet, at the peak of this mastery and
understanding over the earth's processes, problems of pollution and climate change have also opened a deepening chasm that makes it
even more visible that this mastery is an illusion. The danger of technology is that as the perils of climate warming become more
visible we will remain under the illusion that technology is capable of fixing the problem. Technology alone cannot solve the issue.
Heidegger argues that in the midst of the danger, the ‘saving power‘ may emerge. He does not mean, however, that technology is
capable of saving us from the danger’ of the effects of pollution. Instead, he hopes the danger of remaining completely engrossed in
technological mass pollution will shelter the unexamined question of “Being” and eventually, we will remember what it is that makes
it meaningful to be human.
Technological thought is the root cause of environmental destruction – their technological fix only makes things
worse
McWhorter, 92 (Professor of philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 92. LaDelle, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter, p. 15-16)
Thinking today must concern itself with the earth. Wherever we turn - on newsstands, on the airwaves, and in even the most casual of conversations
everywhere - we are inundated by predictions of ecological catastrophe and omnicidal doom. And many of these predictions bear themselves out in
our own experience.We see the expanding muddy landscapes and contracting glaciers at the extremities of our inhabited planet. We see the horrific damage that
increasingly powerful hurricanes do to tropical and temperate coastlines whose wetlands and dunes have given way to high-rise condominiums and oil and natural gas
refineries. We know there is a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico the size of a New England state, the result of poisons draining into the sea along with the topsoil from
Midwestern factory farms. We see and hear and pay the medical bills for millions of children with asthma whose lungs are scarred or underdeveloped as a consequence
of the regular inhalation of toxic industrial and vehicular effluent. We live everyday with the ugly, painful, and impoverishing consequences of
decades of technological innovation and expansion without restraint, of at least a century of disastrous "natural resource management"
policies, and of more than two centuries of virtually unchecked industrial pollution - consequences that include the fact that millions of us on any given day are
suffering, many of us dying of diseases and malnutrition that are the results of humanly produced ecological devastation; the fact that thousands of species now in
existence will no longer exist on this planet by the turn of the century; the fact that our planet's climate has been altered, probably irreversibly, by the carbon dioxide
and chlorofluorocarbons we have heedlessly poured into our atmosphere; and the mind-boggling fact—though few minds take the time to boggle in fact anymore—that
it may now be within humanity's power to destroy all life on this globe. Our usual response to such prophecies of doom is to ignore them or, when we
cannot do that—when they really are in our own backyards—to scramble to find some way to manage our problems, some quick and preferably
inexpensive solution, some technological fix. But over and over again new resource management techniques, new solutions, new
technologies disrupt delicate systems even further, doing still more damage to a planet already dangerously out of balance. Our
ceaseless interventions seem only to make things worse, to perpetuate a cycle of human activity followed by, ecological disaster
followed by human intervention followed by a new disaster of another kind. In fact, it would appear that our trying to do things,
change things, fix things cannot be the solution, because it is part of the problem itself. But, if we cannot act to solve our problems,
what should we do? Heidegger's work is a call to reflect to think in some way other than calculatively, technologically, pragmatically.
Once we begin to move with and into Heidegger's call, and begin to see our trying to seize control and solve problems as itself a problematic approach if we still believe
that thinking's only real purpose is to function as a prelude to action, we who attempt to think will twist within the agonizing grip of paradox, feeling nothing but
frustration, unable to conceive of ourselves as anything but paralyzed. However, as so many peoples before us have known, paradox is not only a trap; it is also a
scattering point and passageway. Paradox invites examination of its own constitution (hence of the patterns of thinking within which it occurs) and thereby breaks a way
of thinking open, revealing the configurations of power that propel it and hold it on track. And thus it makes possible the dissipation of that power and the
deflection of thinking into new paths and new possibilities.
12
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
LINK – ET OBSERVATION
Attempts to observe ETs reflect a human obsession with technology
Denning, 11 (February-March, Kathryn-, Professor of Anthropology York University, Acta Astronautica Volume 68, Issues 3-4, February-March 2011, Pages
372-380 SETI Special Edition http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576510000809)
Heidegger noted that when we ask “What is technology?”, the usual answers are that it is a human activity and it is a means to an end. 43 Above, I addressed some
human dimensions of technological practice—what we do with it—so now I should address what it does with us. As philosophers and students of technology have come
to understand, technology has agency. Sometimes it does our bidding—we use it. But it also sometimes tells us what to do, what to see
and even what to believe. Many thinkers have wrestled with how best to characterize the dance between humanity and our technology: in particular, who leads?
The answers lie along a spectrum. Some have suggested that we are technology's masters, while others have suggested that we humans are
little more than the “sex organs of machines”.44 The most nuanced answers recognize that neither human beings, nor our things, always have the upper
hand. Hans Jonas said it well: “The relation of means to ends is not unilinear but circular… new technologies may suggest, create, even impose new
ends, never before conceived, simply by offering their feasibility”.45 Similarly, Langdon Winner proposed that technologies are forms of life:
for example, we can turn off the television set in the literal sense, by pressing the “power” button, but television as a social phenomenon cannot be turned off.46
Indeed, technology does have its own imperatives sometimes. Ursula Franklin gives the example of radar traps, designed to ensure that motorists obey
speed limits. Not long after these were introduced, radar detectors or “fuzz-busters” were developed. Next came a device which police could use to locate fuzzbusters…. And so it goes, with the initial objective—speed reduction—not really being achieved.47 The obvious analogy is the arms race phenomenon, with which we
are all familiar. But this also recalls Edward Tenner's Why Things Bite Back, a study of the unintended and sometimes counterproductive effects of our
technology. He gives the examples of early car power door locks, which increased drivers’ sense of safety… but simultaneously greatly increased their risk of being
locked out of the car and exposed to unsafe situations. Similarly, car alarm systems malfunction so frequently that in urban areas, that the sound of an alarm going off
initiates little more than neighbours’ irritation. And home security systems have such a high false alarm rate that they effectively divert police officers from doing real
law enforcement. These “revenge effects”, as Tenner calls them, happen because new technologies “react with real people in real situations in ways we could not
foresee”.48 Pulling ideas like these together in his critical synthesis The Technological Bluff, Jacques Ellul offered this summary of technology's unpredictability and
influence: First, all technical progress has its price. Second, at each stage it raises more and greater problems than it solves. Third, its
harmful effects are inseparable from its beneficial effects. Fourth, it has a great number of unforeseen effects .49 Indeed, it is obvious that
modern technology has transformed our social world profoundly; for example, it is easy to see that the speed at which telegraphs, radios, telephones and satellites allow
us to exchange information has fundamentally changed global society. Compared to all human societies before about 1800, which had to rely on travelling humans and
horses to move messages, our world is very different.50 Even more than this, however, television and the internet deeply affect our apprehension of the
world in which we live; humanity's “relationship with the real” is now being changed at the most basic levels.51 But the story is much older
and far deeper than that. In terms of the full sweep of humanity's history, it has been argued that our technology has been instrumental to our actual
physical evolution. From the taming of fire to the development of clothing to the invention of baby slings or corrective lenses, our things have enabled physical
changes in our species. In this sense, it may be said that “things evolved us”, rather than the other way around. 52 Or, as Andy Clark and others have put it, we have
always been human-technology symbionts: cyborgs.53 6. What, then, does it mean to have radio technology? Having explored some historical and philosophical
perspectives about technology and some of the intriguing workings of technology in human societies, it is time to return to the main question: If the technology of
an extraterrestrial civilization is detected via SETI, what could we assume about that civilization? But instead of making a list of
hypotheticals which cannot yet be empirically evaluated, I propose to probe what we can say about ourselves, as the bearers of radio
transmission and detection technology. (I have chosen this as my example because although there are several kinds of SETI search underway, the dominant
search technology has been the radiotelescope.) The stories of the development of radio wave detectors and receivers and the history of radioastronomy, have been told
many times and many ways, so I will not attempt a comprehensive retelling here. Rather, I want to highlight several themes: the diversity of early radio wave detectors;
the role of contingency and the military in radar and radioastronomy, specifically the case of Arecibo; and the agency of the technology itself.
13
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
LINK – GUILT/MORALITY
Trying to solve problems out of guilt does nothing to solve for the root cause of the problem, technological
thought—it just serves to reaffirm our delusion of absolute control
McWhorter, 92 (Professor of philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 92. LaDelle, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter, p. 15-16)
Therefore, when we react to problems like ecological crisis by retreating into the familiar discomfort of our technological dream of
perfect managerial control. How so? Our guilt professes our enduring faith in the managerial dream by insisting that problems—problems
like oil spills, acid rain, groundwater pollution, the extinction of whales and songbirds, the destruction of the ozone layer, the rainforests, the glaciers, the wetlands—lie
simply in mismanangement or in a failure to manage (to manage ourselves in this case) and by reaffirming to ourselves that if we had used
our power to manage our behaviour better in the first place we could have done differently; we had the power to make things work, if
only we had stuck closer to the principles of good management. And in so saying we are in yet a new and more stubborn way refusing
to hear the real message, the message that human beings are not, never have been, and never can be in complete control, that the
dream of that sort of managerial omnipotence is itself the very danger of which Heidegger warns. Thus guilt—as affirmation of human
agential power over and against passive matter—is just another way of concealing the mystery. This guilt is just another way of
refusing to face the fact that we human beings are finite and that we must begin to live with the earth instead of trying to maintain total
control. Guilt is part and parcel of a managerial approach to the world. Thinking along Heidegger’s paths means resisting the power of
guilt, resisting the desire to close ourselves off from the possibility of being with our own finitude . It means finding ‘the courage to make the
truth of our own presuppositions and the realm of our own goals into the things that most deserve to be called into question.’ It means holding ourselves
resolutely open for the shattering power of the event of thinking, even if what is shattered eventually is ourselves.
14
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
LINK – HEGEMONY
Hegemony can’t control a disordered world and their technological mindset causes militarization and war
Burke, 07 (Anthony Burke- Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at UNSW, Sydney. Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason Theory
& Event - Volume 10, Issue 2, 2007. As the hegemon, we cannot place our influence over others. Technological advances will lead to militarization and our heg cannot
solve for the wars. 2007)
By itself, such an account of the nationalist ontology of war and security provides only a general insight into the perseverance of military violence as a core element of
politics. It does not explain why so many policymakers think military violence works. As I argued earlier, such an ontology is married to a more rationalistic form of
strategic thought that claims to link violent means to political ends predictably and controllably, and which, by doing so, combines military action and national purposes
into a common -- and thoroughly modern -- horizon of certainty. Given Hegel's desire to decisively distil and control the dynamic potentials of modernity in thought, it
is helpful to focus on the modernity of this ontology -- one that is modern in its adherence to modern scientific models of truth, reality and technological progress, and
in its insistence on imposing images of scientific truth from the physical sciences (such as mathematics and physics) onto human behaviour, politics and society. For
example, the military theorist and historian Martin van Creve-ld has argued that one of the reasons Clausewitz was so influential was that his 'ideas seemed to have
chimed in with the rationalistic, scientific, and technological outlook associated with the industrial revolution'. 54 Set into this epistemological matrix, modern
politics and government engages in a sweeping project of mastery and control in which all of the world's resources -- mineral, animal,
physical, human -- are made part of a machinic process of which war and violence are viewed as normal features. These are the
deeper claims and implications of Clausewitzian strategic reason. One of the most revealing contemporary examples comes from the
writings (and actions) of Henry Kissinger, a Harvard professor and later U.S. National Security Adviser and Secretary of State. He
wrote during the Vietnam war that after 1945 U.S. foreign policy was based 'on the assumption that technology plus managerial skills
gave us the ability to reshape the international system and to bring about domestic transformations in emerging countries'. This
'scientific revolution' had 'for all practical purposes, removed technical limits from the exercise of power in foreign policy'.55
Kissinger's conviction was based not merely in his pride in the vast military and bureaucratic apparatus of the United States, but in a particular epistemology (theory of
knowledge). Kissinger asserted that the West is 'deeply committed to the notion that the real world is external to the observer, that knowledge consists of recording and
classifying data -- the more accurately the better'. This, he claimed, has since the Renaissance set the West apart from an 'undeveloped' world that contains 'cultures that
have escaped the early impact of Newtonian thinking' and remain wedded to the 'essentially pre-Newtonian view that the real world is almost entirely internal to the
observer'.56 At the same time, Kissinger's hubris and hunger for control was beset by a corrosive anxiety: that, in an era of nuclear weapons proliferation and constant
military modernisation, of geopolitical stalemate in Vietnam, and the emergence and militancy of new post-colonial states, order and mastery were harder to define and
impose. He worried over the way 'military bipolarity' between the superpowers had 'encouraged political multipolarity', which 'does not guarantee stability. Rigidity is
diminished, but so is manageability...equilibrium is difficult to achieve among states widely divergent in values, goals, expectations and previous experience'
(emphasis added). He mourned that 'the greatest need of the contemporary international system is an agreed concept of order'.57 Here were the driving
obsessions of the modern rational statesman based around a hunger for stasis and certainty that would entrench U.S. hegemony: For
the two decades after 1945, our international activities were based on the assumption that technology plus managerial skills gave us
the ability to reshape the international system and to bring about domestic transformations in "emerging countries". This direct
"operational" concept of international order has proved too simple. Political multipolarity makes it impossible to impose an American
design. Our deepest challenge will be to evoke the creativity of a pluralistic world, to base order on political multipolarity even though
overwhelming military strength will remain with the two superpowers. 58 Kissinger's statement revealed that such cravings for order
and certainty continually confront chaos, resistance and uncertainty: clay that won't be worked, flesh that will not yield, enemies that
refuse to surrender. This is one of the most powerful lessons of the Indochina wars, which were to continue in a phenomenally
destructive fashion for six years after Kissinger wrote these words. Yet as his sinister, Orwellian exhortation to 'evoke the creativity of
a pluralistic world' demonstrated, Kissinger's hubris was undiminished. This is a vicious, historic irony: a desire to control nature,
technology, society and human beings that is continually frustrated, but never abandoned or rethought. By 1968 U.S. Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara, the rationalist policymaker par excellence, had already decided that U.S. power and technology could not prevail in Vietnam; Nixon and Kissinger's
refusal to accept this conclusion, to abandon their Cartesian illusions, was to condemn hundreds of thousands more to die in Indochina and the people of Cambodia to
two more decades of horror and misery.59 In 2003 there would be a powerful sense of déja vu as another Republican Administration crowned more than decade of failed
and destructive policy on Iraq with a deeply controversial and divisive war to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
In this struggle with the lessons of Vietnam,
revolutionary resistance, and rapid geopolitical transformation, we are witness to an enduring political and cultural theme: of a craving for order, control and certainty in
the face of continual uncertainty. Closely related to this anxiety was the way that Kissinger's thinking -- and that of McNamara and earlier imperialists like the British
Governor of Egypt Cromer -- was embedded in instrumental images of technology and the machine: the machine as both a tool of power and an image of social and
political order. In his essay 'The Government of Subject Races' Cromer envisaged effective imperial rule -- over numerous societies and billions of human beings -- as
best achieved by a central authority working 'to ensure the harmonious working of the different parts of the machine'. 60 Kissinger analogously invoked the virtues of
'equilibrium', 'manageability' and 'stability' yet, writing some six decades later, was anxious that technological progress no longer brought untroubled control: the
Westernising 'spread of technology and its associated rationality...does not inevitably produce a similar concept of reality'.61
We sense the rational policymaker's
frustrated desire: the world is supposed to work like a machine, ordered by a form of power and governmental reason which deploys machines and whose desires and
processes are meant to run along ordered, rational lines like a machine. Kissinger's desire was little different from that of Cromer who, wrote Edward Said: ...envisions a
seat of power in the West and radiating out from it towards the East a great embracing machine, sustaining the central authority yet commanded by it. What the
machine's branches feed into it from the East -- human material, material wealth, knowledge, what have you -- is processed by the machine, then converted into more
power...the immediate translation of mere Oriental matter into useful substance.62 This desire for order in the shadow of chaos and uncertainty -- the constant war with
an intractable and volatile matter -- has deep roots in modern thought, and was a major impetus to the development of technological reason and its supporting theories
of knowledge. As Kissinger's claims about the West's Newtonian desire for the 'accurate' gathering and classification of 'data' suggest, modern strategy, foreign policy
and Realpolitik have been thrust deep into the apparently stable soil of natural science, in the hope of finding immovable and unchallengeable roots there. While this
process has origins in ancient Judaic and Greek thought, it crystallised in philosophical terms most powerfully during and after the Renaissance. The key figures in this
process were Francis Bacon, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and René Descartes, who all combined a hunger for political and ontological certainty, a positivist epistemology
and a naïve faith in the goodness of invention. Bacon sought to create certainty and order, and with it a new human power over the world, through a new empirical
methodology based on a harmonious combination of experiment, the senses and the understanding. With this method, he argued, we can 'derive hope from a purer
15
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
63
alliance of the faculties (the experimental and rational) than has yet been attempted'. In a similar move, Descartes sought to conjure certainty from uncertainty through
the application of a new method that moved progressively out from a few basic certainties (the existence of God, the certitude of individual consciousness and a
divinely granted faculty of judgement) in a search for pure fixed truths. Mathematics formed the ideal image of this method, with its strict logical reasoning, its
quantifiable results and its uncanny insights into the hidden structure of the cosmos. 64 Earlier, Galileo had argued that scientists should privilege 'objective', quantifiable
qualities over 'merely perceptible' ones; that 'only by means of an exclusively quantitative analysis could science attain certain knowledge of the world'. 65 Such
doctrines of mathematically verifiable truth were to have powerful echoes in the 20th Century, in the ascendancy of systems analysis, game theory, cybernetics and
computing in defense policy and strategic decisions, and in the awesome scientific breakthroughs of nuclear physics, which unlocked the innermost secrets of matter
and energy and applied the most advanced applications of mathematics and computing to create the atomic bomb. Yet this new scientific power was marked by a
terrible irony: as even Morgenthau understood, the control over matter afforded by the science could never be translated into the control of the weapons themselves, into
political utility and rational strategy.66 Bacon thought of the new scientific method not merely as way of achieving a purer access to truth and epistemological
certainty, but as liberating a new power that would enable the creation of a new kind of Man. He opened the Novum Organum with the statement that 'knowledge and
human power are synonymous', and later wrote of his 'determination...to lay a firmer foundation, and extend to a greater distance the boundaries of human power and
dignity'.67 In a revealing and highly negative comparison between 'men's lives in the most polished countries of Europe and in any wild and barbarous region of the new
Indies' -- one that echoes in advance Kissinger's distinction between post-and pre-Newtonian cultures -- Bacon set out what was at stake in the advancement of
empirical science: anyone making this comparison, he remarked, 'will think it so great, that man may be said to be a god unto man'.68
We may be forgiven for
blinking, but in Bacon's thought 'man' was indeed in the process of stealing a new fire from the heavens and seizing God's power over the world for itself. Not only
would the new empirical science lead to 'an improvement of mankind's estate, and an increase in their power over nature', but would reverse the primordial humiliation
of the Fall of Adam: For man, by the fall, lost at once his state of innocence, and his empire over creation, both of which can be partially recovered even in this life, the
first by religion and faith, the second by the arts and sciences. For creation did not become entirely and utterly rebellious by the curse, but in consequence of the Divine
decree, 'in the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread'; she is now compelled by our labours (not assuredly by our disputes or magical ceremonies) at length to afford
mankind in some degree his bread...69 There is a breathtaking, world-creating hubris in this statement -- one that, in many ways, came to characterise western
modernity itself, and which is easily recognisable in a generation of modern technocrats like Kissinger. The Fall of Adam was the Judeo-Christian West's primal
creation myth, one that marked humankind as flawed and humbled before God, condemned to hardship and ambivalence. Bacon forecast here a return to Eden, but one
of man's own making. This truly was the death of God, of putting man into God's place, and no pious appeals to the continuity or guidance of faith could disguise the
awesome epistemological violence which now subordinated creation to man. Bacon indeed argued that inventions are 'new creations and imitations of divine works'. As
such, there is nothing but good in science: 'the introduction of great inventions is the most distinguished of human actions...inventions are a blessing and a benefit
without injuring or afflicting any'.70 And what would be mankind's 'bread', the rewards of its new 'empire over creation'? If the new method and invention brought
modern medicine, social welfare, sanitation, communications, education and comfort, it also enabled the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust and two world wars;
napalm, the B52, the hydrogen bomb, the Kalashnikov rifle and military strategy.
Indeed some of the 20th Century's most far-reaching inventions -radar, television, rocketry, computing, communications, jet aircraft, the Internet -- would be the product of drives for national security
and militarisation. Even the inventions Bacon thought so marvellous and transformative -- printing, gunpowder and the compass -brought in their wake upheaval and tragedy: printing, dogma and bureaucracy; gunpowder, the rifle and the artillery battery;
navigation, slavery and the genocide of indigenous peoples. In short, the legacy of the new empirical science would be ambivalence as
much as certainty; degradation as much as enlightenment; the destruction of nature as much as its utilisation.
Technological and calculative thought leads to waging security wars in the name existence rendering people
disposable and justifying extermination
Burke, 07 (Anthony Burke- Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at UNSW, Sydney. Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason Theory
& Event - Volume 10, Issue 2, 2007. As the hegemon, we cannot place our influence over others. Technological advances will lead to militarization and our heg cannot
solve for the wars. 2007)
war and existence are intertwined. However within such existential imperatives to war lies a more technical, performative (and thus
rationalistic) discourse: that once it is deemed necessary to use force in defence of one's right to exist it is possible to do so, to translate
military means into political ends in a controlled and rational way. This is the second, rationalist form of state reason that most
commonly takes the name of 'strategy'. Its fundamental tenet was most famously expressed in Carl Von Clausewitz's argument that war 'is a mere continuation
Thus
of policy by other means...a pulsation of violent force...subject to the will of a guiding intelligence'.10 That this is a textbook model of instrumental reason, one that
imports Newtonian physics into human relations, is clear in Clausewitz's influential definition: 'War is an act of force to compel our enemy to do our
will'.11 This purposive rationality is expressed by the Israeli war plan for Lebanon , long in preparation, to which we are not privy. We can
however deduce from the IDF's campaign that it had the objective of confronting Hezbollah: degrading their ability to operate, coercing them to hand over the two
captured Israeli soldiers and, indirectly, coercing the Lebanese government into disarming Hezbollah and removing them from southern Lebanon. Other officials stated
that the complete destruction of Hezbollah was their objective. It is telling that at the cessation of hostilities none of these objectives had been fully achieved.12
IDF's chosen weapons, until the last few days when a limited ground operation was conducted, were F-16s and artillery strikes deployed against Hezbollah offices and
facilities along with crucial infrastructure, and against civilians in their homes and vehicles. The doctrinal influences appeared to be Clausewitz and the generation of
twentieth century airpower theorists such as Guilio Douhet. Douhet believed that command of the air would ensure victory 'all down the line'; he argued that 'modern
warfare allows for no distinction between combatants and noncombatants' and, in one analyst's paraphrase, that nations must 'at the outset be prepared to launch massive
bombing attacks against the enemy centres of population, government and industry -- hit first and hit hard to shatter enemy civilian morale, leaving the enemy
government no option but to sue for peace'.13
was captured in the statements of Israeli officials that they have struck '1,000
targets in the last eight days, 20 per cent missile launching sites, control and command centers, missiles and so forth' 14 and that 'we are still working through our
original targeting menus'.15 An International Institute of Strategic Studies' commentary, working again from within the Clausewitzian frame, suggested that 'Israel
will acquire gains well worth the price'16 -- but that crude calculus of costs and benefits must be set against the enormous loss of
civilian life in Lebanon, the hundreds of thousands of refugees, the billions in property and environmental damage, and the inspiration
to a new wave of international terrorism. Both the Israeli government and the Hezbollah leadership claimed victory, but the dead may
disagree.
16
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
LINK – HYDROPOWER
Water power redefines nature into standing reserves
Heidegger, 77 (Martin-, Basic Writings, p. 297-298, http://www.aoni.waseda.jp/sidoli/Heidegger_QCT.pdf)
The hydroelectric plant is set into the current of the Rhine. It sets the Rhine to supplying its hydraulic pressure, which then sets the
turbines turning. This turning sets those machines in motion whose thrust sets going the electric current for which the long-distance power station
and its network of cables are set up to dispatch electricity. In the context of the interlocking processes pertaining to the orderly disposition of electrical
energy, even the Rhine itself appears to be something at our command. The hydroelectric plant is not built into the Rhine River as was the old wooden
bridge that joined bank with bank for hundreds of years. Rather, the river is damned up into the power plant. What the river is now, namely, a
water-power supplier, derives from the essence of the power station. In order that we may even remotely consider the monstrousness that reigns here, let us ponder
for a moment the contrast that is spoken by the two titles: “The Rhine,” as uttered by the art work, in Holderlin’s hymn by that name. But, it will be replied , the Rhine
is still a river in the landscape, is it not? Perhaps. But how? In no other way than as an object on call for inspection by a tour group
ordered there by the vacation industry. The revealing that rules throughout modern technology has the character of a setting-upon, in the sense of a
challenging-forth. Such challenging happens in that the energy concealed in nature is unlocked , what is unlocked is transformed, what is transformed is
stored up, what is stored up is, in turn, distributed , and what is distributed is switched about ever anew. Unlocking, transforming, storing, distributing, and
switching about are ways of revealing. But the revealing never simply comes to an end. Neither does it run off into the indeterminate. The revealing reveals to itself its
own manifoldly interlocking paths, through regulating their course. This regulating itself is, for its part, everywhere secured. Regulating and securing even becomes the
chief characteristics of the revealing that challenges.
17
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
LINK – MINING
Mining is an example of enframing
Absher 11/09/10 (Brandon-, Prof of Philosophy at University of Kentucky, http://imaginenoborders.org/blog/brandon/toward-a-concept-of-eco-violence/)
To sum up, human existence is constituted by its dynamic engagement in practical possibilities which disclose a world of practically significant entities. Traditional
philosophy, then, unduly reifies human existence and the world in which it is involved – it treats both as mere “things” only contingently
related to one another. Heidegger intensified this critique of the Western philosophical tradition in his later reflections on technology. For Heidegger, technology
is not so much a particular (perhaps more complicated) kind of apparatus or instrument as it is a way of being-in-the-world. As such,
technology is distinctive in the manner in which it uncovers or reveals beings. Heidegger calls it En-framing (Ge-stell). The En-framing is a
way of disclosing the world in which everything appears as a mere resource (Bestand) for production (Her-stellung) and representation (Vorstellung). Technology, that is, is a way of life that treats humans and the world in which they are involved as mere sources of “power” to
be exploited in accordance with the independent beliefs, intentions, or values of individuals. As Heidegger writes, “The revealing that rules in modern technology is
a challenging [Herausfordern], which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such.” 3
Whereas in previous ages beings were manifest in their intricate involvement in a web of social/natural significance, technological modernity dissembles this web
and treats beings as abstract, quantifiable units of “power .” Pre-technological ways of life, in Heidegger’s view, are distinctive in their responsiveness to
the independent self-showing of beings. The En-framing, on the other hand, sets out to abolish this independence and to disclose beings in accordance
with a calculable ordering of human devising. “Everywhere,” Heidegger writes, “everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to
stand there just so that it may be on call for a further ordering.” 3 He offers the mining of coal as an example, The coal that has been hauled out of some
mining district has not been supplied in order that it may simply be present somewhere or other. It is stockpiled; that is, it is on call,
ready to deliver the sun’s warmth that is stored in it. The sun’s warmth is challenged forth for heat, which in turn is ordered to deliver
steam whose pressure turns the wheels that keep the factory running .3 Rather than responding to the independent self-showing of the
mountains or the coal beneath them, modern technology demands of the mountains and the coal they hold that they conform to a
“rational ordering” and that they be on hand for whatever use people may make of them.
