George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Oceans Kritik
OCEANS KRITIK .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 1
FYI .................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 3
NEGATIVE .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5
1NC – SHELLS ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 6
LONG SHELL – DEEP ECOLOGY (HEIDEGGER) .................................................................................................................................................. 7
SHORT SHELL – DEEP ECOLOGY (HEIDEGGER) .............................................................................................................................................. 11
LONG SHELL – OTEC ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 13
SHORT SHELL – OTEC ................................................................................................................................................................................... 18
LINKS ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 21
AGRICULTURE ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 22
ALTERNATIVE ENERGY .................................................................................................................................................................................. 24
COMPETITION ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 25
CONSERVATION .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 26
CONSUMERISM ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 27
DEEP ECOLOGY .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 28
DEVELOPMENT ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 29
ENERGY .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 30
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS ............................................................................................................................................................................... 31
ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT ................................................................................................................................................................... 33
ETHICS ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 34
EXPERTS ......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 35
EXTINCTION MPX .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 36
FARMING ........................................................................................................................................................................................................ 37
HUMANISM ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 38
IDENTITY ........................................................................................................................................................................................................ 39
NATURAL RESOURCES .................................................................................................................................................................................... 40
NUCLEAR POWER ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 41
OCEANS (GENERIC TO WATER) ...................................................................................................................................................................... 42
RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM ...................................................................................................................................................................... 44
REFORMISM .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 45
RENEWABLES ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 46
SCIENCE ......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 49
STATE ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 50
TECHNOLOGY ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 51
PERM ANSWER .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 53
MPX .............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 55
BEING ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 56
CALCULATIVE THOUGHT ................................................................................................................................................................................ 57
ENVIRONMENT ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 58
FORGETTING NATURE .................................................................................................................................................................................... 59
STANDING RESERVE ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 60
ONTOLOGICAL DAMNATION > NUKE WAR ..................................................................................................................................................... 62
WARMING ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 63
WAR ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 64
ALTS ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 65
MEDITATION .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 66
LET NATURE BE ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 70
PHENOMENOLOGY OF WATER ........................................................................................................................................................................ 71
RELEASEMENT ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 73
RETHINK ......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 74
ALT- SOLVENCY ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 75
SOLVES BIO D ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 76
SOLVES EXTINCTION ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 77
SOLVES IDENTITY ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 78
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
SOLVES VALUE TO LIFE.................................................................................................................................................................................. 79
AT – TURNS ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 80
AT – ALT = ANARCHY ................................................................................................................................................................................... 81
AT – CTP ....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 82
AT – DO NOTHING ALTS BAD ........................................................................................................................................................................ 83
AT – ETHICS ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 84
AT – UTIL ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 86
AT – EV TO GENERIC ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 87
AT: HEIDEGGER IS A NAZI.............................................................................................................................................................................. 88
AT – REPS NOT IMPORTANT ........................................................................................................................................................................... 89
ONTOLOGY FIRST ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 90
AFF – ANSWERS ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 91
PERM ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 92
AT – PERM TURNS ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 93
DO BOTH ........................................................................................................................................................................................................ 94
AT – ALT ....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 96
RELEASEMENT ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 97
MEDITATIVE THOUGHT ................................................................................................................................................................................... 98
HEIDEGGER IS A NAZI ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 99
DO NOTHING BAD ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 100
TURNS .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 101
CTP .............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 102
CAN’T SOLVE: NUKE WAR/ENVIRONMENT/TOTALITARIANISM ................................................................................................................... 103
ALT FAILS: IGNORES NATURAL DISASTERS.................................................................................................................................................. 104
AT K OF SCIENCE ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 105
VALUE TO LIFE ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 106
ONTOLOGY FIRST = BAD .............................................................................................................................................................................. 107
TURN: KILLS DEBATE ................................................................................................................................................................................... 108
TURN: CALCULATIVE THOUGHT = GOOD: ALLOWS FOR DEBATE................................................................................................................. 109
EXTRA ....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 110
KRITICK ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 111
SCHMITT (FRIEND ENEMY DISTINCTION) ......................................................................................................................................... 112
LINK TURN ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 113
ECONOMIC RATIONAL GOOD........................................................................................................................................................................ 114
ENVIRONMENTAL PRAGMATISM ................................................................................................................................................................... 117
LX TURN – BIOREGIONAL COMMUNITIES (UNDERWATER COLONY) ............................................................................................................. 118
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
FYI
What is Deep ecology, or what is ecology even? Well read this card and find out =)
Antolick 3 (Matthew, MA @University of South Florida, “Deep ecology and Heideggerian phenomenology”, 2003, Date Accessed: 621-14) [IB]
Ecology is “the scientific study of the interrelationships among organisms and¶ between organisms, and between all aspects, living and nonliving, of the¶ environment.”74 The origin of the term is not completely solid, though it has been traced¶ to the nature writings of Theophrastus (c372-287 BC). The
etymology of the term¶ derives from the Greek word oikos meaning “household, home, or place to live.” ¶ German zoologist Ernest Haeckel coined it in reference to the
relationship between an¶ animal and its “organic or inorganic environment.” Ecology is thus the study of the¶ relationships between organisms and their
environment (and each other).¶ On September 3, 1972, at the third World Future Research Conference in ¶ Bucharest, Romania, the Norwegian philosopher
Arne Naess, coined the term Deep¶ Ecology (hereafter referred to as ‘DE’) by differentiating between what he called¶ “shallow” and “deep”
ecological views. The former involve concern for environmental¶ matters solely insofar as human interests are involved. Naess labeled
this “standard view¶ of conservationists” shallow ecology, which he describes as “mainly an anthropocentric,¶ individualistic, Western movement,
concerned with the health and affluence of people in¶ the developed countries.”75 A shallow focus is narrow, but not completely
unethical.¶ “The limitation of the shallow movement is not due to a weak or unethical philosophy,” says Naess, “ but to a lack of explicit
concern with ultimate aims, goals, and norms. ”76¶ The word “shallow” nevertheless has an understandably derogatory tone.¶ David Rothenberg states in the
Introduction to Naess’s Ecology, Community,¶ Lifestyle,¶ More precisely, [DE] is the utilization of basic concepts from the science of ¶ ecology – such as
complexity, diversity, and symbiosis – to clarify the place of¶ our species within nature through the process of working out a total view.77¶
DE does not, as a reaction to shallowness, constitute a rejection of social activism. ¶ Naess himself states that in DE, “unlike academic
philosophy, decisions and actions¶ count more than generalities.”78 But nor does it reject philosophical reasoning: it¶ combines abstract
philosophical formulations with prescriptions for concrete action. The¶ focus of action in shallow ecology is at issue.¶ DE is an
ecological philosophy or ecophilosophy. Naess’s word is “ecosophy.”¶ The combination of abstract reasoning and concrete action hints at DE’s
symbiotic and¶ non-exclusionary character. The science of ecology is observational or descriptive,¶ whereas an ecosophy is action
oriented. “Without an ecosophy, ecology can provide no ¶ principles for acting, no motive for political and individual efforts.”79 ¶
Naess himself calls his ecosophy ‘Ecosophy T’, thereby distinguishing it from¶ other ecopsophies. The possibility of more than one ecosophy reflects the diversity of¶
organisms and phenomena in the ecopshere:¶ Rather than talking about reality or the world, ecosophical thinking proceeds in ¶ terms of nature, and
humanity’s relation to nature. An attempt is made to defend ¶ our spontaneous, rich, seemingly contradictory experience of nature as more
than subjective impressions. They make up the concrete contents of our world. This ¶ point of view, as every other ontology, is deeply problematic –
but of great¶ potential value for energetic environmentalism in opposition to the contemporary ¶ near-monopoly of the so-called
scientific world-view.80¶ A “total view” is to replace the narrow and limited attitudes of citizens in modern¶ industrial societies. “Total
view” corresponds with “the relational, total-field image” of¶ self presented by DE. Ecocentrism replaces anthropocentrism: as such, DE is a¶ “rejection
of the man-in-environment image,”81 doing away with the strictly atomistic¶ view of the self, or ‘self’ according to the technological
worldview.¶ Organisms [are] as knots in the biospherical net or field of total relations. An¶ intrinsic relation between two things A and B is such that
the relation belongs to¶ the definitions or basic constitutions of A and B, so that without the relation, A¶ and B are no longer the same thing. The total-field dissolves
not only the man-inenvironment¶ concept, but every compact thing-in-milieu concept – except when¶ talking at a superficial or
preliminary level of communication.82¶ A “total view” is identification with not just one’s own species, but all forms of ¶ life. Further, the
meaning of “self-realization” is widened out of its typically selfcentered ¶ rendering to include other species, the environment and the
ecopshere. Thus, as¶ one cares for the environment, one cares for oneself. ¶ DE endorses “not a slight reform of our present society, but
a substantial¶ reorientation of our whole civilization.”83 There is an intrinsic connection between DE¶ and nonviolence (in the Ghandian
sense): as such, violent revolutions are not consistent¶ with its purpose. “The direction is revolutionary, the steps are reformatory.” 84 DE
aims¶ at changing the dominant worldview and social structure of modernity. The reasons 31¶ behind the alignment between DE and
nonviolent change become clearer upon¶ consideration of self-widening, explained below.85 We can say for now that the¶ relationship between
DE and nonviolence mirrors the symbiosis expressed through¶ organic relations (between beings or between being and environment) within the total¶
ecosystem.¶ Naess and Sessions formulated the basic principles of any ecosophy. Their goal¶ was to represent the “basics,” which are “meant to express important points
which the¶ great majority of supporters accept, implicitly or explicitly, at a high level of ¶ generality.”86 These principles “guide those who believe
ecological problems cannot be¶ solved only by technological ‘quick-fix’ solutions,” in achieving effective non-violent¶ direct action
in the direction of fundamental change.87¶ The generality of the points allows for specifics to be worked out on individual ¶ bases: the
point is to provide a tool for realizing commonality, rather than a calculus of¶ differentiation. This eight-point platform is:¶ 1. The wellbeing and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth¶ have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, intrinsic worth).¶ These values are
independent of the usefulness of the non-human world¶ for human purposes.¶ 2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of ¶ these
values and are also values in themselves.¶ 3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness except to satisfy vital¶ needs.¶ 4. The
flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a ¶ substantially smaller human population. The flourishing of non-human¶ life
requires a smaller human population. ¶ 5. Present human interference with the non-human world is excessive,¶ and the situation is rapidly
worsening. 6. Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic ¶ economic, technological, and ideological structures. The
resulting state¶ of affairs will be deeply different from the present.¶ 7. The ideological change will be mainly that of appreciating life
quality¶ (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an¶ increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound ¶
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
awareness of the difference between bigness and greatness.¶ 8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly ¶ or
indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.88¶ Point number one is an ecosophical nexus. The good of any non-human entity is¶
independent of our valuations of it (e.g., for profits, resources, or other strictly human¶ purposes). The other points flow out of and unite around this
conception. Additional¶ viewpoints range from political (increased self-determination and diminished¶ centralization of governmental structures)89to
personal (the “profound human ignorance¶ of biospherical relationships,”90 stress on a humble, questioning attitude) to transpersonal¶ (peace and nonviolence91,
concern for future generations). “Profound ignorance” is not¶ an assertion of human stupidity. It rather signifies an open and humble attitude, ¶
expressed by Naess where he says “the smaller we come to feel ourselves compared to ¶ the mountain, the nearer we come to participating in its
greatness. I do not know why¶ this is so.”92¶ The ecological movement relies upon the results of research in ecology and more ¶ recently in
conservation biology…But to the great amazement of many, the¶ scientific conclusions are often statements of ignorance: ‘We do not know
what¶ long-range consequences the proposed interference in the ecosystem will beget, so we cannot make and hard and fast changes.’ Only rarely can scientists predict¶ with
any certainty the effect of a new chemical on even a single small¶ ecosystem…The study of ecosystems makes us conscious of our ignorance .93
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Negative
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
1NC – Shells
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Long Shell – Deep Ecology (Heidegger)
Status quo relation to life and the environment is an shallow ecological valorization of humanism and the
environments overall use value – we must move past this ethic into an deep ecology where we value all forms
of life regardless of its utility to us. Deep ecology is an revolution that will fundamentally reorient the whole
of civilization this allows us to move past humanism and into understanding the ‘profound ignorance’ of
humanity
Antolick 3 (Matthew, MA @University of South Florida, “Deep ecology and Heideggerian phenomenology”, 2003, Date Accessed: 621-14) [IB]
Ecology is “the scientific study of the interrelationships among organisms and¶ between organisms, and between all aspects, living and nonliving, of the¶ environment.”74 The origin of the term is not completely solid, though it has been traced ¶ to the nature writings of Theophrastus (c372-287 BC). The
etymology of the term¶ derives from the Greek word oikos meaning “household, home, or place to live.” ¶ German zoologist Ernest Haeckel coined it in reference to the
relationship between an¶ animal and its “organic or inorganic environment.” Ecology is thus the study of the¶ relationships between organisms and their
environment (and each other).¶ On September 3, 1972, at the third World Future Research Conference in ¶ Bucharest, Romania, the Norwegian philosopher
Arne Naess, coined the term Deep¶ Ecology (hereafter referred to as ‘DE’) by differentiating between what he called¶ “shallow” and “deep”
ecological views. The former involve concern for environmental¶ matters solely insofar as human interests are involved . Naess labeled
this “standard view¶ of conservationists” shallow ecology, which he describes as “mainly an anthropocentric,¶ individualistic, Western movement,
concerned with the health and affluence of people in ¶ the developed countries.”75 A shallow focus is narrow, but not completely
unethical.¶ “The limitation of the shallow movement is not due to a weak or unethical philosophy,” says Naess, “ but to a lack of explicit
concern with ultimate aims, goals, and norms. ”76¶ The word “shallow” nevertheless has an understandably derogatory tone.¶ David Rothenberg states in the
Introduction to Naess’s Ecology, Community,¶ Lifestyle,¶ More precisely, [DE] is the utilization of basic concepts from the science of ¶ ecology – such as
complexity, diversity, and symbiosis – to clarify the place of¶ our species within nature through the process of working out a total view.77¶
DE does not, as a reaction to shallowness, constitute a rejection of social activism. ¶ Naess himself states that in DE, “unlike academic
philosophy, decisions and actions¶ count more than generalities.”78 But nor does it reject philosophical reasoning: it¶ combines abstract
philosophical formulations with prescriptions for concrete action. The¶ focus of action in shallow ecology is at issue.¶ DE is an
ecological philosophy or ecophilosophy. Naess’s word is “ecosophy.”¶ The combination of abstract reasoning and concrete action hints at DE’s
symbiotic and¶ non-exclusionary character. The science of ecology is observational or descriptive,¶ whereas an ecosophy is action
oriented. “Without an ecosophy, ecology can provide no¶ principles for acting, no motive for political and individual efforts.”79 ¶
Naess himself calls his ecosophy ‘Ecosophy T’, thereby distinguishing it from¶ other ecopsophies. The possibility of more than one ecosophy reflects the diversity of¶
organisms and phenomena in the ecopshere:¶ Rather than talking about reality or the world, ecosophical thinking proceeds in ¶ terms of nature, and
humanity’s relation to nature. An attempt is made to defend ¶ our spontaneous, rich, seemingly contradictory experience of nature as more
than subjective impressions. They make up the concrete contents of our world. This ¶ point of view, as every other ontology, is deeply problematic –
but of great¶ potential value for energetic environmentalism in opposition to the contemporary¶ near-monopoly of the so-called
scientific world-view.80¶ A “total view” is to replace the narrow and limited attitudes of citizens in modern ¶ industrial societies. “Total
view” corresponds with “the relational, total-field image” of¶ self presented by DE. Ecocentrism replaces anthropocentrism: as such, DE is a¶ “rejection
of the man-in-environment image,”81 doing away with the strictly atomistic¶ view of the self, or ‘self’ according to the technological
worldview.¶ Organisms [are] as knots in the biospherical net or field of total relations. An¶ intrinsic relation between two things A and B is such that
the relation belongs to¶ the definitions or basic constitutions of A and B, so that without the relation, A¶ and B are no longer the same thing. The total-field dissolves
not only the man-inenvironment¶ concept, but every compact thing-in-milieu concept – except when¶ talking at a superficial or
preliminary level of communication.82¶ A “total view” is identification with not just one’s own species, but all forms of¶ life. Further, the
meaning of “self-realization” is widened out of its typically selfcentered ¶ rendering to include other species, the environment and the
ecopshere. Thus, as¶ one cares for the environment, one cares for oneself. ¶ DE endorses “not a slight reform of our present society, but
a substantial¶ reorientation of our whole civilization.”83 There is an intrinsic connection between DE ¶ and nonviolence (in the Ghandian
sense): as such, violent revolutions are not consistent¶ with its purpose. “The direction is revolutionary, the steps are reformatory.” 84 DE
aims¶ at changing the dominant worldview and social structure of modernity. The reasons 31 ¶ behind the alignment between DE and
nonviolent change become clearer upon¶ consideration of self-widening, explained below.85 We can say for now that the¶ relationship between
DE and nonviolence mirrors the symbiosis expressed through¶ organic relations (between beings or between being and environment) within the total¶
ecosystem.¶ Naess and Sessions formulated the basic principles of any ecosophy. Their goal¶ was to represent the “basics,” which are “meant to express important points
which the¶ great majority of supporters accept, implicitly or explicitly, at a high level of ¶ generality.”86 These principles “guide those who believe
ecological problems cannot be¶ solved only by technological ‘quick-fix’ solutions,” in achieving effective non-violent¶ direct action
in the direction of fundamental change.87¶ The generality of the points allows for specifics to be worked out on individual¶ bases: the
point is to provide a tool for realizing commonality, rather than a calculus of ¶ differentiation. This eight-point platform is:¶ 1. The wellbeing and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth¶ have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, intrinsic worth).¶ These values are
independent of the usefulness of the non-human world¶ for human purposes.¶ 2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of ¶ these
values and are also values in themselves.¶ 3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness except to satisfy vital ¶ needs.¶ 4. The
flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a ¶ substantially smaller human population. The flourishing of non-human¶ life
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
requires a smaller human population. ¶ 5. Present human interference with the non-human world is excessive,¶ and the situation is rapidly
worsening. 6. Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic¶ economic, technological, and ideological structures. The
resulting state¶ of affairs will be deeply different from the present. ¶ 7. The ideological change will be mainly that of appreciating life
quality¶ (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an¶ increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound ¶
awareness of the difference between bigness and greatness. ¶ 8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly ¶ or
indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.88¶ Point number one is an ecosophical nexus. The good of any non-human entity is¶
independent of our valuations of it (e.g., for profits, resources, or other strictly human¶ purposes). The other points flow out of and unite around this
conception. Additional¶ viewpoints range from political (increased self-determination and diminished¶ centralization of governmental structures)89to
personal (the “profound human ignorance¶ of biospherical relationships,”90 stress on a humble, questioning attitude) to transpersonal¶ (peace and nonviolence91,
concern for future generations). “Profound ignorance” is not¶ an assertion of human stupidity. It rather signifies an open and humble attitude, ¶
expressed by Naess where he says “the smaller we come to feel ourselves compared to ¶ the mountain, the nearer we come to participating in its
greatness. I do not know why¶ this is so.”92¶ The ecological movement relies upon the results of research in ecology and more ¶ recently in
conservation biology…But to the great amazement of many, the¶ scientific conclusions are often statements of ignorance: ‘We do not know
what¶ long-range consequences the proposed interference in the ecosystem will beget, so we cannot make and hard and fast changes.’ Only rarely can scientists predict¶ with
any certainty the effect of a new chemical on even a single small¶ ecosystem…The study of ecosystems makes us conscious of our ignorance .93
The affirmative endorses an idea that the entire world is manageable by humanity – this is rationale is
rooted in a technological being based inside western metaphysics – this flawed form of understanding not
only extinguishes alternative forms of knowledge but also risks planetary destruction
McWhorter 92 (LaDelle, Professor of Philosophy @Northeast Missouri State, 1992, “Heidegger and the Earth”, Date Accessed: 6-2114) [IB]
What it most illustrative is often also what is most common. Today, on all sides of ecological debate we hear, with greater and greater frequency, the word
management. On the one hand, business people want to manage natural resources so as to keep up profits . On the other hand, conservationists
want to manage natural resources so that there will be plenty of coal and oil and recreational facilities for future generations. These groups
and factions within them debate vociferously over which management policies are the best, that is, the most efficient and manageable. Radical
environmentalists damn both groups and claim it is human population growth and rising expectations that are in need of
management. But wherever we look, wherever we listen, we see and hear the term management. We are living in a veritable age of management. Before a
middle class child graduates from high school she or he is already preliminarily trained in the arts of weight management, stress management, and time management, to
name just a few. As we approach middle age we continue to practice these essential arts, refining and adapting our regulatory regimes as the pressures of life increase and
the body begins to break down. We have become a society of managers - of our homes, careers, portfolios, estates, even of our own bodies - so
is it surprising that we set ourselves up as the managers of the earth itself? And yet, as thoughtful earth-dwellers we must ask, what does this
signify? In numerous essays - in particular the beautiful 1953 essay, "The Question Concerning Technology" - Heidegger speaks of what he sees as the danger
of dangers in this, our age. This danger is a kind of forgetfulness – a forgetfulness that Heidegger thought could result not only in nuclear
disaster or environmental catastrophe, but in the loss of what makes us the kind of beings we are, beings who can think and who can stand
in thoughtful relationship to things. This forgetfulness is not a forgetting of facts and their relationships; it is a forgetfulness of something far more
important and far more fundamental than that. He called it forgetfulness of 'the mystery.’ It would be easy to imagine that by 'the mystery' Heidegger means some sort of
entity, some thing, temporarily hidden or permanently ineffable. But 'the mystery is not the name of some thing; it is the event of the occurring together of revealing and
concealing. Every academic discipline, whether it be biology or history, anthropology or mathematics, is interested in discovery, in the 'revelation of new truths"
Knowledge, at least as it is institutionalized in the modern world is concerned, then, with what Heidegger would call revealing, the
bringing to light, or the coming to presence of things. However , in order for any of this revealing to occur, Heidegger says, concealing must
also occur. Revealing and concealing belong together. Now, what does this mean? We know that in order to pay attention to one thing, we must stop
paying close attention to something else. In order to read philosophy we must stop reading cereal boxes. In order to attend to the needs of
students we must sacrifice some of our research time. Allowing for one thing to reveal itself means allowing for the concealing of
something else. All revealing comes at the price of concomitant concealment. But this is more than just a kind of Kantian acknowledgment of human
limitation. Heidegger is not simply dressing up the obvious, that is, the fact that no individual can undergo two different experiences simultaneously. His is not
a point about human subjectivity at all. Rather, it is a point about revealing itself. When revealing reveals itself as temporally linear and causally
ordered, for example, it cannot simultaneously reveal itself as ordered by song and unfolding dream. Furthermore, in revealing, revealing itself is
concealed in order for what is revealed to come forth. Thus, when revealing occurs concealing occurs as well. The two events are one and cannot
be separated. Too often we forget. The radiance of revelation blinds us both to its own event and to the shadows that it casts, so that revealing
conceals itself and its self-concealing conceals itself, and we fall prey to that strange power of vision to consign to oblivion whatever cannot be seen. Even our
forgetting is forgotten, and all races of absence absent themselves from our world. The noted physicist Stephen Hawking, in his popular book A Brief History of Time,
writes, "The eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe.,'5 Such a theory, many people would assert, would be a systematic
arrangement of all knowledge both already acquired and theoretically possible. lt would be a theory to end all theories, outside of which no information, no revelation could,
or would need to, occur. And the advent of such a theory would be as the shining of a light into every corner of being. Nothing would remain concealed. This dream of
Hawking's is a dream of power; in fact, it is a dream of absolute power, absolute control. It is a dream of the ultimate managerial utopia. This, Heidegger would
contend, is the dream of technological thought in the modern age. We dream of knowing, grasping everything, for then we can control,
then we can manage, everything. But it is only a dream, itself predicated, ironically enough, upon concealment, the self-concealing of the mystery. We can never
control-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
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
approaches or modes of revealing that would unfold into knowledges of other sort s. Those other approaches or paths of thinking must already have been
obliterated; those other knowledges must already have concealed themselves in order for technological or scientific revelation to occur. The danger of a managerial
approach to the world lies not then in what it knows nor in its planetary on into the secrets of galactic emergence or nuclear fission – but
in what it forgets, what it itself conceals. It forgets that any other truths are possible, and it forgets that the belonging together of revealing with
concealing is forever beyond the power of human management. We can never have, or know, it all; we can never manage everything.