18
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
LINK – SURVEILLENCE
Surveillance deprives us of the feeling of being-at-home
Uitz, 10 (Sophie, Speaker at the 9th Global Conference, “Violence Probing Boundaries” “Violating the Inviolable surveillance and the loss of the home” 2010,
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ uitzpaper.pdf)
Surveillance deprives us of our
ability of feeling and being at home. It is a less visible way of violating the home but certainly not less effective than the elite squad,
which does it openly with physical force. In putting someone under surveillance, a realm is entered without being invited in and most
of the times without even having given the other the possibility to invite. If this realm is regarded as home to this other, then the
entering becomes a violent intrusion of an inviolable space. Without invitation, and without even asking for an invitation, the very core of what
Why would Derrida declare that we are no longer at home and in the same instance refer to surveillance? The link is obvious:
constitutes this home is disrupted: the sovereignty over the home, and in the same instance hospitality. Recalling that this does not only affect physically existing homes
but any situation in which a feeling of being at home is established , surveillance deprives us of our ability to constitute a home: while having a
conversation, when going for a walk, while doing our job, during a meeting with friends, in any sort of digital or analogue exchange of
letters, during phone calls, in living personal peculiarities that we don't want someone else to know, when telling a joke. As soon as
someone else enters the scene – using whatever technology to listen, watch, record or however observe what is happening – what
needs to be inviolable in order to exist is being violated: the feeling of being-at-home, the home as a state-of-mind. In loosing our
home we also loose what we find in it: protection, shelter, security. Returning to Virno, the reason why homeless strangers become thinkers lies in his
observation that it is in thinking that they are protected "from the blows of random chance" and where they can "take refuge from contingency and from the
unforeseen."15 The protection and security a home provides us with gives a sense of control, ultimately also over ourselves – again, the
sovereignty Derrida speaks about. Knowing who is listening to a conversation we are having and who is not, knowing who is
watching what we are doing, who is taking part in whatever it is that we decide to undertake, is part of a feeling-at-home constituted
by sovereignty and hospitality. And this assuredness, this protection from at least a mild breeze of random chance, is getting lost in a
society in which everyday life can be subject to surveillance at any time.
19
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
LINK – SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
Scientific research objectifies nature and the world, which leads to loss of inner being
Videla, 00 (New School for Social Research, philosophy of science, The Problem of Science in Heidegger's Thought. 7-8-00.
http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Scie/ScieVide.htm)
the issue of philosophy's historical marginalization becomes that of its crisis as the discourse that lays the
foundations of the sciences. Expressed in the vocabulary of Being and Time, this is philosophy's crisis as ontology, its failing to properly ask the question of
When addressed by Heidegger,
Being or Seinsfrage. Itself, this book is aimed at the question's retrieval (Wiederholung), and makes of it thematic beginning. Yet, as explained in Being and Time, the
inquiry is not at all something direct, but a hermeneutic exercise. To ask about Being (Sein) is to actually interrogate the being of beings or entities
(Seiende) and then again, only in order to intend or ascertain something else—Being's "sense" (Sinn), term we must unfortunately
render in English as "meaning". Now, according to Heidegger, the meaning of Being is to be intimated as time—at least temporality is the meaning of Dasein's
being, out of which the meaning of Being will be obtained. This temporal meaning, in turn, has been suppressed or forgotten as Being has been conflated with one of its
time-determinations, the present, and as beings, or being-in-the world, have been understood as presence-to-hand, Vorhandenheit. This interpretation is to be undone by
the Destruktion proposed by Heidegger: (4) [I]n our process of destruction (....) it will be manifest that the ancient way of interpreting the
Being of entities is oriented towards the 'world' or 'nature' in the widest sense, and that it is indeed in terms of 'time' that its
understanding of Being is obtained. (....) The Légein itself—or rather noein, the simple awareness of something present at hand in its sheer presence-at-hand,
which Parmenides had already taken to guide him in his interpretation of being—has the temporal structure (my emphasis D.V) of a pure 'making present' of
something. Those entitities which show themselves in this and for it (....) thus get interpreted with regard to the present; that is, they are conceived as presence (ousia).
Yet the Greeks have managed to interpret Being in this way without any explicit knowledge of the clues which function here. BT 47-48, SZ 25-26 One could therefore
say that the book brings to relief a philosophical error that goes back to Parmenides: objectifying Being as presence when interpreting the being of
entities. Somehow, between our (Dasein's) raw awareness of being in time and the formation of the basic philosophical concepts, a certain slippage of meaning has
taken place, falsely rendering time under the guise of one of its determinations: the present. Thus, philosophy has come to operate with a notion of being that orients
itself towards an outer object, nature or the world. The foremost example is the interpretation of the world as res extensa appearing to a no less a-temporal res cogitans,
or subject of cognition. Philosophy, according to Being and Time, is therefore in need to clarify the often confused understanding of temporality, and the extent to which
a one-sided interpretation of time is at work when we "define" or grasp the world as divided among entities of different sorts, as divided between "man" and a "nature"
that appears to the man's cognition, orlégein. It is clear that the (objectifying) oblivion of the meaning of temporality only anticipates the
modern scientific attitude. In order for the sciences to have objects of research, there must be a previous assignment of (ontological)
territories, as well as an interpretation of Being upon which the latter is based. This is the task of ontology, the indication of a place
(Platzanweisung, to say it with Habermas) which Kant accomplishes in the first Critique, a task the sciences need not constantly remember (although it
runs constantly ahead of them) as they research their assigned domains of knowledge : "Basic concept determine the way in which we get an understanding
beforehand of the area of subject matter underlying all objects a science takes as its theme, and all positive investigation is guided by this understanding, [This
preliminary] research must run ahead of the sciences and it can. Here the work of Plato an Aristotle is evidence enough." (BT 30/SZ 10) If ontology has
effectively forgotten the original (temporal) meaning of being, it has nonetheless accomplished a basic crucial assignment: the
assignment of objects to scientific research—in the broadest possible terms, man and nature. Clinging to a one-sided notion of Being
that is actually best suited to scientific endeavors—presence—ontology has forgotten other ways in which Being may be said to be. It
has restricted itself to a very narrow interpretation of Being, forgetting at the same time other possibilities of Being. On the other hand, the
revision proposed in Being and Time seeks to yield a standpoint from which what has been forgotten can be—if only partially—remembered. It is as though the
book suggested that our knowledge of the world would be different could we only remember that the present is only a determination
of Being's time. The task of the destruction of the history of ontology must therefore undo the misguided interpretation of the being of
entities that has founded their ontological assignment as scientific objects of research. It must be accomplished as a different ontology,
one which is more fundamental, in that it recalls the long forgotten ontological assignment that precedes scientific research: "The
Seinsfrage aims therefore at ascertaining the a priori conditions not only for the possibility of the sciences which examine entities as entities of such and such a type,
and in so doing, already operate with an understanding of Being, but also the possibility of those ontologies themselves which are prior to the ontical sciences and
which provide their foundations. Basically, all ontology, no matter how rich and firmly compacted a system of categories it has as its disposal, remains blind and
perverted from its ownmost aim, if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of Being, and conceived this clarification as its fundamental task." (BT 31/SZ 11)
Oblivion or blindness deserve to be called perversion, to the extent that the original and crucial meaning of Being in terms of time remains concealed. The
Seinsfrage therefore calls for correcting the ontological basis upon which the foundations of the sciences have been laid down. It calls
for making explicit the understanding of Being that makes it possible for the sciences to have at their disposal regional ontologies. It
is, as we have said, an understanding of Being as presence that allows the constitution of objectivity in the different sciences. The task
of the destruction of the history is to make that process explicit once again, in order to regain the possibilities it may have displaced.
Otherwise, the ontological assignment will remain fundamentally misguided, no matter how rich or complex its basic concepts may
be. But let it be noted that the aim of the Seinsfrage is ascertaining a priori conditions, those of the sciences, and also those of the ontologies that make the latter
possible. The clarification called for does to ontology what ontology does to science. For that reason, the transcendental step is twofold: from the ontical sciences to the
ontologies which provide their foundations, and from the latter's "rich and compact" systems of categories to the meaning of Being to which they remain blind. Does
this transcendental move, similar to that of the Critique of Pure Reason, imply that Being and Time raises also a quid juris quaestio? If so, then, does fundamental
ontology fulfill the above-mentioned role of a Platzanweiser for the sciences, in Habermas' words? (5) Finally, what kind of an arrangement of knowledge can be
revealed by an ontology that is more fundamental than the modern, Kantian, one? One thing seems to be clear: what is to be retrieved is not knowledge of any kind.
For, is not the meaning of Being something not knowable as object of research, but a condition of science? Even if here Heidegger
does not explicitly invoke the Kantian distinction, the quasi-transcendental purpose of the fundamental ontology requires that we
distinguish between (scientific) knowledge and the thinking that thematizes the meaning of Being. Furthermore, one has to pay closer attention
to the coexisting deconstructive and hermeneutic traits of the attempted task, the one giving it an essentially negative direction, the other making of hermeneutics the
20
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
indirect starting point of an ambitious (yet unfinished) enterprise. In the first place, and in so far as the fundamental ontology is the offspring of a destruction of the
history of ontology, it does not ground the empirical sciences, but subverts the very foundations that make these sciences possible. What is subverted here is the "trivial"
understanding of Being as presence that has been sanctioned by the tradition, the "prejudices" that make unnecessary any revision of the starting point of Greek
philosophy. (BT 21/SZ 2) If the investigation is to yield any results, one might surmise they would make up a reorganization of the regional domains of beings, the
Bezirke or Felder (regions) cut up by the traditional interpretations. One might perhaps entertain new concepts taking the place of "man" and
"nature", perhaps one might altogether dispense with them. But one can only speculate about this matter for the book was never finish
and the author himself never went beyond sketching what an understanding of Being—of Being as time—would be like, once the task
of destruction has been brought to conclusion. In the second place, fundamental ontology proceeds as hermeneutics, that is, it asks about Being through an
interrogation of Dasein's about its own Being (actually it is the development ofDasein's own preoccupation with its being): "[T]o work out the question of Being
adequately, we must make one entity—the inquirer—transparent in its own being" (Dursichtigmachen eines Seienden—des Fragenden—in seinem Sein). As we have
pointed out, the final meaning to be arrived will actually be that of Dasein's being, and only as the horizon of temporality out of which
the meaning of Being is to be obtained . Thus, if this hermeneutic question is the positive side of fundamental ontology, it is nonetheless also indirect and
fragmentary. It asks what determines beings in their being, but never actually proceeds to directly spell out such determination. Therefore, even if Being and Time does
raise a questio juris, it looks as though it finally withheld the answer in order simply to prepare—through the hermeneutics of Dasein's—the task of thinking Being
beyond the narrow scheme of Vorhandenheit. Neither is philosophy thePlatzanweiser for the sciences, nor is it philosophy of science proper. Close to Kant in its
transcendental aspiration (to indicate what could belong to a specific domain of Being), it falls short to actually answer this question, contenting itself with working out
the a priori of a restricted domain, Dasein's everydayness.
Modern science is based on technological thought
Rojcewicz, 06 (Richard- [Prof of philosophy at Pont Park University, translator of 3 Heidegger books], The Gods and Technology; A Reading of Heidegger
p.115)
Hence, modern
technology is the pure theory, the ontological knowledge, the disclosure of what beings are like in general, that stands at
the head of science, that opens up for science its realm of work, and that thereby sets science upon its path of experimentation. Modern technology is the
theory, the knowledge of nature, and modern science is the practical application. Thus modern technology is not applied science;
science is applied technology, applied ontological knowledge. For Heidegger, to sum up, modern technology precedes science and gives
science its start. Science merely furthers the attack on nature inaugurated by the impositional way of disclosing things that is
characteristic of modern technology. Science, from its very start, is in service to modern technology, in service to the disclosure of
things as disposables. Accordingly, modern technology poses science, sets science on its way. Therefore modern technology is the basis of science and
is not based on science.
Science causes us to lose insight into our inner-being
Rouse, 08 (Joseph, chair in society science of Wesleyan, “Heidegger on Science and Naturalism”
https://wesfiles.wesleyan.edu/home/jrouse/Heidegger%20on%20Science%20%26%20Naturalism.pdf)
The indispensability of inferential networks for scientific understanding highlights Heidegger’s insistence that his account of idle talk is not altogether disparaging. He
did not reject articulated theoretical understanding, but only recognized that in developing more extensively articulated theoretical networks, the sciences risk becoming
more invested in their own vocabularies and theories than in the things to be understood. Contrary to the sciences’ familiar fallibilist image, Heidegger worried
that the development of a science closes off the possibility that entities might resist our familiar ways of encountering and talking
about them. For Heidegger, science needed philosophy in order to remain “in the truth.” The greatest danger in science was not error,
which is more readily correctable by further inquiry, but the emptiness of assertions closed off from genuine accountability to entities
(in this respect, Heidegger’s concern bears interesting affinities to McDowell 1994). Thus, Heidegger insisted that truth as correct assertion was
grounded in a more fundamental sense of truth as “unhiddenness”: correctness alone would not yield genuine understanding unless the
entities themselves were continually wrested away from burial in mere talk. We can then connect Heidegger’s account of science as the discovery of
entities as occurrent, and his insistence upon the need to ground science in fundamental ontology. In focusing upon the cognitive discovery of the occurrent, science
inevitably pulls us away from its own “highest” possibility, a readiness for and openness to crisis in its basic concepts out of fidelity to
the entities in question. Only in “philosophically” turning away from involvement with and idle talk about entities, toward the
understanding of being within which entities are disclosed, could science remain open to truthful disclosure of things themselves. The
sciences’ inherent tendency to obscure the entities they discover behind a veil of idle talk is recapitulated and reinforced by the
dominant epistemological conception of philosophical reflection. The sciences, in their very efforts to discover and describe entities,
lose sight of the entities themselves through involvement in an inferentially interconnected web of assertions. Epistemologically
oriented philosophers then make explicit and deliberate this tendency to “fall”10 away from understanding of entities themselves.
Whereas science aims to understand the world, epistemological philosophers take scientific cognition as their own subject matter, at one remove
from scientific concern. For Heidegger, by contrast, the most important philosophical task regarding the sciences was to help renew their
truthful openness to “the things themselves.” Heidegger thus implicitly distinguished naturalism in philosophy from scientism . I have
been arguing that he joined naturalists in arguing, against his neo-Kantian, phenomenological, and logical positivist contemporaries, that philosophy must begin
from and remain within the horizon of our “natural” involvement with our surroundings in all its material and historical concreteness.
No transcendence of this world was permissible. Yet in his early work, 3 Heidegger argued against most naturalists that the empirical sciences were
derivative from (rather than constitutive of) the requisite “natural conception of the world.” In its turn toward theoretical articulation, science itself was more akin than
opposed to traditional philosophical approaches in obscuring or blocking natural understanding.
21
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
LINK – SECURITY
The aff uses salvation and mathematical certainty to predict the world around them, but this only perpetuates
their impacts
Mitchell, 05 (Stanford University: Heidegger and Contemporary Continental Philosophy (phenomenology, existentialism, deconstruction). Philosophy
and
Literature. HEIDEGGER AND TERRORISM, IV. Security for Sure pg 208-213)
There can be no security. If being is what threatens then security as the absence of terror would be the absence of being. But the
absence of being is precisely the threat. Obviously, security is just as little to be found in the absence of danger as it is in the
consummation of the danger, total annihilation. Instead, security is to be found within the danger and threat of being. But how? Heidegger
likewise provides us endangered ones with a way of thinking security and preservation. This is his fourth contribution to a thinking of terrorism. Security and assurance,
both equally apt translations of the German Sicherung, are indissociable from certainty (Gewißheit) for Heidegger . In the course of the 1968 seminar in Le
Thor, Heidegger provides a brief history of this relation between security and certainty: “the quest for certainty appears first in the
domain of faith, as the search for the certainty of salvation (Luther), then in the domain of physics as the search for the mathematical
certainty of nature (Galileo)” (VS, 30/13). Heidegger unites these two concerns for certainty within a single concept: assurance
(Sicherung), “In the quest for mathematical certainty, what is sought is the assurance of man in nature, in the sensible; in the quest for
the certainty of salvation, what is sought is the assurance of man in the supra-sensible world” (VS, 30/14). Certainty is in the service
of assurance or security and is only the epistemological aspect of a greater ontological condition of security. Security is freedom from
uncertainty in all of its forms, sensible, super-sensible, and ontological. Salvation and the mathematical certainty of nature are
themselves to be understood as instances of an ontological assurance against uncertainty. Ontological uncertainty would be found in
conceptions of singularity, where the uniqueness of a thing renders it irreplaceable and thus opens us to the possibility of loss, or in
conceptions of alterity, where the other is not anticipated and confined in advance to the strictures of categorical thought. Uncertainty
in this broader sense is eliminated in security. One is securely insulated against these differences of the world. For modern thought, the
securing of representations for representational thinking provided the backdrop for the arrival of certainty (see GA 7: 82; EP, 98). Modern
metaphysics itself, according to Heidegger, “means the securing of the human being by itself and for itself” (GA 67: 167). Such a
policy must be abandoned as the human becomes more and more a piece of the standing-reserve like everything else. This postmodern
security is accomplished through bestowal and appraisal of value, “Securement, as the obtaining of security, is a grounding in
valuation” (GA 5: 262/195; tm). What is valued can be replaced by something of equal value, and this fact lies at the center of our conception of security today.
Securement, as a giving of value, assures us against loss by making the world replaceable. In this respect, security is nothing other
than total availability, imagined as a world of utter transparency where all resources, human and otherwise, are constantly surveilled
and traced through their paths of circulation. The transformation in being coincident with the end of modern warfare likewise puts an
end to modern politics and establishes in its place an impersonal commitment to the furthering of planned replacement . Security is only
possible when everything works according to these plans, and this requires “leaders,” whose true function now becomes evident. For the plan, “the necessity of
‘leadership’, that is, the planned calculation of the securing of the whole of beings, is required” (GA 7: 89–90/EP, 105; tm). The demand for security is always a call for
such Führers. Planning is a matter of ensuring the smooth and “frictionless” circulation of resources along channels and pipelines of order and delivery. The plan’s
success is assured from the outset, because beings are now in essence planable. The mathematical tracking of stock and supplies becomes a total tracking when things
have become completely available. Nothing is concealed from this taking of inventory, with the effect that the mathematical model of the thing is no different from the
thing itself. The mathematical modeling of things, an operation that Heidegger traces back to Ockham and the nominalist split between word and thing (see VS, 30–
31/13–14), is paradigmatic for the disappearance of identifiably discrete beings under the rule of technology. The model is no longer a representation of
what is modeled but, in a paradoxical manner, the thing itself. Nothing beyond the thing’s mathematical model is recognized.
Everything essential to the thing is contained in the model, without remainder. Such is the truth of the standing-reserve; it is a collapse
of the distances that made possible representation. Without that spacing, there is only the suffocating rush of the standing-reserve
along the circuitry of the plan. The plan makes manifest the self-willing nature of technology, in that the plan has no purpose other
than to assure its own expansion and increase. For the plan to function, it is therefore necessary that beings be consumed and their
replacements follow right upon them. The plan plans for consumption, outlining the paths and channels that the standing-reserve will
occupy in its compelled obedience to order. The world wars have pointed towards this end, according to Heidegger, for “They press
toward a securing of resources [Bestandsicherung] for a constant form of consumption” (GA 7: 88; EP, 103–4; tm). This consumption
is synonymous with replacement, since there is nothing lost in consumption that is not immediately replaced. The plan is to protect
itself from loss by completely insulating itself from uncertainty. The plan seeks “the ‘all-inclusive’ [restlose] securing of the ordering
of order” (GA 7: 92; EP, 107; tm). Order is only secured when there is nothing that resists it, nothing that remains in “disorder.” Any remainder would stand outside
of the prevailing order, as would any difference, in complete disorder. There is another Nietzschean intimation in this, as Heidegger reads the will to power as a drive to
secure and order all chaos. Without remainder (restlose), without rest, the standing-reserve threatens to encompass everything in a
monotonous, swirling sameness. The more secure the world becomes, the greater is the abandonment of being as it is further
enframed within the plan. Homeland security is thus an oxymoron, since one of the most prominent effects of planning is the
elimination of national differences and “homelands.” Security itself is precisely the planned elimination of differences, and as for
“homeland,” it is ever more difficult to conceive of a homeland that would be nationally distinct from another. This is not to be understood
as a complaint against internationalism either, for “Just as the distinction between war and peace has become untenable, the distinction between ‘national’ and
‘international’ has also collapsed” (GA 7: 92; EP, 107). We have already seen that Heidegger attributes a will to the annihilation of homeland to Americanism; what
needs to be added to this view is that there is not one form of government any different; each is run by leaders: uniformity of beings arising from the emptiness of the
abandonment of Being, in which it is only a matter of the calculable security of its order, an order which it subjugates to the will to will, this uniformity also conditions
22
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
everywhere in advance of all national differences the uniformity of leadership [Führerschaft], for which all forms of government are only one instrument of leadership
among others. (GA 7: 93; EP, 108; tm) Government and politics are simply further means of directing ways of life according to plan; and no one, neither terrorist nor
politician, should be able to alter these carefully constructed ways of life. Ways of life are themselves effects of the plan, and the predominant way of life today is that
of an all-consuming Americanism. National differences fall to the wayside. The homeland, when not completely outmoded, can only appear as commodified quaintness.
All governments participate in the eradication of national differences. Insofar as Americanism represents the attempt to annihilate the “homeland,” then under the aegis
of the abandonment of being, all governments and forms of leadership become Americanism. The loss of national differences is accordant with the advent of terrorism,
since terrorism knows no national bounds but, rather, threatens difference and boundaries as such. Terrorism is everywhere, where “everywhere” no longer refers to a
collection of distinct places and locations but instead to a “here” that is the same as there, as every “there.” The threat of terrorism is not international, but antinational
or, to strain a Heideggerian formulation, unnational. Homeland security, insofar as it destroys the very thing that it claims to protect, is nothing
opposed to terrorism, but rather the consummation of its threat. Our leaders, in their attempt to secure the world against terrorism, only
serve to further drive the world towards its homogenized state. The elimination of difference in the standing-reserve along with the elimination of
national differences serve to identify the threat of terrorism with the quest for security. The absence of this threat would be the absence of being, and its consummation
would be the absence of being as well. Security is only needed where there is a threat. If a threat is not perceived, if one believes oneself invulnerable, then there is no
need for security. Security is for those who know they can be injured, for those who can be damaged. Does America know that it can be damaged? If security requires a
recognition of one’s own vulnerability, then security can only be found in the acknowledgment of one’s threatened condition, and this means that it can only be found in
a recognition of being as threat. To be secure, there must be the threat. For this reason, all of the planned securities that attempt to abolish the
threat can never achieve the security they seek. Security requires that we preserve the threat, and this means that we must act in the
office of preservers. As preservers, what we are charged to preserve is not so much the present being as the concealment that inhabits
it. Preserving a thing means to not challenge it forth into technological availability, to let it maintain an essential concealment. That we
participate in this essencing of being does not make of it a subjective matter, for there is no isolated subject in preservation, but an
opening of being. Heidegger will name this the clearing of the truth (Wahrheit) of being, and it is this clearing that Dasein preserves (bewahrt). When a thing
truthfully is, when it is what it is in truth, then it is preserved. In preserving beings, Dasein participates in the truth (preservation) of being. The truth of being is being as
threat, and this threat only threatens when Dasein preserves it in terror. Dasein is not innocent in the terrorization of being. On the contrary, Dasein is complicit in it.
Dasein refuses to abolish terrorism. For this reason, a Heideggerian thinking of terrorism must remain skeptical of all the various measures taken to oppose terrorism, to
root it out or to circumvent it. These are so many attempts to do away with what threatens, measures that are themselves in the highest degree willful. This will can
only impose itself upon being, can only draw out more and more of its wrath, and this inward wrath of being maintains itself in a
never-ending supply. The will can only devastate the earth. Rather than approaching the world in terms of resources to be secured, true
security can only be found in the preservation of the threat of being . It is precisely when we are busy with security measures and the frantic
organization of resources that we directly assault the things we would preserve. The threat of being goes unheeded when things are restlessly shuttled back and forth,
harried, monitored, and surveilled. The threat of being is only preserved when things are allowed to rest. In the notes to the “Evening Conversation,” security is thought
in just such terms: Security (what one understands by this) arises not from securing and the measures taken for this; security resides in rest [in der Ruhe] and is itself
made superfluous by this. (GA 77: 244) rest in question is a rest from the economic cycling and circulating of the standing reserve. The technological unworld, the
situation of total war, is precisely the era of restlessness (“The term ‘totality’ says nothing more; it names only the spread of the hitherto known into the ‘restless’” [GA
69: 181]). Security is superfluous here, which is only to say that it is unnecessary or useless. It is not found in utility, but in the preserved state of the useless. Utility and
function are precisely the dangers of a t°xnh that has turned antagonistic towards nature. In rest, they no longer determine the being of the thing. In resting, things are
free of security measures, but not for all that rendered insecure. Instead, they are preserved. There is no security; this is what we have to preserve.
Our perception of security and technology leads to withdrawal of being and devastation of spirit
Mitchell, 05 (Stanford University: Heidegger and Contemporary Continental Philosophy (phenomenology, existentialism, deconstruction).
Philosophy and
Literature. HEIDEGGER AND TERRORISM, IV. Security for Sure pg 208-213)
Heideggerian thinking is a thinking that thinks away from simple presence and absence. It thinks what Heidegger calls “the between” (das Zwischen). This between is a
world of nonpresence and nonabsence. Annihilation is impossible for this world and so is security. The terror experienced today is a clue to
the withdrawal of being. The world is denatured, drained of reality. Everything is threatened and the danger only ever increases.
Dasein flees to a metaphysics of presence to escape the threatened world, hoping there to find security. But security cannot do away with the
threat, rather it must guard it. Dasein guards the truth of being in the experience of terror. What is perhaps repugnant to consider in all this is that being calls for
terrorism and for terrorists. With the enframing of being and the circulation of standing-reserve, what is has already been destroyed.
Terrorism is merely the ugly confirmation of this point . As we have seen, being does not linger behind the scenes but is found in the staging itself. If being
is to terrorize—if, in other words, this is an age of terrorism—then being must call for terrorists. They are simply more “slaves of the history of beyng” (GA 69: 209)
and, in Heidegger’s eyes, no different from the politicians of the day in service to the cause of Americanism. But someone might object, the terrorists are murderers and
the politicians are not. Granting this objection despite its obvious naïveté, we can nonetheless see that both politicians and terrorists are called for by the standingreserve, the one to ensure its nonabsence, that the plan will reach everyone everywhere, and the other to ensure its nonpresence, that all beings will now be put into
circulation by the threat of destruction. In this regard, “human resources” are no different from “livestock,” and with this, an evil worse than
death has already taken place. Human resources do not die, they perish. Insofar as it is Americanism that is identified with
technological domination and the spread of the unworld, then it is no wonder that America is the place where the question of terrorism
can and must be posed. Instead of turning from terror, we are called to respond to it. Not by sealing ourselves off from it in a singleminded deafness, but by preserving the trace of being in its withdrawal. America is distinct in this because America most faces the challenge of
Americanism. America is today fighting the shadow of itself, it yearns to leap over its shadow and into a state of pure visibility and security. America is not faced with
an outside aggressor, but with its own photographic negative in Americanism/terrorism. America’s challenge is to not recognize itself in Americanism and to preserve
its difference from this ogre. For America to believe that it is the driving force behind Americanism is for America to believe that it is in control of being. Americanism
is a movement of being; it is nothing “American.” America’s other is neither Greece nor Rome, but Americanism. America must distinguish itself from Americanism in
order to confront Americanism as its ownmost other. Terror can teach us this and lead us to preserve what is our own. Is this to say that we should remain forever
terrorized? exist forever in a state of terror? Is this supposed to provide a solution to the problem of terrorism? Surely that would be an outrageous demand (arge
Zumutung) to place upon thinking. The older man says the same thing about malevolence as a basic trait of being; it places an outrageous demand upon thinking. A first
step away from the imposed convenience of Americanism might be heard in the words of the younger man, “ That this should be easy, namely to think the
essential, is also a demand which only arises from the spirit of devastation ” (GA 77: 215). If we are to think the essential, to think what
23
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
withdraws in concealment before the total availability of the unworld around us, then our thinking itself will have to change . Thinking
the essential, this is a thinking that we can never be done with, a thinking that is never to be accomplished, a thinking that concerns what can never be thought through.
Rather than think from out of the spirit of devastation, we are called to let it into thought; not to think devastation, but to devastatedly
think. Thinking itself must be devastated and terrorized if we are to think today. Such a thinking would attend to the uncommon nature
of our present situation before the terrorist threat . If America is terrorized, then it is terrorized by Americanism. But Americanism is nothing more than an
epoch of being; it is the withholding of being in its withdrawal from us. In the face of this withdrawal we are called to think. Perhaps this is possible nowhere other than
America; perhaps this thinking itself will mark another beginning for America, an American thinking that would not be enslaved to a pragmatic and utilitarian
metaphysics. To think in this other American manner would be to entertain a new relation to technology, what Heidegger calls in the
Spiegel interview of 1966 an “explicit relationship” to technology and “to what is happening today and what has been underway for
three centuries.” Is such a thinking possible? Could it ever arise in America? Heidegger answers the question directly: Spiegel: This explicit relationship, do the
Americans have it today? Heidegger: They do not have it either. They are still entangled in a thinking, pragmatism, that fosters technological operating and
manipulating but simultaneously blocks the path toward a contemplation of what is characteristic of modern technology. In the meantime, attempts to break away from
pragmatic-positivistic thinking are being made here and there in the USA. There are no guarantees that these attempts will succeed; their success does not require such
guarantees. We must hope that in the name of homeland security we do not too obstinately squelch them.
Seeing other nations as security threats perpetuates calculative thought and causes war
Burke, 07 (Anthony Burke- Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at UNSW, Sydney. Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason Theory
& Event - Volume 10, Issue 2, 2007. As the hegemon, we cannot place our influence over others. Technological advances will lead to militarization and our heg cannot
solve for the wars. 2007)
The epistemology of violence I describe here (strategic science and foreign policy doctrine) claims positivistic clarity about techniques of
military and geopolitical action which use force and coercion to achieve a desired end, an end that is supplied by the ontological claim
to national existence, security, or order. However in practice, technique quickly passes into ontology. This it does in two ways. First,
instrumental violence is married to an ontology of insecure national existence which itself admits no questioning. The nation and its
identity are known and essential, prior to any conflict, and the resort to violence becomes an equally essential predicate of its
perpetuation. In this way knowledge-as-strategy claims, in a positivistic fashion, to achieve a calculability of effects (power) for an
ultimate purpose (securing being) that it must always assume . Second, strategy as a technique not merely becomes an instrument of state power but
ontologises itself in a technological image of 'man' as a maker and user of things, including other humans, which have no essence or integrity outside their value as
objects. In Heidegger's terms, technology becomes being; epistemology immediately becomes technique, immediately being. This combination could be seen in the
aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon war, whose obvious strategic failure for Israelis generated fierce attacks on the army and political leadership and forced the resignation
of the IDF chief of staff. Yet in its wake neither ontology was rethought. Consider how a reserve soldier, while on brigade-sized manoeuvres in the Golan Heights in
early 2007, was quoted as saying: 'we are ready for the next war'. Uri Avnery quoted Israeli commentators explaining the rationale for such a war as being to 'eradicate
the shame and restore to the army the "deterrent power" that was lost on the battlefields of that unfortunate war'. In 'Israeli public discourse', he remarked, 'the next war
is seen as a natural phenomenon, like tomorrow's sunrise.' 22 The danger obviously raised here is that these dual ontologies of war link being,
means, events and decisions into a single, unbroken chain whose very process of construction cannot be examined . As is clear in the work
of Carl Schmitt, being implies action, the action that is war. This chain is also obviously at work in the U.S. neoconservative doctrine that argues, as Bush did
in his 2002 West Point speech, that 'the only path to safety is the path of action', which begs the question of whether strategic practice and theory can be detached from
strong ontologies of the insecure nation-state.23 This is the direction taken by much realist analysis critical of Israel and the Bush administration's 'war on terror'. 24
Reframing such concerns in Foucauldian terms, we could argue that obsessive ontological commitments have led to especially disturbing 'problematizations' of truth.25
However such rationalist critiques rely on a one-sided interpretation of Clausewitz that seeks to disentangle strategic from existential reason, and to open up choice in
that way. However without interrogating more deeply how they form a conceptual harmony in Clausewitz's thought -- and thus in our dominant understandings of
politics and war -- tragically violent 'choices' will continue to be made.
divisive ontology of the national security state and the violent and instrumental vision of 'enframing' have, as Heidegger suggests, come to define being and drive 'out
every other possibility of revealing being', how can they be escaped? 26 How can other choices and alternatives be found and enacted? How is there any scope for
agency and resistance in the face of them? Their social and discursive power -- one that aims to take up the entire space of the political -- needs to be respected and
understood. However, we are far from powerless in the face of them. The need is to critique dominant images of political being and dominant ways
of securing that being at the same time, and to act and choose such that we bring into the world a more sustainable, peaceful and nonviolent global rule of the political.
24
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
LINK – SPACE
Space is the last frontier of nature to be exploited
Sabatino, 07 (Professor of Philosophy at Daemen College, 07
Janus Head Peer Review Journal, “A Hedieggerian Reflection on the Prospects of Technology.” http://www.janushead.org/10-1/sabatino.pdf)
Heidegger believed that modern technology represented something very different from that of previous eras because of the full extent to which practically
everything, especially all aspects of the natural realm, had become available and accessible to human manipulation. For Heidegger,
technology does not represent merely the tools and equipment we make and use as we build and settle our world. More fundamentally than that, technology
represents the manner in which humans have extended their reach to change, shape and thereby control just about everything we
encounter within the world with practically no limit. Nothing has meaning or purpose except that it can be made available to be used,
disposed of as needed, even ab-used if suitable. The difference of the era of modern technology is that nothing is left outside the scope of what
humans can effect. Heidegger saw all this as auguring a time of danger because of the all-encompassing nature of what was taking place and also because of how
we viewed it as strictly the result of our own power of achievement. Interestingly, Heidegger sounded his note of warning about the danger of this era of technology
even before some of the more astounding achievements of recent years. Events during the past half century would seem to confirm his perspective, as we find very
little that escapes the power of human manipulation. Not only have we split the atom, but we have managed to delve into the inner workings of its most
elementary particles. Nature, in its most minute dimensions has been penetrated. But also laser and radio scopes have reached out into the beginnings of
time itself to practically catch up with the very origins of the universe. And so nature at its cosmically largest and distant has also been
penetrated as its countless galaxies are probed and made ready for observation.
The way the aff uses technology to explore/develop space, will represent the earth as an industrialized resource.
This reduces earth to a symbol of the deterritorializing technological power of global capitalism
Turnbull, 1/1/06 (Is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Social Theory at Nottingham Trent University. His current research interests address the question of the
nature and significance of philosophy and its relationship to everyday life, “The Ontological Consequences of Copernicus: Global Being in the Planetary World” The
Planet Contra Nihilis pg125-128)
IN THE ‘parable of the madman’, Nietzsche addressed what he believed to be the consequences of Copernican astronomy and Darwinian evolutionary theory for
Western culture’s most cherished and deeply held moral and metaphysical convictions \ (Nietzsche, 1977: 202–3). In his view, rather than producing ‘Enlightenment’
and liberating humanity from the dead hand of religious dogma and superstition, these theories threatened to undermine the moral and intellectual foundations of life in
the West.According to Nietzsche, Copernicanism and Darwinism endangered the ancient, residual, yet still ubiquitous, metaphysical idea that there is an ultimate
foundation or ‘ground’ to the universe, capable of cognizance, and of ‘rationally supporting’ judgement in all its forms. Nietzsche encapsulated the theological
dimensions of these anxieties in his claim that ‘God is Dead’. However, as many have pointed out, this was no simple counter-theological statement, but a warning
about the bottomless void – what might be termed the ‘spatial nihilism’ – implicit within the ‘new cosmology’. For in Nietzsche’s view, with the quest for greater
epistemological self-assuredness, modern humanity is in danger of not only sacrificing its traditional bases of meaning, but of losing the very idea that the world exists
as something fixed, stable and significant. Thus the madman asks the crowd: ‘[w]hither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling?
Backward forward, sideward in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as if through an infinite nothing?’ (Nietzsche, 1977: 203). Essentially,
Nietzsche’s claim is that Copernicanism and Darwinism force us to question the significance of both the Greek Humanist and the Downloaded from tcs.sagepub.com at
EMORY UNIV on June 28, 2011Judeo–Christian conceptions of humanity and its world (that is, to think beyond the territorialization of Western philosophy as
somewhere between ‘Athens’ and ‘Jerusalem’). In Nietzsche’s view, modern metaphysics is both ‘groundless’ and ‘simian’ because, after Copernicus and Darwin, ‘the
earth does not stand fast’ (Nietzsche, 1998: 2) and ‘man is more of an ape than any ape’ (Nietzsche, 1969: 42). In such a context Nietzsche’s madman is not a prophet of
lost archaic theological certainties, but a new voice of sanity,castigating, warning and exhorting his ‘metaphysically somnambulant’ audience to wake up to the truly
frightening placelessness of modernity’s Copernican and Darwinian forms of life. And many who have followed Nietzsche in this regard have noted
that the key to understanding the signifi- cance of modernity’s unheimlich ontology resides within a broader appreciation of the way in
which the new cosmology has undermined traditional conceptions of earth. As Nietzsche’s heir Martin Heidegger famously claimed,
when seen in Copernican planetary-cosmological terms, the earth is no longer the earth in any vital or lived sense but simply an object
comprised of ‘purely technological relationships’ and an object, moreover, that is subjectivized into a representation, a vorstellung,
that ‘stands before us’ rather than as something in ‘our midst’ (Heidegger, 1993: 105–6). For Heidegger, once perceived and
conceived as a visual representation of a planetary bounded whole, the earth becomes ‘deworlded’: appearing as just one more casual
system within a much wider cosmological causal order. And this is why for Heidegger – in his much-cited reflections on this matter –
the interplanetary images of the earth from space are not simply the end product of a rather complex and powerful set of technological
process that enframe the earth as a mass industrialized object, but are images that radically diminish the meaning of the earth,
rendering humanity without a world within which to dwell (a theme that I return to later). When seen in Heideggerian terms,
Copernicanism reduces the earth to mere ‘planetary matter’; an absurd and inhuman cosmic accident devoid of any ultimate sense or
significance. In such a context we can no longer speak of a meaningful world at all, because when the earth is ‘reduced’ to a visual
representation, it ceases to be a context of significance but stands as something that ‘transcends all tacitly shared assumptions’. As
such, it is ‘beyond all frameworks – an abyss’ (Wood, 2002: 15). It becomes a ‘spectral earth’ – a mere flicker of light in the
cosmological void. As Lyotard claimed, as a Copernican technologized object the earth ‘isn’t at all originary’ but merely a ‘spasmodic
state of energy, an instant of established order, a smile on the surface of matter in a remote corner of the cosmos’ (Lyotard, 1991: 10).
Thus the modern astronaut is seen as one of the primary agents of modern worldlessness in Heideggerian philosophy (and one is
immediately struck by the phenomenological similarities between the spatial nihilism of Nietzsche’s madman and the free-floating
placeless experience of the modern astronaut). For when the earth is seen from an astronautic point of view, all traditional human
25
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
concerns are deterritorialized and strangely diminished to the extent that interplanetary representations of the earth developed this idea
and used it as the basis for an existential critique of ‘the mad astronaut’: the quintessentially modern avatar that stands as the highest
expression of modernity’s unheimlich rootlessness. Romanyshyn’s is a critique of what might be termed ‘the astronautic condition of
modernity’ (1989; 200), as, in Romanyshyn’s view, the modern astronaut – what so many modern Western children want to ‘grow up
to be’ – is a metaphor for a hypermodern cultural-psychological dream of distance, departure and escape from matter that reveals a
world of pure ‘spectacular wonder’, and that disguises and perhaps even obliterates those deep and emotional connections to the earth
that maintain a sense of ontological security and lived reality. . It is an object that conveys a new ‘satellite geography’ (see Redfield,
1996) and a placeless map that is the representational condition of possibility for the establishment of global surveillance and
communication systems (Western capital’s command-and-control system). This placeless space of the planet is seen as challenging traditional
notions of space and perhaps even traditional conceptions of the real itself. And according to Paul Virilio, the interplanetary idea of
the earth is not only internally related to the idea of limitless capitalist expansion (see Virilio, 2002: 63) because, in his view, planetary
technologies are bringing about an ‘exotic reorganisation of sight enabling perception to escape from the “real space of our planet”’
into what he terms ‘a horizonless perception under a vanished sky’ (see Virilio, 1997: 2, 2000: 63). Here, as with more orthodox Heideggerian
analyses, the representation of the earth as planet is seen as a symbol of the deterritorializing technological power of global capitalism: a
power that renders the ‘sphere of experience’ as ‘a synthesis of home and non-place, a nowhere place’ (Beck, 2002: 30). However, what Nietzsche and Heidegger – and
their followers – could not foresee is the extent to which planetary representations of the earth have been mass produced and redeployed as a symbolic resource bearing
a different – more critical, that is aesthetic, ethical and political – sense and signifi-cance. When seen from space, the earth appears as much more than mere
cosmological detritus or icon of global capitalism. As many have commented, it strikes us as a rather remarkable planet: redolent with ethical and aesthetic significance
and more like a ‘planetary home’ than a substellar geological object (see Russell, 1982). As humanity reconceives itself through its movement across ‘another
sky’, 1 representations of the earth become suggestive of a new cosmopolitan ontology of worldly co-presence and integral to what has
become known as ‘banal globalism’ (Szserzynski The satellite representation of the earth as the ‘blue globe’ connotes a world with potentially no formal
political boundaries, revealing itself as a rhizome of meteorological, oceanic and technoscientific flows whose indeterminate geometry coordinates a new symbol to
rival the religious and political symbols of the past by exposing the futility of nationalistic strife (see Blumenberg, 1987; Hoyle, 1960: 19). Thus in this article my aim is
to interrogate the Nieztschean– Heideggerian style of philosophical critique of what might be termed ‘cosmological hypermodernity’ and its heliocentric conception of
a ‘mobile earth’, and to show the extent to which visual representations of the earth as planet support a different, ‘less grounded’ but ‘more worlded’ conception of the
earth (and a conception of the earth that in many ways requires Western philosophy re-engage with its classical philosophical heritage, as well as strive for new dialogic
openings with non-Western philosophical traditions). As the experience of the earth becomes representational – and virtual – the earth is not
deworlded as such but is ‘reworlded’ along a new planetary dimension – as a new unbounded planetary space that itself becomes a
privileged place for a new theoria of ‘earth-in-the-cosmos’ (Harries, 2001: 328–30). For, with the astronaut’s technological representation of the earth
sub speciae techne, and its emergence as a new quasispiritual and highly aesthetic percept, the earth has moved back to centre of political consciousness, not in the
traditional sense of the ‘earth as Garden’, but as new technologically worlded and neo-stoic cosmopolitical percept of the ‘earth-as-planet’ (see Ihde, 1990). My main
claim in what follows is that when earth is no longer simply a fixed ground but something more dynamic, expansive and virtual, contemporary Western philosophy is
forced into a new revisionary phase. Western philosophy, I suggest, needs to begin the task of finding a new conceptual lexicon through which ‘cosmopolitan
planetariness’ can be articulated (a new conceptual a priori that ‘speaks for’ a new planetary sense of worldhood).
26
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
LINK – TERRORISM
Trying to prevent terrorism leads to the further dispersing and withdrawal of being, which leads to the false sense
of complete safety and terrorism
Mitchell, 05 (Stanford University: Heidegger and Contemporary Continental Philosophy (phenomenology, existentialism, deconstruction). Philosophy and
Literature. HEIDEGGER AND TERRORISM, IV. Security for Sure pg 208-213)
Heideggerian thought is a thinking that is engaged with its times. Whatever we might make of Heidegger’s political choices, the fact remains that even these decisions
can be seen as attempts to think with and against the times. It is no stretch to say that our time today is the time of terrorism—an uncommon time, no matter how
common a claim this may be—especially in the United States. What then might a Heideggerian engagement with our time of terrorism bring to light? To answer this, it
is important to note that Heideggerian thinking, as a thinking of being, must engage with its times precisely because it is through these
times that we first find our access to being (or rather “beyng,” Seyn). For Heidegger, however, the contemporary scene is dominated by
technology and, as his later writings endeavor to show, this is indicative of a “withdrawal” of being. Heidegger distinguishes
himself from the various foes of technology, however, by viewing this withdrawal as nothing negative on its own. Instead, this
withdrawal is a further dispensation of being. Beyng withdraws and grants us these withdrawn times. This does not mean that beyng exists unperturbed
somewhere behind or beyond these beings. The withdrawal of being is found in these abandoned beings themselves and is determinative
for the way they exist. Heideggerian thinking, then, allows us to ask the question of our times and to think terrorism. My contention
in the following is that the withdrawal of being shows itself today in terrorism, where beings exist as terrorized . Terrorism, in other
words, is not simply the sum total of activities carried out by terrorist groups, but a challenge directed at beings as a whole. Terrorism is consequently a metaphysical
issue, and it names the way in which beings show themselves today, i.e., as terrorized. This “ontological” point demands that there be the “ontic” threat
of real terrorists. Further, this metaphysical aspect of terrorism also indicates that a purely political response to terrorism is destined to
fail. Political reactions to terrorism, which depict terrorism from the outset as a political problem, miss the fact that terrorism itself, qua metaphysical issue, is
coincident with a transformation in politics. That is to say, political responses to terrorism fail to think terrorism. In what follows I will elaborate some of the
consequences of thinking terrorism as a question of being and sketch a few characteristics of the politico-technological landscape
against which terrorism takes place. In order to do so, I will address the role of America in Heidegger’s work, for it is in “America”
that politics and technology are driven the furthest toward interdependency. “Americanism” names the project of technological
domination and the will to world homogenization. This is not a reason to dismiss Heidegger as “anti-American,” however, regardless of how strong the
grounds for such an assessment might appear. If we hold Heidegger to his own insights, then even he would have to admit that there remains a crucial role for America
in the face of “Americanism,” a role which itself might constitute an American “privilege” for the thinking of our times (and thus, perhaps, for the thinking of beyng
today). The logic of this privilege in the midst of extreme denigration is perhaps the most important point for a proper understanding of Heidegger’s views on
technology. In the pages that follow, an attempt is made to pose the question of this privilege in regard to both technology and the land of America. Insofar as
Heideggerian thinking is a thinking of being, then it must be able to think terrorism, for the simple reason that terrorism names the
current countenance of being for our times, and without such a correspondence to being, Heideggerian thinking is nothing . The issue is
not one of applying a preestablished Heideggerian doctrine to an object or sit- that would remain outside of thought. Rather, the issue is one of recognizing that the
objects and situations of our world themselves call for thought, and that in thinking the world, we enter into a correspondence with being. But what sort of
correspondence can be achieved between the thinking of being and terrorism? Heidegger’s articulation of the age of technology already contains in germ four routes of
access for the thinking of terrorism. First, Heidegger himself witnessed a transformation in the making of war, such that he was led to think beyond the Clausewitzian
model of modern warfare and to open the possibility for a “warfare” of a different sort. This thought beyond war is itself an opening to terrorism. Second, Heidegger
prioritizes terror (Erschrecken) as a fundamental mood appropriate to our age of technological enframing. Terror is a positive mood, not a privative one, and it
corresponds to the way that being gives itself today. Third, Heidegger thinks threat and danger in an “ontological” manner that calls into question
traditional notions of presence and absence. Terrorism attends this transformation in presence. Finally, and following from all of this,
Heidegger rethinks the notion of security in a manner that alerts us to the oxymoronic character of “homeland security” and
the impossibility of ever achieving a condition of complete safety from terrorism. In each of these ways, Heideggerian thinking
responds to this most uncommon of challenges.
27
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
***IMPACTS***
28
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
INTERNAL LINK – LOSS OF BEING
Devaluing nature results in devaluing human life
Beckman, 00 (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Humanities and Social Sciences at Harvey Mudd College
Tad Beckman, “Martin Heidegger and Environmental Ethics.” http://www2.hmc.edu/~tbeckman/personal/Heidart.html)
To see the essence of technology in this way delivers us into the final phase of Heidegger's analysis, the great danger to humanity that technology represents. Just as
enframing organizes our lives progressively into a disposition of challenging and ordering the things around us into standing reserve , its
progress as a development of human destiny challenges and orders us into standing reserve for its own ends. "The destining of revealing is in itself not just any danger,
but danger as such. Yet when destining reigns in the mode of Enframing, it is the supreme danger. This danger attests itself to us in two ways. As soon as what is
unconcealed no longer concerns man even as object, but does so, rather, exclusively as standing-reserve, and man in the midst of
objectlessness is nothing but the orderer of standing-reserve, then he comes to the very brink of a precipitous fall; that is, he comes to the point
where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve. Meanwhile, man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of
the earth. In this way the impression comes to prevail that everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct. This illusion
gives rise in turn to one final delusion: It seems as though man everywhere and always encounters only himself." {[7], pp. 26-7; emphasis added} Just as humans
have progressively limited the being of the natural objects around them, Heidegger observed, they too have acquired a progressively limited
character or being. While we have come to think that we encounter only ourselves in the world, "in truth, however, precisely nowhere does man today any longer
encounter himself, i.e., in his essence." {[7], p. 27} While all epochs of human evolution contain danger, the epoch of modern technology possesses the gravest danger
because it is the epoch whose characteristic is to conduct humanity out of its own essence. Modern technology, in Heidegger's view, is the highest stage of
misrepresentation of the essence of being human. (9) In order to understand this danger completely and, certainly, in order to come to accept it as a correct analysis, will
require a more extensive review of Heidegger's theory of human nature and its essence. But this will be easier and also more appropriate in the final section of this
essay, after we have reviewed Heidegger's understanding of art. For art, in its essence and not as we presently conceive of it, from the disposition of enframing, is a
wholly separate path of human development.
Technological thought ends in loss of Being
Beckman, 00 (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Humanities and Social Sciences at Harvey Mudd College
Tad Beckman, “Martin Heidegger and Environmental Ethics.” http://www2.hmc.edu/~tbeckman/personal/Heidart.html)
As human beings become progressively more involved as the orderers of a reality conceived as standing-reserve, they too become
standing-reserve at a higher level of organization. In other words, as human beings come to see other beings in the world only for their potential
applications to human dispositions, humans themselves come to mirror this shallowness of "being" and to see themselves merely in
terms of potential resources to the dispositions of others. Enframing challenges us forth in the decisive role as organizer and challenger of all that is in
such a way that human life withdraws from its essential nature. Within this role the essence of our humanity falls into concealment; we can no longer
grasp the real nature of life. We withdraw into a conception of reality that is subjective and isolated; but Heidegger asserts that the human essence is not a being
in isolation.
By abusing the essence of modern technology, we treat everything as being replaceable and therefore making our
own being replaceable, which leads to the loss of value in one’s own life
Mitchell, 05 (Stanford University: Heidegger and Contemporary Continental Philosophy (phenomenology, existentialism, deconstruction). Philosophy and
Literature. HEIDEGGER AND TERRORISM, IV. Security for Sure pg 208-213)
Opposition is no longer an operative concept for Heidegger, since technology has served to eradicate the distance that would separate the supposedly opposed parties.
The analysis of technology in Heidegger’s work is guided by the (phenomenological) insight that “All distances in time and space are shrinking” (GA 79: 3; cf. GA 7:
157/PLT, 165). Airplanes, microwaves, e-mail, these serve to abbreviate the world, to be sure, but there is a metaphysical distance that has likewise been reduced, that
between subject and object. This modern dualism has been surpassed by what Heidegger terms the standing-reserve (Bestand), the eerie
companion of technological dominance and “enframing.” Insofar as an object (Gegenstand) would stand over against (Gegen) a subject, objects can
no longer be found. “What stands by in the sense of standing-reserve, no longer stands over against us as object” (GA 7: 20/QCT, 17 ). A present object could
stand over against another; the standing-reserve, however, precisely does not stand; instead, it circulates, and in this circulation it
eludes the modern determination of thinghood. It is simply not present to be cast as a thing. With enframing, which names the dominance of position,
positing, and posing (stellen) in all of its modes, things are no longer what they were. Everything becomes an item for ordering (bestellen) and
delivering (zustellen); everything is “ready in place” (auf der Stelle zur Stelle), constantly available and replaceable (GA 79: 28). The
standing-reserve “exists” within this cycle of order and delivery, exchange and replacement. This is not merely a development
external to modern objects, but a change in their being. The standing-reserve is found only in its circulation along these supply
channels, where one item is just as good as any other, where, in fact, one item is identical to any other. Replaceability is the being of things
today. “Today being is being-replaceable” (VS, 107/62), Heidegger claims in 1969. The transformation is such that what is here now is not really here now,
since there is an item identical to it somewhere else ready for delivery. This cycle of ordering and delivery does not operate serially, since we are no longer dealing with
discrete, individual objects. Instead, there is only a steady circulation of the standing-reserve, which is here now just as much as it is there in
storage. The standing-reserve spreads itself throughout the entirety of its replacement cycle, without being fully present at any point
along the circuit. But it is not merely a matter of mass produced products being replaceable . To complete Heidegger’s view of the enframed
29
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
standing reserve, we have to take into consideration the global role of value, a complementary determination of being: “Being has become value” (GA 5:
258/192). The Nietzschean legacy for the era of technology (Nietzsche as a thinker of values) is evident here. But the preponderance of value is so far from preserving
differences and establishing order of rank, that it only serves to further level the ranks and establish the identity of everything with its replacement. When
everything has a value, an exchangeability and replaceability operates laterally across continents, languages, and difference,
with great homogenizing and globalizing effect. The standing-reserve collapses opposition.