****ADD SPECFIC LINK HERE****
The alternative is to renounce the affirmative and their calls for solutions – instead we should embrace the
mysterious and random universe and carry on the path of thinking never asking for answers but accepting
tension of persistent questioning which remains radically exotic to calculative thinking this method of
thinking is completely foreign to both incorporation and cooptation
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
In being open to this possibility, in being open to its mysterious pull on us, we are heeding something in us, something that tells us (even
if only by way of hinting and by eluding our intellectual grasp) that be-ing is not something separate from us. Somehow, it—in its very
withdrawing—speaks to us at a very deep level. That is why Heidegger could say to his neighbors that, to get under way in thinking, it is
enough to genuinely heed and ponder what is of concern to us, what is close to us. Whether this call to think the mystery of be-ing is provoked by
pulling a perfect scallion from the soil, by being plunged into darkness when the power goes out, or by trying to understand how the history of Western philosophy shapes
us, it draws us into (the) be-ing that is not just of “beings” in some vague and general sense but is unique in each instance and pertains to us and everything of concern to us.
This dynamic, relational enowning and arising of everything is so near to us that it could be said—as Heidegger does say— of it that it is our very heart’s core. But as close
as this is it calls us to think, because the more we are touched and moved and drawn by it, the more elusively compelling it becomes. ¶ Being drawn on by what thus
withdraws is what sets us on the way of thinking and inclines us to continue moving along the way. It compels and attunes our
questioning. Over and over Heidegger says that what is worthy of questioning is what is worthy of thought, of attempting to bring to
language “the inconspicuousness of a withholding, its riches” (marginal note). The questioning that is intrinsic to thinking that always
remains on the way does not ask for answers. It places “questions that seek what no inventiveness can find” because the matter itself is
inexhaustible and utterly resistant to calculative thinking. To persist in this thinking is not to persist in the attempt to find an answer but
rather to persist in questioning, to remain in motion, in unresolved tension and openness to transformative possibility. The questioning
that holds thinking on the way is in no way a matter of question and answer (distinct moments in a linear process). Rather, being drawn on
by withdrawal into ab-ground keeps thinking ever more deeply, even compellingly, engaged with the matter. This unfolds as a different
experience of questioning, jarring our presuppositions about what questions and answers are. “If an answer could be given it would
consist in a transformation of thinking, not in a propositional statement about a matter at stake.”And such a radical transformation of
thinking also transforms us, whose very nature is in question and at stake, as this thinking proceeds. Withdrawing and the questioning it
evokes are in oscillating play, pulling thinking along, opening a way into the matter. Going the way of this interplay calls forth, is called
forth by, and enacts an attuning. What does this say? In the first place, it indicates that neither thoughtful questioning nor attuning causes one another. Instead, there
is a resonance between questioning and attuning whereby the attuning both compels and responds to the questioning and the ever-deepening questioning calls forth a
response that in turn attunes further questioning. The questioning responds to the beckoning hints and traces and echoes of be-ing’s withdrawing and in turn “challenges being to thoroughly attune the questioning” in its very withdrawing. So it is that thinking takes its bearings from be-ing while opening the region of the
thinking of be-ing and getting under way within it.
Adjusting our thinking of and about the environment is key
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
What does this mean? Why is it significant? Heidegger’s “one question” has many facets. In a way, that comment seems almost trivial. We take “being” to refer to anything
that exists in any way at all. So, of course, that includes everything! That seemingly trivial obviousness, however, only covers over what is really going on here. Because
being “includes everything,” a transformation in the way we think “being” is going to bring a change in, at the very least, thinking and
language (the “is”). But thinking and language shape our understanding of time, space, things, and ourselves. In the contemporary world
our understanding of all of these things is also shaped by science and technology . So it is not just the fact that Heidegger questions the meaning of being
that results in his ongoing concern with all these other areas but that his way of thinking and questioning concerning being is already in and of itself
radically transformative. One of the ways it transforms thinking is in the direction of a much clearer idea of the dynamic relationality of
everything that is. At the moment, this early on, I can only assert this: change one key thing, and everything else changes, too. For Western
philosophy the “meaning of being” is the keystone. Move it, change it, and everything else changes; remove it, and the whole
metaphysical edifice falls. And, as will gradually become more and more clear, all these crucial matters (being, time, space, language, thinking,
mind, technology’s dominance, things, earth, world, us) resonate and dance with one another in a complex and dynamic intertwining.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Again: change one thing, change everything. Not, however, in the way we usually think of change, in terms of linear cause and effect. How, then? This must
emerge as we go on.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Short Shell – Deep Ecology (Heidegger)
The affirmative endorses an idea that the entire world is manageable by humanity – this is rationale is
rooted in a technological being based inside western metaphysics – this flawed form of understanding not
only extinguishes alternative forms of knowledge but also risk planetary destruction via nuclear catastrophe
McWhorter 92 (LaDelle, Professor of Philosophy @Northeast Missouri State, 1992, “Heidegger and the Earth”, Date Accessed: 6-2114) [IB]
What it most illustrative is often also what is most common. Today, on all sides of ecological debate we hear, with greater and greater frequency, the word
management. On the one hand, business people want to manage natural resources so as to keep up profits . On the other hand, conservationists
want to manage natural resources so that there will be plenty of coal and oil and recreational facilities for future generations. These groups
and factions within them debate vociferously over which management policies are the best, that is, the most efficient and manageable. Radical
environmentalists damn both groups and claim it is human population growth and rising expectations that are in need of
management. But wherever we look, wherever we listen, we see and hear the term management. We are living in a veritable age of management. Before a
middle class child graduates from high school she or he is already preliminarily trained in the arts of weight management, stress management, and time management, to
name just a few. As we approach middle age we continue to practice these essential arts, refining and adapting our regulatory regimes as the pressures of life increase and
the body begins to break down. We have become a society of managers - of our homes, careers, portfolios, estates, even of our own bodies - so
is it surprising that we set ourselves up as the managers of the earth itself? And yet, as thoughtful earth-dwellers we must ask, what does this
signify? In numerous essays - in particular the beautiful 1953 essay, "The Question Concerning Technology" - Heidegger speaks of what he sees as the danger
of dangers in this, our age. This danger is a kind of forgetfulness – a forgetfulness that Heidegger thought could result not only in nuclear
disaster or environmental catastrophe, but in the loss of what makes us the kind of beings we are, beings who can think and who can stand
in thoughtful relationship to things. This forgetfulness is not a forgetting of facts and their relationships; it is a forgetfulness of something far more
important and far more fundamental than that. He called it forgetfulness of 'the mystery.’ It would be easy to imagine that by 'the mystery' Heidegger means some sort of
entity, some thing, temporarily hidden or permanently ineffable. But 'the mystery is not the name of some thing; it is the event of the occurring together of revealing and
concealing. Every academic discipline, whether it be biology or history, anthropology or mathematics, is interested in discovery, in the 'revelation of new truths"
Knowledge, at least as it is institutionalized in the modern world is concerned, then, with what Heidegger would call revealing, the
bringing to light, or the coming to presence of things. However , in order for any of this revealing to occur, Heidegger says, concealing must
also occur. Revealing and concealing belong together. Now, what does this mean? We know that in order to pay attention to one thing, we must stop
paying close attention to something else. In order to read philosophy we must stop reading cereal boxes. In order to attend to the needs of
students we must sacrifice some of our research time. Allowing for one thing to reveal itself means allowing for the concealing of
something else. All revealing comes at the price of concomitant concealment. But this is more than just a kind of Kantian acknowledgment of human
limitation. Heidegger is not simply dressing up the obvious, that is, the fact that no individual can undergo two different experiences simultaneously. His is not
a point about human subjectivity at all. Rather, it is a point about revealing itself. When revealing reveals itself as temporally linear and causally
ordered, for example, it cannot simultaneously reveal itself as ordered by song and unfolding dream. Furthermore, in revealing, revealing itself is
concealed in order for what is revealed to come forth. Thus, when revealing occurs concealing occurs as well. The two events are one and cannot
be separated. Too often we forget. The radiance of revelation blinds us both to its own event and to the shadows that it casts , so that revealing
conceals itself and its self-concealing conceals itself, and we fall prey to that strange power of vision to consign to oblivion whatever cannot be seen. Even our
forgetting is forgotten, and all races of absence absent themselves from our world. The noted physicist Stephen Hawking, in his popular book A Brief History of Time,
writes, "The eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe.,'5 Such a theory, many people would assert, would be a systematic
arrangement of all knowledge both already acquired and theoretically possible. lt would be a theory to end all theories, outside of which no information, no revelation could,
or would need to, occur. And the advent of such a theory would be as the shining of a light into every corner of being. Nothing would remain concealed. This dream of
Hawking's is a dream of power; in fact, it is a dream of absolute power, absolute control. It is a dream of the ultimate managerial utopia. This, Heidegger would
contend, is the dream of technological thought in the modern age. We dream of knowing, grasping everything, for then we can control,
then we can manage, everything. But it is only a dream, itself predicated, ironically enough, upon concealment, the self-concealing of the mystery. We can never
control-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; those other knowledges must already have concealed themselves in order for technological or scientific revelation to occur. The danger of a managerial
approach to the world lies not then in what it knows nor in its planetary on into the secrets of galactic emergence or nuclear fission – but
in what it forgets, what it itself conceals. It forgets that any other truths are possible, and it forgets that the belonging together of revealing with
concealing is forever beyond the power of human management. We can never have, or know, it all; we can never manage everything .
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
The alternative is to renounce the affirmative and their calls for solutions – instead we should embrace the
mysterious and random universe and carry on the path of thinking never asking for answers but accepting
tension of persistent questioning which remains radically exotic to calculative thinking this method of
thinking is completely foreign to both incorporation and cooptation
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
In being open to this possibility, in being open to its mysterious pull on us, we are heeding something in us, something that tells us (even
if only by way of hinting and by eluding our intellectual grasp) that be-ing is not something separate from us. Somehow, it—in its very
withdrawing—speaks to us at a very deep level. That is why Heidegger could say to his neighbors that, to get under way in thinking, it is
enough to genuinely heed and ponder what is of concern to us, what is close to us. Whether this call to think the mystery of be-ing is provoked by
pulling a perfect scallion from the soil, by being plunged into darkness when the power goes out, or by trying to understand how the history of Western philosophy shapes
us, it draws us into (the) be-ing that is not just of “beings” in some vague and general sense but is unique in each instance and pertains to us and everything of concern to us.
This dynamic, relational enowning and arising of everything is so near to us that it could be said—as Heidegger does say— of it that it is our very heart’s core. But as close
as this is it calls us to think, because the more we are touched and moved and drawn by it, the more elusively compelling it becomes. ¶ Being drawn on by what thus
withdraws is what sets us on the way of thinking and inclines us to continue moving along the way. It compels and attunes our
questioning. Over and over Heidegger says that what is worthy of questioning is what is worthy of thought, of attempting to bring to
language “the inconspicuousness of a withholding, its riches” (marginal note). The questioning that is intrinsic to thinking that always
remains on the way does not ask for answers. It places “questions that seek what no inventiveness can find” because the matter itself is
inexhaustible and utterly resistant to calculative thinking. To persist in this thinking is not to persist in the attempt to find an answer but
rather to persist in questioning, to remain in motion, in unresolved tension and openness to transformative possibility. The questioning
that holds thinking on the way is in no way a matter of question and answer (distinct moments in a linear process). Rather, being drawn on
by withdrawal into ab-ground keeps thinking ever more deeply, even compellingly, engaged with the matter. This unfolds as a different
experience of questioning, jarring our presuppositions about what questions and answers are. “If an answer could be given it would
consist in a transformation of thinking, not in a propositional statement about a matter at stake.”And such a radical transformation of
thinking also transforms us, whose very nature is in question and at stake, as this thinking proceeds. Withdrawing and the questioning it
evokes are in oscillating play, pulling thinking along, opening a way into the matter. Going the way of this interplay calls forth, is called
forth by, and enacts an attuning. What does this say? In the first place, it indicates that neither thoughtful questioning nor attuning causes one another. Instead, there
is a resonance between questioning and attuning whereby the attuning both compels and responds to the questioning and the ever-deepening questioning calls forth a
response that in turn attunes further questioning. The questioning responds to the beckoning hints and traces and echoes of be-ing’s withdrawing and in turn “challenges being to thoroughly attune the questioning” in its very withdrawing. So it is that thinking takes its bearings from be-ing while opening the region of the
thinking of be-ing and getting under way within it.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Long Shell – OTEC
Status quo relation to life and the environment is an shallow ecological valorization of humanism and the
environments overall use value – we must move past this ethic into an deep ecology where we value all forms
of life regardless of its utility to us. Deep ecology is an revolution that will fundamentally reorient the whole
of civilization this allows us to move past humanism and into understanding the ‘profound ignorance’ of
humanity
Antolick 3 (Matthew, MA @University of South Florida, “Deep ecology and Heideggerian phenomenology”, 2003, Date Accessed: 621-14) [IB]
Ecology is “the scientific study of the interrelationships among organisms and¶ between organisms, and between all aspects, living and nonliving, of the¶ environment.”74 The origin of the term is not completely solid, though it has been traced ¶ to the nature writings of Theophrastus (c372-287 BC). The
etymology of the term¶ derives from the Greek word oikos meaning “household, home, or place to live.” ¶ German zoologist Ernest Haeckel coined it in reference to the
relationship between an¶ animal and its “organic or inorganic environment.” Ecology is thus the study of the¶ relationships between organisms and their
environment (and each other).¶ On September 3, 1972, at the third World Future Research Conference in ¶ Bucharest, Romania, the Norwegian philosopher
Arne Naess, coined the term Deep¶ Ecology (hereafter referred to as ‘DE’) by differentiating between what he called¶ “shallow” and “deep”
ecological views. The former involve concern for environmental¶ matters solely insofar as human interests are involved . Naess labeled
this “standard view¶ of conservationists” shallow ecology, which he describes as “mainly an anthropocentric,¶ individualistic, Western movement,
concerned with the health and affluence of people in ¶ the developed countries.”75 A shallow focus is narrow, but not completely
unethical.¶ “The limitation of the shallow movement is not due to a weak or unethical philosophy,” says Naess, “ but to a lack of explicit
concern with ultimate aims, goals, and norms. ”76¶ The word “shallow” nevertheless has an understandably derogatory tone.¶ David Rothenberg states in the
Introduction to Naess’s Ecology, Community,¶ Lifestyle,¶ More precisely, [DE] is the utilization of basic concepts from the science of ¶ ecology – such as
complexity, diversity, and symbiosis – to clarify the place of¶ our species within nature through the process of working out a total view.77¶
DE does not, as a reaction to shallowness, constitute a rejection of social activism. ¶ Naess himself states that in DE, “unlike academic
philosophy, decisions and actions¶ count more than generalities.”78 But nor does it reject philosophical reasoning: it¶ combines abstract
philosophical formulations with prescriptions for concrete action. The¶ focus of action in shallow ecology is at issue.¶ DE is an
ecological philosophy or ecophilosophy. Naess’s word is “ecosophy.”¶ The combination of abstract reasoning and concrete action hints at DE’s
symbiotic and¶ non-exclusionary character. The science of ecology is observational or descriptive,¶ whereas an ecosophy is action
oriented. “Without an ecosophy, ecology can provide no¶ principles for acting, no motive for political and individual efforts.”79 ¶
Naess himself calls his ecosophy ‘Ecosophy T’, thereby distinguishing it from¶ other ecopsophies. The possibility of more than one ecosophy reflects the diversity of¶
organisms and phenomena in the ecopshere:¶ Rather than talking about reality or the world, ecosophical thinking proceeds in ¶ terms of nature, and
humanity’s relation to nature. An attempt is made to defend ¶ our spontaneous, rich, seemingly contradictory experience of nature as more
than subjective impressions. They make up the concrete contents of our world. This ¶ point of view, as every other ontology, is deeply problematic –
but of great¶ potential value for energetic environmentalism in opposition to the contemporary ¶ near-monopoly of the so-called
scientific world-view.80¶ A “total view” is to replace the narrow and limited attitudes of citizens in modern ¶ industrial societies. “Total
view” corresponds with “the relational, total-field image” of¶ self presented by DE. Ecocentrism replaces anthropocentrism: as such, DE is a¶ “rejection
of the man-in-environment image,”81 doing away with the strictly atomistic¶ view of the self, or ‘self’ according to the technological
worldview.¶ Organisms [are] as knots in the biospherical net or field of total relations. An¶ intrinsic relation between two things A and B is such that
the relation belongs to¶ the definitions or basic constitutions of A and B, so that without the relation, A¶ and B are no longer the same thing. The total-field dissolves
not only the man-inenvironment¶ concept, but every compact thing-in-milieu concept – except when¶ talking at a superficial or
preliminary level of communication.82¶ A “total view” is identification with not just one’s own species, but all forms of ¶ life. Further, the
meaning of “self-realization” is widened out of its typically selfcentered ¶ rendering to include other species, the environment and the
ecopshere. Thus, as¶ one cares for the environment, one cares for oneself. ¶ DE endorses “not a slight reform of our present society, but
a substantial¶ reorientation of our whole civilization.”83 There is an intrinsic connection between DE¶ and nonviolence (in the Ghandian
sense): as such, violent revolutions are not consistent¶ with its purpose. “The direction is revolutionary, the steps are reformatory.” 84 DE
aims¶ at changing the dominant worldview and social structure of modernity. The reasons 31¶ behind the alignment between DE and
nonviolent change become clearer upon¶ consideration of self-widening, explained below.85 We can say for now that the¶ relationship between
DE and nonviolence mirrors the symbiosis expressed through¶ organic relations (between beings or between being and environment) within the total¶
ecosystem.¶ Naess and Sessions formulated the basic principles of any ecosophy. Their goal¶ was to represent the “basics,” which are “meant to express important points
which the¶ great majority of supporters accept, implicitly or explicitly, at a high level of ¶ generality.”86 These principles “guide those who believe
ecological problems cannot be¶ solved only by technological ‘quick-fix’ solutions,” in achieving effective non-violent¶ direct action
in the direction of fundamental change.87¶ The generality of the points allows for specifics to be worked out on individual ¶ bases: the
point is to provide a tool for realizing commonality, rather than a calculus of¶ differentiation. This eight-point platform is:¶ 1. The wellbeing and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth¶ have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, intrinsic worth).¶ These values are
independent of the usefulness of the non-human world¶ for human purposes.¶ 2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of ¶ these
values and are also values in themselves.¶ 3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness except to satisfy vital¶ needs.¶ 4. The
flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a ¶ substantially smaller human population. The flourishing of non-human¶ life
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
requires a smaller human population. ¶ 5. Present human interference with the non-human world is excessive,¶ and the situation is rapidly
worsening. 6. Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic ¶ economic, technological, and ideological structures. The
resulting state¶ of affairs will be deeply different from the present.¶ 7. The ideological change will be mainly that of appreciating life
quality¶ (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an¶ increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound ¶
awareness of the difference between bigness and greatness.¶ 8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly ¶ or
indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.88¶ Point number one is an ecosophical nexus. The good of any non-human entity is¶
independent of our valuations of it (e.g., for profits, resources, or other strictly human¶ purposes). The other points flow out of and unite around this
conception. Additional¶ viewpoints range from political (increased self-determination and diminished¶ centralization of governmental structures)89to
personal (the “profound human ignorance¶ of biospherical relationships,”90 stress on a humble, questioning attitude) to transpersonal¶ (peace and nonviolence91,
concern for future generations). “Profound ignorance” is not¶ an assertion of human stupidity. It rather signifies an open and humble attitude, ¶
expressed by Naess where he says “the smaller we come to feel ourselves compared to ¶ the mountain, the nearer we come to participating in its
greatness. I do not know why¶ this is so.”92¶ The ecological movement relies upon the results of research in ecology and more ¶ recently in
conservation biology…But to the great amazement of many, the¶ scientific conclusions are often statements of ignorance: ‘We do not know
what¶ long-range consequences the proposed interference in the ecosystem will beget, so we cannot make and hard and fast changes.’ Only rarely can scientists predict¶ with
any certainty the effect of a new chemical on even a single small¶ ecosystem…The study of ecosystems makes us conscious of our ignorance .93
The State utilizes water system in order to expand its territory however there is room for resistance
Protevi 2009 (John, “Geohistory and Hydro-Bio-Politics,” in Deleuze and History, Deleuze Connections Series, 2009, Date Accessed:
6-20-2014) [IB]
let’s shift to think politics as physiology: the body politic as a body, a system of material
flows. The State as apparatus of capture on top of organic apparatuses, the State as meta-vampire, seeking always control of flows, especially flows
of water. Because water is such a great solvent, it dissolves rock and picks up minerals. Thus, unfortunately for land plants and animals, most of the water on earth – that in the oceans – is too salty. Although we are
‘hypersea’, we’re much more dilute than sea water, so we need ‘fresh’ water; we’ll supply the minerals in carefully controlled doses. How humans have directed fresh water from where
there’s a lot of it – rivers and aquifers – to where we can use it for drinking or feeding to plants and animals (agriculture) – the process of
irrigation – is an important story discussing hydro-bio-politics.¶ To return to Wittfogel’s highlighting of the State/water relation, we should recognise that despite his failings, he does point
us to an impor- tant truth: aridity is the key to the connection of stratified societies and irrigation. Studies on the American West show how the largescale state and federal investment in irrigation could only produce stratified societies in arid conditions, where control of water grants a
key power position (Worster 1993). (Recall the plot of Chinatown!) Although Deleuze and Guattari affirm that ‘there is no going back on Wittfogel’s theses on the importance of large-scale waterworks for an empire’
We could go on in this way exploring physiology as politics for quite some time, but
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 363), they do acknowledge that some parts of Wittfogel’s work have been ‘refuted’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 19). Although they do not enter into the details of this refutation, when we do, we find
Ancient Egyptian irrigation was basin irrigation rather than canal
irrigation. In basin irrigation earth banks run parallel and perpendicular to the river, creating basins. Sluices would direct floodwater into a basin where it would sit for a month until the soil was saturated. Then the water
they affirm some of Deleuze and Guattari’s central theses on the State.¶ Let’s take the example of Egypt.
would be drained to the next basin and the soil in the first basin would be ready for planting. This system sustained Egypt’s remarkable continuity (the only ancient irrigated society to have a continuous existence). Once-a-year
planting didn’t deplete the soil, which was replenished by the next year’s flood. Nor did basin irrigation result in salination, as the water table during the dry season was well below the root level, so that flood waters would push
basin irrigation using the Nile floods arose as a decentralised, locally
controlled system, and was later overcoded by the apparatus of capture of the State. Butzer writes:¶ All of the information that can be brought to bear on Dynastic land use in
accumulated salts down into the water table, below the root level (Butzer 1976). Karl Butzer has shown how
Egypt shows a simple pattern of winter agriculture, largely confined to the flood basins, with their crude but effective system of annual flood irrigation. Despite the symbolic association [my italics; read ‘overcoding’] of the
pharaoh with this inundation, Dynastic irrigation technology was rudimentary and operated on a local rather than national scale . . . Perhaps the only centralized aspect was the traditional link between tax rates and the poten- tial
harvest [State as ‘apparatus of capture’], as inferred from the height of each Nile flood . . . no form of centralized canal network was ever achieved in Dynastic times. (Butzer 1976: 50)¶ In this same vein, we can also talk about
the contours of the bio- litho-hydro-political
multiplicity begin to come into focus. There is more than one singularity and the role of chance is irreducible. The multiplicity behind the morphogenesis of political
structure includes geological factors such as ground slopes and surface friction; biological factors such as the type and strength of local flora and fauna; hydrological factors such
Stephen Lansing’s work in Bali, which also shows local, decentralised control of canals in the mountains of Bali (Lansing 2006). With Butzer and Lansing,
as river currents, channels and wave strengths; and social factors such as the speed capacity of available transportation assemblages, which are social/technical at the same time: man–sandal–spear–shield assemblages; horse–man–
stirrup assemblages; and all the assemblages formed with chariots, wagons, sailing ships, rowing ships, and so on. Wittfogel’s mistake was seeing a single pathway – control of irrigation – in the morphogenesis of Oriental
despotism. This may actually have been the pathway for ancient Mesopotamian empires, which needed flat river valleys for irrigation-intensive agriculture and to install garrisons in out- lying towns which could be quickly
the bigger the territory under control, the more
solar energy is captured in agriculture and the larger the bureaucracy and the army that can be fed with the surplus. These can then enlarge
and administer the territory and put more peasants to work producing and funneling surpluses and building roads for more expansion, and so
supported: the corvée supplies labour for roads as well as for irrigation and monuments. Once past a certain threshold, we find a positive feedback loop:
on. Butzer, however, shows that in Egypt the key factor for Pharaonic absolutism was the ecological embeddedness of ‘nomes’ or basic territorial/political social units.¶ These primeval nomes appear to have provided the necessary
political infra- structure for the military ventures that over several generations of strife led to the unification of Egypt. In this sense Pharaonic civilisation remains inconceivable without its ecological determinants, but not in the
linear causality model [sc. of Wittfogel] of stress
irrigation
managerial bureaucracy
despotic control. (Butzer 1976: 111)¶ In other words, Butzer does not deny Egypt was united under a despot nor that its political
for Butzer, the ‘nome’ or local
unit qualifies as a State – perhaps even a hydraulic state – but not as an empire.¶ In fact, it has recently been argued that centralised national state control
of Egyptian irrigation – based on a change from basin irrigation to a centralised canal grid system – is a nineteenth-century phenomenon
that was represented as a return to the supposedly centralised irrigation control of the Pharaohs. So the argument would be that with regard to Egypt at least, Wittfogel
mistook modern propaganda for ancient reality (Kalin 2006). Butzer (and by extension Lansing) thus contradicts Wittfogel, who stresses the State as the origin of large-scale water works, and
confirms Deleuze and Guattari’s theses that the imperial State overcodes local arrangements. ¶ We should recognise in conclusion, however, that the State has
no monopoly on hydro-bio-politics, for there is a ‘hydraulic model of nomad science and the war machine . . . [which] consists in being
dis- tributed by turbulence across a smooth space’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 363). We need to add to Deleuze and Guattari’s discussion of the nomad
in order to bring ontology and politics more closely together in the study of hydro-bio-politics. For the portable water container, the
animal skin, is as fully a part of the nomad assemblage as the more famous stirrup, and the machinic phylum had to encompass this
techno- logical supplement to Hypersea to allow the nomad occupation of the smooth space of the arid steppes.
structure was ecologically embedded. He just denies that irrigation control was the sole determinant of that imperial scale despotism. Here we see an important question of scale:
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
The affirmative is locked into an ethos of sustainable development this has three implications – Nature is an
exploitable resource, assumes we can know the limits of natures utility, and lastly the institutions that are at
the root of this managerial way of thinking go uncontested
Worster 95 (Donald, professor of environmental history @Univ. Kansas, “The Shaky Ground of Sustainability”, 1995, Date Accessed:
6-20-14) [IB]
I find the following deep flaws in the
sustainable development ideal:¶ First, it is based on the view that the natural world exists primarily to serve
the material demands¶ of the human species. Nature is nothing more than a pool of “resources” to be exploited; it has ¶ no intrinsic
meaning or value apart from the goods and services it furnishes people, rich or¶ poor. The Brundtland Report makes this point clear on every
page: the “our in its title refers to people exclusively, and the only moral issue¶ it raises is the need to share what natural resources there are more equitably among our kind,
among the present world population and among¶ generations to come. That is not by any means an unworthy goal, but it is not adequate to the challenge. ¶ Second,
sustainable development, though it acknowledges some kind of limit on those material¶ demands, depends on the assumption that we can easily
determine the carrying capacity of¶ local regional ecosystems. Our knowledge is supposedly adequate to reveal the limits of ¶ nature and to
exploit resources is supposedly adequate to reveal the limits of nature and to¶ exploit resources safely up to that level. In the face of new
arguments suggesting how turbulent, complex, and¶ unpredictable nature really is, that assumption seems highly optimistic. Furthermore, i n light of the tendency of
some leading ecologists¶ to use such arguments to justify a more accommodating stance toward development, and heavy reliance on their
ecological expertise seems¶ doubly dangerous ; they are experts who lack any agreement on what the limits are.¶ Third, the
sustainability ideal rests on an uncritical, unexamined acceptance of the traditional ¶ worldview of progressive, secular materialism. It
regards that worldview as completely benign¶ so long as it can be made sustainable. The institutions associated with that worldview,¶
including those of capitalism, socialism, and industrialism, also escape all criticism, or close ¶ scrutiny. We are led to believe that
sustainability can be achieved with all those institutions ¶ and values intact.
***The alternative is to embrace the Phenomenology of Water***
The attempt to control the world conceals its nature. Rather than fixing problems as soon as they arise so
that tools return to their inconspicuous state, we ought to take a moment in order to think their essence and
allow them to show themselves. This is particularly true in the case of water.
Barbaza 2012 (Remmon E., Associate Professor in Philosophy @Manila University, “Letting it Flow: Towards a Phenomenology of
Water in the Age of Modern Technology,”, 2012, Date Accessed: 6-20-2014) [IB]
we are now in a position to work out a phenomenology of water. A phenomenology of
water, thus, would mean letting water be seen from itself, just as water shows itself from itself. Water is a phenomenon insofar as it shows
itself. But it must be allowed to show itself, "just as it shows itself from itself." What we are concerned here is therefore not just the showing itself of
water, but the showing itself of water "just as it shows itself from itself." ¶ How does water show itself and from itself? We must first recall from Being
and Time that for the most part of our lives anything at all appears within the context of everyday human existence- with all the things we
preoccupy ourselves with and the useful things we take hold of and employ to meet our needs, to accomplish tasks, and to achieve
objective goals. We are always already in a world (which means a horizon of meaning, a context or web of references), and we always already
know our way about our daily lives. Water, like the other things we use in our daily lives, appears to us as handy, made readily available by the faucet in our
kitchen or the shower in our bathroom. We do not really pay attention to water, which is only in keeping with the being of useful things as
they recede into the background and remain inconspicuous for the most part. As Heidegger observes, "what is peculiar to what is initially at hand is
that it withdraws, so to speak, in its character of handiness in order to be really handy" (Being and Time 65).¶ But useful things can sometimes rise
out of their inconspicuousness and make themselves present before us, as happens when they malfunction, break down, run out, or get
lost. "When
we discover its unusability," Heidegger says, "the thing becomes conspicuous" (Being and Time 68). What is "initially and for the most part" ready-to-hand
(zuhanden), for the moment becomes present-at-hand (vorhanden)2 A breakdown of a tool or a piece of equipment can cause an interruption to the everyday and
familiar character of our human existence. We strive to bring our lives back to normalcy by bringing back our things to their normal,
useful state. And then we are back to our familiar, everyday world. "Pure objective presence," notes Heidegger, "makes itself known in the useful
thing only to withdraw again into the handiness of what is taken care of, that is, of what is being put back into repair" (Being and Time 68).¶
Interruptions to the normal flow of our daily existence are not always only negative. They can also become opportunities for us to take a
second look at our lives and how we stand in relation to the things that have broken down or been removed from us. We recall how in Chinese language
Having now seen in broad strokes what Heidegger means by phenomenology,
the word for crisis denotes both danger and opportunity.
Water power has turned nature into a standing reserve
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
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
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.
By making the world simply an operation of mechanics meant to serve the needs of humans, we reduce the
dignity of its being and convert it to the status of a slave. Even if the environment is not polluted, the very
action of enframing it produces it as slave to humanity’s master. We are in a unique time where technology
is at its most dangerous point. Once we convert the environment to standing reserve, we will begin
producing humans as slaves to our will. The status quo is moving in that direction now. Makes it try or die
for the alt.
Waddington 2005 David Waddington, “A Field Guide to Heidegger: Understanding ‘The Question Concerning Technology,’” Educational Philosophy and Theory, Volume 37. No. 4. 2005
Heidegger comments, ‘It is said that modern technology is something incomparably different from all earlier technologies ...’ (1977, p. 14) Heidegger attributes this ‘incomparable difference’ to the ability of human beings to think in the mode of challenging forth—an ability
The revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging, which puts
to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such. But does this not hold true for the old
windmill as well? No. Its sails do indeed turn in the wind; they are left entirely to the wind’s blowing. But the windmill does not unlock
energy from the air currents in order to store it. (Heidegger 1977, p. 14)¶ However, if I were an ambitious and avaricious miller living in the middle ages, I
might want to maximize flour production in my mill. To this end, I would make sure that my windmill had enormous sails in order to
maximize wind-catching efficiency. By processing the grain, I would unlock its food energy in the form of flour and hold it in reserve in
my granary. I could then maximize profit by selling the flour during the wintertime when the peasants were starving. The intuitive
plausibility of the hypothetical miller suggests that Heidegger is wrong to think that challenging- forth is a phenomenon unique to modern
times.¶ However, despite the fact that thinking in the mode of challenging-forth is not limited solely to the reign of modern technology, there is
certainly a link between modern technology and challenging-forth. The forester of old with his horses and chains could not even conceive
of machines like the Caterpillar tree ‘harvester’, which can liquidate a forest at ‘the highest level of productivity and efficiency’ using
‘extremely high levels of horsepower’ (Caterpillar 2003). Since modern technology enables challenging-forth to achieve extraordinary results,
thinking in the mode of challenging-forth is more dangerous and alluring now than at any other time in history. ¶ Tree ‘harvesters’ are a particularly unpleasant
example of modern technology. Yet, critics of Heidegger are quick to point out that modern technology has improved our standard of living. Hydroelectric
dams, for example, have allowed power to be brought to the homes of many people around the world, thus improving their lives immensely. Although
which, he maintains, only emerged recently. Apparently, older technologies cannot involve or facilitate this sort of thinking: ¶
there are some environmental problems associated with hydroelectric dams, it is a relatively clean form of energy generation. Heidegger, however, is outraged by the building of a hydroelectric dam on the Rhine: ¶ In the context of the interlocking processes pertaining to the
orderly disposition of electrical energy, even the Rhine itself appears as 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 dammed up into the
power plant. What the river is now, namely, a water power supplier, derives from out of 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 speaks out of the two titles,
Even the most rabid capitalists may become uneasy when forced
to watch a tree ‘harvester’ in the process of liquidating a forest; intuitively, one can see that there is a certain monstrousness about this
kind of wholesale destruction. Yet, although the same kind of destruction is not taking place in the context of the dam on the Rhine,
Heidegger still asks us to ‘consider the monstrousness that reigns here’. (1977, p. 16) In order to solve this puzzle in Heidegger’s thinking, let us clarify the terms of the problem with some assumptions:
assume that the dam has improved the standard of living for many Germans and that no significant environmental damage has resulted
from its construction and operation. If these assumptions are made, how can Heidegger still deem the dam monstrous? ¶ In his polemic against the dam,
Heidegger comments, ‘What the river is now, namely a water power supplier, derives from out of the essence of the power station’ (1977, p. 16). Heidegger does not hate the dam because it physically damages
the river; instead, he hates it because it reduces the river. Subsumed under both the idea and the material fact of the hydroelectric dam, the
river no longer stands on its own. Implicitly, Heidegger is using the following syllogism:¶ Premise: The building of the Rhine dam has compromised the standing-on-its-own of the Rhine River.¶ Premise: All actions in which we compromise
the standing-on-its-own of something are monstrous actions.¶ Conclusion: The building of the Rhine dam is a monstrous action. ¶ It is still unclear, however, what it means for something to stand on its
own. Aristotle may enlighten us in this regard with his description of what it is for a human being not to stand on their own: ‘Hence we see what is the nature and office of a slave; he who is ... not his own but another’s man, is by nature a slave ...’ (1995, 1254a13) The
person whose nature is subsumed under that of another has been reduced—reduced to slavery. No standing or dignity remain for the
slave; ‘he’ or ‘she’ has been reduced to an ‘it’. The slave, regarded as slave, is a mere piece of property that is disposable in both the
technical and conventional senses of disposability described in the summary. ¶ Laboring under the material and conceptual mastery of the
dam, the river has also been reduced to slavery. It no longer stands on its own; it is merely a piece of property to be manipulated by the
various gigantic states and corporations of the world. The Rhine and the Columbia, the Nile and the Yangtze—they were once the greatest
and most holy of rivers, but are now merely the most useful of our slave-objects.¶ Most of the countries of the world have signed agreements that grant that human beings possess a certain
inviolable dignity; humans cannot be reduced to slavery and they must be treated with a measure of respect. Human beings, however, are not the only entities in the world that seem to possess
dignity. For example, a Sequoia in the forest stands on its own, and, as such, it seems to have some kind of dignity. Once that tree has been cut
down and reduced to a technically and conventionally disposable log, whatever dignity it may once have had is lost. ¶ Suppose it is true
that all human beings possess a kind of inviolable dignity. Animals differ from human beings only in the fact that they are not rational.