30
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
IMPACT – ENVIRONMENT
Technological thought and exploitation lead to environmental destruction
Beckman, 00 (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Humanities and Social Sciences at Harvey Mudd College
Tad Beckman, “Martin Heidegger and Environmental Ethics.” http://www2.hmc.edu/~tbeckman/personal/Heidart.html)
The "withdrawal of the gods" is a sign of our pervasive power and our progressive "ego-centrism." The human ego stands at the center of everything and,
indeed, sees no other thing or object with which it must reckon on an equal footing. We have become alone in the universe in the most profound sense.
Looking outward, we see only ourselves in so far as we see only objects standing-in-reserve for our dispositions. It is no wonder that we
have "ethical problems" with our environment because the whole concept of the environment has been profoundly transformed. A
major portion of the environment in which modern Westerners live, today, is the product of human fabrication and this makes it ever more difficult for
us to discover a correct relationship with that portion of the environment that is still given to us. It is all there to be taken, to be manipulated, to be used
and consumed, it seems. But what in that conception limits us or hinders us from using it in any way that we wish? There is nothing that we can see today
that really hinders us from doing anything with the environment, including if we wish destroying it completely and for all time. This, I take it is the challenge of
environmental ethics, the challenge of finding a way to convince ourselves that there are limits of acceptable human action where the environment is involved. But
where can we look for the concepts that we need to fabricate convincing arguments.
Calculative thought is what brought us to the brink of environmental destruction in the first place
McWhorter, 92 (Professor of philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 92. LaDelle, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter, p. 15-16)
When we attempt to think ecological concerns within the field of thinking opened for us by Martin Heidegger, the paradoxical unfolds
at the site of the question of human action. Thinking ecologically—that is, thinking the earth in our time—means thinking death; it means
thinking catastrophe; it means thinking the possibility of utter annihilation not just for human being but for all that lives on this planet
and for the living planet itself. Thinking the earth in our time means thinking what presents itself as that which must not be allowed to
go on, as that which must be controlled, as that which must be stopped. Such thinking seems to call for immediate action. There is no
time to lose. We must work for change, seek solutions, curb appetites, reduce expectations, find cures now, before the problems
become greater than anyone’s ability to solve them—if they have not already done so. However, in the midst of this urgency, thinking
ecologically, thinking Heideggerly, means rethinking the very notion of human action. It means placing in question the typical Western managerial
approach to problems, our propensity for technological intervention, our belief to human cognitive power, our commitment to a
metaphysics that places active human being over and against passive nature. For it is the thoughtless deployment of these approaches
and notions that has brought us the point of ecological catastrophe in the first place. Thinking with and after Heidegger, thinking Heideggerly and
ecologically, means, paradoxically, acting to place in question the acting subject, willing a displacement of our will to action; it means calling ourselves as selves to
rethink our very selves, insofar as selfhood in the West is constituted as agent, as actor, as calculatively controlling ego, as knowing consciousness. Heidegger’s work
calls us not to rush in with quick solutions, not to act decisively to put an end to deliberation, but rather to think, to tarry with thinking unfolding itself, to release
ourselves to thinking without provision or predetermined aim. Such thinking moves paradoxically, within and at the edge of the tension and the play of calculation and
reflection, logos and poesis, and urgency that can yet abide in stillness.
31
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
IMPACT – LAUNDRY LIST
Technological thought causes a litany of impacts; environment destruction and nuclear war
Shrader-Frechette, 97 (Holds the O'Neill Chair in Philosophy and is also Concurrent Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame,
Google Books)
Heidegger's Ontological Approach to Technology As his thinking develops, however, Heidegger does not deny these are serious problems, but he comes to the
surprising and provocative conclusion that focusing on loss and destruction is still technological. All attempts to reckon existing reality ... in terms of decline and loss,
in terms of fate, catastrophe, and destruction, are merely technological behavior .' Heidegger on Gaining a Free Relation to Technology 43 Seeing our
situation as posing a problem that must be solved by appropriate action turns out to be technological too: lithe instrumental conception of
technology conditions every attempt to bring man into the right relation to technology.... The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more
technology threatens to slip from human control.' Heidegger is clear this approach cannot work. No single man, no group of men, no
commission of prominent statesmen, scientists. and technicians, no conference of leaders of commerce and industry can break or direct the progress of history in the
atomic age.' His view is both darker and more hopeful He thinks there is a more dangerous situation facing modern man than the technological destruction of nature and
civilization, yet a situation about which something am be done—at least indirectly. The threat is not a problem for which there can be a solution but an ontological
condition from which we can be saved. Heidegger's concern is the human distress caused by the technological understanding of being, rather than the destruction caused
by specific technologies. Consequently, Heidegger distinguishes the current problems caused by technology—ecological destruction, nuclear
danger, consumerism, etc.-from the devastation that would result if technology solved all our problems . What threatens man in his very nature
is the...view that man by the peaceful release, transformation, storage, and channeling of the energies of physical nature, could render the human condition . . . tolerable
for everybody and happy in all respects.’ The "greatest danger" is that the approaching tide of technological revolution in the atomic age could so captivate, bewitch,
dazzle, and beguile man that calculative thinking may someday come to be accepted and practiced as the only way to thinking.
32
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
IMPACT – BEING
Eclipse of Being outweighs the annihilation of humanity and the destruction of the earth
Zimmerman 93 (Michael E. Zimmerman, Professor of philosophy at The University of Tulane, Contesting Earths Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity.
Page 119-120)
Heidegger asserted that human self-assertion, combined with the eclipse of being, threatens the relation between being and human
Dasein. Loss of this relation would be even more dangerous that a nuclear war might bring about the complete annihilation of
humanity and the destruction of the earth . This controversial claim is comparable to the Christian teaching that it is better to forfeit the world than to lose
ones soul by losing ones relation to God. Heidegger apparently thought along these lines: it is possible that after a nuclear war, life might once again emerge, but it is far
less likely that there will ever again occur in an ontological clearing through which life could manifest itself. Further, since modernity’s one dimensional disclosure ot
entities virtually denies that any being at all, the loss of humanity’s openness for being is already occurring. Modernity’s background mood is horror in the face of
nihilism, which is consistent with the aim of providing material happiness for everyone by reducing nature into pure energy. The unleashing of vast quantities
of energy in a nuclear war would be equivalent to modernity’s slow destruction of nature: unbounded destruction would equal
limitless consumption. If humanity avoided a nuclear war only to survive as contended clever animals, Heidegger believed we would
exist in a state of ontological damnation: hell on earth,, masquerading as material paradise. Deep ecologists might agree that a world of
material human comfort purchased at the price of everything wild would not be a world worth living in, for in killing wild nature,
people would be as good as dead. But most of them could not agree that the loss of humanity’s relation to being would be worse than nuclear omnicide, for it is
wrong to suppose that the lives of millions of extinct and unknown species are somehow lessened because they were never disclosed by humanity.
33
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
IMPACT – GENOCIDE
Technological thought led to the Holocaust and causes genocides
Athaniasou, 03 (Athena-, Technologies of Humanness, Aporias of Biopolitics, and the Cut Body of Humanity, A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 125-162
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/differences/v014/14.1athanasiou.html)
“The
essence of modern technology,” he argues, “shows itself in what we call Enframing,” Ge-stell: the setting up and hunting down of nature as
standing-reserve, the ordering and challenging of nature to unconceal itself (“Question” 23). Samuel Weber translates [End Page 134] Ge-stell as
“emplacement,” “in order to retain the reference to place and to placing which is paramount in Heidegger’s discussion of the phenomenon.” Weber also suggests, taking
his cue from Heidegger’s own semantic suggestions, that the translation by “skeleton” would not be inappropriate. He explains: “For the more technology seeks
to put things in their proper place, the less proper those places turn out to be, the more displaceable everything becomes and the more
frenetic becomes the effort to reassert the propriety of the place as such ” (124). 8 I would add that the translation by the word “skeleton” would not be
inappropriate for another reason as well: it echoes the corporeal implications of Enframing; more specifically, it signals a claim upon a crumbling and
perished corporeality, evidenced by—or, rather, revealed as—the very remains of those reduced to a standing-reserve, deemed unfit to live.
Despite Heidegger’s somewhat neutral employment of Enframing, his notion is itself charged with strong implications of the biopolitical propriety underwriting the
skeletal power to body forth beings and things, to challenge them forth within the configuration, the “Frame-work,” of modern technology. 9 In Heidegger’s
questioning (understood as a will to essence), edibility and extermination are interlaced , and as such, are inscribed—or emplaced—within the regime of
industrial planning and technology. The mass annihilation of human bodies and the mass production of the means of human subsistence
together usher in the era of technological Enframing, articulated —through Heidegger’s framing device of analogy—as instances of the modern
technologies of amassing, clearing, crashing, and becoming-waste. 10 Man, plant, and, most crucially, the animal—the other of man in
Western metaphysics—emerge as essential categories whose ontological distinctions are blurred and collapsed at the horizon of
modern technology. With the obsolescence of the (nostalgic) aletheic essence of “handling” 11 in favor of mechanical means, bodies (human and nonhuman) are figured as final products, mere effects, of a technological inevitability, vestigial (or skeletal) residues of physis in the topos, or better, in
the thesis, of the factory and the camp, the wastelands of modernity. The emphasis on this essential operational affinity occludes—or brings to light precisely by
“writing out” of the self-aware tropological space—the singularities and temporalities of the human/non-human spectrum: those whose labor and time are
consumed and exploited in the automated assembly-line of human food agriculture; those who feed their human living mortality by
consuming the industrially produced agricultural commodities; those who, by virtue of their assigned biogenetic and [End Page 135]
morphological status as non-human animals—are susceptible to being confined to motorized frameworks of human “handling”; and
those, naked and anonymous, who were not only forced into slave labor but reduced to “life that does not deserve to live” by the
biopolitical technology of the Nazi extermination camp. These disparate singularities remain unacknowledged—bound to dissolve in the crucible of
Enframing—not only precluding certain kinds of questions and foreclosing the possibility of a different kind of questioning but also absolving the philosopher from the
“task” of responding differently to the paradigm of extermination. In the Heideggerian text, the agricultural factory and the concentration camp thus become the
exemplary delimited spaces of modern Enframing, where the spectrum of technomediated “mere life” is delineated in all its limits, continuities, and discontinuities. In
the exchange of typical instances, “examples,” “para-deigma-ta,” the regime of Enframing, where “man is nothing but the orderer of the standing-reserve,” is fused with
technological execution whereby the naked body is left bare of any subjective content, standing before the sovereign power that constitutes and obliterates it as such.
Heidegger’s reference to the concentration camp gives an example as much as it sets an example: it brings to light the naked body of the technologies of modernity as
indistinguishable from its intimate limit, and the word s oma thus resumes its Homeric Greek limit-designation of a fallen or thrown nonliving body, a “corpse.” But it
does so, however, in a way that obliterates the eponymous subjectivity of those nonliving bodies , reducing them to a faceless and nameless mass of “byproducts.” It does so in a way that undermines any involvement with response-ability for the Nazi realm of Enframing, a regime of decimating Jews,
homosexuals, Gypsies, and communists, all precluded from the realm of humanness and, as such, put to death. The subjugation of
human life and death to biopolitical sovereignty comes to be what is at stake in modern technology; it also returns to haunt Heidegger’s
questioning of technology. In a certain sense, the force of substitution encapsulated in Heidegger’s use of the correspondence between industrial agricultural production
and the industrial production of corpses here resonates uncannily with the scene of sacrificial offering (in its particular instantiation in the scene of the “holocaust,”
which signifies “burnt offering”). And thus, absolved from the form of political execution sanctioned as the racial purgation of “the human,” the systematic obliteration
of the crematoria becomes redolent with the innocuous expiation of the sacrificial pyre. In the illuminating ritual flames of [End Page 136] symbolic exchange and
fusion, the forces of displacement and replacement take the upper hand; boundaries bleed and limits are tested between the living and the dead,
subject and object, the natural and the social, the sacred and the profane, inclusion and exclusion, humanity and divinity, human form
and animal form, animate and inanimate matter, the saved and the lost, the edible and the discarded, killing and purifying, and killing
and eating.
34
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
***ALTERNATIVES***
35
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
ALTERNATIVE – MEDITATIVE THOUGHT
The alternative is to adopt meditative thought
Caputo, 78 ( John D., Ph.D., Bryn Mawr College, Professor of Religion and Humanities at Syracuse, 1978, A Mystical Element in Heidegger’s Thought, Pg. 215216)
Moreover, just as the Zen master tells us that sunyala can only be “grasped” by a thought which is “no thought‘ (wu-nien). Heidegger tells us that in order to think
upon Being we must take up thinking, which is wholly unlike everything that “thinking” has previously meant . We must adopt a
“thinking” which does not “represent,” which does not “calculate” or “reason.” To the scientist and man of reason. This thinking is
indistinguishable from “not thinking” at all. Indeed. Heidegger describes it in terms, which are very similar to those of the Zen masters. Where Huinengteaches the doctrine of “letting go of yourself” Heidegger teaches “letting-be”. Again, Heidegger speaks of “meditative” thinking, and we know that
“Zen” as a term is the counterpart to the Chinese “ch'an" which itself translates the Sanskrit “dhyana,” meaning “meditation.” “No-thought” is “meditative,” even as
“releasernent“ is “meditative thought”. In each ease, then, to “think” means to have cleared away all concepts and representations and every trace
of willing in order to be open to what is truly thought-worthy. And in each case this “thinking” is attained only by a ‘leap’ from rational to
meditative thought. As Heidegger speaks of the “leap of thought,” Hui-neng champions the “abrupt” school among the ancient Chinese masters.
The alternative is to reject technological enframing and question being in the world
Rojewicz, 06 (Professor of Philosophy at Point Park, “The Gods and Technology: A Reading of Heidegger”, , pg. 204-207)
What is the difference between a geological survey of the Mt. Sainte-Victoire and Cézanne’s paintings of it? The artist does not deny that the mountain is a coal lode or
an ore depository. Cézanne purposely studied the geological content of the landscapes he wanted to paint, believing that the geological “anatomy” should be represented
in every stroke of his brush. Yet what he is trying to express is not this anatomy: “What I am trying to render you is more mysterious. It is entangled in the very roots of
Being, in the impalpable source of sensations.”6 In MerleauPonty’s terms, Cézanne is trying to render the mountain naissant, being born, emerging from its roots in
Being.7 What is mysterious is not especially the mountain as coal lode but the mountain—however understood— as having emerged into existence at all. What the
painting renders us is the mountain in the mysteriousness of its existence as such; the painting expresses the mystery that we see
anything at all, the mystery that the visible has emerged from its invisible source, the mystery that there are beings at all, that Being
holds sway in them. Thus art, in relation to technology, does not present things under an alternative essence, if “alternative” means different but on the same level.
In our epoch, art does not replace the understanding of things as disposables with some other understanding. That is what Heidegger means by saying that art and
technology are kindred in essence. At one level they remain the same: each is a disclosive looking upon disposables, upon beings as they currently disclose themselves.
The difference is that art and technology do not remain at that level but proceed from it—in opposite directions. Art, as it were, proceeds up
and technology down. That is why art is of a higher essence. Art proceeds from the disposables one step further up, one step closer to the origin, rather than descending
down from the origin to the practical. Art relates the disposables up to Being rather than down to our human needs and desires. Art presents these disposables to our
contemplation—i.e., art calls on us to attend to the mystery of their existence as such. In art, the disposables are indeed presented as there at our disposal, but as
mysteriously there. Art—all art—presents to us the mystery of the there, the mystery that anything is there at all, that beings are beings . Thus art is, in a sense, more
ontological than technology, since it relates beings up to Being rather than down to humans. Art presents beings simply as beings; i.e., it presents
to our contemplation beings in relation to their mysterious source, beings in relation to Being. We can adopt—or, rather, adapt—here Kant’s famous determination of
beauty, which he applies to the beauty of the work of art, as a presentation of “purposiveness without a purpose.”8 In Heideggerian terms, both art and
technology look disclosively upon disposables; i.e., they both present beings in their practicality or purposiveness. Yet, in contradistinction to art,
technology has an ulterior motive, a purpose, a practical objective. Technology observes purposiveness while armed with a purpose, the purpose of
satisfying efficiently some human need or desire. Art, however, is a disclosive looking upon purposiveness for the mere sake of contemplation,
with no ulterior purpose. In art we merely observe the purposiveness. The beautiful work of art presents the purposiveness , the
disposables, as simply there, as having emerged we know not whence, as uncannily there. Thus it happens that art shows us something nondisposable
about the disposables. The very existence of the disposables is not at our disposal. Their emergence into being is mysterious,
wonderful, impalpable, beyond us. That there are disposables and disposable resources at all is not our work but the work of Being. The existence of beings is a
gift to us. That is to say, art presents the disposables as bestowed upon us. Technology turns the disposables into practical gizmos and gadgets; art
displays the disposables as indeed essentially disposables but as, so to speak, more essentially bestowals. In Heideggerian terms, it is correct
to say that beings are today disposables, but it would be more truthful to say that they are bestowals. Art is higher than technology because art presents the higher truth
of the disposables, namely, that in coming forth as disposables they are bestowals. At least, this presentation of beings as bestowed is, for Heidegger, the highest
possibility of art. This is what art is called upon to accomplish. This is inspired art. But will art be inspired? Will art succeed in bringing home to us the mystery of the
existence of things? Will art display beings as uncannily there? According to Heidegger: “Whether this highest possibility of its essence may be bestowed on art in the
midst of the extreme danger, no one can tell” (FT, 36/35). Heidegger expresses himself very precisely here: it is a question of whether this possibility will be bestowed
on art. In other words, it is primarily in the hands of Being, in the hands of the inspiring gods. That is why, ultimately only a god can save us. We humans shall have to
wait. But we must wait in the manner appropriate to the receiving of a bestowal: we must wait with all our might. That means poets and other artists will never be
inspired if they are passive; they must prepare themselves by working at their craft with all the skill and creativity they can muster . Indeed,
we all have a role to play in preparing a place for the fullest possible self-disclosure of Being. All of us are at least called upon to be open to and
respect what is revealed in art and poetry. We are all called upon to approach art in terms of truth, in terms of the relation between divine and
human destinies, and not in terms of aesthetics. Art is that which might save, “always provided that our approach to art is not sealed off from the
constellation of truth . . .” (FT, 36/35).
36
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
ALTERNATIVE – SOLIDARITY WITH NATURE
The alternative is solidarity with nature—only through complete liberation from the brutal cycle of technological
exploitation can we avoid destruction
Best and Nocella, 06 (Associate Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at University of Texas, El Paso and Professor of Criminology, Sociology, and Peace
and Global Studies at Le Moyne College, 06. Steven and Anthony, Igniting a Revolution: voices in defense of the Earth, p. 81-82)
Yes, for both Heidegger and revolutionary environmentalists, there exist possibilities for transformation despite the destructiveness of Enframing.
In the midst of technological peril—indeed, precisely because the peril strikes at and thus awakens us to the bond between human and nonhuman life—there
emerges a sense of solidarity of human with nonhuman beings. Looking at the well-heeled, bureaucratic discourse of “human resource management”
and “personnel resources,” the challenging forth of human beings into standing reserve is fairly evident. Factory-farmed cows, pigs, and
chickens obviously have it far worse than people, but in both cases the purpose is to harness resources for maximum efficiency and
profit. Ultimately human and nonhuman beings are similarly enframed within one giant “gasoline station.” It is precisely the
experience of this solidarity which must be constantly rearticulated —in arts, poetry, ceremony, music, and especially in socioeconomic and political
action—in order to provide a historically and ontologically authentic break with the metaphysics of technical control and capitalist
exploitation. Action will only be truly revolutionary if it revolves around engagement in solidarity with nature, where liberation is
always seen both as human liberation from the confines of Enframing and simultaneously as liberation of animal nations and
ecoregions from human technics. Anything less will always lapse back into the false and oppressive hierarchy of “man” over “nature”
and “man” over “animals” with attendant effects of technological, disciplinary control over humans, nonhumans, and the Earth. Using a
familiar title from the anarchist Crimethinc collective, revolutionary environmentalism is truly an instance of “fighting for our lives” where the pronoun refers to all life
not just human life. Heidegger describes the possibility of transformation through a return of Being as a re-figured humanism. It is the possibility of suspending the will
and attaining a lucid sense of the free play of Being within which all life emerges and is sustained. A human being, like any entity, is—s/he stands forth as present. But
“his distinctive feature lies in [the fact] that he, as the being who thinks, is open to Being….Man is essentially this relationship of responding to Being.” Human being,
in essence, is the experience of awareness of Being. Such experience is the clearing of a space (symbolically represented, for example, in the building of an arbor for a
ceremony or in the awesome silence created in the space within a cathedral or a grove of old-growth Redwoods), and the patient readiness of Being to be brought to
language. Given the appropriate bearing and evocation through language, human beings can become aware of dwelling, along with all other existent beings, within
Being—the open realm within which entities are “released” into presence (Gelassenhait—or “releasement”). What comes to the fore in suspension of willed
manipulation is an embrace of other beings and the enduring process of evolution within which all beings emerge and develop. By
reflecting on or experiencing oneself within the dimension of freedom that is the domain through which all beings pass, human beings
can repair the willed manipulation inherent in calculative thinking and realize a patient equanimity toward Life.
37
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
ALTERNATIVE – CRITICAL INTELLECTUALS SOLVE
The alternative solves because as critical intellectuals engage in a role which makes the world better
Jones, 99 (Professor of International Relations at Aberystwyth. Richard, “6. Emancipation: Reconceptualizing Practice,” Security, Strategy and
Critical Theory, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/wynjones/wynjones06.html)
Critical movements and intellectuals persuaded the Reagan government to adopt the rhetoric and substance of common security in its
entirety, it is clear that it did at least have a substantial impact on ameliorating U.S. behavior. The most dramatic and certainly the most
unexpected impact of alternative defense ideas was felt in the Soviet Union. Through various East–West links, which included arms control institutions, Pugwash
conferences, interparty contacts, and even direct personal links, a coterie of Soviet policy analysts and advisers were drawn toward common security and such attendant
notions as “nonoffensive defense” (these links are detailed in Evangelista 1995; Kaldor 1995; Checkel 1993; Risse–Kappen 1994; Landau 1996 and Spencer 1995
concentrate on the role of the Pugwash conferences). This group, including Palme Commission member Georgii Arbatov, Pugwash attendee Andrei Kokoshin, and
Sergei Karaganov, a senior adviser who was in regular contact with the Western peace researchers Anders Boserup and Lutz Unterseher (Risse–Kappen 1994: 203),
then influenced Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev’s subsequent championing of common security may be attributed to several factors. It is clear, for
example, that new Soviet leadership had a strong interest in alleviating tensions in East–West relations in order to facilitate much–needed domestic reforms (“the
interaction of ideas and material reality”). But what is significant is that the Soviets’ commitment to common security led to significant changes in force sizes and
postures. These in turn aided in the winding down of the Cold War, the end of Soviet domination over Eastern Europe, and even the collapse of Russian control over
much of the territory of the former Soviet Union. At the present time, in marked contrast to the situation in the early 1980s, common security is part of the common
sense of security discourse. As MccGwire points out, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (a common defense pact) is using the rhetoric of common
security in order to justify its expansion into Eastern Europe (MccGwire 1997). This points to an interesting and potentially important aspect of the impact of ideas on
politics. As concepts such as common security, and collective security before it (Claude 1984: 223–260), are adopted by governments and military services, they
inevitably become somewhat debased. The hope is that enough of the residual meaning can survive to shift the parameters of the debate in a
potentially progressive direction. Moreover, the adoption of the concept of common security by official circles provides critics with a
useful tool for (immanently) critiquing aspects of security policy (as MccGwire 1997 demonstrates in relation to NATO expansion). The example of common
security is highly instructive. First, it indicates that critical intellectuals can be politically engaged and play a role—a significant one at that—in
making the world a better and safer place. Second, it points to potential future addressees for critical international theory in general,
and critical security studies in particular. Third, it also underlines the role of ideas in the evolution of society. Although most proponents of
critical security studies reject aspects of Gramsci’s theory of organic intellectuals, in particular his exclusive concentration on class and his emphasis on the guiding role
of the party, the desire for engagement and relevance must remain at the heart of their project. The example of the peace movement suggests that critical theorists
can still play the role of organic intellectuals and that this organic relationship need not confine itself to a single class; it can involve
alignment with different coalitions of social movements that campaign on an issue or a series of issues pertinent to the struggle for
emancipation (Shaw 1994b; R. Walker 1994). Edward Said captures this broader orientation when he suggests that critical intellectuals “are always tied to
and ought to remain an organic part of an ongoing experience in society: of the poor, the disadvantaged, the voiceless, the
unrepresented, the powerless” (Said 1994: 84). In the specific case of critical security studies, this means placing the experience of those men and women and
communities for whom the present world order is a cause of insecurity rather than security at the center of the agenda and making suffering humanity rather than raison
d’état the prism through which problems are viewed. Here the project stands full–square within the critical theory tradition. If “all theory is for someone and for some
purpose,” then critical security studies is for “the voiceless, the unrepresented, the powerless,” and its purpose is their emancipation. The theoretical implications of this
orientation have already been discussed in the previous chapters. They involve a fundamental reconceptualization of security with a shift in referent object and a
broadening of the range of issues considered as a legitimate part of the discourse. They also involve a reconceptualization of strategy within this expanded notion of
security. But the question remains at the conceptual level of how these alternative types of theorizing—even if they are self–consciously aligned to the practices of
critical or new social movements, such as peace activism, the struggle for human rights, and the survival of minority cultures—can become “a force for the direction of
action.” Again, Gramsci’s work is insightful. In the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci advances a sophisticated analysis of how dominant discourses play a vital role in
upholding particular political and economic orders, or, in Gramsci’s terminology, “historic blocs” (Gramsci 1971: 323–377). Gramsci adopted Machiavelli’s view of
power as a centaur, half man, half beast: a mixture of consent and coercion. Consent is produced and reproduced by a ruling hegemony that holds sway through civil
society and through which ruling or dominant ideas become widely dispersed. 2 In particular, Gramsci describes how ideology becomes sedimented in society and
takes on the status of common sense; it becomes subconsciously accepted and even regarded as beyond question. Obviously, for Gramsci, there is nothing immutable
about the values that permeate society; they can and do change. In the social realm, ideas and institutions that were once seen as natural and beyond question (i.e.,
commonsensical) in the West, such as feudalism and slavery, are now seen as anachronistic, unjust, and unacceptable. In Marx’s well–worn phrase, “All that is solid
melts into the air.” Gramsci’s intention is to harness this potential for change and ensure that it moves in the direction of emancipation. To do this he suggests a strategy
of a “war of position” (Gramsci 1971: 229–239). Gramsci argues that in states with developed civil societies, such as those in Western liberal democracies, any
successful attempt at progressive social change requires a slow, incremental, even molecular, struggle to break down the prevailing hegemony and construct an
alternative counterhegemony to take its place. Organic intellectuals have a crucial role to play in this process by helping to undermine the “natural,” “commonsense,”
internalized nature of the status quo. This in turn helps create political space within which alternative conceptions of politics can be developed and new historic blocs
created. I contend that Gramsci’s strategy of a war of position suggests an appropriate model for proponents of critical security studies to adopt in relating their
theorizing to political practice. The Tasks of Critical Security Studies If the project of critical security studies is conceived in terms of a war of position, then the main
task of those intellectuals who align themselves with the enterprise is to attempt to undermine the prevailing hegemonic security discourse. This may be accomplished
by utilizing specialist information and expertise to engage in an immanent critique of the prevailing security regimes, that is, comparing the justifications of those
regimes with actual outcomes. When this is attempted in the security field, the prevailing structures and regimes are found to fail grievously on their own terms. Such an
approach also involves challenging the pronouncements of those intellectuals, traditional or organic, whose views serve to legitimate, and hence reproduce, the
prevailing world order. This challenge entails teasing out the often subconscious and certainly unexamined assumptions that underlie their arguments while drawing
attention to the normative viewpoints that are smuggled into mainstream thinking about security behind its positivist facade. In this sense, proponents of critical security
studies approximate to Foucault’s notion of “specific intellectuals” who use their expert knowledge to challenge the prevailing “regime of truth” (Foucault 1980: 132).