Does their lack of reason make animals unworthy of dignity? Surely not: when humans lose their minds to Alzheimer’s disease, we all
agree that their dignity remains inviolable. We would not even consider consigning a witless Alzheimer’s patient to a cage in a research
laboratory.¶ One can expand the scope of this argument from animals to other living and non-living entities. In each case one can ask, ‘Does their lack of property Z make entity X less worthy of dignity than entity Y?’ Admittedly, as one traces the course of this
argument through the hierarchy of being—from animals all the way down to manufactured objects—dignity becomes increasingly attenuated. Yet, I would argue that dignity persists all the way down the hierarchy of
‘The Rhine’ as dammed up into the power works, and ‘The Rhine’ as uttered out of the art work, in Hölderlin’s hymn by that name. (1977, p. 16)¶
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
being; even the plastic soft-drink bottle possesses an extremely small amount of dignity. Heidegger would probably concur with this view; he was fascinated by the work of Cezanne, who thought that even inanimate objects had dignity:¶ People think that a sugar bowl
has no physiognomy, no soul. But that also changes from day to day. One has to know how to take them, flatter them, these gentlemen. These glasses, these plates, they speak to each other, they are always exchanging confidences. (Jamme, 1994, p. 140) ¶ In his essay, ‘The
‘Whatever stands by in the sense of standingreserve no longer stands over against us as object’ (1977, p. 17). The notion of the dignity and standing of objects can help us understand Heidegger’s cryptic remark. Objects like the river lose
their dignity by being subsumed under the material and conceptual command of objects like the dam, which, for their part, are under the
complete control of human subjects. Therefore, in a sense, whatever is reduced to standing- reserve is no longer an object because it has been
completely subsumed under the material and conceptual reign of the subject. A kind of objectlessness results—the only significance these
objects have is that they are the property of the subject. In light of this view, another of Heidegger’s puzzling remarks begins to make sense:¶ Meanwhile man ... 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
[italics mine]. (1977, p. 27)¶ Heidegger feels that we should not underestimate the importance of the dignity of objects; once the objectlessness of standing-reserve
prevails, the next target for reduction to material/conceptual slavery is other subjects—human beings. Already, says Heidegger (1977, p.
18), we can discern the beginnings of this trend in the talk of ‘human resources’. As Michael Zimmerman ominously remarks, ‘While humanity cannot yet
manufacture itself in factories, it is moving in that direction’ (1990, p. 201).
Thing’, Heidegger expresses views that are similar to those of Cezanne. (1971, p. 182)¶ At one point, while discussing the reduction of objects to standing-reserve, Heidegger remarks,
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Short Shell – OTEC
The State utilizes water system in order to expand its territory however there is room for resistance
Protevi 2009 (John, “Geohistory and Hydro-Bio-Politics,” in Deleuze and History, Deleuze Connections Series, 2009, Date Accessed:
6-20-2014) [IB]
let’s shift to think politics as physiology: the body politic as a body, a system of material
flows. The State as apparatus of capture on top of organic apparatuses, the State as meta-vampire, seeking always control of flows, especially flows
of water. Because water is such a great solvent, it dissolves rock and picks up minerals. Thus, unfortunately for land plants and animals, most of the water on earth – that in the oceans – is too salty. Although we are
‘hypersea’, we’re much more dilute than sea water, so we need ‘fresh’ water; we’ll supply the minerals in carefully controlled doses. How humans have directed fresh water from where
there’s a lot of it – rivers and aquifers – to where we can use it for drinking or feeding to plants and animals (agriculture) – the process of
irrigation – is an important story discussing hydro-bio-politics.¶ To return to Wittfogel’s highlighting of the State/water relation, we should recognise that despite his failings, he does point
us to an impor- tant truth: aridity is the key to the connection of stratified societies and irrigation. Studies on the American West show how the largescale state and federal investment in irrigation could only produce stratified societies in arid conditions, where control of water grants a
key power position (Worster 1993). (Recall the plot of Chinatown!) Although Deleuze and Guattari affirm that ‘there is no going back on Wittfogel’s theses on the importance of large-scale waterworks for an empire’
We could go on in this way exploring physiology as politics for quite some time, but
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 363), they do acknowledge that some parts of Wittfogel’s work have been ‘refuted’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 19). Although they do not enter into the details of this refutation, when we do, we find
Ancient Egyptian irrigation was basin irrigation rather than canal
irrigation. In basin irrigation earth banks run parallel and perpendicular to the river, creating basins. Sluices would direct floodwater into a basin where it would sit for a month until the soil was saturated. Then the water
they affirm some of Deleuze and Guattari’s central theses on the State.¶ Let’s take the example of Egypt.
would be drained to the next basin and the soil in the first basin would be ready for planting. This system sustained Egypt’s remarkable continuity (the only ancient irrigated society to have a continuous existence). Once-a-year
planting didn’t deplete the soil, which was replenished by the next year’s flood. Nor did basin irrigation result in salination, as the water table during the dry season was well below the root level, so that flood waters would push
basin irrigation using the Nile floods arose as a decentralised, locally
controlled system, and was later overcoded by the apparatus of capture of the State. Butzer writes:¶ All of the information that can be brought to bear on Dynastic land use in
accumulated salts down into the water table, below the root level (Butzer 1976). Karl Butzer has shown how
Egypt shows a simple pattern of winter agriculture, largely confined to the flood basins, with their crude but effective system of annual flood irrigation. Despite the symbolic association [my italics; read ‘overcoding’] of the
pharaoh with this inundation, Dynastic irrigation technology was rudimentary and operated on a local rather than national scale . . . Perhaps the only centralized aspect was the traditional link between tax rates and the poten- tial
harvest [State as ‘apparatus of capture’], as inferred from the height of each Nile flood . . . no form of centralized canal network was ever achieved in Dynastic times. (Butzer 1976: 50)¶ In this same vein, we can also talk about
the contours of the bio- litho-hydro-political
multiplicity begin to come into focus. There is more than one singularity and the role of chance is irreducible. The multiplicity behind the morphogenesis of political
structure includes geological factors such as ground slopes and surface friction; biological factors such as the type and strength of local flora and fauna; hydrological factors such
Stephen Lansing’s work in Bali, which also shows local, decentralised control of canals in the mountains of Bali (Lansing 2006). With Butzer and Lansing,
as river currents, channels and wave strengths; and social factors such as the speed capacity of available transportation assemblages, which are social/technical at the same time: man–sandal–spear–shield assemblages; horse–man–
stirrup assemblages; and all the assemblages formed with chariots, wagons, sailing ships, rowing ships, and so on. Wittfogel’s mistake was seeing a single pathway – control of irrigation – in the morphogenesis of Oriental
despotism. This may actually have been the pathway for ancient Mesopotamian empires, which needed flat river valleys for irrigation-intensive agriculture and to install garrisons in out- lying towns which could be quickly
the bigger the territory under control, the more
solar energy is captured in agriculture and the larger the bureaucracy and the army that can be fed with the surplus. These can then enlarge
and administer the territory and put more peasants to work producing and funneling surpluses and building roads for more expansion, and so
supported: the corvée supplies labour for roads as well as for irrigation and monuments. Once past a certain threshold, we find a positive feedback loop:
on. Butzer, however, shows that in Egypt the key factor for Pharaonic absolutism was the ecological embeddedness of ‘nomes’ or basic territorial/political social units.¶ These primeval nomes appear to have provided the necessary
political infra- structure for the military ventures that over several generations of strife led to the unification of Egypt. In this sense Pharaonic civilisation remains inconceivable without its ecological determinants, but not in the
linear causality model [sc. of Wittfogel] of stress
irrigation
managerial bureaucracy
despotic control. (Butzer 1976: 111)¶ In other words, Butzer does not deny Egypt was united under a despot nor that its political
for Butzer, the ‘nome’ or local
unit qualifies as a State – perhaps even a hydraulic state – but not as an empire.¶ In fact, it has recently been argued that centralised national state control
of Egyptian irrigation – based on a change from basin irrigation to a centralised canal grid system – is a nineteenth-century phenomenon
that was represented as a return to the supposedly centralised irrigation control of the Pharaohs. So the argument would be that with regard to Egypt at least, Wittfogel
mistook modern propaganda for ancient reality (Kalin 2006). Butzer (and by extension Lansing) thus contradicts Wittfogel, who stresses the State as the origin of large-scale water works, and
confirms Deleuze and Guattari’s theses that the imperial State overcodes local arrangements. ¶ We should recognise in conclusion, however, that the State has
no monopoly on hydro-bio-politics, for there is a ‘hydraulic model of nomad science and the war machine . . . [which] consists in being
dis- tributed by turbulence across a smooth space’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 363). We need to add to Deleuze and Guattari’s discussion of the nomad
in order to bring ontology and politics more closely together in the study of hydro-bio-politics. For the portable water container, the
animal skin, is as fully a part of the nomad assemblage as the more famous stirrup, and the machinic phylum had to encompass this
techno- logical supplement to Hypersea to allow the nomad occupation of the smooth space of the arid steppes.
structure was ecologically embedded. He just denies that irrigation control was the sole determinant of that imperial scale despotism. Here we see an important question of scale:
The affirmative is locked into an ethos of sustainable development this has three implications – Nature is an
exploitable resource, assumes we can know the limits of natures utility, and lastly the institutions that are at
the root of this managerial way of thinking go uncontested
Worster 95 (Donald, professor of environmental history @Univ. Kansas, “The Shaky Ground of Sustainability”, 1995, Date Accessed:
6-20-14) [IB]
I find the following deep flaws in the
sustainable development ideal:¶ First, it is based on the view that the natural world exists primarily to serve
the material demands¶ of the human species. Nature is nothing more than a pool of “resources” to be exploited; it has ¶ no intrinsic
meaning or value apart from the goods and services it furnishes people, rich or ¶ poor. The Brundtland Report makes this point clear on every
page: the “our in its title refers to people exclusively, and the only moral issue¶ it raises is the need to share what natural resources there are more equitably among our kind,
among the present world population and among¶ generations to come. That is not by any means an unworthy goal, but it is not adequate to the challenge. ¶ Second,
sustainable development, though it acknowledges some kind of limit on those material¶ demands, depends on the assumption that we can easily
determine the carrying capacity of¶ local regional ecosystems. Our knowledge is supposedly adequate to reveal the limits of ¶ nature and to
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
exploit resources is supposedly adequate to reveal the limits of nature and to ¶ exploit resources safely up to that level. In the face of new
arguments suggesting how turbulent, complex, and¶ unpredictable nature really is, that assumption seems highly optimistic. Furthermore, in light of the tendency of
some leading ecologists¶ to use such arguments to justify a more accommodating stance toward development, and heavy reliance on their
ecological expertise seems¶ doubly dangerous ; they are experts who lack any agreement on what the limits are.¶ Third, the
sustainability ideal rests on an uncritical, unexamined acceptance of the traditional ¶ worldview of progressive, secular materialism. It
regards that worldview as completely benign¶ so long as it can be made sustainable. The institutions associated with that worldview, ¶
including those of capitalism, socialism, and industrialism, also escape all criticism, or close ¶ scrutiny. We are led to believe that
sustainability can be achieved with all those institutions¶ and values intact.
***The alternative is to embrace the Phenomenology of Water***
The attempt to control the world conceals its nature. Rather than fixing problems as soon as they arise so
that tools return to their inconspicuous state, we ought to take a moment in order to think their essence and
allow them to show themselves. This is particularly true in the case of water.
Barbaza 2012 (Remmon E., Associate Professor in Philosophy @Manila University, “Letting it Flow: Towards a Phenomenology of
Water in the Age of Modern Technology,”, 2012, Date Accessed: 6-20-2014) [IB]
we are now in a position to work out a phenomenology of water. A phenomenology of
water, thus, would mean letting water be seen from itself, just as water shows itself from itself. Water is a phenomenon insofar as it shows
itself. But it must be allowed to show itself, "just as it shows itself from itself." What we are concerned here is therefore not just the showing itself of
water, but the showing itself of water "just as it shows itself from itself." ¶ How does water show itself and from itself? We must first recall from Being
and Time that for the most part of our lives anything at all appears within the context of everyday human existence- with all the things we
preoccupy ourselves with and the useful things we take hold of and employ to meet our needs, to accomplish tasks, and to achieve
objective goals. We are always already in a world (which means a horizon of meaning, a context or web of references), and we always already
know our way about our daily lives. Water, like the other things we use in our daily lives, appears to us as handy, made readily available by the faucet in our
kitchen or the shower in our bathroom. We do not really pay attention to water, which is only in keeping with the being of useful things as
they recede into the background and remain inconspicuous for the most part. As Heidegger observes, "what is peculiar to what is initially at hand is
that it withdraws, so to speak, in its character of handiness in order to be really handy" (Being and Time 65).¶ But useful things can sometimes rise
out of their inconspicuousness and make themselves present before us, as happens when they malfunction, break down, run out, or get
lost. "When
we discover its unusability," Heidegger says, "the thing becomes conspicuous" (Being and Time 68). What is "initially and for the most part" ready-to-hand
(zuhanden), for the moment becomes present-at-hand (vorhanden)2 A breakdown of a tool or a piece of equipment can cause an interruption to the everyday and
familiar character of our human existence. We strive to bring our lives back to normalcy by bringing back our things to their normal,
useful state. And then we are back to our familiar, everyday world. "Pure objective presence," notes Heidegger, "makes itself known in the useful
thing only to withdraw again into the handiness of what is taken care of, that is, of what is being put back into repair" (Being and Time 68).¶
Interruptions to the normal flow of our daily existence are not always only negative. They can also become opportunities for us to take a
second look at our lives and how we stand in relation to the things that have broken down or been removed from us. We recall how in Chinese language
Having now seen in broad strokes what Heidegger means by phenomenology,
the word for crisis denotes both danger and opportunity.
Settlement over resources is only dealt with through technological means – this univocal understanding
creates means to destroy all of nature and its meanings
Hasst 8 (Sanna, Philosophy @University of Jyvuasyla, "RELEASING UPPER LAPLAND Martin Heidegger and the question
concerning nature", 2008, www.metla.fi/hanke/3400/Pro-gradu-Sanna-Hast.pdf, Date accessed: Jun 26, 2014) [IB]
In Upper Lapland, the different parties appear to be arguing over the use of the same natural resources for different purposes, but what if
the situation is in fact so that they are arguing over the different understandings they have of nature, of different natures? We now turn to back Martin
Heidegger again to look at the situation in Upper Lapland from a different angle. If technology is indeed the most compelling metaphysics of our time, can it be seen as a
reason why a compromise is still lacking? In the previous chapters, it has been established that technology is dominating our way of relating with nature, our
ways of defining, understanding and using nature; leaving little room for other ways. The forest conflict will now be analysed as a result
of clashing conceptions of nature. Perhaps the conflict in Upper Lapland is not merely a conflict of interests or user-rights, nor only a result of
the overexploitation of limited natural resources, but in fact a manifestation of the hegemony of technology, which may not have reached
completion yet.¶ If people have to resort to the only language that is considered relevant, the technological language or the language of the
natural sciences, they may be unable to convey their whole understanding of the nature they believe is in question, which can result in a
situation, where the different interest groups will never reach a compromise. Or, what may be even worse and will be more thoroughly looked at later on, a
compromise is found, but it will be at the cost of the other natures: the destruction and forgetting of them, their meanings and the
experiences they carry.¶ It is important to find out the meaning of nature for the local people: if the relationships and definitions of nature differ from each other, whether
they have changed during the years and how they are present in their everyday practises. Here, the concept of nature is to be understood as a socially constructed entity, this means its
meaning can and does change. Where else would this change occur than in language understood in the wider sense? In those collective meanings, grounding experiences and practices that also
Heidegger was concerned with? Language goes beyond every individual’s experience and conveys the locally bound meaning of nature,
which has been revealed in the communal relationship with nature in the course of time.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Links
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Agriculture
Extermination on a massive scale is now equivalent to modern day agriculture practices – technological
thought is used in both to produce products rather that be humans or food
Athaniasou 3 (Athena, Department of Social Anthropology @Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, “Technologies of
Humanness, Aporias of Biopolitics, and the Cut Body of Humanity”, 2003, Date Accessed: Jun 27, 2014)[IB]
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 Lacoue-Labarthe 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 calculative-representational
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 carryingover? 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.
Modern agriculture is based in substructure of technology – reinforcing humanities master-slave complex in
reference to nature
Rojcewicz 2006 (Richard Rojcewicz, Professor of Philosophy at Point Park University, The Gods and Technology: A Reading of Heidegger, pp. 75-78)
This is a clear and vigorous paragraph that scarcely needs commentary. The main point is unmistakable, as illustrated in the example of traditional farming versus modern
agriculture. The farmer of old submitted, tended, and nurtured. These are the quintessential activities of poiesis; the old way of farming is midwifery, and what it brings
forth is that with which nature is already pregnant. Modern agriculture, on the other hand, hardly brings forth crops; it produces "foodstuffs" or, perhaps we should rather
say, ingesta. Modern agriculture does not submit seeds to the forces of growth; on the contrary, it interferes with the seeds, genetically
manipulating them. The forces of growth are now in the farmer's own hands , which is to say that she imposes the conditions that determine growth. The
end product, in the extreme case, to which we may be heading inexorably, is astronauts' food. It would be a travesty to say grace before
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
"eating" a "meal" of such "foods." They are not gifts; they are human creations. They are not grown; they are synthesized. They are created by
someone playing God, and it would make no sense to pray to God before ingesting them. What Heidegger means by "imposing" is "playing God." To play God is to place
oneself above nature, to look upon nature as subservient to one's own bidding. For Heidegger, this is an imperious, adolescent, violent attitude. Modern technology
violates nature; it forces nature to hand over its treasures, it throttles them out of nature, and nature then must precisely
"disgorge." According to Heidegger, the earth, the air, and the fields now look different. We see the earth as an enormous mineral lode, we see
the air as anemo-energy, we see the river as hydraulic power. There is an obvious sense in which this is true, but the correct order of motivation is not so
obvious. It is not because the earth is ravished that it now looks like a store of minerals; on the contrary, the earth comes to be ravished precisely because
of the way we now see it. The disclosive looking comes first; the possibilities come before the actualities. We must first look upon the earth, upon nature
in general, in a certain way; then we can exploit what we see. And that way of looking is the way of modern technology ; i.e., it is the
disrespectful way that sees in nature something there merely to satisfy, as efficiently as possible, human needs and whims. That is the most basic outlook of modern
technology; concretely, it amounts to seeing in nature energy as such, minable, hoardable, exploitable energy. Nature is exploited because it is disclosed as
something exploitable; the disclosure of the exploitable possibilities precedes the actual exploiting. It requires scientific advancements to
exploit nature; but the precedent seeing of nature as exploitable is not a matter of science . It is a theoretical and not a practical or experimental affair;
it is a way of disclosive look-ing that expresses, for Heidegger, the essence of modern technology. Thus far, Heidegger has characterized this disclosive looking of modern
technology as a challenging and an imposing. He next offers an even more violent and pejorative characterization.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Alternative Energy
Storing energy gained from alternative energy renders nature as disposable exploiting it at every turn this
places nature into an standing reserve useful insofar as its utility
Beckman 2K (Tad, Professor @Harvey Mudd College, Martin Heidegger and Environmental Ethics, 2000,
http://www2.hmc.edu/~tbeckman/personal/HEIDART.HTML, Date Accessed: Jun 27, 2014)[IB]
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. (7) 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 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 standing-ready for human design. (8)
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Competition
Their calls for competition reinforce the i-other dialectic – as competition gains value alienation and elitism
become the only outcomes possible
Antolick 3 (Matthew, MA @University of South Florida, “Deep ecology and Heideggerian phenomenology”, 2003, Date Accessed: 621-14) [IB]
39¶ The
nature of competition is peculiar in itself. A competitive society has the ¶ appearance of diversity, but upon closer inspection,
reveals itself to the one who probes¶ as a rather homogenous state of affairs. Competition is a driving force towards¶ centralization. Not only
that: once competition becomes a value to a society (as in the¶ United States, where competition is all too often held to be the actualization of¶ Jeffersonian
democracy), alienation and elitism result, as each individual individualizes¶ himself against the other: the other becomes a possible
hindrance to personal prestige .¶ As far as the relationship between competition and production is concerned, one¶ need only think of the shift Heidegger discusses
from techne to manufacturing. One¶ needs only to think of the difference between specialized craftworks (e.g. no two¶ sculptures exactly alike) and the
Fordian calculation of individual component ¶ constructions on an assembly line: productivity and efficiency take precedence –¶ meditative
sculpting is a hindrance to high profits. That one does it fast is more¶ important than doing it well: machines and computers are careful for
the workers. As a¶ result, workers work for the machines.110
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Conservation
They turn nature into a spectacle for the purpose of human control and enjoyment this is no different then
non-conservationists technological domination of nature that threatens extinction
Hasst 8 (Sanna, Philosophy @University of Jyvuasyla, "RELEASING UPPER LAPLAND Martin Heidegger and the question
concerning nature", 2008, www.metla.fi/hanke/3400/Pro-gradu-Sanna-Hast.pdf, Date accessed: Jun 26, 2014) [IB]
The enthusiasm for nature conservation in the western world stems from the concern for the last natural areas that have not been affected
or destroyed by human influence. The concern for the global environment, the global nature is genuine, since environmental problems
(both local and global) are undeniable; human influence in the destruction of habitats and nature types is commonplace. We may be able
to speak of a nature that is common for all, we may even imagine this abstract concept with the help of photographs of the planet earth for
instance, but in practice it is very difficult to agree on the content of this common nature; in practice we find a collection of local natures
that may have close to nothing in common with each other.¶ The western faith in the natural sciences to provide a neutral description or
truth about this common nature is very strong. As I have argued earlier, this truth about nature is only a partial truth and one among
others; also, it does not provide us with guidelines for action. Nor does it comment on the behalf or the destruction of the other
understandings of nature that are silenced in its wake. It is as Vadén (2006a, p.25) writes ‘(a)t its best [the fact machine-science] can
produce nature conservation, which is only a reverse operation for the deliberate destruction of nature. Nature conservation is correct and
good (...) yet it does not face the question about the extinction of local cultures or what this means...’ 11. The will to cage nature into a
nature museum comes from the technological will to control everything: nature is frozen into a picture, an icon or image of an original,
pristine state, that the near poisonous human touch has not yet spoiled.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Consumerism
The current in course human consumerism is highly unsustainable – the planet is being deleted of resources
at an rapid pace this not only impacts the ecosphere, and the economic growth it risks extinction via
starvation future generations only the alternative provides the shift needed to rupture that logic
Antolick 3 (Matthew, MA @University of South Florida, “Deep ecology and Heideggerian phenomenology”, 2003, Date Accessed: 621-14) [IB]
Current trends in human consumerism are unsustainable, a fact “clearly seen in ¶ the damage done to major elements necessary for the
continued well-being of the¶ planet.”133 When the soil, the air and the water have been extensively depleted, human¶ needs cannot be
fulfilled. On the flip side, the current (too) intense focus on present¶ fulfillment leads to greater and greater lack of fulfillment for the future generations who¶ will inherit
the effects of our present practices. Gary Gardener notes:¶ the loss of forests, wetlands, and coral reefs to social decay in the world’s most ¶ advanced
nations…warn us of creeping corrosion in the favored development ¶ model of the twentieth century. That model, used by developers as well as¶
industrial nations, is materials-intensive, driven by fossil fuels, based on mass ¶ consumption and mass-disposal, and oriented primarily toward
economic growth¶ – with insufficient regard for meeting people’s needs. In 1992, the U.N.¶ Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth
Summit) challenged this¶ model and offered a comprehensive alternative. It called the human family to a ¶ new experience – that of sustainable development.134¶ Thomas
Berry cites unsustainable trends as resulting directly from “a humancentered¶ norm of reality and value.”135 A wider (deeper) view is needed. Again, to say so¶
is not to be anti-human, but anti-anthropocentric, in the sense that current practices are ¶ based on fundamentally flawed conceptions of
both human and non-human nature.¶ Andrew McLaughlin emphasizes the distinction between vital and non-vital¶ needs. “This distinction is
denied by the consumerism inherent in industrialism. To lose sight of it is to become trapped within an endlessly repeating cycle of
deprivation and¶ temporary satiation.”136 Our current consumerist culture, fueled through advertising and ¶ manipulative psychological
tactics, puts enormous stress on replacement purchases. A¶ constant growth economy maintains momentum through constant sales. Longterm¶ durable goods cut into total sales. Not only that: Deep, long-term satisfaction with¶ current possessions is actually detrimental to
overall economic growth. Today, helping¶ corporations to increase profits is even equated with American “patriotism,” ¶ demonstrating the
fusion of ideology and technology in the interests of a constant growth ¶ economy.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Deep Ecology
Deep Ecology cannot escape the subject-object dualism of a largely Cartesian world – Only the denial of the
subject through our alternative can we disrupt this logic which is the root cause of modern environmental
crisis without which we are left with a dead world
Deluca 5 (Kevin Michael, Assistant Professor @University Georgia Department of Communication “Thinking with Heidegger:
Rethinking Environmental Theory and Practice”, Ethics and the Environment¶ Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring, 2005), JSTOR, Date Accessed: 621-14) [IB]
The first stasis point revolves around humanity’s relation to nature. To put it plainly, in environmental circles it is still a Cartesian world, wherein the
founding act is human thinking (cogito ergo sum) and the earth is object to humanity’s subject. This position is clear in mainstream
environmentalism, where humans act to save the object earth and, fundamentally, this action is motivated by the subject’s self-interest. So, we
must save the rain forests because they contain potential medical resources and because they alleviate global warming. Now certainly this base
anthropocentrism has come under attack from various radical environmentalisms that posit biocentrism or ecocentrism. I would argue, however, that these antianthropocentric positions have not escaped the gravity of Cartesianism. This is evident at both theoretical and practical levels. Theoretically,
in the effort to avoid the stain of anthropocentrism all beings are posited as having equal intrinsic worth/value and difference is leveled .
The banana slug is equal to homo sapiens. There are problems with this. Most obviously, the concept of intrinsic worth/value is philosophically
incoherent—worth/value by definition is always relational. More significantly for this discussion, to posit intrinsic worth/value is to deny the
ecological insight that all beings are constituted in relation to other beings and their environment. Further, to deny difference is to blunt analysis of
our current situation and to deny the differential levels of effects different species have. Homo sapiens is not another type of slug and must be analyzed with that awareness.
In practice, radical groups, most notably Earth First!, often demonize humans as a cancer on the planet. As the metaphor suggests, humans are seen as somehow different
from all other forms of life, an alien other, not a part but apart. Even more significantly, the metaphor of cancer suggests humans to be active subjects preying on the object
earth. Indeed, the problem with humanity, as with the cancer cell, is that it is too active. Although radical groups offer a different valuation, note that this
position does not trouble the terms of Cartesianism. The dichotomies subject-object, human-animal, culture-nature, civilization-wilderness, remain
intact. The active subject humanity threatens the object earth. The statsis point in actual environmental debates revolves around reform
and radical environmental groups dismissing each other’s seemingly oppositional positions as, respectively, anthropocentic and
compromised versus misanthropic and unrealistic, while remaining oblivious to the underlying Cartesian presuppositions they both share.
In other words, reform environmentalists privilege humanity while radical environmentalists demonize humanity. In this morality play
on the fate of the planet, humanity, whether hero or villain, is the actor. Heidegger’s thinking on the subject-object dichotomy,
Descartes, and the phenomenology of the structure of reality offer a useful lever with which to displace these dichotomies and challenge
the traditional ontology that undergirds and girdles environmental thinking. Citing the Cartesian ontology of the world as dominant, Heidegger in Being
and Time works to “demonstrate explicitly not only that Descartes’ conception of the world is ontologically defective, but that his Interpretation and the foundations on
which it is based have led him to pass over both the phenomenon of the world and the Being of those entities withinthe- world which are proximally ready-to-hand” (1962,
128). Briefly, Heidegger critiques Descartes for positing a “bare subject without a world” (1962, 192) and for relying on mathematics, which produces the sort of Reality it
can grasp, thus “the kind of Being which belongs to sensuous perception is obliterated, and so is any possibility that the entities encountered in such perception should be
grasped in their Being” (1962, 130). Descartes’ ontology presumes the dynamic of an isolated subject grasping mathematically world as object. Arguably, it is this
perspective that is at the root of the environmental crisis, for the world is reduced to an object laid out before me and I am reduced to a
detached subject that has only a use-relation to a dead world.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Development
The affirmative is locked into an ethos of sustainable development this has three implications – Nature is an
exploitable resource, assumes we can know the limits of natures utility, and lastly the institutions that are at
the root of this managerial way of thinking go uncontested
Worster 95 (Donald, professor of environmental history @Univ. Kansas, “The Shaky Ground of Sustainability”, 1995, Date Accessed:
6-20-14) [IB]
I find the following deep flaws in the
sustainable development ideal:¶ First, it is based on the view that the natural world exists primarily to serve
the material demands¶ of the human species. Nature is nothing more than a pool of “resources” to be exploited; it has¶ no intrinsic
meaning or value apart from the goods and services it furnishes people, rich or ¶ poor. The Brundtland Report makes this point clear on every
page: the “our in its title refers to people exclusively, and the only moral issue¶ it raises is the need to share what natural resources there are more equitably among our kind,
among the present world population and among¶ generations to come. That is not by any means an unworthy goal, but it is not adequate to the challenge. ¶ Second,
sustainable development, though it acknowledges some kind of limit on those material¶ demands, depends on the assumption that we can easily
determine the carrying capacity of¶ local regional ecosystems. Our knowledge is supposedly adequate to reveal the limits of¶ nature and to
exploit resources is supposedly adequate to reveal the limits of nature and to ¶ exploit resources safely up to that level. In the face of new
arguments suggesting how turbulent, complex, and¶ unpredictable nature really is, that assumption seems highly optimistic. Furthermore, in light of the tendency of
some leading ecologists¶ to use such arguments to justify a more accommodating stance toward development, and heavy reliance on their
ecological expertise seems¶ doubly dangerous ; they are experts who lack any agreement on what the limits are.¶ Third, the
sustainability ideal rests on an uncritical, unexamined acceptance of the traditional ¶ worldview of progressive, secular materialism. It
regards that worldview as completely benign¶ so long as it can be made sustainable. The institutions associated with that worldview, ¶
including those of capitalism, socialism, and industrialism, also escape all criticism, or close ¶ scrutiny. We are led to believe that
sustainability can be achieved with all those institutions ¶ and values intact.
Dalby 2 (Simon, professor of geography and political economy @Carleton University, Environmental Security, 2002)
This observation makes the question of what is to be secured especially important. The possibility that the ecological costs of globalizing omnivorous consumption might
drastically destabilize the biosphere is the rationale for many invocations to think about environmental security, as well as the related appeals for global environmental
management that so worry "global ecology" thinkers like Wolfgang Sachs.2 While Peter Taylor calls such a program an eco-fascist world order, the World Order Models
Project has discussed these matters in terms of eco-imperialism and made the argument that such practices are effectively already in action.3 Tim Luke's warning that
environmentalists often, if sometimes inadvertently, support such projects in their zeal to monitor and encourage managerial responses to political crises extends these
observations to once again emphasize the importance of the discursive politics of forms of ecocritique.4 From this it is clear that a program of environmental
management will have to understand human ecology better than conventional international relations does if world politics in the global
city is going to seriously tackle environmental sustainability. Accelerating attempts to manage planet Earth using technocratic, centralized
modes of control, whether dressed up in the language of environmental security or not, may simply exacerbate existing trends. The frequent failures of
resource management techniques premised on assumptions about stable ecosystems are even more troubling in the case of claims about
the necessity of managing the whole planet. Given the inadequacy of many existing techniques, if these practices are to be extended to the
scale of the globe, the results are potentially disastrous. In the face of extreme disruption, no comfort can be taken from biospheric thinking or the
Gaia hypothesis. As James Lovelock has pointed out, the question for humanity is not just the continued existence of conditions fit for life on the
planet. In the face of quite drastic structural change in the biosphere in the past, the climatic conditions have remained within the limits that have assured
the overall survival of life-but not necessarily the conditions suitable for contemporary human civilization. The political dilemma and the
irony here is that the political alternative to global managerial efforts, that of political decentralization and local control, which is often
posited by green theory, frequently remains in thrall to the same limited political imaginary of the domestic analogy and avoids dealing with the hard questions of
coordination by wishing them away in a series of geographical sleights of hand coupled to the rearticulation of the discourses of political idealism.5 Given that the
ecological analyses of biospheric processes and the human ecology discussions of biospheric people suggest both the global scope of
processes of disruption and the intrinsic instabilities of ecology, the importance of politics and the inadequacies of international relations
to grapple with its complexities is only emphasized in the face of these calls for either global management or radical decentralization .6
The widespread failure of the omnivores to acknowledge the consequences of their actions is a crucial part of these concerns, and this
responsibility is often obscured by the construction of security in terms of technological and modernist managerial assertions of control
within a geopolitical imaginary of states and territorial entities, urbane civilization and primitive wilderness . But as the focus on human ecology
demonstrates, nature is not just there anymore; it is also unavoidably here, in part a consequence of human activities, which, although often
out of sight to urban residents, cannot remain out of mind in considering matters of world politics and the radical endangerment of human
"being" as a result of the practices of securing modern modes of existence .
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Energy
The transformation of nature into ‘natural resources’ staticizes its utility into a tool that is to be dominated
Hasst 8 (Sanna, Philosophy @University of Jyvuasyla, "RELEASING UPPER LAPLAND Martin Heidegger and the question
concerning nature", 2008, www.metla.fi/hanke/3400/Pro-gradu-Sanna-Hast.pdf, Date accessed: Jun 26, 2014) [IB]
The very message he was attempting to convey, in my understanding,
was that we ought to approach issues, people, cultures, meanings, words with a precious sensitivity towards them. In order to understand
the conflict in Upper Lapland we must attempt to understand the otherness, the unfamiliar nature between the parties (the stakeholders) in regarding one
another. Here we are indeed not dealing with a conflict of livelihoods, stemming from limited natural resources and poor distribution of
them, but a conflict between natures, between the different ontological understandings and definitions of the nature at hand. ¶ Changes in the social and
economic structures have been rapid since the Second World War. It is common these days to talk about “natural resources”, by which we usually mean the raw materials
and energy in nature: we talk about mineral resources and wind power for example. Yet these are not entities, elements or properties found in nature itself, but become
resources for humans when people discover a meaningful use for them. (Valkonen 2003, p.53.) We start referring to them as “natural resources”. After the
World Wars the nature discourse in Lapland took a turn. Nature is seen having multiple possibilities that need to be harnessed for the benefit of Lapland’s economy
and the employment of its people. Nature is described as something that will provide jobs and therefore a future for the local population.
Same kind of rhetoric is still used in popular discourse on how people would best benefit from nature. (Ibid. p.54.)
In applying the Heideggerian model to Upper Lapland one must approach with caution. Heidegger himself is a representative of a certain culture, a certain people in a certain time and space.
The affirmatives use of energy creates an mindset to humanity that all resources are endless and exploitable
they turn the Earth into a gas station never thinking of what happens when we run out of fuel
Heidegger 66 (Martin, “Discourse on Thinking”, 1966, Jun 17, 2014) [IB]
it was recognized at once that
energy can be used also for peaceful purposes. Nuclear physicists everywhere are busy with vast plans to implement the peaceful uses of atomic energy. The great
industrial corporations of the leading countries, first of all England, have figured out already that atomic energy can develop into a gigantic business. Through
this atomic business a new era of happiness is envisioned. Nuclear science, too, does not stand idly by. It publicly proclaims this era of happiness. Thus in July of this
year at Lake Constance, eighteen Nobel Prize winners stated in a proclamation: "Science [and that is modem natural science] is a road to a happier human life." What is the sense of this
statement? Does it spring from reflection? Does it ever ponder on the meaning of the atomic age ? No. For if we rest content with this statement of science, we
remain as far as possible from a reflective insight into our age. Why? Because we forget to ponder. Because we forget to ask: 'What is the
ground that enabled modern technology to discover and set free new energies in nature? This is due to a revolution in leading concepts
which has been going on for the past several centuries, and by which man is placed in a different world . This radical revolution in outlook has come about
in modern philosophy. From this arises a completely new relation of man to the world and his place in it. The world now appears as an object open to
the attacks of calculative thought, attacks that nothing is believed able any longer to resist. Nature becomes a gigantic gasoline station, an
energy source for modem technology and industry. This relation of man, to the world as such, in principle a technical one, developed in the
seventeenth century first and only in Europe. It long remained unknown in other continents, and it was al- together alien to former ages and histories. The power concealed in modern technology
determines the relation of man to that which exists. It rules the whole earth. Indeed, already man is beginning to advance beyond the earth into outer space. In not quite
The age that is now beginning has been called of late atomic age. Its most conspicuous symbol is the atom bomb. But this symbolizes only the obvious; for
atomic
twenty years, such gigantic sources of power have become known through the discovery of atomic energy that in the foreseeable future the world's demands for energy of any kind will be ensured
forever. Soon the procurement of the new energies will no longer be tied to certain countries and continents, as is the occurrence of coal, oil, and timber. In the foreseeable future it will be possible to
build atomic power stations anywhere on earth. Thus the decisive question of science and technology to- day is no longer: 'Where
do we find sufficient quantities of fuel? The
decisive question now runs: In what way can we tame and direct the unimaginably vast amounts of atomic energies, and so secure mankind
against the danger that these gigantic energies suddenly-even without military actions-break out somewhere, "run away" and destroy
everything?
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Environmental Ethics
Environmental ethics are based in the mindset subject-object dualism, dictating that we act as “subjects”
over “objects” in the world. This calculative mindset, always attempts to locate ‘problems’ to which there
must be ‘solutions’ – This fails and denies the transformative potential of the alternative – only by
embracing the radically transformative potential of our alternative can we address the root cause and
achieve the goals that environmental ethics wish to see.