However, critical theorists might wish to reformulate this sentiment along more familiar Quaker lines of “speaking truth to power” (this sentiment is also central to Said
1994) or even along the eisteddfod lines of speaking “truth against the world.” Of course, traditional strategists can, and indeed do, sometimes claim a similar role.
Colin S. Gray, for example, states that “strategists must be prepared to ‘speak truth to power’” (Gray 1982a: 193). But the difference between Gray and proponents of
critical security studies is that, whereas the former seeks to influence policymakers in particular directions without questioning the basis of their power, the latter aim at
a thoroughgoing critique of all that traditional security studies has taken for granted. Furthermore, critical theorists base their critique on the presupposition, elegantly
38
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
stated by Adorno, that “the need to lend suffering a voice is the precondition of all truth” (cited in Jameson 1990: 66). The aim of critical security studies in attempting
to undermine the prevailing orthodoxy is ultimately educational. As Gramsci notes, “Every relationship of ‘hegemony’ is necessarily a pedagogic relationship”
(Gramsci 1971: 350; see also the discussion of critical pedagogy in Neufeld 1995: 116–121). Thus, by criticizing the hegemonic discourse and advancing alternative
conceptions of security based on different understandings of human potentialities, the approach is simultaneously playing a part in eroding the legitimacy of the ruling
historic bloc and contributing to the development of a counterhegemonic position. There are a number of avenues open to critical security specialists in pursuing this
educational strategy. As teachers, they can try to foster and encourage skepticism toward accepted wisdom and open minds to other possibilities. They can also take
advantage of the seemingly unquenchable thirst of the media for instant punditry to forward alternative views onto a broader stage. Nancy Fraser argues: “As teachers,
we try to foster an emergent pedagogical counterculture.... As critical public intellectuals we try to inject our perspectives into whatever cultural or political public
spheres we have access to” (Fraser 1989: 11). Perhaps significantly, support for this type of emancipatory strategy can even be found in the work of the ultrapessimistic
Adorno, who argues: In the history of civilization there have been not a few instances when delusions were healed not by focused propaganda, but, in the final analysis,
because scholars, with their unobtrusive yet insistent work habits, studied what lay at the root of the delusion. (cited in Kellner 1992: vii) Such “unobtrusive yet
insistent work” does not in itself create the social change to which Adorno alludes. The conceptual and the practical dangers of collapsing practice into theory must be
guarded against. Rather, through their educational activities, proponents of critical security studies should aim to provide support for those social movements that
promote emancipatory social change. By providing a critique of the prevailing order and legitimating alternative views, critical theorists can perform a valuable role in
supporting the struggles of social movements. That said, the role of theorists is not to direct and instruct those movements with which they are aligned; instead, the
relationship is reciprocal. The experience of the European, North American, and Antipodean peace movements of the 1980s shows how influential social movements
can become when their efforts are harnessed to the intellectual and educational activity of critical thinkers. For example, in his account of New Zealand’s antinuclear
stance in the 1980s, Michael C. Pugh cites the importance of the visits of critical intellectuals such as Helen Caldicott and Richard Falk in changing
the country’s political climate and encouraging the growth of the antinuclear movement (Pugh 1989: 108; see also Cortright 1993: 5–13). In the
1980s peace movements and critical intellectuals interested in issues of security and strategy drew strength and succor from each other’s
efforts. If such critical social movements do not exist, then this creates obvious difficulties for the critical theorist. But even under
these circumstances, the theorist need not abandon all hope of an eventual orientation toward practice.
39
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
***ANSWERS AND MISC***
40
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
AT: CEDE THE POLITICAL
The Right wing takeover is already underway
Gaynor, 10 (Tim, staff writer at Reuters “U.S. right-wing groups, militias: study” 3-4-10.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/03/04/us-usa-politics-patriots-
idUSTRE6234JT20100304)
The number of right-wing "Patriot" groups that see the U.S. government as their enemy more than doubled in the last year, fanned by
anger over the economy and a backlash against the policies of President Barack Obama, according to a study published this week. The
report by the Southern Poverty Law Center said 512 anti-government Patriot groups were active in the United States last year, a leap from 149
in 2008. The "Rage on the Right" report (www.splcenter.org) found that militias, the paramilitary arm of the Patriot movement, accounted
for a large part of the increase, rising to 127 in 2009 from 42 a year earlier. The militia and Patriot movement first came to attention in the mid-1990s
in response to what the groups saw as a tyrannical government bent on curbing individual freedoms. Most notorious was Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in a
bomb attack on a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. The study said some of the ideas of Patriot groups raging at the federal government in the
1990s have now become more mainstream, taken up by groups including some "Tea Party" grassroots conservative activists who are
hoping to make a splash in November's congressional elections and beyond. "The anger seething across the American political
landscape -- over racial changes in the population, soaring public debt and the terrible economy, the bailouts of bankers and other
elites, and an array of initiatives by the relatively liberal Obama administration that are seen as 'socialist' or even 'fascist' -- goes
beyond the radical right ," the report said. "The 'tea parties' and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be
considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism." HATE GROUPS
GROW Growing disillusionment with the Democratic Party, which controls the White House and Congress, and the opposition
Republican Party has been captured in recent opinion polls . A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in December found 41 percent of respondents
had a very or somewhat favorable view of the Tea Party movement, compared with a 35 percent positive rating for the Democrats and 28 percent for
the Republicans. The SPLC said the number of hate groups in the United States grew by 54 percent between 2000 and 2008, " driven largely by an angry
backlash against non-white immigration and, starting in the last year of that period, the economic meltdown and the climb to power of
an African American president." The SPLC said the number of hate groups rose again slightly last year to 932 from 926 in 2008
"despite the demise of a key neo-Nazi group" -- the American National Socialist Workers Party, which had 35 chapters in 28 states. The SPLC study gave
several examples of what it said was "violence emanating from the radical right" since Obama took office last year. These included the murders of six law enforcement
officers by right-wing extremists and the arrests of "racist skinheads and others" in alleged plots to assassinate Obama.
Theoretical thought is
A: Necessary for the foundation of Democracy
B: Inseparable from modern day political practice
Dallmayr, 01 (PhD. professor in the department of philosophy and political science at the University of Notre Dame Ahcieveing Our world, Toward a Global and
Plural democracy pg 24-26, google books)
Rorty asserts the ‘primacy of the practical over
the theoretical‘ and proceeds to denounce or impugn many or most of the theoretical preoccupations of American intellectuals during
the past half century. As he notes, many of these preoccupations are of Continental European origin, and thus not properly germane or indigenous to the American
experience (an argument not free of ethnocent:ric leanings). More important in the current context is a certain obtuseness of pragmatism narrowly
constructed. Clearly, the asserted ‘primacy of the practical over the theoretical‘ is itself a theoretical pronouncement, and thus can
hardly be used to dislodge or delegitimate reflective theorizing as such. Moreover, as Rorty himself recognizes, theoretical initiatives
during recent decades-even when of European origin - have greatly helped in raising social consciousness or sensitivity in the United
States, in the sense of rendering Americans more sensitive or attentive to ethnic or cultural ‘otherness,’ to the problems of identity
formation, and hence to the complexity of self-other relations in a multicultural society.8 As this author believes, again, the
strengthening or reinvigoration of democracy is impossible without a heightened awareness of this complexity —a point largely ignored in
The other point of departure has to do with the issue of antifoundationalism. Faithful to pragmatist teachings,
old-style socialism and progressivism. Valorizing theory in this manner does not amount to an endorsement of ‘foundationaism.' In the author's view, theory does not
constitute the premise or a priori foundation of action, a preamble from which practice could be deduced through logical entailment, nor does it furnish a mere cloak or
posthoc rationalization to practical conduct. Contrary to such construals, theorizing simply means a careful vigilance or reflective mindfulness, a certain way of
‘minding one's business'—where 'business' includes what is happening in the world and how people behave toward each other. Differently put, theory is not the servant
or handmaiden of practice (in a means-ends relation), nor its master or omnipotent dictator, but rather simply its custodian or attentive companion.9 Viewed against
this background, theory can only with great difficulty be separated from practice , and then only for limited heuristic purposes. This book adopts
such a heuristic device, in the sense that part 1 (‘Globalization and Democracy‘) focuses more on practical-political issues involved in the tension between global and
local trajectories, while part 2 ('Pluralism: Variations on Self-Other Relations‘) shifts attention to more recessed theoretical problems having to do with the liaison
between selfliood and otherness, identity and difference. One should note, however, the division is one of emphasis only and not of 'primacy‘ in either direction; hence,
overlaps are multiple and in principle unavoidable. As readers of chapters in both parts will quickly detect, practical-political concerns constantly invade and permeate
‘philosophical’ deliberations, just as theoretical concerns impinge on discussions of globalization and the promotion of global democracy.
Critical theory is a prerequisite to politics
Brown, 05 (Wendy got her phd in Princeton in 1983 for political philosophy. Edgework:
41
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics. She is best known for intertwining the insights of Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, Frankfurt School theorists, Foucault, and
contemporary Continental philosophers to critically interrogate formations of power, political identity, citizenship, and political subjectivity in contemporary liberal
democracies. http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8079.html)
critical theory cannot let itself be bound by political exigency; indeed, it has something of an obligation to refuse such
exigency. While there are always decisive choices to be made in the political realm (whom to vote for, what policies to support or oppose, what
action to take or defer), these very delimitations of choice are often themselves the material of critical theory. Here we might remind
ourselves that prising apart immediate political constraints from intellectual ones is one path to being "governed a little less" in
Foucault's sense. Yet allowing thinking its wildness beyond the immediate in order to reset the possibilities of the immediate is also how this degoverning
rearticulates critical theory and politics after disarticulating them; critical theory comes back to politics offering a different sense of the times and a
different sense of time. It is also important to remember that the "immediate choices" are just that and often last no longer than a
political season (exemplified by the fact that the political conundrums with which this essay opened will be dated if not forgotten by the time this book is
published). Nor is the argument convincing that critical theory threatens the possibility of holding back the political dark. It is difficult to
name a single instance in which critical theory has killed off a progressive political project. Critical theory is not what makes
progressive political projects fail; at worst it might give them bad conscience, at best it renews their imaginative reach and vigor.
On the one hand,
Political reform cannot succeed without consideration of ontology
Zizek, 99 (Slavoj-, 10-28-1999, Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism, London Review Vol. 21 No. 21)
In dissecting Late Socialism, Havel was always aware that Western liberal democracy was far from meeting the ideals of authentic community and
‘living in truth’ on behalf of which he and other dissidents opposed Communism. He was faced, then, with the problem of combining a rejection of ‘totalitarianism’
with the need to offer critical insight into Western democracy. His solution was to follow Heidegger and to see in the technological hubris of capitalism, its mad dance
of self-enhancing productivity, the expression of a more fundamental transcendental-ontological principle – ‘will to power’, ‘instrumental reason’ – equally evident in
the Communist attempt to overcome capitalism. This was the argument of Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, which first engineered the fateful
shift from concrete socio-political analysis to philosophico-anthropological generalisation, by means of which ‘instrumental reason’ is
no longer grounded in concrete capitalist social relations, but is instead posited as their quasi-transcendental ‘foundation’. The moment
that Havel endorsed Heidegger’s recourse to quasi-anthropological or philosophical principle, Stalinism lost its specificity, its specific political dynamic, and turned into
just another example of this principle (as exemplified by Heidegger’s remark, in his Introduction to Metaphysics, that, in the long run, Russian Communism
and Americanism were ‘metaphysically one and the same’). Keane tries to save Havel from this predicament by emphasising the ambiguous nature of his
intellectual debt to Heidegger. Like Heidegger, Havel conceived of Communism as a thoroughly modern regime, an inflated caricature of
modern life, with many tendencies shared by Western society – technological hubris and the crushing of human individuality attendant
on it. However, in contrast to Heidegger, who excluded any active resistance to the social-technological framework (‘only God can save
us,’ as he put it in an interview, published after his death), Havel put faith in a challenge ‘from below’ – in the independent life of ‘civil society’
outside the frame of state power. The ‘power of the powerless’, he argued, resides in the self-organisation of civil society that defies the ‘instrumental reason’
embodied in the state and the technological apparatuses of control and domination. I find the idea of civil society doubly problematic. First, the
opposition between state and civil society works against as well as for liberty and democracy. For example, in the United States, the Moral
Majority presents itself (and is effectively organised as) the resistance of local civil society to the regulatory interventions of the liberal state – the recent exclusion of
Darwinism from the school curriculum in Kansas is in this sense exemplary. So while in the specific case of Late Socialism the idea of civil society
refers to the opening up of a space of resistance to ‘totalitarian’ power, there is no essential reason why it cannot provide space for all
the politico-ideological antagonisms that plagued Communism, including nationalism and opposition movements of an antidemocratic nature. These are authentic expressions of civil society – civil society designates the terrain of open struggle, the terrain in
which antagonisms can articulate themselves, without any guarantee that the ‘progressive’ side will win. Second, civil society as Havel
conceived it is not, in fact, a development of Heidegger’s thinking. The essence of modern technology for Heidegger was not a set of institutions, practices
and ideological attitudes that can be opposed, but the very ontological horizon that determines how we experience Being today, how reality
discloses itself to us. For that reason, Heidegger would have found the concept of ‘the power of the powerless’ suspect, caught in the logic of the Will to Power
that it endeavours to denounce. Havel’s understanding that ‘living in truth’ could not be achieved by capitalism, combined with his crucial failure to understand the
origins of his own critical impulse, has pushed him towards New Ageism. Although the Communist regimes were mostly a dismal failure, generating terror and misery,
at the same time they opened up a space for utopian expectations which, among other things, facilitated the failure of Communism itself. What anti-Communist
dissidents such as Havel overlook, then, is that the very space from which they criticised and denounced terror and misery was opened and
sustained by Communism’s attempt to escape the logic of capitalism. This explains Havel’s continuing insistence that capitalism in its
traditional, brutal form cannot meet the high expectations of his anti-Communist struggle – the need for authentic human solidarity etc. This is, in
turn, why Václav Klaus, Havel’s pragmatic double, has dismissed Havel as a ‘socialist’.
42
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
AT: HEIDEGGER WAS A NAZI
Their argument is invalid—Heidegger recognized Nazism as based on technological thought and exploitation,
which caused genocide
Thomson, 09 (Associate Professor and Graduate Director of the Department of Philosophy of the University of New Mexico, 09. Palgrave Macmillan, New
Waves in Philosophy of Technology, ed. by: Jan-Kyrre Berg Olsen, Evan Selinger, and Soren Riis, p. 151-152)
As such critical references to ‘breeding’ suggest, Heidegger associates the Nietzschean danger of technological thinking with National Socialism in
1938. By 1940, however, when America directly enters the Second World War in response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Heidegger is no longer sure Germany
will win the massive arms race for global control he thinks all nations are being driven into by the technological ontotheology underlying the
age. Heidegger thus concludes his 1940 Nietzsche lectures dramatically, interpreting (for those students who have not already gone off to war) Nietzsche’s famous
prophecy that: ‘The time is coming when the struggle for dominion over the earth will be carried on…in the name of fundamental philosophical doctrines.’ According
to the reading Heidegger will never subsequently relinquish, Nietzsche’s ontotheological understanding of the being of entities predetermines the destiny of our
contemporary world. Nietzsche’s ontotheological understanding of ‘the totality of entities as such’ as ‘eternally recurring will-to-power’ not only intensifies
‘the struggle for the unrestrained exploitation of the earth as a source of raw materials’ (a struggle already implicit in the modern subject/object
divide), it also generates our distinctively last-modern reflexive application of that limitless objectification back upon the subject itself. This objectification of the
subject dissolves the subject/object distinction itself and so lays the ground for what Heidegger already recognizes in 1940 as ‘the cynical
exploitation of “human resources” in the service of the absolute empowering of will to power’ (N3 250/NII 333).
Labeling Heidegger as a Nazi and his work as evil oversimplifies the relationship between man, politics and
thought
Young, 97 (Kenan Professor of Humanities at Wake Forest University. Julian, Heidegger, philosophy, Nazism, p. 5-6)
The argument of this book is that none
of these claims about the philosophy can, in fact be sustained; that neither the early philosophy of Being
and Time, nor the later, post-war philosophy, nor even the philosophy of the mid-1930s—works such as the Introduction to Metaphysics with
respect to which critics often feel themselves to have an open-and-shut case—stand in any essential connection to Nazism. One may accept some, or
all, of this philosophy without fear of being committed to, or moved into proximity with, fascism. More precisely, my claim is that one may
accept any of Heidegger’s philosophy and, though Heidegger himself was far from any such commitment, preserve, without inconsistency, a commitment to orthodox
liberal democracy. This is the sense in which the book seeks to present a ‘de-Nazified’ Heidegger: it is, above all, ‘Heidegger’ as the name of a body of
philosophy which I shall argue to be free of the taint of Nazism. Thoughtful readers will protest that my thesis proposes an a priori implausibility, the severance of
man from work. They may even point out, as Herbert Marcuse did in 1947, in writing to his former teacher to ask him to recant his Nazi past, that a separation between
Heidegger the man and Heidegger the philosopher contradicts his own philosophy: his lifelong rejection of the distinction between the ‘theoretical’ and the ‘practical’.
My reply, however, is that I propose no such separation. Particularly in the case of someone so passionately and essentially a thinker as Heidegger, life and thought are
one and the same. On the other hand, thinkerly men, human beings in general, are complex, richly inconsistent creatures, with a complexity which, unless we are very
good novelists or therapists, we stand under an ever-increasing pressure not to see. In deciding who to read, whom to attend to and whom to ignore, we
search for headlines, one-word biographies—‘the homosexual’, ‘the president’, ‘the existentialist’, ‘the Nazi’—to tell us everything important
about the person with whom we have to deal.
Heidegger’s political actions contradict his philosophy
Young, 97 (Kenan Professor of Humanities at Wake Forest University. Julian, Heidegger, philosophy, Nazism, p. 5-6)
In this book I have sought to ‘de-Nazify’ Heidegger. Taking on board the wisdom of those who insist on the inseparability of man and philosophy, I have sought to deNazify both. None of Heidegger’s philosophy, I have argued, is implicated, either positively or negatively, in fascism, and neither, therefore,
is the essential man. By no means, however, do I deny Heidegger’s deep involvement with Nazism during 1933-4. In relation to this, however, I have made two
claims. First, that his claim that by 1935 he had moved into fundamental opposition to Nazism is to be believed. To be set against the, as it turned out, relatively weak
evidence of Lowith’s report that in Rome in 1936 Heidgger still asserted Nazism to be the right way is the much stronger evidence of the powerful, public and, as Otto
Poggeler has emphasized, courageous critique of Nazism beginning with the Introduction to Metaphysics. Secondly, and even more importantly, I have argued that
Heidegger’s political involvement was inconsistent with the deepest philosophical position he had already worked out, at least by the
essay “The Essence of Truth” of 1930. According to that philosophy, his involvement is itself an instance of the nihilism and
‘forgetfulness of Being’ Heidegger was dedicated to opposing.
Heidegger’s Nazism was controlled and caused by his wife
Bowler, 09 (Eric-, Master’s Degree in Comparative Religion, Heidegger and the Third Reich, p.7 http://www.walterjensen.net/handouts/P_Heidegger_and_the_Third_Reich.pdf)
Much of the defense of Heidegger’s war time activities and associations come from his former associates and pupils (including his former lover Hannah Arendt.) They
believed that Heidegger was naïve and politically unmotivated, that much of the political maneuvering was due to the influence of
Heidegger’s wife. His former pupils and friends, while many times his staunchest critics, also turn out to be his most reliable allies. Karl Jaspers,
when asked to testify before a 1945 commission regarding Heidegger’s wartime activities, told that he believed that Heidegger was not anti-Semitic during
43
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
the 1920s, but rather, that he developed a situational tendency toward the prejudice by 1933 . Though this does sound bad, it could have been much
worse. In effect, Jaspers downplayed the anti-Semitism of Heidegger of which he was aware.
Heidegger wasn’t anti-Semitic and helped many Jews
Safranski, 98 (Rudiger-, German philosopher, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil, p.254-255)
Was Heidegger anti-Semitic? Certainly not in the sense of the ideological lunacy of Nazism. It is significant that neither in his lectures
and philosophical writings, nor in his political speeches and pamphlets are there any anti-Semitic or racist remarks. Thus, when Heidegger
in his circular before the May Day celebrations described “the building of a new spiritual world for the German people” as the “command of the hour,” he did not
wish to exclude from this task anyone willing to cooperate. Heidegger’s Nazism was decisionist. What mattered to him was not origin but decision. In his
terminology, man should be judged not by his “thrownness” but by his “design.” To that extent he was even able to help hard-pressed Jewish colleagues.
When Eduard Fraenkel, professor of classical philology, and Georg von Hevesy, professor of physical chemistry, were to be dismissed because they were Jews,
Heidegger in a letter to the Ministry of Education tried to prevent this. He used the tactical argument that a dismissal of these two Jewish professors, “whose
extraordinary scientific standing was beyond doubt,” would be especially harmful to a “borderland university,” on which foreign critical eyes were particularly focused.
Besides, both men were “Jews of the better sort, men of exemplary character.” He could vouch for the irreproachable conduct of both men, “insofar as it is humanly
possible to predict these things.” Fraenkel was dismissed despite Heidegger’s submission, while Hevesy was allowed to stay on for the time being. Heidegger also
engaged himself for his Jewish assistant Werner Brock. Although he could not keep him at the university, he arranged for a research fellowship for him in Cambridge,
England. After 1945 Heidegger pointed to his engagement for Jewish scientists at the time, as well as to the fact that within a few days of assuming office he
had risked a conflict with the Nazi student body by forbidding the anti-Semitic poster “Against the Un-German Spirit” to be displayed within
the university. These patterns of behavior show Heidegger’s reserve toward a crude or ideological anti-Semitism.
Heidegger had quickly withdrawn from the National Socialist revolution, separated his politics from his
philosophy, and was a Nazi for only a short time
Safranski, 98 (Rudiger-, German philosopher, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil, p.338)
he had, for a short while, committed
himself to the National Socialist revolution because he had regarded it as a metaphysical revolution. When it failed to live up to its
promises—and what its promises to him had been he never accurately disclosed—he had withdrawn and pursued his philosophical work, unaffected
by the party’s approval or rejection. He had made no secret of his critical distance from the system but openly declared it in his
lectures. To that extent he was less responsible of the system than the vast majority of scholars who had adapted , and none of whom was now
being made to justify himself. What did he have to do with the crimes of the system? Heidegger was actually surprised to be required to justify himself at all. He
experienced, as he later admitted to Jaspers on April 8, 1950, “shame” at having for a short time collaborated—that he admitted. But it was
shame at having made a mistake, of having been “deluded.” What he had himself hoped for—a new beginning, renewal—that, from his point of view,
had little to do with what eventually happened in reality. The fact that, after his philosophically motivated political engagement, he had once more separated the
spheres of politics and philosophy now seemed to him to be a recapturing of the purity of his philosophical points of view. He believed
Heidegger, therefore, showed no sense of guilt. But in fact neither did he feel any. The situation, as he saw it, was this:
that the road of his own thinking, which he had professed in public, had rehabilitated him. Hence he felt no guilt, neither in a legal sense nor probably even in a moral
one. Against Lampe’s vote, the denazification committee in August 1945 arrived at a very lenient judgment on Heidegger’s political behavior.
While at first he had placed himself in the service of the National Socialist revolution, the committee stated, thereby doing “a great deal to justify this revolution in the
eyes of educated Germans and making it more difficult for German science and scholarship to maintain its independence amidst the political upheaval,” he had not
been a Nazi since 1934. The committee’s recommendation was that Heidegger should be prematurely retired but not dismissed from office. He was to keep his
teaching rights but was to be excluded from participation in university administration. For, in order to deflect precipitous attempts to use Heidegger’s politics simply to
dismiss his thought outright (a move no serious critic makes today), Heideggerians have become accustomed to rigidly separating Heidegger’s philosophy from his
politics. Even such thinkers as Rorty (1999), Schürmann (1990), Lyotard (1990), Pöggeler (in Neske and Kettering 1990), and Olafson (2000) employ this strategy,
seeking to insulate Heidegger’s important philosophical achievements from what he later called his life’s “greatest stupidity.”
44
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
AT: EVOLUTIONARY REALISM
Thayer’s concept of realism is flawed – selectively chosen and over-simplified
Busser, 06 (Mark, Master’s Candidate Department of Political Science York University Revisiting the Human Nature Debate in International Relations, Holds an
Ontario Graduate Scholarship for 2006-2007 and currently holds a Harry Lyman Hooker Senior Fellowship at McMaster August 06, Revisiting the Human Nature
Debate in International Relations)
According to Thayer, the goal of evolutionary theory is to understand the ultimate causes of behavior, and because these causes are testable
they provide a solid foundation for a realist approach to the study of politics. This description over simplifies the goals of evolutionary science and
conflates evolutionary theory writ large with the specific intentions and goals of sociobiology, a controversial field. Furthermore,
Thayer exaggerates the scientific consensus about sociobiology within evolutionary studies, as Duncan Bell and Paul MacDonald have
noted.33 This is not a minor point, for while his argument seeks to unify the natural and social sciences, Thayer has selectively chosen his scientific
sources (both social and natural), read them selectively, and turned a blind eye to alternative explanations and interpretations. His
article rests on two major claims, both underpinned by arguable sociobiological evidence.
32
Using sociobiology to determine human nature creates a discourse, which generates self-fulfilling prophesies. Too
firm a focus on these arguments prevents social solutions
Busser, 06 (Mark, Master’s Candidate Department of Political Science York University Revisiting the Human Nature Debate in International Relations, Holds an
Ontario Graduate Scholarship for 2006-2007 and currently holds a Harry Lyman Hooker Senior Fellowship at McMaster August 06, Revisiting the Human Nature
Debate in International Relations)
The danger inherent in arguments that incorporate sociobiological arguments into examinations of modern political life, the authors say, is that
such arguments naturalize variable behaviors and support discriminatory political structures. Even if certain behaviors are found to have a
biological drives behind them, dismissing those behaviors as ‘natural’ precludes the possibility that human actors can make choices and can
avoid anti-social, violent, or undesirable action. While the attempt to discover a genetically- determined human nature has usually been justified under the
argument that knowing humankind’s basic genetic programming will help to solve the resulting social problems, discourse about human nature seems to
generate self-fulfilling prophesies by putting limits on what is considered politically possible . While sociobiologists tend to distance themselves
from the naturalistic fallacy that ‘what is’ is ‘what should be,’ there is still a problem with employing adaptionism to ‘explain’ how existing
political structures because conclusions tend to be drawn in terms of conclusions that assert what ‘must be’ because of biologicallyingrained constraints. Too firm a focus on sociobiological arguments about ‘natural laws’ draws attention away from humanity’s
potential for social and political solutions that can counteract and mediate any inherent biological impulses, whatever they may be.
Realist views are focusing on evolutionary science and biological views are flawed, they don’t take into account
environment and culture
Busser, 06 (Mark, Master’s Candidate Department of Political Science York University Revisiting the Human Nature Debate in International Relations, Holds an
Ontario Graduate Scholarship for 2006-2007 and currently holds a Harry Lyman Hooker Senior Fellowship at McMaster August 06, Revisiting the Human Nature
Debate in International Relations)
Citing evolutionary Science does not truly support ‘realist’ narratives and explanations of egoistic competition in human society, despite
the fact that over the years those wishing to make such cases have often cited it. There is plenty of evidence in evolutionary science for explaining why biology is not
destiny, and in fact, for unsettling any claim about an evolutionarily derived ‘human nature’ that underlies political life. In her book In Search of Human Nature, Mary
E. Clark has suggested that instead of a human nature defined by genetically programmed instincts , predispositions and drives, it is more
useful to discuss a human nature in terms of universal needs. These needs, she argues, are as close to a ‘human nature’ as we humans
have, since their fulfillment is necessary as a result of complex development. Clark suggests that human beings have basic biological
and psychological needs for bonding, for autonomy, and for meaning. Bonding with a social group, Clark says, is an evolved human
propensity that was necessary for survival during our evolution, and which also became indispensable because of other biologically
evolved traits. Situating her evolutionary arguments in the context of the Pleistocene era, she suggests that biological changes in the evolving human
body demanded social changes as well. For example, as the primate brain grew in size, the birth canal could not enlarge to accommodate it. This meant that as
primate intelligence evolved and increased, selective pressures encouraged primate children to be born increasingly premature, thus experiencing more and more of
early childhood development outside of the womb. This, Clark argues, meant that natural selection favored mutually supportive group behaviour.61 A large brain
therefore co- evolved with an interdependent social lifestyle. However, this is not a repeat of the sociobiological emphasis on inclusive
fitness. Clark argues that not only individuals, but also groups were selected for traits during the most crucial phases of primate
evolution. Culture became the most critical adaptation for survival in the Pleistocene as group living became vital not only to the
survival of individual members, but also to the survival of the group as a whole . Communication skills and their social use became critical to
survival. “Shared group intelligence,” Clark suggests, “independent of genetically determined behaviors, promotes the survival of groups, and hence of all their
members.” While social bonding is a fundamental need, human beings also need the autonomous freedom to act individually to establish an identity. Clark suggests that
this need was established during human evolution, when children would need a degree of freedom in order to experience the environment and independent. The need
for autonomy, Clark insists, does not translate into a genetic predisposition towards egoistic individualism . She criticizes Machiavellian
interpretations of evolutionary science, arguing that ultra-Darwinians overemphasize the ubiquity of dominance hierarchies.64 Much of the science that supports the
45
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
Hobbesian view of human nature, Clark argues, is based on studies of primates conducted under obtrusive
environments. When scientific observers have developed less invasive methods for observing primates
conditions and in artificial
in their natural habitat, far
different results were recorded where primates were seen as more peaceful, cooperative, and conciliatory. Much of the conflict,
aggression, tendencies towards dominance and violence observed in primate societies, Clark writes, is the result of irregular stresses
upon the individuals and the group as a whole, often posed by scientists conducting their studies.65 Neither neo-Hobbesian sociobiologists nor the rational
game theorists have correctly envisioned primate nature in its complexities, Clark asserts. The intersection between the basic human needs for bonding
and autonomy offers a space for understanding complex behaviors and social arrangements . Citing extensive ethnographic evidence, she suggests
that primates have the potential for both dominance hierarchies and for egalitarian co-existence, and that the determining factor is the level of stress experienced by a
group. When individuals are allowed autonomy within the context of meaningful group bonding, she argues, hierarchies are less likely to emerge. 66 The
implication is that the conflict-driven hierarchies that observers like Thayer believe to be an unavoidable part of human and primate
nature is instead contingent upon environmental and social circumstances, being merely the result of a failure to fulfill basic needs.
46
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
AT: PERMUTATION
Calculative thought blocks out all other ontological possibilities
McWhorter, 92 (Professor of philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 92. LaDelle, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter, p. 15-16)
But it is only a dream, Heidegger warns us. And it itself is predicated ironically enough, on concealment, the self-concealing of the mystery. We
can never control
or manage or even grasp the mystery, the belonging together of revealing and concealing. In order to approach the world in a manner
exclusively technological, calculative, mathematical, scientific, we must already have given up (or lost, or been expelled by, or
perhaps ways of being such as we are even impossible within) other approaches or modes of revealing that would unfold into
knowledges of other sorts. Those other approaches or paths of thinking must already have been obliterated or at least totally obscured;
those other knowledges must already have concealed themselves in order for technological or scientific revelation to occur.
47
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
AT: ONTOLOGY IS INFINITELY REGRESSIVE
Heidegger’s notion of authenticity resolves the infinitely regressive nature of ontological questioning – the
affirmative’s ontological assumptions engage in a process of forgetting that prevents them from accurately
predicting the world and destroys value to life
Guignon, 83 (Phd in philosophy and current professor at University of South Florida. “Heidegger And The Problem Of Knowledge” 69-78, google books)
The existential understanding of oneself must serve as the foun-dation for the analytic of Dasein if we are to avoid "free-floating constructions" and epistemological
posits: "Unless we have an ex-istentiell understanding," Heidegger says, "all analysis of existen-tiality will remain groundless" (312). But the methodological primacy
of the individual does not indicate a return to Cartesianism with its faith in the self-transparency of consciousness. Heidegger cautions us against thinking
that because the entity we are examin-ing is immediately accessible (since we are it), it is also the case that "the kind of Being which it
possesses is presented just as 'im-mediately' " (15). For Heidegger, there is no reason to presuppose that the self is immediately intelligible to itself in
reflection, as even Dilthey was inclined to believe. A "thematic ontological reflection [Besinnung] on one's ownmost composition of Being" cannot guarantee us an
"appropriate clue" to the Being of Dascin (15), because Dasein's "closest" self-understanding is generally a misunderstanding. This is the case because our selfunderstanding is generally mediated by the culture and historical tradition in which we find ourselves. As text-analogues, we are in a sense "com-mentaries" on the
public text of the social world. But insofar as that social world will always embody certain distortions and con-cealments, what we discover by reflection is often
deceptive. Heidegger thinks that we have a certain degree of "competence" in Being that assures us that we will eventually be able to achieve a ge-nuine grasp of what it
is to be from our existentiell modes of activi-ty in the world. But the deeper understanding of Dascin's Being cannot be reached directly or
immediately by self-reflection. It is apparent, then, that although he borrows the label 'phenomenology' from Husscrl to identify his
descriptive method, the term has undergone a considerable change in Heidegger's hands . Husserl takes the maxim, "To the things themselves!"
(Zur den Sachen selbst!) to mean that we should start from "objec-tivities" (Gegenstandlichkeiten) given immediately in intuition. For Heidegger, on the other hand,
what is given immediately and self-evidently is often an illusion mediated by the historical epoch in which the self-reflection occurs. What Heidegger wants to
describe is not objects presented to the mind; it is rather understanding itself." The objects that show themselves at the outset are
therefore not the genuine phenomena with which phenomenology deals. The "phenomena" of phe-nomenology are precisely what do not show
themselves. What is it that must be called a "phenomenon" in a distinctive sense? . . Manifestly, it is something that proximally and for the most part does not show
itself at all: it is something that lies hidden, in contrast to that which proximally and for the most part does show itself, but at the same time it is some-thing that belongs
to what thus shows itself, and it belongs to it so essentially as to constitute its meaning and ground [seinem Sinn und Grund ausmacht] (35). The hidden "meaning and
ground" of entities is the implicit background of understanding which is the condition of the possibility of encountering anything as given. The goal of the description of
everydayness, then, is to bring to light this background "clearing" (Lichtung) which makes possible the discovery of what "proximally shows itself."
Since the phenomena are defined as the "hidden meaning" underlying entities, the descriptive stage of fundamental ontology is
necessarily coupled with a hermeneutic stage in which the text-analogue revealed by the description of everydayness is interpreted to
uncover its deep meaning. "The phenomenology of Dasein is a hermeneutic in the primordial signification of this word" (37). "Hermeneutics" here is not a
methodological technique or "Kunstlehre" for discovering the meanings embodied in the expres-sions of a "thou," as it was for DiIthey. In fact, hermeneutics in not a
technique or device at all in Heidegger's philosophy. Insofar as the Being of Dasein is seen as understanding, 'hermeneutics' refers to the very constitution of being
human. To be human is to care about the meaning of life, to try to be deep and coherent about what it is to be. In this sense the hermeneutics of Being and Time is
merely a reflection of what we all do all of the time. Heidegger says that "the question of Being is nothing other than the radicalization of an essential tendency of Being
that belongs to Dasein —the pre-ontological understanding of Being" (15). In our everyday lives we grasp entities in terms of a tacit understanding of
what it is to be, and we are constantly driven to make that understanding explicit and revise it on the basis of passing encounters and
collisions. The hermeneutic approach to fundamental ontology, far from being a technique for uncovering meanings in an alien text, is just a more rigorous and
explicit version of the kind of movement toward clar-ity and depth which makes up life itself. Like the interpretation of a text, the interpretation of Dasein must
always be circular. There are no axioms or self-evident truths from which we can build up an edifice of knowledge about ourselves. As
our lives always involve a back-and-forth movement between partial meanings and some sense of the whole, the method of
fundamental ontology also moves back and forth between un-covering structural items of Dasein and a pre-understanding of the
totality. But Heidegger does not regard this circularity as a vicious circle that handicaps his investigation in any way. For we are not demonstrating unknown truths on
the basis of known truths. In-stead we are making explicit something that is in a sense already known in living itself. The hermeneutic circle is constitutive of
Da-sein's Being: "An entity for which, as Being-in-the-world, its Being itself is at issue, has ontologically a circular structure" (153). Fun-damental ontology
reflects this circularity. What we are trying to get clear about is not an external object, but our own self-understanding in the ongoing process of seeking clarity and
depth about what it is to be in our lives. The inquiry into the meaning of Being is possible because we are already under way in such an in-quiry. Heidegger says that it
belongs to the essence of being human that we are ontologists: "Dasein is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological" (12). Nevertheless, taking hermeneutics as the
method of fundamen-tal ontology raises certain difficulties for the over-all project of Be-ing and Time which must be considered. These difficulties are characteristic of
textual interpretation in general. First, there is the problem of determining the closure for the interpretation of Da-sein. If there are no basic
premises from which the propositions of Being and Time arc deduced and if our interpretations may always uncover deeper levels of
meaning, the question arises of how we can know we have reached the deepest or final interpretation of the text-analogue of
everydayness. Second, there is the problem of a criterion for the correctness or adequacy of our interpretation. If we have two plausible
but incommensurable interpretations of the meaning of Dasein's Being, how are we to decide which of them is correct? What justification
can be adduced for accepting one inter-pretation over another? Since questions of this sort, when applied to textual interpretation, have often been thought to open the
pros-pect of interpretive relativism, it is important to see how Heidegger answers them. The problem of finding a closure for the hermeneutic of Dasein
arises because of the circular structure of questioning in general . Heidegger points out that every question must be guided in advance
by some prior understanding of the answer to that question. "In-quiry, as a kind of seeking, must be guided beforehand by what is
sought. So the meaning of Being must already be available to us in some way" (5). In the question of the meaning of Being, we are to begin by
examining an entity— Dasein — in order to discover its Be-ing. But in order to pose this question, Heidegger says, we must already have some
48
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
understanding of the Being of entities—for otherwise how would we know it is this entity's Being we were discovering in the
investigation and not something else? We have seen that our pre-ontological understanding of Being can serve as a provisional and
tentative basis for posing the question of Dascin's Being at the outset. U sing this horizon of understanding, Heidegger says, we can then work out a
"preparatory" analytic of Dasein as "Being-in-the-world." But this initial characterization of Dasein is itself provisional and incomplete: "It
merely brings out the Being of this entity, without interpreting its meaning " (I 7). What is required, then, is an inter-pretation of this text-analogue of
everyday Dasein to uncover its deeper meaning. This interpretation will lead in turn to a more primordial horizon for understanding Being. But this is still not the end of
the matter. For when we have reached this deeper horizon through interpreting the results of the initial analytic of Dasein, the "preparatory analytic of Dasein will have
to be repealed on a higher and authentically ontological basis" (17: my emphasis). Yet when the analytic of Dasein has been repeated, a new text-analogue will become
available for a new and still deeper interpretation of its meaning. And so on. It seems, then, that the structure of the inquiry is not so much a circle as
it is a "spiral." The analysis of Dasein always presupposes a prior understanding of Being which guides the description. Yet every
description of Dawn' will open the possibility of arriving at a deeper horizon of understanding of Being . The fact that we are already in this spiral assures
us of the possibility of undertaking an inquiry into the meaning of Being: since "pre-ontological understanding" defines our Being,
such an inquiry is in fact already under way. What is uncertain here is whether the inquiry can ever be terminated. As Heidegger says, In
any investigation in this field ... one must take pains not to overestimate the results. For in such an inquiry one is con-stantly compelled to face the
possibility of disclosing an even more primordial and more universal horizon from which we may draw the answer to the question,
"What is 'Being'?" (26) If the possibility always remains open of finding a "more primor-dial and universal horizon," however, how can we know there is a
closure for the cycle of interpretations? The second problem in the application of hermeneutics to fun-damental ontology—the problem of finding a criterion
for the cor-rectness and adequacy of the interpretation—arises because of Heidegger's conception of the nature of understanding in general. Interpretation, according to
Heidegger, always operates within a "fore-structure" of presuppositions that are projected in advance over what one is interpreting. There can be no such thing, he says,
as a "presuppositionless apprehending of something presented to us" (150). Every interpretation is shaped and regulated by a set of assumptions and
expectations about the meaning or the whole which is sketched out beforehand in understanding . Even when one is engaged in precise textual
interpretation and one wants to appeal to what just "stands there" in the text, "one finds that what 'stands there' in the first instance is nothing other than the obvious undiscussed assumption of the person who does the interpreting" (150). There are no bare facts, no things themselves that can be en-countered independent of the
presuppositions outlined by the understanding. It follows, then, that the interpretation of Dascin will also operate within the framework of such a
fore-structure of presup-positions. Heidegger calls the "totality of 'presuppositions' " that guides the existential analytic "the
hermeneutical situation" (232). The hermeneutical situation contains a "formal idea of existence" that "illuminate," the inquiry as a
whole (314).'" But if fundamen-tal ontology always" 'presuppose? an idea of Being in general" and is "already illumined by the
'presupposed' idea of existence" (313). the problem arises of justifying what has been presupposed from the outset. Heidegger
therefore asks, "where are ontological projec-tions to get the evidence that their 'findings' arc phenomenally ap-propriate" (3I2)? "Where
dots this (presupposed] idea get its justification" (313)? The solution to both of the problems built into the method of hermeneutics is to be found in the notion of
"primordial and authentic truth." Heidegger says that truth which is primordial and authentic must guarantee the understanding of the Being
of Dasein and of Being in general. The ontological "truth" of the existential analysis is developed on the ground of the primordial
existentiell truth (316). In the context of Being and Time, it seems that this "existentiell truth" is uncovered when one becomes
authentic. If we become authentic, Heidegger claims, we will be able to clear away the con-cealments and obscurities that block our access to a genuine selfunderstanding, and we will thereby achieve "transparency" about Being-in-the-world and "all of the constitutive items which are essential to it" (146). When Dasein
has achieved authentic transparency, it will recognize the most fundamental horizon for understanding its own Being, and it will be able to
"decide for itself whether, as the entity which it is, it has that composition of Being which has been disclosed in the projection of its formal aspects" (315). What is
"primordial and authentic truth," and how does it "guarantee the understanding of the Being of Dasein and of Being in general"? If the concept of
authenticity is to satisfy the methodological demands placed on it, it seems that be-coming authentic must provide us with some new
"information" or "facts" that were previously not available. But, at first sight at least, it does not seem that authenticity involves
coming to have any new information. In fact, as we shall see in section 10 below, authenticity is more a matter of the style of one's life than of a particular
content of understanding. In his last Marburg lec-tures, for instance, Heideggcr speaks of authenticity as an "art of existing" which involves not self-reflection but a
special way of acting: Only he who understands this art of existing, that which is grasped at any time as the absolutely single thing to be dealt with in his actions
Mandell* and is clear thereby just as much about the finitude of these activities, only he understands fi-nite existence and can hope to achieve something in this. This art
of existing is not self-reflection, . . . but is rather solely the clarity of action itself, the pursuit of genuine possibilities (LL 201). If the authentic life is a particular art or
style of existing, however, in what sense does it give us access to "primordial and authentic truth"? To understand how authenticity can provide a thematic
content for fundamental ontology, we must see that Heideggers method is also "dialectical" in a Platonic sense . Its goal is not to give
us new information, but to lead us to "remember" something that lies con-cealed in our ordinary interpretations of ourselves and our
world. Everydayness is characterized by "forgetfulness" or "oblivion " (Vergessenheit). In our normal involvements in the world, we are not so much
ignorant as we are misled about our own Being. As Heidegger says in his Marburg lectures of 1927, The covering over of transcendence is not total ignorance, but, what
is much more portentous, a misunderstanding, a mis-interpretation. These misinterpretations and misunderstand-ings obstruct the path to authentic
knowledge much more obstinately than total ignorance (GP 458). Fundamental ontology is dialectical, then, in the way it tries to lead us
through the darkcss and opacity surrounding our everyday lives to the light of the authentic knowledge that underlies our ordinary
misinterpretations." The source of our forgetfulness is a tendency to "fall" into the world of our day-to-day preoccupations. As involved
agents in the world, we generally throw ourselves into routine tasks and chores and act according to the norms and conventions laid out for us in the social context in
which we find ourselves. For the most part we are dispersed and adrift; we forget the deeper origins and significance of the guidelines that regulate and govern our
behavior. Like Nietzsche, Heidegger sees forgetting as a positive phenomenon (339). We can be normal participants in the contemporary world only if we
can draw a horizon around ourselves and shut out our awareness of the sources of our possibilities of acting." Our forgetful involvement in ordinary
practical affairs first discloses our "situatcdness" in an intelligible life-world and makes it possible for us to be open to the past as
"having-been" (Covescnheit). For this reason Heidegger says that forgetfulness is prior to remembering: . tense:String (is possible only] on the basis of forgetting.
and not vice versa; for in the mode of forgetfulness, one's having-been "discloses" primarily the horizon into which Da-scin, lost in the "superficiality" of its concerns,
can bring itself by remembering (339). NV/tat we forget under the pressure of daily life is something that "is indeed known, but at the same time is not conceptualized?"
49
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
The interpretations we take over in our everyday forgetfulness are drawn from what Heidegger calls the "tradition" (Tradition). In its ordinary understanding of itself,
Dascin is inclined to fall back upon its world . . . and to interpret itself in terms of the world by its reflected light, but also ... Dasein simul-taneously falls prey to the
tradition of which it has more or less explicitly taken hold (21; my emphasis). The tradition provides us with the common-sense grid of categories and schematizations
through which we encounter ourselves and the world. According to Heidegger, the tradition is the medium from which we draw all our possibilities of understanding.
But it transmits these possibilities in a warped and distorted form which conceals their true significance. When tradition thus becomes master (in everyday forgetfulness', it dots so in such a way that what it "transmits" is made so inaccessible, proximally and for the most part, that it rather becomes concealed. Tradition takes what
has come down to us and delivers it over to self-evidence; it blocks our access to those primordial "wellsprings" ("Quelleni from which the categories and concepts
handed down to us have been in part quite genuinely drawn. Indeed it makes us forget that they have had such an origin, and makes us suppose that the necessity of
going back to these sources is something which we need not even understand (21). The goal of fundamental ontology, then, is to lead us to remember our forgotten
"roots" and "origins": "the basic, fundamental-ontological act of the metaphysics of Dasein is, therefore, a 'remembering' i'Wiedererinnerunel. It seems, then, that
achieving authenticity is supposed to enable us to overcome the forgetfulness of everyday life so that we can remember what is handed on to us in a distorted form by
the tradi-tion. What we remember in the dialectical stage is what Heidegger calls the "springs." "origins," "sources," "roots," or "soil" on which our everyday
understanding is nurtured. It is important to see that, whereas for Husserl such "origins" were to be found in trans-cendental subjectivity, for Heidegger they are
historical. The tradi-tion, which opens a range of possibilities for our lives, is conceived of as a commentary on a primordial "ur-text" or "primal text" of possibilities
opened up at the dawn of Western history. In this sense the understanding of Being that governs our current interpretations of self and world is just a variation on certain
basic themes that emerged at the outset of Western history. If this interpretation of the notion of origins is correct, then it follows that, by
becoming authentic, we are able to see through the distortions and concealments in the tradition in order to retrieve the "primordial
experiences in which we achieved our first ways of determining Being—the ways which have guided us ever since" (22). What the
dialectical stage reveals is not some a historical eidos or ratio, but rather the deep historical sources of our ways of understanding Being. "Fundamental ontology,"
Heidegger says, "is always only a repetition and retrieval of these old and early things."
50
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
AT: INACTION
The affirmative’s ontological and epistemological assumptions make error replication inevitable – their form of
action only produces worse consequences
Dillion and Reid, 00 (Michael professor at Department of Politics and International Relations University of Lancaster Global, Dr Julian Reid. Lecturer in
International Relations, Department of War Studies “Governance, Liberal Peace, and Complex Emerge 132-134”
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/40644986.pdf?acceptTC=true)
As a precursor to global governance, governmentality, according to Foucault's initial account, poses
the question of order not in terms of the origin of
the law and the location of sovereignty, as do traditional accounts of power, but in terms instead of the man- agement of population.
The management of population is further refined in terms of specific problematics to which population management may be reduced.
These typically include but are not necessarily exhausted by the following topoi of governmental power: economy, health, welfare,
poverty, security, sexuality, de- mographics, resources, skills, culture, and so on. Now, where there is an operation of power there is
knowledge, and where there is knowledge there is an operation of power . Here discursive forma- tions emerge and, as Foucault noted, in every
society the production of discourse is at once con- trolled, selected, organised and redistributed by a certain num- ber of procedures
whose role is to ward off its powers and dan- gers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous, formidable
materiality.34 More specifically, where there is a policy problematic there is expertise, and where there is expertise there, too, a policy prob- lematic will
emerge. Such problematics are detailed and elabo- rated in terms of discrete forms of knowledge as well as interlock- ing policy
domains. Policy domains reify the problematizatiòn of Michael Dillon & Julian Reid 133 life in certain ways by turning these epistemically
and politically contestable orderings of life into "problems" that require the con- tinuous attention of policy science and the continuous
resolutions of policymakers. Policy "actors" develop and compete on the basis of the expertise that grows up around such problems or
clusters of problems and their client populations. Here, too, we may also dis- cover what might be called "epistemic entrepreneurs."
Albeit the market for discourse is prescribed and policed in ways that Fou- cault indicated, bidding to formulate novel problematizations they seek to "sell" these, or
otherwise have them officially adopted. In principle, there is no limit to the ways in which the management of population may be problematized.