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
In the first place, the
thinking of the first and other beginning, if it is to persist in thinking be-ing and in opening up our situation in timingspacing- thinging, cannot be reduced to any kind of dogma or doctrine. Heidegger is quite clear on why he rejects that. “When thinking
comes to an end by slipping out of its element it replaces this loss by procuring a validity for itself as techne-. . . . Philosophy becomes a
technique for explaining from the highest causes[,] . . . [and] in competition with one another [philosophies] publicly offer themselves as
‘isms’ and try to offer more than the others” (
:
/
; see also
: ,
/
,
). Philosophical theorizing,
including the production of ethical theory, is rooted in the presuppositions of metaphysics. Ethics is rooted in metaphysics and its
epistemology, and even thinking in terms of values and value judgments is rooted in subject-object dualism. “Precisely through the
characterization of something as a ‘value’ what is so valued is robbed of its worth . . . admitted only as an object for man’s estimation . . . a subjectivizing. . . . The bizarre
effort to probe the objectivity of values does not know what it is doing” (
:
/
). The very act of making value judgments is rooted in
the notion of our acting as subjects in relation to objects that, in and of themselves, have no “say” in the matter. So even assigning a very
high value to something is an assumption that it has its value in relation to us. The fact that environmental ethicists, for example, think that
they must offer a justification and argue on behalf of the notion of the intrinsic value of other kinds of beings or species or ecosystems is
itself a tacit admission that, within the realm of ethical theory, traditional metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions hold sway.
We, the human subjects, will decide whether or not to grant value to the objects with which ethics is attempting to concern itself. The very
notion of “intrinsic value,” in that framework, is rather perplexing, to say the least. No matter how convinced we are that the notion of
human superiority is wrong-headed and destructive, until we can release our attachment to the underlying dualistic presuppositions,
“value” can only be an admission of “no intrinsic value.” Until we can let go of dualistically fixating on ourselves as subjects over against
objects, as minds in charge of bodies (ours or others’), and as selves in relation to others, “ethics” will be both necessary and ineffective.
It will seem necessary because of the requirement that harmful or offensive behavior be restrained. It will be ineffective because it does
too little to actually change anything, fostering our sense of superiority along with the notion that if we can only figure things out well
enough and exercise enough control over ourselves and others, we can solve the problems that confront us. But the very assumptions and
attitudes that ethics and values thinking fosters are in large measure at the root of many of those problems. So the bottom line is that to try to
derive “an ethics” from the thinking of be-ing would be to expect both too much and too little. It would expect too much in looking for a
way to solve problems and to expect this solution to come by way of the usual mechanics of theory production: concepts, principles,
argumentation. The thinking of be-ing is, for this purpose, useless (
:
/
). But the demand for an ethics also expects
too little. The kind of transformation that becomes possible here runs much deeper than a willed change of attitude, a new set of values, or
a different kind of ethics ever could. “With all the good intentions and all the ceaseless effort, these attempts are no more than makeshift
patchwork, expedients for the moment. And why? Because the ideas of aims, purposes, and means, of effects and causes, from which all
these attempts arise—because these ideas are from the start incapable of holding themselves open to what is” and thus fall far short of the
kind of radical transformation opened up in the thinking of be-ing, the possibility of dwelling with things in mindfulness of our
interrelationality in timing-spacing-thinging (
–
/
;
:
,
–
/
–
,
). Furthermore, the
very basis of ethical theory, its grounding on some definite idea of the nature of beings, is thoroughly shaken in the thinking of be-ing.
“All calculating according to ‘purposes’ and ‘values’ stems from an entirely definite interpretation of beings. . . . [H]ereby the question of
be-ing is not even intimated, let alone asked[,] . . . [resulting in] all noisy talk . . . without foundation and empty” (
:
/
).
The thinking of be-ing and its opening toward dwelling is not an attempt to solve our problems and aim at utopia through some
kind of ethical-political planning. It is also not subject to the kinds of limits that pertain to such attempts, attempts that limit transformation to incremental change
within predetermined bounds. We cannot predict what may come, but one thing is clear: a way of thinking that alters all our deepest
presuppositions about ourselves and the nature of the world is going to have unimaginably far-reaching ramifications, if it can be thought
and imagined and lived. I said earlier in this book, as the all-pervasive nature of dynamic relationality began to come to the fore, “Change one thing, and
everything changes.” If that “one thing” is the thought of be-ing, and the next thing is our understanding of ourselves, then everything else
begins to follow. I hope it is clear that I do not mean “follow” here in the sense in which each premise in an argument follows from another. What follows from (and
accompanies) the thinking of be-ing is a multifaceted shifting in which “all relationship to a being is transformed.” Here the imagery of Indra’s net is again helpful. I
brought it into play at first to help explain the way that the joinings of guidewords work. Those guidewords, however, say and show something of the dynamic of the
turnings in enowning, of timing-spacing-thinging. One way that Heidegger gives us to think the possibility of transformation is of turning with the turnings in enowning
(
:
/
). This transforming will not be subject to planning and prediction. On the contrary, it depends on being attuned
to the dynamic of timing-spacing-thinging, being attuned to the reservedness that echoes being’s withdrawal from any grasping
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
attempt.We might well wonder, then, what comes next. We proceed by once again gathering ourselves to releasement toward things and
openness to mystery.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Environmental Management
The affirmative endorses an idea that the entire world is manageable by humanity – this is rationale is
rooted in a technological being based inside western metaphysics – this flawed form of understanding not
only extinguishes alternative forms of knowledge but also risk planetary destruction
McWhorter 92 (LaDelle, Professor of Philosophy @Northeast Missouri State, 1992, “Heidegger and the Earth”, Date Accessed: 6-2114) [IB]
What it most illustrative is often also what is most common. Today, on all sides of ecological debate we hear, with greater and greater frequency, the word
management. On the one hand, business people want to manage natural resources so as to keep up profits . On the other hand, conservationists
want to manage natural resources so that there will be plenty of coal and oil and recreational facilities for future generations. These groups
and factions within them debate vociferously over which management policies are the best, that is, the most efficient and manageable. Radical
environmentalists damn both groups and claim it is human population growth and rising expectations that are in need of
management. But wherever we look, wherever we listen, we see and hear the term management. We are living in a veritable age of management. Before a
middle class child graduates from high school she or he is already preliminarily trained in the arts of weight management, stress management, and time management, to
name just a few. As we approach middle age we continue to practice these essential arts, refining and adapting our regulatory regimes as the pressures of life increase and
the body begins to break down. We have become a society of managers - of our homes, careers, portfolios, estates, even of our own bodies - so
is it surprising that we set ourselves up as the managers of the earth itself? And yet, as thoughtful earth-dwellers we must ask, what does this
signify? In numerous essays - in particular the beautiful 1953 essay, "The Question Concerning Technology" - Heidegger speaks of what he sees as the danger
of dangers in this, our age. This danger is a kind of forgetfulness – a forgetfulness that Heidegger thought could result not only in nuclear
disaster or environmental catastrophe, but in the loss of what makes us the kind of beings we are, beings who can think and who can stand
in thoughtful relationship to things. This forgetfulness is not a forgetting of facts and their relationships; it is a forgetfulness of something far more
important and far more fundamental than that. He called it forgetfulness of 'the mystery.’ It would be easy to imagine that by 'the mystery' Heidegger means some sort of
entity, some thing, temporarily hidden or permanently ineffable. But 'the mystery is not the name of some thing; it is the event of the occurring together of revealing and
concealing. Every academic discipline, whether it be biology or history, anthropology or mathematics, is interested in discovery, in the 'revelation of new truths"
Knowledge, at least as it is institutionalized in the modern world is concerned, then, with what Heidegger would call revealing, the
bringing to light, or the coming to presence of things. However, in order for any of this revealing to occur, Heidegger says, concealing must
also occur. Revealing and concealing belong together. Now, what does this mean? We know that in order to pay attention to one thing, we must stop
paying close attention to something else. In order to read philosophy we must stop reading cereal boxes. In order to attend to the needs of
students we must sacrifice some of our research time. Allowing for one thing to reveal itself means allowing for the concealing of
something else. All revealing comes at the price of concomitant concealment. But this is more than just a kind of Kantian acknowledgment of human
limitation. Heidegger is not simply dressing up the obvious, that is, the fact that no individual can undergo two different experiences simultaneously. His is not
a point about human subjectivity at all. Rather, it is a point about revealing itself. When revealing reveals itself as temporally linear and causally
ordered, for example, it cannot simultaneously reveal itself as ordered by song and unfolding dream. Furthermore, in revealing, revealing itself is
concealed in order for what is revealed to come forth. Thus, when revealing occurs concealing occurs as well. The two events are one and cannot
be separated. Too often we forget. The radiance of revelation blinds us both to its own event and to the shadows that it casts , so that revealing
conceals itself and its self-concealing conceals itself, and we fall prey to that strange power of vision to consign to oblivion whatever cannot be seen. Even our
forgetting is forgotten, and all races of absence absent themselves from our world. The noted physicist Stephen Hawking, in his popular book A Brief History of Time,
writes, "The eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe.,'5 Such a theory, many people would assert, would be a systematic
arrangement of all knowledge both already acquired and theoretically possible. lt would be a theory to end all theories, outside of which no information, no revelation could,
or would need to, occur. And the advent of such a theory would be as the shining of a light into every corner of being. Nothing would remain concealed. This dream of
Hawking's is a dream of power; in fact, it is a dream of absolute power, absolute control. It is a dream of the ultimate managerial utopia. This, Heidegger would
contend, is the dream of technological thought in the modern age. We dream of knowing, grasping everything, for then we can control,
then we can manage, everything. But it is only a dream, itself predicated, ironically enough, upon concealment, the self-concealing of the mystery. We can never
control-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 sort s. Those other approaches or paths of thinking must already have been
obliterated; those other knowledges must already have concealed themselves in order for technological or scientific revelation to occur. The danger of a managerial
approach to the world lies not then in what it knows nor in its planetary on into the secrets of galactic emergence or nuclear fission – but
in what it forgets, what it itself conceals. It forgets that any other truths are possible, and it forgets that the belonging together of revealing with
concealing is forever beyond the power of human management. We can never have, or know, it all; we can never manage everything .
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Ethics
Ethics replicates management over all other modes of ontology
McWhorter 92 (LaDelle, Professor of Philosophy @Northeast Missouri State, 1992, “Heidegger and the Earth”, Date Accessed: 6-2114) [IB]
And shattered we may be, for our self-understanding is at stake; in fact, our very selves – selves engineered by the technologies of power that shaped, that are, modernity – are at stake. Any thinking
that threatens the state. As a result, guilt is familiar, and, though somewhat uncomfortable at times, it comes to feel almost safe. It is no surprise, then, that whenever caring people think hard about
Guilt is a standard
defense against the call for change as it takes root within us. But, if we are to think with Heidegger, if we are to heed his call to reflect, we must not respond to it simply by
deploring our decadent life-styles and indulging ourselves in a fit of remorse. Heidegger's call is not a moral condemnation, nor is it a call to take up some politically
correct position or some privileged ethical stance. When we respond to Heidegger's call as if it were a moral condemnation, we reinstate a discourse
in which active agency and its projects and responsibilities take precedence over any other way of being with the earth. In other words, we
insist on remaining within the discourses, the power configurations, of the modern managerial self. Guilt is a concept –whose heritage and
meaning occur within the ethical tradition of the western world. But the history of ethical theory in the west (and it could be argued that ethical theory
only occurs in the West) is one with the history-of technological thought. The revelation of things as to-be-managed and the imperative to be in
control work themselves out in the history of ethics just as surely as they work themselves out in the history of the natural and human
sciences.
how to live with/in/on the earth, we find ourselves growing anxious and, usually, feeling guilty about the way we conduct ourselves in relation to the natural world.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Experts
Their reliance on expertism forecloses chances for new modes of thought ‘letting go’ of the expert is an
essential precondition to solving the alternative
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
Heidegger is here attempting to provoke us to see how our tendency to grasp and cling, to reduce everything possible to an idea or a concept, prevents us not only
from staying with things but from even genuinely encountering them in the first place. I have already, more than once, spoken of releasement
toward things as being applicable to letting go of this obsessive tendency to grasp at concepts. But there is more that we need to release if
we hope to learn to dwell, to stay with things long enough to hear what they say to us. We must let go of our reliance on “the experts.” I
am not advocating some kind of reactive, wholesale rejection of science. Some of the best contemporary science is not nearly as rigid and
limiting as what we are presented with in the popular science and “the studies” presented to us in the media. What I am suggesting is that
we let go of (and at times this might mean forcefully tossing out) our passive, unquestioning acceptance of anything that is presented to us as expert
opinion, as authoritatively reflecting what “they say.” As early as Being and Time Heidegger let us know some of the ways that we are shaped,
constrained, closed in, and closed off by this “they.” We can become and in fact ordinarily are so molded that our very “self” becomes,
effectively, a “they-self.” The they-self does not think, not in the sense in which we are now using that word. The theyself goes rather
mindlessly about its business, business that has also been laid out for it by “them.” Stop and think: How much of what we call our beliefs,
our ideas, our values, and our lifestyle comes not only from the Western philosophical tradition but also from Wall Street,Madison
Avenue, and Washington, D.C.? In its interactions with things the they-self is incapable of face-to-face encounter, of hearing what things
say, of heeding any intimations of timing-spacing-thinging. The they-self does not even have the time to stop and pause long enough to
wonder about this, being herded about and channeled within the framework of public time, clock time. The theyself is incapable of
dwelling unless it can undergo radical transformation.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Extinction MPX
Extinction is not unique and is happening everyday humanity must move past the obsession with
technological solutions to “extinction” into a radical rethinking of the way we engage with Earth
Berry 1995 (Thomas, director of Riverdale Center for Religious Research. “The Viable Human,” in Deep Ecology for the 21st
Century,¶ ed. George Sessions, p. 11)
The total extinction of life is not imminent, though the elaborate forms of life expression in the ¶ earth’s ecosystems may be shattered in an
irreversible manner. What is absolutely threatened is the¶ degradation of the planet’s more brilliant and satisfying forms of life expression. This degradation involves
extensive distortion and a¶ pervasive weakening of the life system, its comprehensive integrity as well as its particular manifestations. ¶ While there are pathologies that wipe
out whole populations of life forms and must be considered pernicious to the life process on an ¶ extensive scale, the human species has, for some thousands of
years, shown itself to be a¶ pernicious presence in the world of the living on a unique and universal scale. Nowhere has ¶ this been more
evident that in the Western phase of development of the human species. ¶ There is scarcely any geological or biological reality or function
that has not experienced the¶ deleterious effects of the human. The survival of hundreds of thousands of species is ¶ presently threatened.
But since the human survives only within this larger complex of ¶ ecosystems, any damage done to other species, or to the other
ecosystems, or to the planet¶ itself, eventually affects the human not only in terms of physical well-being but also in every¶ other phase of
human intellectual understanding, aesthetic expression, and spiritual ¶ development.¶ Because such deterioration results from a rejection of the inherent
limitation of earthly existence and from an effort to alter the natural¶ functioning of the planet in favor of a humanly constructed wonderworld for its human occupants, t he
human resistance to this¶ destructive process has turned its efforts toward an emphasis on living creatively within the ¶ functioning of the
natural world. The earth as a bio-spiritual planet must become, for the¶ human, the basic reference in identifying what is real and what is
worthwhile.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Farming
farming is an biological disaster there is little no point in a world modern industrial irrigation farming even
then in order to have an ecologically sane future we need to do away with farming altogether
Devall and Sessions 85 (Bill, professor of sociology at Humboldt State Univ., and George, professor emeritus of philosophy ¶ at
Sierra College. Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered)
Not only is farming itself an ecological disease, according to Shepard, but the traditional peasant has led "the dullest life man has ever lived."
While the pioneer subsistence farm is in fairly close ecological harmony, farmers in a monocultural setting "require constant social
supercharging to remain sane and human." Rural life is hopeless in modern industrial irrigation farming. Domestic plants and
animals are biological disasters, he claims; they are "genetic goofies." Shepard agrees with Brownell that humans need wild animals in their natural habitat
to model themselves after and become fully human; domesticated pets and farm animals provide pathetically inadequate substitutes. For Shepard, an ecologically sane
future requires that almost all forms of farming together with genetically-altered plants and animals must go. Another requirement for the
future is the full recognition that humans are genetically hunters and gatherers: Most people seem to agree that we cannot and do not want
to go back to the past; but the reason given is often wrong: that time has moved on and what was can never be again. The truth is that we
can not go back to what we never left. Our home is the earth, our time the Pleistocene Ice Ages. The past is the formula for our being.
Cynegetic man is us.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Humanism
The affirmative reinforces the notion that the Earth belongs to humanity this cannot be accepted the Earth
belongs to itself and we merely inhabit it the latter leads the Earth down the path of ecological destruction
that the 1AC’s technological fixes will inevitably fail to resolve
Antolick 3 (Matthew, MA @University of South Florida, “Deep ecology and Heideggerian phenomenology”, 2003, Date Accessed: 621-14) [IB]
The well-being and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth have value in¶ themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent worth).
These values are independent¶ of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes.¶ In his essay “The Viable Human,” Thomas Berry
writes¶ The basic orientation of the common law tradition is toward personal rights and ¶ toward the natural world as existing for
human use. There is no provision for¶ recognition of nonhuman beings as subjects having legal rights. To the¶ ecologists, the entire
question of possession and use of the earth, either by¶ individuals or by establishments, needs to be profoundly reconsidered. The naïve¶ assumption that the
natural world exists solely to be possessed and used by¶ humans for their unlimited advantage cannot be accepted. The earth
belongs to¶ itself and to all the component members of the community.123¶ Berry points out the mistaken nature of the assumption that the earth exists
solely¶ for present human use. Present social and economic reality reveals humans as selfproclaimed ¶ privileged possessors of natural (animal,
plant, and mineral resources), and¶ even other people, as revealed through the many instances throughout history of slave¶ trading, sweat-shop labor, and harsh
working conditions – pure examples of Heidegger’s¶ standing reserve. As possessors, the earth, along with its inhabitants and resources, ¶ become
possessions – things owned and present for consumptive use. DE challenges the inherent use standpoint , a challenge Naess endorses where he¶
writes, “The earth does not belong to humans.”124 Furthermore, in the deep ecological ¶ approach,¶ Humans only inhabit the lands, using
resources to satisfy vital needs. And if their¶ non-vital needs come in conflict with the vital needs of nonhumans, then humans ¶ should
defer to the latter. The ecological destruction now going on will not be¶ cured by a technological fix. Current arrogant notions in
industrial (and other)¶ societies must be resisted.125¶ A fundamental aspect of ‘intrinsic value’ includes allowing “all entities (including¶
humans) the freedom to unfold in their own way unhindered by the various forms of ¶ human domination.”126 There is a fundamental
distinction between vital needs and¶ created needs (wants): between what we truly need and what we merely think ( or are¶ influenced to think) we
need. The former are intrinsic to flourishing, the latter are not¶ and may, when carried too far, actually hinder flourishing.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Identity
Liberation movements based on identity replicate dualistic modes of thinking that cements the very
foundations of oppression they move in resistance to - This is empirically proven and the worst form of
slavery the tyranny of the self. We must move past subjectivity and move into new modes of thought
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
Self-other dualism. When
Heidegger said that the thought of ourselves as subjects is the refuge of all dualistic assumptions, he caught hold of
an important insight, one that hints at the underlying reason why these dualisms are so hard to release from their position of dominance.
Dualistic thinking has, from the very beginning, given human beings (or some subset of humans, determined in various times and places
by things such as race and gender and class) a very comforting sense of superiority. The divisions subject-object and mind-body have by
no means been value-free notions that only pertain to the arcane domains of metaphysics and epistemology. Humans, the subjects having
“mind” (and language, which is usually closely linked to any sense of what it is to “have” mind), are elevated over all other beings. All the
way back to the origins of monotheism and on through the first beginning of Western philosophy down until now we find this as an underlying motif. Genesis
:
–
tells the humans that since they are made in the image of God (which is usually taken to include language, thought, and the capacity for spiritual and moral
experience), they are to have dominion over all the creation, right on down to the last detail, to “every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” Plato and Aristotle both
distinguished us from the other animals in terms of our linguistic and intellectual capacity, and their doing so was by no means value-free. They also felt that men were more
in possession of those capacities and therefore superior to women. Aristotle in particular was rather blunt about that. Then there is the notion of the hierarchical Great Chain
of Being that developed in the Middle Ages. In the seventeenth century Descartes conceived all bodies—not just nonliving things but also animal bodies, including our
own—as mere mechanisms. After defining the other animals as possessing no mind at all and therefore no sentience, he used these ideas to justify vivisection. These are all
fairly well known developments. The reason I bring them up here is to remind us of the power that the dualism-based notion of human superiority has had and continues to
have. Even after about thirty years of environmental philosophers’ having argued against this kind of thinking, little has changed in terms
of society’s ways of interacting with the nonhuman realm. Why not? Because of the notion of human superiority (or male superiority, or
race superiority, or class standing, or intellectual elitism, etc.). Dualistic thinking and the kinds of value judgments and behavior
based on it have been dominant for so long that it will take more than philosophical argument and ethical theorizing to bring a
change. If we are to even imagine letting go of these effects of self-other dualism thought in terms of human-other, we have to be able to
first imagine letting go of self-other dualism on the personal level. That means, in terms of the thinking of be-ing, that we need to be able
to think and imagine living as opening for timing-spacing-thinging. It means we need to be able to imagine making the leap to
dwelling, to staying with things so as to nurture and care for them, freeing them while and as freeing ourselves.
Calls for lived experience are intrinsically linked with machinations of normalcy – this creates a constant
striving for progress and calculable explainability
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
Erlebnis and erleben are both linked quite closely with the German word for life, Leben. Hence, the words carry the connotation of lived personal experience, or living
through some occurrence or event. Erlebnis can even mean an adventure.Heidegger quite often uses this word in a context where he is talking about thinking and action, or
“Lived experience corresponds to
machination,” he says, rather bluntly. He does not mean that lived experience is identical with machination but that the two are intimately
intertwined. They enact our received obsessive drive toward the deceptive comfort of certainty, of correctness and calculable
explainability. Our everyday lives revolve around this compulsion, although it is in the deep background. The experiences we have foster
our sense of our own existence as the subjects of experience in a world divided into such subjects and the objects of their
experience. “ Lived experiences” take place in a dualistically framed world (
:
/
;
:
/
). This
life at the extremity of the history of metaphysics, in (unrecognized) abandonment by being, under the rule of enframing.
understanding of lived experiences helps us understand even more clearly the ways in which this compulsion to cling to the results of calculative thinking affect us.
Grasping for the comfort of stable correctness, with a lurking unease or unsatisfactoriness, a sense that we never quite have what we want, leads us to avoid some things and
grasp at others. We grasp at group identity (being often deeply suspicious not only of uniqueness but even of those who prefer or claim for themselves a modicum of
solitude). We grasp at shared ideas, at thoughts and values and value-judgments held in common. We foster the rule of “the experts” to tell
us what we should think and believe and accept and do. Style and fashion give us a sense of change, of “something new,” while at the same time keeping us in
step with everyone else. Awe, reticence, solitude, stillness, and waiting seem decidedly out of place in a world characterized by problem
solving, taking action (we simply must do something both as individuals and even more often in organized groups). Excitement lets us know
that we are alive. We see the effects of what Heidegger calls “acceleration” in the sense that everything seems speeded up. This is not only in the obvious realm of
technology (e.g., ever-increasing computer processor speeds) but also in the ways we spend our days. Not only do we have to be doing something at all times (even
relaxation and meditation are now advocated as a way to increase efficiency and productivity or, at the very least, to acquire “peak experiences”), but we are bombarded by
the constant flow of bits of information that I described earlier. This speeded-up character of our lives is, in fact, a significant hindrance to thinking (in the sense in which we
are working toward it) in multiple ways. Thinking is not the acquisition of information or of lived experiences .
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Natural Resources
The transformation of nature into ‘natural resources’ staticizes its utility into a tool that is to be dominated
Hasst 8 (Sanna, Philosophy @University of Jyvuasyla, "RELEASING UPPER LAPLAND Martin Heidegger and the question
concerning nature", 2008, www.metla.fi/hanke/3400/Pro-gradu-Sanna-Hast.pdf, Date accessed: Jun 26, 2014) [IB]
The very message he was attempting to convey, in my understanding,
was that we ought to approach issues, people, cultures, meanings, words with a precious sensitivity towards them. In order to understand
the conflict in Upper Lapland we must attempt to understand the otherness, the unfamiliar nature between the parties (the stakeholders) in regarding one
another. Here we are indeed not dealing with a conflict of livelihoods, stemming from limited natural resources and poor distribution of
them, but a conflict between natures, between the different ontological understandings and definitions of the nature at hand. ¶ Changes in the social and
economic structures have been rapid since the Second World War. It is common these days to talk about “natural resources”, by which we usually mean the raw materials
and energy in nature: we talk about mineral resources and wind power for example. Yet these are not entities, elements or properties found in nature itself, but become
resources for humans when people discover a meaningful use for them. (Valkonen 2003, p.53.) We start referring to them as “natural resources”. After the
World Wars the nature discourse in Lapland took a turn. Nature is seen having multiple possibilities that need to be harnessed for the benefit of Lapland’s economy
and the employment of its people. Nature is described as something that will provide jobs and therefore a future for the local population.
Same kind of rhetoric is still used in popular discourse on how people would best benefit from nature. (Ibid. p.54.)
In applying the Heideggerian model to Upper Lapland one must approach with caution. Heidegger himself is a representative of a certain culture, a certain people in a certain time and space.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Nuclear Power
The affirmatives use of nuclear energy creates an mindset to humanity that all resources are endless and
exploitable they turn the Earth into a gas station never thinking of what happens when we run out of fuel
Heidegger 66 (Martin, “Discourse on Thinking”, 1966, Jun 17, 2014) [IB]
it was recognized at once that
atomic energy can be used also for peaceful purposes. Nuclear physicists everywhere are busy with vast plans to implement the peaceful uses of atomic energy. The great
industrial corporations of the leading countries, first of all England, have figured out already that atomic energy can develop into a gigantic business.
Through this atomic business a new era of happiness is envisioned. Nuclear science, too, does not stand idly by. It publicly proclaims this era of happiness. Thus in July
of this year at Lake Constance, eighteen Nobel Prize winners stated in a proclamation: "Science [and that is modem natural science] is a road to a happier human life." What is the sense of
this statement? Does it spring from reflection? Does it ever ponder on the meaning of the atomic age? No. For if we rest content with this statement of science,
we remain as far as possible from a reflective insight into our age. Why? Because we forget to ponder. Because we forget to ask: 'What is
the ground that enabled modern technology to discover and set free new energies in nature? This is due to a revolution in leading concepts
which has been going on for the past several centuries, and by which man is placed in a different world . This radical revolution in outlook has come about
in modern philosophy. From this arises a completely new relation of man to the world and his place in it. The world now appears as an object open to
the attacks of calculative thought, attacks that nothing is believed able any longer to resist. Nature becomes a gigantic gasoline station, an
energy source for modem technology and industry. This relation of man, to the world as such, in principle a technical one, developed in the
seventeenth century first and only in Europe. It long remained unknown in other continents, and it was al- together alien to former ages and histories. The power concealed in modern technology
determines the relation of man to that which exists. It rules the whole earth. Indeed, already man is beginning to advance beyond the earth into outer space. In not quite
The age that is now beginning has been called of late atomic age. Its most conspicuous symbol is the atom bomb. But this symbolizes only the obvious; for
twenty years, such gigantic sources of power have become known through the discovery of atomic energy that in the foreseeable future the world's demands for energy of any kind will be ensured
forever. Soon the procurement of the new energies will no longer be tied to certain countries and continents, as is the occurrence of coal, oil, and timber. In the foreseeable future it will be possible to
build atomic power stations anywhere on earth. Thus the decisive question of science and technology to- day is no longer: 'Where
do we find sufficient quantities of fuel? The
decisive question now runs: In what way can we tame and direct the unimaginably vast amounts of atomic energies, and so secure mankind
against the danger that these gigantic energies suddenly-even without military actions-break out somewhere, "run away" and destroy
everything?
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Oceans (Generic to Water)
Enframing water via management blocks the essence of water. Only by confronting water in its actual state
can we come back to an awareness of its origin.
Barbaza 2012 (Remmon E., Associate Professor in Philosophy @Manila University, “Letting it Flow: Towards a Phenomenology of
Water in the Age of Modern Technology,”, 2012, Date Accessed: 6-20-2014) [IB]
enframing) blocks the
appearance of water as water. Instead, like most other “natural resources,” water appears as the resource that is extracted, manipulated, and
made readily available for universal distribution and instant consumption, but detached from its origin in earth and sky. A disruption in
the handiness of water, however, such as is occasioned by water shortage or massive flooding, offers the possibility of inviting human beings
to recover their primordial relationship with water, as that on which their life depends and one that they cannot partake of in a sustainable
way without a truthful and simple awareness of its origin.
This essay seeks to initiate a phenomenology of water in the age of modern technology within a Heideggerian framework. Insofar as it holds sway as the essence of modern technology, Ge-stell (
The State utilizes water system in order to expand its territory however there is room for resistance via the
nomadic ontology that connects being and politics. Empirically proven.
Protevi 2009 (John, “Geohistory and Hydro-Bio-Politics,” in Deleuze and History, Deleuze Connections Series, 2009, Date Accessed:
6-20-2014) [IB]
let’s shift to think politics as physiology: the body politic as a body, a system of material
flows. The State as apparatus of capture on top of organic apparatuses, the State as meta-vampire, seeking always control of flows, especially flows
of water. Because water is such a great solvent, it dissolves rock and picks up minerals. Thus, unfortunately for land plants and animals, most of the water on earth – that in the oceans – is too salty. Although we are
‘hypersea’, we’re much more dilute than sea water, so we need ‘fresh’ water; we’ll supply the minerals in carefully controlled doses. How humans have directed fresh water from where
there’s a lot of it – rivers and aquifers – to where we can use it for drinking or feeding to plants and animals (agriculture) – the process of
irrigation – is an important story discussing hydro-bio-politics.¶ To return to Wittfogel’s highlighting of the State/water relation, we should recognise that despite his failings, he does point
us to an impor- tant truth: aridity is the key to the connection of stratified societies and irrigation. Studies on the American West show how the largescale state and federal investment in irrigation could only produce stratified societies in arid conditions, where control of water grants a
key power position (Worster 1993). (Recall the plot of Chinatown!) Although Deleuze and Guattari affirm that ‘there is no going back on Wittfogel’s theses on the importance of large-scale waterworks for an empire’
We could go on in this way exploring physiology as politics for quite some time, but
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 363), they do acknowledge that some parts of Wittfogel’s work have been ‘refuted’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 19). Although they do not enter into the details of this refutation, when we do, we find
Ancient Egyptian irrigation was basin irrigation rather than canal
irrigation. In basin irrigation earth banks run parallel and perpendicular to the river, creating basins. Sluices would direct floodwater into a basin where it would sit for a month until the soil was saturated. Then the water
they affirm some of Deleuze and Guattari’s central theses on the State.¶ Let’s take the example of Egypt.
would be drained to the next basin and the soil in the first basin would be ready for planting. This system sustained Egypt’s remarkable continuity (the only ancient irrigated society to have a continuous existence). Once-a-year
planting didn’t deplete the soil, which was replenished by the next year’s flood. Nor did basin irrigation result in salination, as the water table during the dry season was well below the root level, so that flood waters would push
basin irrigation using the Nile floods arose as a decentralised, locally
controlled system, and was later overcoded by the apparatus of capture of the State. Butzer writes:¶ All of the information that can be brought to bear on Dynastic land use in
accumulated salts down into the water table, below the root level (Butzer 1976). Karl Butzer has shown how
Egypt shows a simple pattern of winter agriculture, largely confined to the flood basins, with their crude but effective system of annual flood irrigation. Despite the symbolic association [my italics; read ‘overcoding’] of the
pharaoh with this inundation, Dynastic irrigation technology was rudimentary and operated on a local rather than national scale . . . Perhaps the only centralized aspect was the traditional link between tax rates and the poten- tial
harvest [State as ‘apparatus of capture’], as inferred from the height of each Nile flood . . . no form of centralized canal network was ever achieved in Dynastic times. (Butzer 1976: 50)¶ In this same vein, we can also talk about
the contours of the bio- litho-hydro-political
multiplicity begin to come into focus. There is more than one singularity and the role of chance is irreducible. The multiplicity behind the morphogenesis of political
structure includes geological factors such as ground slopes and surface friction; biological factors such as the type and strength of local flora and fauna; hydrological factors such
Stephen Lansing’s work in Bali, which also shows local, decentralised control of canals in the mountains of Bali (Lansing 2006). With Butzer and Lansing,
as river currents, channels and wave strengths; and social factors such as the speed capacity of available transportation assemblages, which are social/technical at the same time: man–sandal–spear–shield assemblages; horse–man–
stirrup assemblages; and all the assemblages formed with chariots, wagons, sailing ships, rowing ships, and so on. Wittfogel’s mistake was seeing a single pathway – control of irrigation – in the morphogenesis of Oriental
despotism. This may actually have been the pathway for ancient Mesopotamian empires, which needed flat river valleys for irrigation-intensive agriculture and to install garrisons in out- lying towns which could be quickly
the bigger the territory under control, the more
solar energy is captured in agriculture and the larger the bureaucracy and the army that can be fed with the surplus. These can then enlarge
and administer the territory and put more peasants to work producing and funneling surpluses and building roads for more expansion, and so
supported: the corvée supplies labour for roads as well as for irrigation and monuments. Once past a certain threshold, we find a positive feedback loop:
on. Butzer, however, shows that in Egypt the key factor for Pharaonic absolutism was the ecological embeddedness of ‘nomes’ or basic territorial/political social units.¶ These primeval nomes appear to have provided the necessary
political infra- structure for the military ventures that over several generations of strife led to the unification of Egypt. In this sense Pharaonic civilisation remains inconceivable without its ecological determinants, but not in the
linear causality model [sc. of Wittfogel] of stress
irrigation
managerial bureaucracy
despotic control. (Butzer 1976: 111)¶ In other words, Butzer does not deny Egypt was united under a despot nor that its political
for Butzer, the ‘nome’ or local
unit qualifies as a State – perhaps even a hydraulic state – but not as an empire.¶ In fact, it has recently been argued that centralised national state control
of Egyptian irrigation – based on a change from basin irrigation to a centralised canal grid system – is a nineteenth-century phenomenon
that was represented as a return to the supposedly centralised irrigation control of the Pharaohs. So the argument would be that with regard to Egypt at least, Wittfogel
mistook modern propaganda for ancient reality (Kalin 2006). Butzer (and by extension Lansing) thus contradicts Wittfogel, who stresses the State as the origin of large-scale water works, and
confirms Deleuze and Guattari’s theses that the imperial State overcodes local arrangements. ¶ We should recognise in conclusion, however, that the State has
no monopoly on hydro-bio-politics, for there is a ‘hydraulic model of nomad science and the war machine . . . [which] consists in being
dis- tributed by turbulence across a smooth space’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 363). We need to add to Deleuze and Guattari’s discussion of the nomad
in order to bring ontology and politics more closely together in the study of hydro-bio-politics. For the portable water container, the
animal skin, is as fully a part of the nomad assemblage as the more famous stirrup, and the machinic phylum had to encompass this
techno- logical supplement to Hypersea to allow the nomad occupation of the smooth space of the arid steppes.
structure was ecologically embedded. He just denies that irrigation control was the sole determinant of that imperial scale despotism. Here we see an important question of scale:
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
Water power has turned nature into a standing reserve
Heidegger 77 (Martin-, Basic Writings, p. 297-298, http://www.aoni.waseda.jp/sidoli/Heidegger_QCT.pdf)
[File Name]
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.
Life is controlled via water
Protevi 2009 (John, “Geohistory and Hydro-Bio-Politics,” in Deleuze and History, Deleuze Connections Series, 2009, Date Accessed:
6-20-2014) [IB]
the environment of life on land is the deterritorialised sea (McMenamin
organ- isms are ‘lakes’ of Hypersea,
separated by membranes and connected by ingestion, sex, parasitism and other forms of communication: ‘The appearance of complex life
on land was a major event in which a kind of mutant sea invaded the land surface. . . . The land biota represents not simply life from the
sea, but a variation of the sea itself’ (McMenamin and McMenamin 1994: 25). What’s different about the Hypersea organ- isms is that they have to stick
closely together in tightly bound systems enclosed by a membrane to replicate in an enclosed space the organic functions that are
distributed in the sea.¶ Organisms, which are all primarily water, can interact at arm’s length, so to speak, only in water. On land, direct
physical connections become essential. Overall, terrestrial organisms had to build for themselves structures and components that could
perform the environmental services that marine organisms can take for granted. (McMenamin and McMenamin 1994: 4)¶ Land life is physically bonded
capture – organic land life is an ‘appara- tus of capture’ or, more melodramatically put, we’re all vampires: thus a notion of geo-hydro-political physiology
underlies that of the organism. Because of this self-contained structure, ‘bodies of macroscopic terres- trial plants and animals are the setting for extremely
active, if miniatur- ized, ecological interactions. . . . These interactions constitute Hypersea’ (McMenamin and McMenamin 1994: 13). The most elementary of those ecosystems, of
We see an interesting illustration of the interplay of re- and de- territorialisation in the concept of ‘Hypersea’, in which
and McMenamin 1994; Wood 2004: 120–2; Margulis 1998: 109). In a memorable image, the authors of the thought-provoking book Hypersea tell us that
course, is the eukaryotic cell, as we see in the serial endosymbiosis theory of Lynn Margulis. The mitochondria were originally oxygen-using bacteria that under pressure of the ‘oxygen holocaust’ came to live together with other
cell elements, providing energy to the emergent unity, the nucleated cell (Margulis 1998: 42). A question then for a certain type of political physiology: are the mitochondria slaves or partners?
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Radical Environmentalism
Radical environmentalism cannot escape the subject-object dualism of a largely Cartesian world – Only the
denial of the subject through our alternative can we disrupt this logic which is the root cause of modern
environmental crisis without which we are left with a dead world
Deluca 5 (Kevin Michael, Assistant Professor @University Georgia Department of Communication “Thinking with Heidegger:
Rethinking Environmental Theory and Practice”, Ethics and the Environment¶ Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring, 2005), JSTOR, Date Accessed: 621-14) [IB]
The first stasis point revolves around humanity’s relation to nature. To put it plainly, in environmental circles it is still a Cartesian world, wherein the
founding act is human thinking (cogito ergo sum) and the earth is object to humanity’s subject. This position is clear in mainstream
environmentalism, where humans act to save the object earth and, fundamentally, this action is motivated by the subject’s self-interest. So, we
must save the rain forests because they contain potential medical resources and because they alleviate global warming. Now certainly this base
anthropocentrism has come under attack from various radical environmentalisms that posit biocentrism or ecocentrism. I would argue, however, that these antianthropocentric positions have not escaped the gravity of Cartesianism. This is evident at both theoretical and practical levels. Theoretically,
in the effort to avoid the stain of anthropocentrism all beings are posited as having equal intrinsic worth/value and difference is leveled .
The banana slug is equal to homo sapiens. There are problems with this. Most obviously, the concept of intrinsic worth/value is philosophically
incoherent—worth/value by definition is always relational. More significantly for this discussion, to posit intrinsic worth/value is to deny the
ecological insight that all beings are constituted in relation to other beings and their environment. Further, to deny difference is to blunt analysis of
our current situation and to deny the differential levels of effects different species have. Homo sapiens is not another type of slug and must be analyzed with that awareness.