All aspects of human con- duct, any encounter with life, is problematizable. Any problemati- zation is capable of becoming a policy
problem. Governmentality thereby creates a market for policy, for science and for policy sci- ence, in which problematizations go
looking for policy sponsors while policy sponsors fiercely compete on behalf of their favored problematizations. Reproblematization
of problems is constrained by the institu- tional and ideological investments surrounding accepted "prob- lems," and by the sheer
difficulty of challenging the inescapable ontological and epistemological assumptions that go into their very formation. There is
nothing so fiercely contested as an epis- temological or ontological assumption. And there is nothing so fiercely ridiculed as the
suggestion that the real problem with problematizations exists precisely at the level of such assumptions. Such "paralysis of analysis"
is precisely what policymakers seek to avoid since they are compelled constantly to respond to circum- stances over which they
ordinarily have in fact both more and less control than they proclaim. What they do not have is precisely the control that they want . Yet serial
policy failure - the fate and the fuel of all policy - compels them into a continuous search for the new analysis that will extract them
from the aporias in which they constantly find themselves enmeshed.35 Serial policy failure is no simple shortcoming that science and
policy - and policy science - will ultimately overcome. Serial policy failure is rooted in the ontological and epistemological
assumptions that fashion the ways in which global governance encounters and problematizes life as a process of emergence through
fitness land- scapes that constantly adaptive and changing ensembles have con- tinuously to negotiate. As a particular kind of
intervention into life, global governance promotes the very changes and unintended out- comes that it then serially reproblematizes in
terms of policy failure. Thus, global liberal governance is not a linear problem-solving 134 Global Governance, Liberal Peace, and
Complex Emergency process committed to the resolution of objective policy problems simply by bringing better information and
knowledge to bear upon them. A nonlinear economy of power/knowledge, it deliber- ately installs socially specific and radically
inequitable distributions of wealth, opportunity, and mortal danger both locally and glob- ally through the very detailed ways in which
life is variously (pol- icy) problematized by it. In consequence, thinking and acting politically is displaced by the institutional and
epistemic rivalries that infuse its power/ knowledge networks, and by the local conditions of application that govern the introduction
of their policies. These now threaten to exhaust what "politics," locally as well as globally, is about.36 It is here that the "emergence"
characteristic of governance begins to make its appearance. For it is increasingly recognized that there are no definitive policy
solutions to objective, neat, discrete policy problems. The "subjects" of policy increasingly also become a mat- ter of definition as
well, since the concept population does not have a stable referent either and has itself also evolved in biophilosoph- ical and biomolecular as well as
Foucauldian "biopower" ways. Foucault was preoccupied with populations that were already territorialized within states. It becomes exceptionally difficult to elide the
relation between sovereignty and governmentality, as Foucault tended to do, when the "populations" at issue are global rather than local.37 The complex relation that
has always obtained between governmental and sovereign power becomes freshly posed as a consequence. Global liberal governance begins to dif- fer from the way in
which Fqucault argued that governmentality took population as its organizing principle, for example, inas- much as global liberal governance takes global "populations"
as its terrain of operation. However, global liberal governance also be- gins to differ from Foucault's initial account of governmentality inasmuch as "population"
discourse has evolved in consequence of the increasing influence of the biophilosophy disseminated through the evolution of the evolutionary theory of molecular biology.38 This, too, classically, depends upon the concept of "popu- lation," and the evolution of evolutionary talk has begun to gen- erate a novel biophilosophical
discourse that informs the allied accounts of complex adaptive systems, knowledge-based societies, and network organizations.39 These increasingly distinguish the
discourses of global liberal governance, especially those account- ing for its global economic success and those newly conceiving its account of strategy and war.
51
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
ONTOLOGY FIRST
Evaluate ontology first – it precedes “knowing”
Waterhouse, 81 (Roger, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, Department of History, Philosophy, and Geography, Missouri Western State
University, 1981, “A Heidegger Critique”, Pg 241)
an adequate philosophical account of human existence must treat man as a whole, not
merely as a knowing consciousness. There can be no doubt that this is right . In making this claim Heidegger is advancing a powerful criticism
Heidegger's central vision in Being and Time is that
against his philosophical predecessors, and most immediately against Husserl. Of course, it was not Husserl’s prime purpose to give a philosophical account of human
existence, any more than it was Descartes’s or Kant’s. Like them, Husserl was more concerned about knowledge and truth, and how certainty could be established. But
also like them, he implicitly gave an account of how human beings are, which concentrated centrally on their capacity to discover knowledge. By contrast, Heidegger
says that man’s being-in-the-world precedes the establishment of knowledge; that knowing is a ‘founded’ mode of being-in-the-world.
This sounds right. Certainly, it is true of the development of an individual child: at birth he cannot properly be said to ‘know’ anything,
if knowing is taken in the sense of‘ ‘objective’ knowledge so hallowed by the philosophical tradition . In a similar sense it seems true of the
historical development of culture. Nobody worried very much about ‘objective’ knowledge before Descartes, or at least before the beginnings of the scientific
‘revolution’ in the latter half of the sixteenth century. And we have no good reason to suppose that ‘knowledge’ was considered as, in any sense, a problem until shortly
before Socrates. Distinctions between knowledge, understanding, practical ability, or wisdom, we can suppose to have arisen quite late in our history -— and certainly
long after homo sapiens (so-called) began to exist. So in both historical’ senses, that of the individual and that of culture, we can concede that human
existence preceded knowing, and knowing was never more one way of being in the world.
Ontology comes first – it’s key to all decisionmaking
Dillon, 99 (Michael, Professor of Politics at the University of Lancaster, 1999, Moral Spaces Pg. 97-98)
Heirs to all this, we find ourselves in the turbulent and now globalized wake of its confluence. As Heidegger-himself an especially revealing figure of the deep and
mutual implication of the philosophical and the political4-never tired of pointing out, the relevance of ontology to all other kinds of thinking is
fundamental and inescapable. For one cannot say anything about any-thing that is, without always already having made assumptions about the is as such. Any
mode of thought, in short, always already carries an ontology sequestered within it. What this ontological turn does to other-regional-modes of thought
is to challenge the ontology within which they operate. The implications of that review reverberate throughout the entire mode of
thought, demanding a reappraisal as fundamental as the reappraisal ontology has demanded of philosophy. With ontology at issue, the entire foundations
or underpinnings of any mode of thought are rendered problematic. This applies as much to any modern discipline of thought as it does to the question
of moder-nity as such, with the exception, it seems, of science, which, having long ago given up the ontological questioning of when it called itself natural philosophy,
appears now, in its industrialized and corporatized form, to be invulnerable to ontological perturbation. With its foundations at issue, the very authority of a mode of
thought and the ways in which it characterizes the critical issues of freedom and judgment (of what kind of universe human beings inhabit, how they inhabit it, and what
counts as reliable knowledge for them in it) is also put in question. The very ways in which Nietzsche, Heidegger, and other continental philosophers challenged
Western ontology, simultaneously, therefore reposed the fundamental and inescapable difficulty, or aporia, for human being of decision and
judgment. In other words, whatever ontology you subscribe to, knowingly or unknowingly, as a human being you still have to act.
Whether or not you know or acknowledge it, the ontology you subscribe to will construe the problem of action for you in one way
rather than another. You may think ontology is some arcane question of philosophy, but Nietz-sche and Heidegger showed that it intimately shapes not
only a way of thinking, but a way of being, a form of life. Decision, a fortiori political decision, in short, is no mere technique. It is instead a way of being
that bears an understanding of Being, and of the fundaments of the human way of being within it. This applies indeed applies most, to those mock -innocent
political slaves who claim only to be technocrats of decision making.
52
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
REPS MATTER
The framing of a situation affects how we attempt to resolve it
Boroditsky, 11 (Boroditsky is a professor at the Department of Psychology, Stanford University, 2/23/11
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0016782#s3)
In Experiment 1, we explored whether framing a crime problem with one of two contrasting metaphors for crime could systematically influence
how people reasoned about the problem. Participants were presented with one of two versions of the crime paragraph (as detailed
above) and asked a set of free response follow-up questions. Of particular interest, participants were asked how they would
recommend solving Addison's crime problem. Coding. Proposed solutions to the crime problem in Addison were coded into two categories in line with the
results of the norming study described in the introduction: 1) diagnose/treat/inoculate, and 2) capture/enforce/punish. Responses were categorized as
“diagnose/treat/inoculate” if they suggested investigating the underlying cause of the problem (e.g., “look for the root cause”) or suggested
a particular social reform to treat or inoculate the community (e.g., fix the economy, improve education, provide healthcare). Responses
were categorized as “capture/enforce/punish” if they focused on the police force or other methods of law enforcement (e.g., calling in the National Guard) or modifying
the criminal justice system (e.g., instituting harsher penalties, building more jails). For brevity, we will refer to the “diagnose/treat/inoculate” category as “reform” and
the “capture/enforce/punish” category as “enforce.” Each participant's response was weighted equally – as a single point towards the analysis.
For solutions that solely emphasized either reform or enforcement, the respective category was incremented by a point. Responses that
exclusively emphasized one approach were the majority. Occasionally, however, participants listed both types of suggestions. In this case, if the response
listed a disproportionate number of suggestions that were consistent with one approach (e.g., if the response listed three suggestions in line with reform and only one in
line with enforcement, as in “investigate the root cause, institute new educational programs, create jobs, and hire more police”) then it was coded as a full point for the
corresponding category. However, if the response equally emphasized both approaches, then the point was split between the categories such that each was incremented
by .5. Thirty of the 485 responses (6%) did not fit into either category. In every case this was because the response lacked a suggestion (e.g., “I don't know”, “I need
more information”, “It should be addressed”). These data were omitted from analysis. Participants' crime reducing suggestions were coded blindly by two coders.
Cohen's kappa – a measure of inter-rater reliability – was .75 indicating good agreement between the coders (p<.001). All disagreements between the coders were
resolved between them before analyzing the data. Results. Overall, participants were more likely to emphasize enforcement strategies (65%) than reform (35%), χ2 =
41.85, p<.001. However, as predicted, the solutions participants proposed to the crime problem in Addison differed systematically as a function of the metaphorical
frame encountered in the crime report (see Fig. 1). Participants given the crime-as-beast metaphorical framing were more likely to suggest enforcement (74%) than
participants given the crime-as-virus framing (56%), χ2 = 13.94, p<.001. See Table 1 for response frequencies. Interestingly, when asked to identify the most influential
aspect of the report, most participants ignored the metaphor. Only 15 participants (3%) identified the metaphoric frame as influential to their problem solving strategy.
Removing these participants from the analysis did not affect the results (the proportion of responses that were congruent with the
metaphor was not different in the two analyses, χ2 = .0001, p = .991). The vast majority of the participants identified the statistics in the
crime report as being most influential in their decision – namely, the final three sentences of the paragraph that state the increasing
crime and murder rate. Discussion. In this experiment, we found that crime-reducing suggestions differed systematically as a function of
the metaphor used to frame the crime problem. Participants who read that crime was a virus were more likely to propose treating the
crime problem by investigating the root causes of the issue and instituting social reforms than participants who read that crime was a
beast. Participants who read that crime was a beast were more likely to propose fighting back against the crime problem by hiring
police officers and building jails – to catch and cage the criminals – than participants who read that crime was a virus. Further, despite
the clear influence of the metaphor, we found that participants generally identified the crime statistics, which were the same for both
groups, and not the metaphor, as the most influential aspect of the report . These findings suggest that metaphors can influence how
people conceptualize and in turn approach solving an important social issue, even if people don't explicitly perceive the metaphor as
being especially influential.
53
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
***AFF ANSWERS***
54
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
AFF – CEDE THE POLITICAL
Heidegger’s theories can’t be applied to everyday life or politics
Weinberger, 92 (Professor of political science at Michigan State University, Senior Research Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The
American Political Science Review, “Politics and the Problem of Technology,” Vol. 86, No. 1 (Mar., 1992), pp. 112-127 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1964019)
In other words, we would have to show that Heideggerian
being, which grants a causeless and tacticall" play of its domains, cannot account for
the genuine gravity of political life-for how the elements of experience contend against each other , as we see in the challenge of thought
to faith, the tension between private and public life, the conflicts between morality and politics, the difference between the good
and the just, and so on. We would have to show that such contention is possible only insofar as their elements are related causally and hierarchically,
so that each by its very nature claims an authority, beyond the con- tingencies of any given world, to order the others. And we would have to see that
however much the fact of such contention calls forth our efforts to overcome it by way of making and knowing, both making and knowing are even at
their best the very source of this contention. Nature, as I propose to think about it, is beyond any project for conquest. Technology
could, of course, simply destroy the natural soul by making it either subhuman or godlike; but it could never wholly stamp the human species
because it cannot supply all of the needs that the soul has spontaneously (or by nature), such as the desire for noble preeminence.
Consequently, the harder technology presses, the more intensely we sense a “problem” with it. I am suggesting that the problem of technology is
most fully understood when we approach it through the old-fashioned equation of natural justice that transcends any given political conventions. I am suggesting that no
era’s thinking and practice is so finite and self-contained that it can be wholly stamped by technology and that we do not have to recur to Heideggerian being to see
the limits of the stamp. But I am also suggesting that such direction as nature gives to our groping for justice will never satisfy the demands of everyday
politics and morality; for that direction consists in the limited extend to which the widest opening of our eyes can cure the blindnesses of political life.
Bringing philosophy into politics causes a right wing takeover, which inevitably leads to another Vietnam and
Worldwide war
Rorty, 98 (Harvard Lecturer and professor of philosopher at Princeton and many other colleges <Achieving our Country: Leftist thought in Twentieth-Century
America 88-93>)
It should ask the public to consider how the country of Lincoln and Whitman might be achieved. In support of my first suggestion, let me cite a passage from Dewey's
Reconstruction in Philosophy in which he ex-presses his exasperation with the sort of sterile debate now going on under the rubric of "individualism versus
communitarianism." Dewey thought that all discussions which took this dichotomy seriously Suffer from a common defect. They are all committed to the logic
of general notions under which specific situations are to be brought. What we want is light upon this or that group of individuals, this
or that concrete human being, this or that special institution or social arrangement. For such a logic of inquiry, the tradition-ally
accepted logic substitute’s discussion of the mean-ing of concepts and their dialectical relationships with one another. Dewey was
right to be exasperated by sociopolitical theory conducted at this level of abstraction . He was wrong when he went on to say that ascending to this
level is typically a right-ist maneuver, one which supplies 'the apparatus for intellec-mal justifications of the established order."' For such ascents are now more common
on the Left than on the Right. The contemporary academic Left seems to think that the higher your level of abstraction, the more subversive of the estab-lished order
you can be. The more sweeping and novel your conceptual apparatus, the more radical your critique. When leftists says that some topic
has been "inadequately theorized," you can be pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of language, or
Lacanian one of today's academic psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist ver-sion of economic determinism. Theorists of the Left think
that dissolving political agents into plays of differential subjectivity, or political initiatives into pursuits of Lacan's impossible object
of desire, helps to subvert the established order. Such subversion, they say, is accomplished by "problematizing familiar concepts.Recent attempts to subvert social institutions by problematizing concepts have produced a few very good books. They have also
produced many thousands of books which represent scholastic philosophizing at its worst. The authors of these purportedly
"subversive" books honestly believe that they are serving human liberty. But it is almost impossible to clamber back down from their
books to a level of abstraction on which one might discuss the merits of a law, a treaty, a candidate, or a political strategy. Even
though what these authors "theorize" is often something very concrete and near at hand—a current TV show, a media celebrity, a recent scandal—they offer the most abstract and barren explanations imaginable. These futile attempts to philosophize one's way into
political relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats from activism and adopts a spectatorial approach to
the problems of its country. Disengagement from practice produces theoretical hallucinations. These result in an intellectual
environment which is, as Mark Edmundson says in his book Nightmare on Main Street, Gothic. The cultural Left is haunted by
ubiquitous specters, the most frightening of which is called "power." This is the name of what Edmund-son calls Foucault's "haunting agency, which is
everywhere and nowhere, as evanescent and insistent as a resourceful spook." le In its Foucauldian usage, the term "power" denotes an agency which
has left an indelible stain on every word in our language and on every institution in our society. It is always already there, and cannot
be spotted coming or going. One might spot a corporate bagman arriving at a congressman's office, and perhaps block his entrance.
But one cannot block off power in the Foucauldian sense. Power is as much inside one as outside one. It is nearer than hands and feet.
As Ed-mondson says: one cannot "confront power; one can only encounter its temporary and generally unwitting agents ... fit] has
capacities of motion and transformation that make it a preternatural force."' Only interminable individual and so-cial self-analysis, and
perhaps not even that, can help us es-cape from the infinitely fine meshes of its invisible web. The ubiquity of Foneatt'dim power is
reminiscent of the ubiquity of Satan, and thus of the ubiquity of original sin—that diabolical stain on every human soul. I argued in
my first lecture that the repudiation of the concept of sin was at the heart of Dewey and Whitman's civic religion. I also claimed that
55
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
the American Left, in its horror at the Vietnam War, rein-vented sin. It reinvented the old religious idea that some stains are
ineradicable. I now wish to say that, in committing itself to what it calls "theory," this Left has gotten something which is entirely too
much like religion. For the cultural Left has come to believe that we must place our country within a theoretical frame of
reference, situate it within a vast quasi-cosmological perspective. Stories about the webs of power and the insidious influence of a
hegemonic ideology do for this Left what stories about the Lamanites did for Joseph Smith and what stories about Yakkub did for
Elijah Muhammad. What stories about blue-eyed devils are to the Black Muslims, stories about hegemony and power are to many
cultural leftists—the only thing they really want to hear. To step into the intellectual world which some of these leftists inhabit is to
move out of aki world in which the citizens of a democracy can join forces to resist sadism and selfishness into a Gothic world in
which democratic politics has become a farce. It is a world in which all the day lit cheerfulness of Whitrnanesque hyper secularism
has been lost, and in which "liberalism" and "humanism" are synonyms for naiveté—for an inability to grasp the full horror of our
situation.
56
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
AFF – EVOLUTIONARY REALISM
Realism and domination are inevitable – engaging with them is necessary for justice
Thayer, 00 (Professor of political science at Baylor. “Bringing in Darwin” http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228800560471)
Realists have traditionally argued that there are two ultimate causes of human behavior. The ªrst, grounded in theology, is expressed by Niebuhr: Humans are evil.
Human evil is the primary cause of human behavior, especially of the desire to dominate others . Humans possess “unlimited and demonic
potencies of which animal life is innocent.” 16 Evil manifests itself in sin, or the reBringing in Darwin 127 fusal of humans to accept inherent limitations. 17
Furthermore, all human activity is tainted with a narcissistic self-love that, for Niebuhr, is the essence of evil. 18 Self-love or pride causes
humans to seek power because “the ego does not feel secure and therefore grasps for more power in order to make itself secure . It does
not regard itself as suffciently signiªcant or respected or feared and therefore seeks to enhance its position in nature and society.” 19 The recognition that humans are
ªnite creatures causes them to seek power: “Man is the only finite creature who knows that he is finite and he is therefore tempted to protest
against his fate. One form which this protest takes is his imperialistic ambition, his effort to overcome his insignificance by subordinating
other life to his individual or collective will.” 20 The recognition of human sinfulness manifests itself in Niebuhr’s consideration of
international politics. Pride and a desire for power exist not only among individuals, but also among states. And because national pride
is capable of causing greater evil, it is especially dangerous. 21 Niebuhr argues that the traditional realist mechanism of stability, the
balance of power, is the only force capable of bringing justice to the world . The balance of power is necessary because the “natural weakness of
democracy as a form of government when dealing with foreign policy is aggravated by liberalism as the culture which has informed the life of democratic nations.” 22
As Niebuhr explains, “In this liberalism there is little understanding of the depth to which human malevolence may sink and the heights to which malignant power may
rise.” 23
Human nature emerged in selfishness and dominance through multiple evolutionary theories
Thayer, 00 (Professor of political science at Baylor. “Bringing in Darwin” http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228800560471)
a hostile environment where
resources are scarce and thus survival precarious, organisms typically satisfy their own physiological needs for food, shelter, and so on before
assisting others. Bringing in Darwin 131 and reproduce are rewarded through the transmission of their genes to the next generation.” In addition, what
Evolutionary theory offers two sufªcient explanations for the trait of egoism. The ªrst is a classic Darwinian argument: In
is ultimately important is relative, not absolute, ªtness. That is, it is not only the number of offspring one produces, but that one produces more than others. Sober and
Wilson, Unto Others, p. 23. For excellent discussions of the complexities associated with ªtness, see John Beatty, “F. The ability of zebras to run fast is one example; on
average, fast zebras tend to produce faster offspring. Of course, there are genetic, phenotypic, and environmental limits to the speed of zebras. Furthermore, as Sober
notes, the environment may be especially important, particularly if offspring receive better nutrition. So there might be a purely environmental explanation for similarity
between parental and offspring phenotypes. Sober, Philosophy of Biology, p. 11. 40. Evolutionary theory is concerned with ultimate causes of behavior rather than
proximate causes.ers. 41 In times of danger or great stress, an organism usually places its life—its survival—before that of other members
of its group, be it pack, herd, or tribe. For these reasons, egoistic behavior contributes to fitness. Evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins’s selªsh gene theory
provides the second sufªcient explanation for egoism. A conceptual shift is required here because Dawkins’s level of analysis is the gene, not the organism. As Dawkins
explains, at one time there were no organisms, just chemicals in a primordial “soup.” 42 At ªrst, different types of molecules started forming by accident, including
some that could reproduce by using the constituents of the soup—carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen. Because these constituents were in limited supply,
molecules competed for them as they replicated . From this competition, the most efªcient copy makers emerged. The process, however, was never perfect.
Sometimes mistakes were made during replication, and occasionally these accidents resulted in more efªcient replication or made some other contribution to ªtness. One
such mistake might have been the formation of a thin membrane that held the contents of the molecule together—a primitive cell. A second might have involved the
division of the primitive cell into ever larger components, organs, and so on to create what Dawkins calls “survival machines.” He explains, “The ªrst survival machines
probably consisted of nothing more than a protective coat. But making a living got steadily harder as new rivals arose with better and more effective survival machines.
Survival machines got bigger and more elaborate, and the process was cumulative and progressive.” 43 From a genetic perspective, there is no intentionality in this
process, but it continued nonetheless because of evolution. Dawkins makes clear, however, that the interests of the gene and the organism need not coincide at different
stages in an organism’s life, particularly after reproduction. 44 In general, however, the selfishness of the gene increases its fitness, and so the behavior
spreads. the origins of domination Evolutionary theory can also explain the trait of domination . In evolutionary theory, domination usually
means that particular individuals in social groups have regular priority of access to resources in competitive situations. For most social mammals, a form of social
organization called a “dominance hierarchy” International Security 25:2 132 41. Although, as I discuss below, inclusive ªtness may modify this argument. 42. Richard
Dawkins, The Selªsh Gene, new ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 258. 43. Ibid., p. 19. 44. Ibid., chap. 6.operates most of the time. 45 The creation of a
dominance hierarchy may be violent and is almost always competitive. A single leader, almost always male (the alpha male), leads the group. The ubiquity of this social
ordering strongly suggests that such a pattern of organization contributes to ªtness. Two principal types of behavior are evident among social mammals in a dominance
hierarchy: dominant and submissive. Dominant mammals have enhanced access to mates, food, and territory, thus increasing their chances of
reproductive success. 46 Acquiring dominant status usually requires aggression. Dominance, however, is an unstable condition; to maintain it, dominant
individuals must be willing to defend their privileged access to available resources as long as they are able. Ethologists Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson explain
why an individual animal vies for dominant status: “The motivation of a male chimpanzee who challenges another’s rank is not that he foresees more matings or
better food or a longer life.” 47 Rather “those rewards explain why . . . selection has favored the desire for power, but the immediate reason he vies for status . . . . is
simply to dominate his peers.” 48 Dominant animals often assume behavior reºecting their status. For example, dominant wolves and rhesus monkeys hold their
tails higher than do other members of their group in an effort to communicate dominance. A dominant animal that engages in such displays is better off if it can gain
priority of access to resources without having to ªght for it continuously. 49 Bringing in Darwin 133 45. Social mammals are usually deªned as those mammals that live
in groups (such as packs, herds, and tribes) that cooperate to raise the young and defend the group from enemies, and in which there is overlap in the group between at
least two generations. Sociobiology is closely allied with ethology. Both disciplines pay close attention to the evolutionary history of species and the manner
in which behavior (instinct in particular) adapts organisms to their environment. It differs from sociobiology because “ethology focuses on the details of individual
behavior, including the activity of the nervous system and the effects of hormones; sociobiology concentrates on the most complex forms of social behavior and the
organization of entire societies.” Charles J. Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson, Promethean Fire: Reºections on the Origin of Mind (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
57
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
University Press, 1983), p. 23. 49. David P. Barash, Sociobiology and Behavior (New York: Elsevier, 1977), p. 237. In this respect, animal behavior is like deterrence
and coercion in international politics. Animals, like states, signal their intentions in efforts to deter and coerce . As Waltz notes, “Force is least visible
where power is most fully and most adequately present.” Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 185.Submissive social mammals recognize what is permitted and
forbidden given their place in the hierarchy. They often try to be as inconspicuous as possible. This behavior signals that the subordinate accepts its place in the
dominance hierarchy and at least temporarily will make no effort to challenge the dominant animal. Ethologists and sociobiologists argue that dominance
hierarchies evolve because they aid defense against predators, promote the harvesting of resources, and reduce intragroup conºict. 50 A species that lives
communally has two choices: either it accepts organization with some centralization of power, or it engages in perpetual conºict over scarce resources, which may result
in serious injury and thus deprive the group of the beneªts of a communal existence. 51 Ethological studies have conªrmed that a hierarchical dominance system within a
primate band minimizes overt aggression; aggression increases, however, when the alpha male is challenged. The dominance hierarchy has had a profound effect on
human evolution. As cognitive psychologist Denise Dellarosa Cummins argues, “The fundamental components of our reasoning architecture evolved in response to
pressures to reason about dominance hierarchies, the social organization that characterizes most social mammals.” 52 Her study and others have found that dominance
hierarchies contribute to the evolution of the mind, which in turn contributes to ªtness. According to Cummins, submissive individuals have the ability to detect, exploit,
and circumvent the constraints of domination. If an animal can take what it wants by force, it is sure to dominate the available resources—unless its subordinates are
smart enough to outwit it. A subordinate must use other International Security 25:2 134 51. In this respect, international politics resembles animal behavior. As an alpha
male provides stability to the group, so too a hegemon in international politics may provide stability for lesser states both in the realm of international security and for
international political economy. 52. Denise Dellarosa Cummins, “Social Norms and Other Minds,” in Cummins and Colin Allen, eds., The Evolution of Mind (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 30.strategies—deception, guile, appeasement, bartering, alliance formation, or friendship—to survive. Thus intelligence is
particularly important to the survival of subordinates. “The evolution of mind emerges,” Cummins writes, “as a strategic arms race in which the weaponry is everincreasing mental capacity to represent and manipulate internal representations of the minds of others.” 53 From their studies of chimpanzee societies, ethologists
have learned that the struggle for survival is best characterized as a struggle between those who are dominant and those seeking to
outwit them (i.e., between recognizing an opponent’s intentions and hiding one’s own). The following example illustrates how a subordinate chimpanzee, Belle, who
knows the location of hidden food, attempts to deceive Rock, who is dominant. Belle accordingly stopped uncovering the food if Rock was close. She sat on it until
Rock left. Rock, however, soon learned this, and when she sat in one place for more than a few seconds, he came over, shoved her aside, searched her sitting place, and
got the food. Belle next stopped going all the way [to the food]. Rock, however, countered by steadily expanding the area of his search through the grass near where
Belle had sat. Eventually, Belle sat farther and farther away, waiting until Rock looked in the opposite direction before she moved toward the food at all, and Rock in
turn seemed to look away until Belle started to move somewhere. On some occasions Rock started to wander off, only to wheel around suddenly precisely as Belle was
about to uncover some food. . . . On a few trials, she actually started off a trail by leading the group in the opposite direction from the food, and then, while Rock was
engaged in his search, she doubled back rapidly and got some food. 54 Despite the “arms race” described by Cummins to outwit a dominant individual, the subordinate
members of the group continue to participate in the dominance hierarchy because doing so increases their chances of survival. As sociobiologist David Barash explains,
if subordinates “are more fit by accepting . . . [subordinate] ranking than by refusing to participate, then some form of social
dominance hierarchy will result.” 55 Humans and other primates evolve a mental architecture to address the difficulties they encounter
when in dominance hierarchies. As result of this, Wilson submits: “Human beings are absurdly easy to indoctrinate—they seek it.” 56
Three factors contribute to the ease of indoctrination. First, survival in a Bringing in Darwin 135 from it. Second, acceptance of, or conformity
to, a particular status quo lowers the risk of conflict in a dominance hierarchy. Third, conformity helps keep groups together. 57 If
group conformity becomes too weak, the group could fall apart and become extinct because of predation from one’s own or another
species. 58 The consequences for the study of politics are great. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Somit and Peterson, Wilson, and psychologist Donald Campbell, among others,
suggest that humans readily give allegiance to the state, or embrace religion or ideologies such as liberalism or communism, because evolution has produced a need to
belong to a dominance hierarchy. 59 An overview of human history provides context. Much of it is a record of threats of force or wars to gain territory and resources.
60 Political institutions, whether monarchies or aristocracies, and leaders such as Julius Caesar, Louis XIV, and Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid typify
dominance hierarchies—as do the modern state and its many institutions, including government bureaucracies and the military. 61 These political examples are readily
evident, but dominance hierarchies also have more subtle effects, for example, among the young and between the sexes. They help explain why people obey authority
and intensify the signiªcance of birth order. Research on children’s social interactions has shown that children as young as three years organize themselves into
dominance hierarchies. Stanley Milgram’s famous psychological experiments show that ordinary citizens will obey those recognized as dominant even when they are
using their power Frank Sulloway’s analysis of birth order shows that dominance structures within the family inºuence personality, with ªrstborn siblings seeking to
maintain conformity, and later-borns, as subordinates, seeking to rebel against constraints. 63
Realism and the need to manipulate our environment for personal gain is rooted in us biologically, no alt solvency
Thayer, 04 (Thayer has been a Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and
has taught at Dartmouth College and the University of Minnesota [Darwin and International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic Conflict,
University of Kentucky Press, 2004, pg. 75-76 //adi] The central issue here is what causes states to behave as offensive realists predict. Mearsheimer advances a powerful argument that
anarchy is the fundamental cause of such behavior. )
The fact that there is no world government compels the leaders of states to take steps to ensure their security, such as striving to have a
powerful military, aggressing when forced to do so, and forging and maintaining alliances. This is what neorealists call a self-help
system: leaders of states arc forced to take these steps because nothing else can guarantee their security in the anarchic world of international relations. I argue that evolutionary
theory also offers a fundamental cause for offensive realist behavior. Evolutionary theory explains why individuals are motivated to
act as offensive realism expects, whether an individual is a captain of industry or a conquistador. My argument is that anarchy is even more important than most scholars of
international relations recognize. The human environment of evolutionary adaptation was anarchic; our ancestors lived in a state of nature in
which resources were poor and dangers from other humans and the environment were great —so great that it is truly remarkable that a mammal standing
three feet high—without claws or strong teeth, not particularly strong or swift—survived and evolved to become what we consider human. Humans endured because natural selection gave
This environment produced the behaviors examined here: egoism, domination, and the ingroup/out-group distinction. These specific traits arc sufficient to explain why leaders will behave, in the proper circumstances, as
offensive realists expect them to behave. That is, even if they must hurt other humans or risk injury to themselves, they will strive to
maximize their power, defined as either control over others (for example, through wealth or leadership) or control over ecological circumstances (such as meeting their own and their
them the right behaviors to last in those conditions.
family's or tribes need for food, shelter, or other resources).
58
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
AFF – PERM
Heidegger isn’t advocating complete rejection of technological thought – perm solves
Thomson, 00 (Associate Professor and Graduate Director of the Department of Philosophy of the University of New Mexico, 2000. Iain, Inquiry,
“What’s Wrong with Being a Technological Essentialist? A Response to Feenberg.” 43:4, 429-44.)
This may sound mysterious, but in his 1949 essay on ‘The Turning’ Heidegger unequivocally states that he is not advocating anything as ridiculous
as the abandonment of technology. In the post-nihilistic future that Heidegger worked philosophically to help envision and achieve, ‘ Technology’, he
repeats, ‘will not be done away with. Technology will not be struck down, and certainly it will not be destroyed.’ Indeed, Heidegger
can no longer be confused with a Luddite longing for a nostalgic return to a pretechnological society ; in his Ž nal interview (given in 1966),
he reiterates that the technological world must be ‘transcended , in the Hegelian sense [that is, incorporated at a higher level], not pushed aside’.
Heidegger’s critics may object that he does not provide enough guidance about how practicing an open phenomenological comportment will allow us to transcend our
current technological understanding of Being, but he cannot be accused of a reactionary rejection of technological devices, and even less of wanting to reject
the essence of technology, which, he says, would be madness, ‘a desire to unhinge the essence of humanity.’
Perm do both – doesn’t sever out of our reps
Rorty, 98 (Harvard Lecturer and professor at Princeton and many other colleges <Achieving our Country: Leftist thought in Twentieth-Century America 88-93)
I have argued in various books that the philosophers most often cited by cultural leftists—Nietzsche, Heidegger. Foucault, and Derrida—are
largely right in
their criticisms of Enlightenment rationalism. I have argued further that traditional liberalism and traditional humanism are entirely I
compatible with such criticisms. We can still be old-fashioned reformist liberals even if, like Dewey, we give up the correspondence
theory of truth and start treating moral and scientific beliefs as tools for achieving greater human happiness, rather than as
representations of the intrinsic nature of reality. We can be this kind of liberal even after we turn our backs on Descartes linguistify
subjectivity, and see everything around us and within us as one more replaceable social construction.
Perm solves—Heidegger doesn’t reject technological thought. Only through a revolution in our relationship with
technology, not a severing, can we avoid destruction
Best and Nocella, 06 (Associate Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at University of Texas, El Paso and Professor of Criminology, Sociology, and Peace
and Global Studies at Le Moyne College, 06. Steven and Anthony, Igniting a Revolution: voices in defense of the Earth, p. 116-117)
What will change is, first, the pre-eminence of Enframing as that which animates the epoch and, correspondingly, our relationship to technology. No
longer will technical solutions be sought after in realms of activity where technique is not applicable. No longer will everyday
activities be pervaded by the standardization and frenzied pace of technology. No longer will nature be looked upon as a homogenous
field of resources to be extracted and exploited. No longer will resource-intensive and polluting technologies be utilized simply
because they serve the blind interests of corporations over the needs of the Earth. No longer will human being stake from the Earth
without thought of the far-reaching consequences of such actions on all present and future forms of life. Critics would wrongly denounce this
position as atavistic, primitivist, or anti-science/technology. But as the turning toward the re-emergence of Being unfolds, both through revolutionary action rooted in
solidarity with nature and through new, non-exploitative modes of acting in the world, technics will not disappear; instead, the limits of technology as a mode
of revealing will begin to be discerned so that new forms and uses of technology can emerge. Questions about technology will
center on whether a given technology can be developed and used so that plant and animal life can appear as it is and not be reduced to
a standing reserve. The question, for Heidegger, is not whether technology, in the sense of a set of tools, is done away with, but whether
Enframing is surmounted. It is in this sense of releasement that Heidegger writes, “Mortals dwell in that they save the earth….Saving does not only snatch something
from a danger. To save really means to set something free into its own presencing.” I take this as the literal equivalent of a masked ALF activist reclaiming a puppy
from a research lab so that it can become a dog rather than a unit of research, or an ELF activist who stops the destruction of an aquifer or forest so that it can remain an
aquifer or forest rather than become a water or wood resource. It is just this new ethos which must guide a revolutionary reconstruction of society on grounds that
preserve the openness to Being and the ability of each kind of being to become what it is in its essence.
Action and reflection on consequences of that action are compatible.
Padrutt, 92 (Psychiatrist and President of the Daseinsanalyse Gesellschaft – 1992. Hanspeter Padrutt, Heidegger and the Earth, “Heidegger and Ecology,” ed.
LaDelle McWhorter, P.31)
Once in a while the conceptual interplay of theory and praxis is put against this attempt. From the philosophical point of view the so-called practical or political
dimension of the attempt is rejected, whereas from the ecological point of view the so-called theoretical, philosophical dimension is rejected. But deeper reflection
and decisive action do not need to contradict each other. Those who shield themselves from the political consequences might one day
be confronted by the fact that no decision is still a decision that can have consequences. And those who believe that they need not
bother about thinking fail to recognize that no philosophy is also a philosophy – e.g., a cybernetic worldview – that also has consequences.
59
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
AFF – INEQUALITY
Heidegger’s school of thought rejects basic human equality in terms of necessary material ownership
Weinberger, 92 (Professor of political science at Michigan State University, Senior Research Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The
American Political Science Review, “Politics and the Problem of Technology,” Vol. 86, No. 1 (Mar., 1992), pp. 112-127 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1964019)
to
render common life translucent and perfectly orderly it is not enough just to satisfy pressing material needs but it is also necessary to
overcome the need for goods that are inherently scarce because they cannot be conceived of as falling within the cycle of production,
reproduction, and consumption. These are the noble and beautiful things, the goods whose rarity and whose opacity to clear definition give rise to perplexity
But why must such a world flatten the human landscape, reduce human beings to mere means, and banish the gods and every mystery? It must do this because
about justice, to serious political competition, and, ultimately, to faith in the gods. Heidegger’s accounts of Gestell and Bestand are illuminating because they suggest
that it is openness to the noble and beautiful things that constitutes, at least in part, the essence of human experience. When we are revolted by the
Heideggerian Bestand, we supply evidence that such goods exist, that human being is experienced in terms of them, and thus that
technology can overcome scarcity only by denaturing human life. Moreover, we disclose that the impetus for technological mastery is the
desire for justice provoked by the scarcity of such goods, and that the stamp of technology—the domination of utilitarianism,
instrumental method, and universal mathesis—is the triumph of egalitarian justice: in a world where nothing is scarce because
everything can be produced, all can be had and used equally. (It is no accident that Heidegger did not advocate democracy.)
Heidegger’s philosophy destroys democracy and justifies domination and subjugation through autocracy of those
deemed “inauthentic”
Wolin, 90 (Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York Graduate Center - 1990 (Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being, P. 46)
The political philosophical implications of this theory are as unequivocal as they are distasteful to a democratic sensibility. On the basis of
the philosophical anthropology outlined by Heidegger, the modern conception of popular sovereignty becomes a sheer non sequitur :
for those who dwell in the public sphere of everydayness are viewed as essentially incapable of self-rule. Instead, the only viable
political philosophy that follows from this standpoint would be brazenly elitist: since the majority of citizens remain incapable of
leading meaningful lives when left to their own devices, their only hope for "redemption" lies in the imposition of a "higher spiritual
mission" from above. Indeed, this was the explicit political conclusion drawn by Heidegger in 1933. In this way, Heidegger's political
thought moves precariously in the direction of the "Fuhrerprinzip" or "leadership principle." In essence, he reiterates, in keeping with a characteristic
antimodern bias, a strategem drawn from Platonic political philosophy: since the majority of men and women are incapable of ruling themselves
insofar as they are driven by the base part of their souls to seek after inferior satisfactions and amusements, we in effect do them a
service by ruling them from above.77T o date, however, there has never been a satisfactory answer to the question Marx poses concerning such theories of
educational dictatorship: "Who shall educate the educator?”
60
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
AFF – NAZISM
Heidegger’s endorsement of inaction allowed him to ignore the atrocities of the Holocaust – the alternative
desensitizes us to suffering and allows genocides to occur
Rockmore, 91 (Professor of Philosophy at McAnulty College. Tom, On Heidegger’s Nazism and Philosophy, p. 240-241)
The revised version of this passage is singularly important for an understanding of Heidegger's Nazism after the rectorate, including its link to his theory of technology.
Here, with great clarity, in 1953, well after the end of the Second World War, at a point when Heidegger, who has returned to teaching, no longer has anything to fear
from the Nazis or anyone else, he states his appreciation for the supposedly misunderstood essence of National Socialism, in virtue of the socalled movement's important effort to confront global technology. Heidegger publicly affirms his conviction in Nazism, not the real
Nazism of Adolf Hitler, but an ideal kind that has not yet been and still might occur. Heidegger's remark is not a strategic claim, an effort to curry favor, to protect
himself or his family, but in all probability a sincere statement of his conviction. We are already familiar with Heidegger's frequent assertions, common in
claims of orthodoxy, with respect to the views of Kant, Nietzsche, and Jünger, that only he, Heidegger, has understood them. Here, he makes a similar claim with
respect to Nazism. For Heidegger evidently thought of himself as the only "orthodox" Nazi, as the only one able to understand the essence
of National Socialism. This passage further stresses the connection, later emphasized in the Spiegel interview, between Heidegger's Nazism and his theory of
technology. As in the interview, here as well, Heidegger insists on the importance of National Socialism in confronting the rule of technology.
Heidegger's statement in 1953 is fully consistent with the later statement in the Spiegel interview in 1966. In both instances, he underlines his conviction that
National Socialism is a valuable, but finally incomplete, effort to counter the effects of modern technology. Although his view of
technology later changed, his appreciation of Nazism's role remained constant. It is, then, appropriate to consider Heidegger's theory
of technology as a revised, reworked, better formulation of the unsuccessful Nazi effort, as Heidegger understands it, to free us from
the rule of technology. In the accounts of Heidegger's Nietzsche lectures and theBeiträge , it was possible to point to passages in which he criticized the failures of
Nazism regarded as an ontological theory. To the best of my knowledge there is nothing in the public record to suggest that Heidegger was at all
sensitive to the human suffering wreaked by Nazism, in fact sensitive to human beings in more than an abstract sense. The best that Vietta, currently the
staunchest German defender of Heidegger, can do is to point to a diary entry by Heribert Heinrichs recording a discussion in which Heidegger supposedly described
Hitler as "the robber and criminal of this century"—certainly a mild judgment in view of the enormity of the evidence—and further claimed to have totally revised his
own view of National Socialism after 1938.[125] Yet the available evidence contradicts this view, since Heidegger's own writings after that date reveal a
continued sympathy for National Socialism, namely for the Nazi effort to confront technology, and a lack of concern for the crimes
committed by the Nazis. Heidegger's failure to denounce, or even to acknowledge, Nazi practice can be interpreted as an
oblique resistance to the practical consequences of his theoretical commitment. He was obviously unwilling to acknowledge the failure of his
turn to Nazism, not for mere psychological reasons, but on good philosophical grounds; for his turn to Nazism was grounded in his own theory of Being, which he
never abandoned. For the same reason, he was also unwilling to abandon National Socialism, or at least an ideal form of it, because of his continued interest in certain
points where his thought converged with Nazism, including the coming to be of the Germans as German and the confrontation with technology. Heidegger's
insensitivity to the effects of Nazism in practice is coupled, then, with a residual theoretical enthusiasm for a form of Nazism in
theory.
Not only is anti-Semitism at the root of Heidegger’s philosophy, the concept of authenticity led to his Nazism
Wolin, 01 (Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York Graduate Center – 2001
Richard Wolin, Heidegger’s Children, P. 10-11)
In May 1933, Heidegger sent a telltale telegram to Hitler expressing solidarity with recent Gleichschaltung legislation. There were instances of political
denunciation and personal betrayal. Moreover, Heidegger remained a dues-paying member of the Nazi Party until the regime's bitter end . He continued to
open his classes with the so-called "German greeting" of "Heil Hitler!" In 1936, he confided to Lowith that his 'partisanship for National Socialism lay in
the essence of his philosophy"; it derived, he claimed, from the concept of "historicity" (which stressed the importance of authentic historical
commitment) in Being and Time.'" As the rector of Freiburg University, Heidegger was charged with enforcing the anti-Semitic clauses of the socalled "Law for the Preservation of a Permanent Civil Service," which effectively banned Jews from all walks of government service,
including university life. Despite his later disclaimers, in his capacity as rector Heidegger faithfully executed these laws , even though it meant banning
Husserl, to whom he owed so much, from the philosophy faculty library. In the eyes of Hannah Arendt, this action, which had affected the septuagenarian
phenomenologist so adversely, made Heidegger a "potential murderer."" AT the time, Husserl complained bitterly in a letter to a former student about Heidegger's
growing anti-Semitism: "In recent years [he] has allowed his anti-Semitism to come increasingly to the fore, even in his dealings with his groups
of devoted Jewish students," observes Husserl. "The events of the last few weeks," he continued (referring to Heidegger's joining the Nazi Party as well as the
recent university ban on Jews), "have struck at the deepest roots of my existence."'" In 1929, Heidegger had already complained that Germany was faced with a stark
alternative: "the choice between sustaining our German intellectual life through a renewed infusion of genuine, native teachers and educators, or abandoning it once and
for all to growing Jewish influence [Verjudung]-in both the wider and narrow sense."'
Critique of the enlightenment justifies Nazism
Wolin, 90 (Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York Graduate Center - 1990 (Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being, P. 152)
And thus, if upon turning to the text of a 1953 lecture we find the observation: "Thinking
begins only when we have come to know that reason,
glorified for centuries, is the most stiff-necked adversary of thought" we cannot help but conclude that in his later work, Heidegger has
only sunk more deeply into the bog of Logosvergessenheit. This verdict gives cause for dismay, for it suggests that the philosopher has
61
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
drawn precisely the wrong conclusions from the political events of 1933-1945: instead of participating in the attempt to forge, out of the
ravages of postwar Europe, a new conception of reason and truth, Heidegger himself has become an even greater "stiff-necked"
advocate of counterenlightenment. His thought seeks refuge in the recrudescence of myth: "openness for the mystery," "the remembrance of Being," and "the
mirror-play of the four-fold" (gods and mortals, heaven and earth) becomes the mystified categorial scheme around which his later thinking revolved. The notion that
analogous counterenlightenment attitudes and doctrines might have played a key role in the spiritual preparation for the German
catastrophe is a thought that has obviously never crossed his mind.57
62
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
AFF – INACTION
Heidegger ignored all practical effects of his theory (death and destruction) and human suffering as a whole—
empirically proven by Nazism and the Holocaust
Rockmore, 91 (Professor of Philosophy at McAnulty College. Tom, On Heidegger’s Nazism and Philosophy, p. 240-241)
In Heidegger's writings on technology, at least two passages indicate a striking insensitivity to human suffering. Heidegger, who understood
technology as a form of disclosure, was careful to conceal and not to reveal some of his most deeply held views about the technological process. There is a passage in
the original version of Heidegger's essay, "The Question concerning Technology," which originated as a lecture in 1949 under the title "Enframing" but which was
altered in the version published in 1954.[126] In the version published during Heidegger's lifetime, the text, which was clearly changed to conceal an earlier formulation,
retains only seven words in the translation, five in the revised text: "Agriculture is now the mechanized food industry." [127] This banal point hardly reveals the startling
claim embedded in the original manuscript, which only became available some seven years after Heidegger's death. The original passage reads as follows:
"Agriculture is now a mechanised food industry, in essence the same as the manufacturing of corpses in gas chambers and
extermination camps, the same as the blockade and starvation of nations, the same as the production of hydrogen bombs." [ From a strictly
Heideggerian point of view, this passage is literally correct, since he maintains that all of modernity suffers from the turn away from Being which leads to the
hegemony of technology. Yet this passage is disturbing, in part because of Heidegger's manifest insensitivity, in a period when he emphasizes the Ereignis , to the most
catastrophic moral Ereignis of our time: the Holocaust. Heidegger, who is sensitive to Being, is startlingly insensitive to human being. There is further a manifest
conceptual mistake in simply considering all forms of technology as indistinguishably alike. For Heidegger has failed to consider, and certainly failed to
comprehend, the relation of technology to the event of the Holocaust: the unparalleled way in which all available technological
resources were harnessed, and new ones were invented, specifically to commit genocide. No amount of liberal handwringing at this late
date should be allowed to obscure Heidegger's incapacity, not only to respond to, but even to comprehend, the Holocaust through his
theory of technology. His theory, hence, fails the test of experience.
Emphasis on Heideggers anti-logical ontology results in passivity and inaction that allows disaster to happen.
Wolin, 90 (Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York Graduate Center – 1990. Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being, P. 147)
As we suggested earlier, the essential thinking of the later Heidegger promotes an "eclipse of practical reason." For his post-Kehre reformulation of the
relation between Being and Dasein rebels so fervently against the voluntarist dimension of his own earlier thinking that the very concept of "meaningful
human action" is seemingly rendered null and void. If the early Heidegger attempted to rally Dasein to "decisiveness" (Entschlossenheit), the thought of the
later Heidegger appears at times to be a summary justification of human passivity and inaction (Gelassenheit)-so prejudicially is the balance
between Sein and Mensch struck in favor of the former term. Thus, in the later Heidegger, the campaign against practical reason develops along a two-fold front: not
only is the concept of Being grossly inflated, but the powers of human reason and will are correspondingly devalued . In the later writings, Being
assumes the character of an omnipotent primal force, a "first unmoved mover," whose "presencing" proves to be the determinative,
ultimate instance for events in the lowly world of human affairs. In its other-worldly supremacy, this force both withdraws from the tribunal of human
reason and defies the meager capacities of human description: "A Being that not only surpasses all beings-and thus all men-but which like an unknown God rests and
'essences' in its own truth, in that it is sometimes present and sometimes absent, can never be explained like a being in existence; instead, it can only be 'evoked.' "
63
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
AFF – NIHILISM
Heidegger’s philosophy led to nihilism and a refusal of ethical norms
Wolin, 90 (Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York Graduate Center – 1990. Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being, P. 65)
The consequences of this decisionistic "ethical vacuum," coupled with the prejudicial nature of Heidegger's conservative revolutionary
degradation of the modern life-world, suggests an undeniable theoretical cogency behind Heidegger's ignominious life-choice of 1933. In its
rejection of "moral convention-which qua convention, proves inimical to acts of heroic bravado-decisionism shows itself to be distinctly
nihilistic vis-a-vis the totality of inherited ethical paradigms.118F or this reason, the implicit political theory of Being and Time-and in this respect, it proves a
classical instance of the German conservative-authoritarian mentality of the period-remains devoid of fundamental "liberal convictions" that might have served as an
ethicopolitical bulwark against the enticement of fascism. Freed of such bourgeois qualms, the National Socialist movement presented itself as a
plausible material "filling" for the empty vessel of authentic decision and its categorical demand for existentiell-historical content. The
summons toward an "authentic historical destiny" enunciated in Being and Time was thus provided with an ominously appropriate
response by Germany's National Revolution. The latter, in effect, was viewed by Heidegger as 'the ontic fulfillment of the categorical
demands of "historicity": it was Heidegger's own choice of a "hero," a "destiny," and a "community."
The theory of meditative thought and unconcealement blurs the lines of truth allowing victimization
Wolin, 90 (Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York Graduate Center – 1990. Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being, P. 121-122)
Ultimately Heidegger's theory of truth succumbs to the same problem of criterionlessness that was at issue in the decisionistic approach to human
action in Being and Time. On the one hand, Heidegger seems at first to be claiming that unconcealment is merely an ontological
precondition of truth-which is, as far as it goes, certainly a plausible and valuable insight. In point of fact, however, the nature of truth is conceptualized
in terms of the dialectic of concealment and unconcealment that occurs within the phenomenological horizon that has been opened up
by a work, a world, etc. In the end, his thoroughgoing antisubjectivism, which is radicalized in the "Turn," results in a type of ineffectual positivism: objects
(beings) are no longer to be "judged" (for this would be to subject them to subjective criteria, or, worse still, to "values"), but "disclosed" or "unveiled." Yet, once the
lines between truth and error become blurred, the distinction between authentic and inauthentic unveiling essentially evaporates: both
are victimized by error in an unspecifiable way. Heidegger could conceivably redeem his theory of truth by an attempt, however
minimal, to distinguish a true from an untrue act of unconcealment. A true unconcealment would thus unveil a being "essentially" or
as it is "in itself." But no such distinction between genuine and non-genuine unveiling is forthcoming in his work. Instead, error (Irrnis) is
paradoxically deemed a mode of unconcealment that is valid in its own right and thus "equiprimordial" with truth. Or again, Heidegger might have claimed that
unconcealment presents a type of privileged or exemplary disclosure of beings; and judgments of truth, in turn, could have been predicated on this exemplary mode
of disclosure. But no such claim is made. Instead, all we are left with is an unexalted, positivistic affirmation of "givenness," "beings in their immediacy," "disclosure as
such." In this respect, Heidegger's theory of Seinsgeschichte regresses behind both the Husserlian and the ancient Greek conceptions of truth. For in both cases,
truth resides not in the "givenness" of beings as such, but in a supramundane or superior mode of givenness?* As a result of his obsession with providing a
"topography" of truth-with defining the clearing or openness as a sufficient condition for the appearance of truth as "untruth"-to the
wholesale exclusion of all traditional predicative considerations, Heidegger lays himself open to extreme judgmental incapacities. And
it was this philosophically induced lack of discernment that would lead to his fatal misapprehension of the intellectual as well as the
political essence of National Socialism.
64
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
AFF – VALUE TO LIFE
Heidegger’s notion of authenticity can never be realized and his philosophy leads to a joyless devaluation of
existence
Wolin, 90 (Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York Graduate Center – 1990. Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being, P. 49-50)
Heidegger's characterization of everydayness is so disproportionately negative that we are seemingly left with no immanent prospects
for realizing our authentic natures in the domain of ontic life as such. For on the basis of his phenomenological descriptions, it would
seem that the ontic sphere in general- "worldliness" in its entirety-has been "colonized" by the They. Here, we see that Heidegger's
pessimistic philosophical anthropology and his "joyless" social ontology ultimately join forces. The result is a radical devaluation of
the life-world, that delicate substratum of everyday human sociation which existential phenomenology claims to redeem. AT this point, one might raise against
Heidegger's social ontology the same charge he levels against Husserl's theory of the pure, transcendental ego: it suffers from an impoverishment of world-relations-a
fact clearly evinced in Heidegger's self-defeating celebration of the "non-relational" character of authentic Dasein cited above. For how can the authenticity of a Dasein
that is essentially "non -relational" ever attain realization in the sphere of ontic life?
65
Heidegger
ENDI
Lab CGLT
AFF – REASON/RATIONALITY GOOD
Enlightenment thought is good and necessary to solve problems
Wolin, 90 (Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York Graduate Center - 1990 (Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being, P. 167)
Heidegger's theory of technology ultimately collapses under the weight of its own self-imposed conceptual limitations. And thus, the
intrinsic shortcomings of his theoretical framework prevent him from entertaining the prospect that the problem of technological
domination owes more to the dearth of reason in the modern world rather than an excess . For in modern life, the parameters of rationality have
been prematurely restricted: formal or instrumental reason has attained de facto hegemony; practical reason-reflection on ends-has been effectively
marginalized. Instead of the "overcoming" of reason recommended by Heidegger, what is needed is an expansion of reason's boundaries,
such that the autonomous logic of instrumental rationality is subordinated to a rational reflection on ends. Similarly, Heidegger's
incessant lamentations concerning the "will to will-the theoretical prism through which he views the modern project of human self-assertion in its entirety- only serve to
confuse the problem at issue?7 That the forces of technology and industry follow an independent logic.
66