In practice, radical groups, most notably Earth First!, often demonize humans as a cancer on the planet. As the metaphor suggests, humans are seen as somehow different
from all other forms of life, an alien other, not a part but apart. Even more significantly, the metaphor of cancer suggests humans to be active subjects preying on the object
earth. Indeed, the problem with humanity, as with the cancer cell, is that it is too active. Although radical groups offer a different valuation, note that this
position does not trouble the terms of Cartesianism. The dichotomies subject-object, human-animal, culture-nature, civilization-wilderness, remain
intact. The active subject humanity threatens the object earth. The statsis point in actual environmental debates revolves around reform
and radical environmental groups dismissing each other’s seemingly oppositional positions as, respectively, anthropocentic and
compromised versus misanthropic and unrealistic, while remaining oblivious to the underlying Cartesian presuppositions they both share.
In other words, reform environmentalists privilege humanity while radical environmentalists demonize humanity. In this morality play
on the fate of the planet, humanity, whether hero or villain, is the actor. Heidegger’s thinking on the subject-object dichotomy,
Descartes, and the phenomenology of the structure of reality offer a useful lever with which to displace these dichotomies and challenge
the traditional ontology that undergirds and girdles environmental thinking. Citing the Cartesian ontology of the world as dominant, Heidegger in Being
and Time works to “demonstrate explicitly not only that Descartes’ conception of the world is ontologically defective, but that his Interpretation and the foundations on
which it is based have led him to pass over both the phenomenon of the world and the Being of those entities withinthe- world which are proximally ready-to-hand” (1962,
128). Briefly, Heidegger critiques Descartes for positing a “bare subject without a world” (1962, 192) and for relying on mathematics, which produces the sort of Reality it
can grasp, thus “the kind of Being which belongs to sensuous perception is obliterated, and so is any possibility that the entities encountered in such perception should be
grasped in their Being” (1962, 130). Descartes’ ontology presumes the dynamic of an isolated subject grasping mathematically world as object. Arguably, it is this
perspective that is at the root of the environmental crisis, for the world is reduced to an object laid out before me and I am reduced to a
detached subject that has only a use-relation to a dead world.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Reformism
Reform fails – reorienting the way we engage with planet is key to averting environmental crisis
Devall and Sessions 85 (Bill, professor of sociology at Humboldt State Univ., and George, professor emeritus of philosophy¶ at
Sierra College. Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered)
The environmental problems of technocratic-industrial societies are beginning to be seen as¶ manifestations of what some individuals are
calling “the continuing environmental crisis.” This¶ is coming to be understood as a crisis of character and of culture. The
environmental/ecology¶ social movements of the twentieth century have been one response to the continuing crisis. ¶ These movements
have addressed some of the problems and have tried to reform some of the ¶ laws and agencies which manage the land and to change some
of the attitudes of people in¶ these societies. But more than just reform is needed. Many philosophers and theologians are calling for a new¶
ecological philosophy for our time. We believe, however, that we may not need something new, but need to ¶ reawaken to something very old, to
reawaken our understanding of Earth wisdom. In the ¶ broadest sense, we need to accept the invitation to the dance—the dance of unity of
humans,¶ plants, animals, the Earth. We need to cultivate and ecological consciousness. And we ¶ believe that a way out of our present
predicament may be simpler than many people realize.
More ev reform fails
Devall 1988 (Bill, professor of sociology at Humboldt State Univ. Simple in Means, Rich in Ends: Practicing Deep Ecology)
Since Arne Naess introduced the distinction between shallow (reform) environmentalism and ¶ deep ecology in 1972, the distinction has gained general acceptance among
philosophers and¶ environmental educators (Miller 1985). I this chapter I discuss the relationship between reform and deep ecology. In¶ practical political debates,
arguments based on reform and deep perspective are both¶ appropriate in certain situations. But the weakness of reform arguments should
also be noted.¶ In particular I am concerned with the dilemma of environmental activists who feel they must ¶ use reform arguments in
order to be understood by political decision-makers and who reject¶ using deep arguments because they are seen as too subversive. In
using reformist arguments,¶ however, activists help to legitimate and reinforce the human-centered (anthropocentric)¶ worldview of
decision-makers.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Renewables
Renewable energy is caught up in the trap of enframing it is the least radical form of action, in fact, letting
be is the best action
Hill 2008 (Glen, Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney, “Design without Causality: Heidegger’s
Impossible Challenge for Ecologically Sustainable Architecture”, September 9, 2008, Date Accessed: Jun 25, 2014)[IB]
Heidegger’s conception of the real, evident in his own formulation of earth as absence, does not offer a foothold to causalit y in the same way as modernity’s understanding of the real as presence. In The Question Concerning
Technology, Heidegger refers approvingly to the work of Werner Heisenberg, whose formulation of Quantum Mechanics lays down a challenge to the Classical Realism of modern physics that is as radical as Heidegger’s own
challenge to traditional philosophical formulations of the real (23). (Quantum mechanics argues that cannot accurately know the position of an electron travelling around the nucleus of an atom. Einstein was never happy with
the real, earth, is not a particular way, and cannot therefore
ground the sort of causality that allows the impacts of design outcomes to be anticipated. Thus Heidegger’s critique of any generalisable
causality, does not encourage intentional action through the vehicle of design as it is now conceived. Although I haven’t included this in the paper, I’ll just spend a
quantum mechanics for exactly that reason, it did not allow predictability. “God does not play dice with the universe”.) For Heidegger,
moment contemplating the flaws in causality in relation to a designed outcome, that might flow from Heidegger’s thinking. I’ll discuss two aspects. The easier aspect relates to the meaning or understanding of a designed outcome.
We may be able to determine the materiality of the outcome, but not its meaning. Any designed intervention (whether it is a new thing or a new practice)
grows a new world around itself (small or large). As our understanding is, for Heidegger, always in terms of a world, the new world that grows around
a designed intervention must inevitably result in the designed intervention being understood differently in this new world, than the world
from which it was projected. Being understood differently means that it will produce actions different than those expected in the world in
which it was projected. Thus design itself, by bringing into being the new, undermines the stability of its own meaning and use. The automobile
was understood very differently by its earlier designers than by those of us now immersed in the world of suburban sprawl that the automobile grew around itself. Likewise the clock was understood very
differently in the slow-time world in which it originated, than in the obsessively punctual and time-ordered world that it has generated.
Every designed outcome, from a sharpened stick to a pair of shoes to a mobile phone or computer has this same capacity to grow a world
around itself and thereby undermine its own intended meaning and use. The harder aspect to conceive relates to Heidegger’s understanding
of the real as absence, as earth, as potential, rather than as presence. Here there is resonance, though nothing like equivalence, to Heisenberg’s
thinking. For Heidegger, our worlds are in a constant struggle with earth — a struggle in which only aspects of earth are revealed as our worlds. Any
designed intervention will engage in its own struggle with earth and thereby disclose an aspect of earth as world. It is this struggle that
brings into being the worlds that grow around our designed interventions, our worlds in other words. But because earth has its own
trajectories that are never, and can never, be fully revealed to us (because they are potential, not presence) the outcome of the struggle between world and
earth, the outcome of a designed intervention in other words, is quite simply unknowable in advance. [science’s predictability is achieved by keeping the world unchanged
(the experimental set-up). Science would not claim predictability otherwise. Experiments without fixed parameters are totally unpredictable. (what we do).] The reservations about design interventions that arise from Heidegger’s
The precautionary principle insists that a potentially harmful technology should
not be used until there is certainty that it will not do major harm. But here, being certain is still tied to a classical realist understanding of a
reality in which, with enough data, we could predict its outcome. If we instead assumed the Heideggerian understanding of reality and
applied the precautionary principle, no new technology could ever pass the test. Perhaps because of this recognition, I feel a sense of frustration in my encounter with this aspect
thinking are far more extreme than the reservations that ground, say, the precautionary principle.
of Heidegger’s thinking. This frustration is particularly evident to me in my role as a design studio tutor in the sustainable stream of the senior design years of the professional architecture degree, where I have struggled to incorporate,
So-called ecologically sustainable design is invariably premised on the expectation that design interventions
will have anticipated outcomes. The success of such interventions depends directly on causal chains, such as the relation between building
energy use, green-house gas emissions and global warming. But when causality itself is challenged and all certainty relating to the outcome
of a design intervention is removed, then confidence in the act of design is undermined and the effect immobilising. But hesitation may be
the reaction Heidegger would wish in the face of the recognition of the enframing of modern technology. To conclude The Question Concerning Technology
Heidegger advocates an (active) non-action as the appropriate response to the relentless demands of modern technology. This is articulated
in his much-debated call to ‘let be’. Such an orientation is of course problematic in a studio context where it is completely mismatched to
pre-framed expectations about design and architecture and their heroic role in inventing new worlds. (Rick LePastrier?) Against such an
heroic role for design, Heidegger’s conservative calls to focus on the ‘little things’ (Rojcewicz, 213ff), on life’s everyday routines, run
entirely counter to the innovative and radical attributes of design that are now valorised. But in the context of a world of unrelenting change
driven by the vehicle of technologically mediated design, Heidegger’s may indeed be the radical position. As Gianni Vattimo has pointed out, what designers
proudly depict as innovation, has become nothing more than the maintenance of the ordinary, (quote)…in a consumer society continual renewal (of clothes, tools, buildings) is already required
physiologically for the system simply to survive. What is new is not in the least ‘revolutionary’ or subversive: it is what allows things to
stay the same (endquote) (7). (That is pretty cutting to architects who strive for innovation: they are being told that innovation is the least radical path. Perhaps trying to keep things the same is the most radical path. Interesting
in any meaningful way, Heidegger’s radical stance.
that Heidegger felt we needed tradition. Tradition does actually allow predictability, because you are doing what has been done before, therefore the outcome is known.) As if in a final dismissal of causality and the possibility of our
control over it, Heidegger’s thinking does not even allow us to choose the alternative course of resisting the imperative to design. Even if there were a recognition that the causality that governs design is flawed, and that the certainty
Heidegger does not allow that we can simply will an alternative outcome (Rojcewicz). To do so would be
another act of enframed designing. For Heidegger, our course is granted to us, not designed by us.
sustaining our technological striving for the new is groundless,
The world is locked into and mindset of technological domination any attempt to craft renewable energy
sources will fail and only serve to replicate the very forces of planetary destruction we are trying to avoid
Hill 2008 (Glen, Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney, “Design without Causality: Heidegger’s
Impossible Challenge for Ecologically Sustainable Architecture”, September 9, 2008, Date Accessed: Jun 25, 2014)[IB]
Using Martin Heidegger’s thinking on technology,
this paper attempts to show an internal contradiction in our unquestioned assumption that design
(as green design, sustainable design, and so on) can solve the current environmental crisis. The argument is simply this: that design, in its
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
modern technological manifestation, is the engine driving, and accelerating, the environmental crisis, and can therefore never be its solution.
Central to the argument is the unmasking of the flawed assumption of causality that grounds design in modernity. (so the argument is very
simple: design is the problem, not the solution) For me, Heidegger’s most remarkable contribution to philosophy centres on his insistent explication of the absence
that grounds all presence. (on board) It is the power of the recognition of this absence that continues to shake any pretence of the possibility of rationalist foundations (in every
domain, including architecture). The mapping of this absence over the course of his work followed a rambling philosophical path. (in other words… Heidegger never made
anything simple) Since Descartes (17c), rationalist philosophical explanations about how it is we can have knowledge of an object, have begun with two premises: a subject
that is present to itself, and an object that is independently present. With this schism between self-present subject and ever-present object in place, the tradition has been left
to construct shaky explanatory bridges showing how a subject present in its own ‘internal world’ could have certain knowledge of an object present in an ‘outside world’.
(explain…so much philosophy is about how we know the outside world). Draw Picture 1. Heidegger’s early work, most famously Being and Time (1926),
firstly undermines the priority given to a self-present subject. It shows that our noticing of something as something in the present is not on the
basis of our being self aware subjects (thinking things), but is instead on the basis of an unnoticed background of, firstly, the everyday lifeworld that has constituted our past, and, secondly, an unnoticed projection of our everyday projects into the future. In other words, it shows
how our absent past and absent projected future allows things come to presence as the present. (explain how something shows up as something…a
chair. Absent past and future allow things to show up (presence) in present). Draw Picture 2. However, because its starting point was located in the everyday being of human
beings, Heidegger’s early work contained an anthropocentric bias. Within his work lurked the problematic implication that humanity, in this case human projects and practices,
still determines the way the world comes to presence. To redress this implication, Heidegger deployed a great deal of his later work toward demonstrating
that neither human subjectivity nor human projects and practices determine the way the world comes to presence. Central to achieving this,
Heidegger took the familiar concept of ‘earth’ and made it strange (Haar). On one reading, Heidegger’s earth names the totality of the universe, nature, the
real, before it shows up in our world as something for us. (think about this…what is a tree prior to it showing up in our world? Is it a tree? Talk to neighbour.)
For Heidegger, earth is never an object, a thing; it is instead the potential that is disclosed as things, or objects, in the encounter with our
world of projects and practices. (this is the key…potential) Add to Picture 2. So, world is simply one disclosure of the potential we are calling earth,
never its totality. Countering any implication of anthropocentrism, this disclosure is not a one-sided affair, dependent simply on our human
projects and practices. Earth is a potentiality with its own force, its own trajectories, that struggles with the interpretive forces of our world
that attempt to disclose it. Prior to its disclosure in our world, earth, as potential, is thus also an absence. Heidegger thus paints a profound
and radical picture of struggle between two absences — the absence of the subject (remember…we are an absent past and an absent future…in the sense of not noticing them)
and the absence of the object — between which our world comes to presence. (draw) 3 Regime of Modern Technology Heidegger’s discussion of technology,
particularly the danger of modern technology, may initially appear disconnected from his critique of the rationalist separation of self-present
subjects and ever-present objects. The two however emerge as intimately intertwined. In the text where technology is scrutinised most closely, The Question Concerning
Technology (1955), Heidegger draws a distinction between modern and pre-modern technology. (nothing to do with type of technology). Heidegger points out that under the
dominion of modern technology our relation with nature becomes one of demanding and challenging — a relation for which he uses the German neologism
‘Ge-stell’, sometimes translated as ‘enframe’ or ‘set-up’. Rather than being open to what nature offers to us, nature is instead forced to reveal itself in
ways we have formulated in advance. For Heidegger the essence of modern technology is thus its enframing or setting up of nature in terms of
human interests to the extent that nature is revealed one dimensionally as a resource for human use. (remember, nature as Earth/potential, could
reveal itself in many ways, but we force it to reveal itself in one way…as a resource. River: source of water, source of power, or
even…source of bio-diversity for our benefit, rarely for its own sake) 4 Causality in Modern Technology In The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger makes the paradoxical
claim that modern technology arrives before the appearance any actual modern technologies (22). Heiddegger’s chronology appears to be: firstly the arrival of the essence of technology, then the arrival of both modern science and
the appearance of modern technologies, (quote) It is said that modern technology is something incomparably different from all earlier technologies because it is based on modern physics as an exact science. Meanwhile we have come
to understand more clearly that the reverse holds true as well: Modern physics, as experimental, is dependent upon technical apparatus and upon the progress in the building of apparatus. The establishing of this mutual relation
The decisive question still
remains: Of what essence is modern technology that it happens to think of putting exact science to use? (endquote) (14) (eg Don Ihde: Chinese technologies…
between technology and physics is correct. But it remains a merely historiographical establishing of facts and says nothing about that in which this mutual relationship is grounded.
clock, fireworks, …) The essence of modern technology that I contend Heidegger is trying to show now enframes us is the product of the shift that initiates modernity itself: the radical new understanding of the self, and the radical
new conception of the very stuff that constitutes the universe. This shift has come to be summarised in the now rather innocuous phrase, the separation of subject and object. (can’t exaggerate what a huge shift this was…) As discussed
the separation of subject and object privileges an understanding of our relation to the world as one of a self-present subject located in
a universe of ever-present objects. This understanding is evidenced in both the modern scientific apprehension of our universe, and our
everyday apprehension of the world. For modern science, the entities that constitute the universe are a particular way (a position described as Classical Realism). Once it is understood that
entities are a particular way, then it becomes possible that we can come to know the way they are — this is the orientation necessary to
found modern science. (this is critical…atomic structure, gene sequences, etc) In a more everyday context, when we reflect on our own relation to the world the entities
around us appear in much the same way as they do for science — as objectively and permanently present. For Heidegger, such reflection is
secondary to unreflective coping, but in modernity it has been taken as primary. The consequence of this shift for our modern conception
of self and world should not be underestimated. Understanding that the entities constituting our universe are a particular way (not flux, not
transformable by the whim of God, or so on), brings with it the conviction that we can come to understand these entities, to understand nature, and as a
consequence that we can come to understand the causality inherent in nature. Heidegger spends some time in The Question Concerning Technology discussing pre-modern
and modern notions of causality. His assertion that (quote) ‘wherever instrumentality reigns, there reigns causality’ (endquote) (6), identifies causality as being
central to our instrumental relation to nature. Clearly, it is a small step from the belief that we can understand causality in nature to the conviction
that we can control it. Understanding causality and controlling causality can be seen as the twin grounds of science and technology
respectively. (expand…) 5 Design Hubris At this point, the implications for ecological sustainability and for design also become clearer. With modernity’s
belief that causality in nature could be understood and therefore controlled, arrived the confidence that the outcomes of designed
technological interventions could be predicted. The result of this confidence in causality is evidenced in the exponential increase in the
deployment of designed technological interventions. While the design of each individual technologically mediated intervention would have
been intended to cause a (local) beneficial outcome for some portion of humanity, their cumulative impact on the ecological systems of the
planet is now considered by many to be potentially catastrophic. If this scenario is accepted, then design could be characterised as the wellearlier,
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
intentioned engine driving the proliferation of technologies that now threatens the planet. Designers, not least architects, are enframed within
a view of causality which instils confidence that design interventions have predictable outcomes. Confirming such a view of the designer, Heidegger refers to the
(quote) ‘engineer in his drafting room’ (which could equally be the architect in his/her studio) as being part of an enframed system, ‘an executer, within Enframing’ (endquote) (Question, 29). This enframed confidence
is no less evident in the responses to the perceived ecological crisis, where design is confidently being advocated to develop solutions to
overcome the very problems that confident designing has created. Modernity’s understanding that the entities constituting our universe are a particular way and operate under the rule of
causality, marks a momentous shift: in pre-modernity nature is apprehended as mysterious and marvellous (medieval chronicles/annals); in modernity nature is apprehended as systematic and
operable. (image) This shift is, for me, no better illustrated than in the surreal (yet quite serious) design for a solar umbrella consisting of trillions
of satellites launched from earth and intended to stop global warming (Brahic). The pre-modern understanding of the mystery and wonder
of the sun’s warmth granting life to all beings on earth (remember, for many pre-modern cultures the sun and God were one), has shifted to a modern understanding
where the sun’s warming of the earth is a calculable system that we do not merely believe we can understand, but have the hubris to believe
that we can control. (did not have time for it in the talk, but in another version of the paper I provide examples (and they are endless) of design interventions that did not have the expected outcome: Dam projects, leaded
petrol, contraception, any example you pick… The argument is always that we simply did not know enough. But the argument from Heidegger would be that it could never have been known til it occurred.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Science
The affirmatives scientific management of the of the environment reifies systems of biopolitical control
through treating the environment as an economic resource
Rutherford 99 (Paul, professor of environmental politics in the Department of Government and Public Administration at the
University of Sydney, Australia, 1999, Discourses of the Environment, p. 37-38)
Modern thinking about the natural environment is character¬ized by the belief that nature can be managed or governed through the
application of the scientific principles of ecology. This chapter considers how governing the environment in this sense involves more than the familiar political
activities of the modern adminis¬trative state. Environmental governance in advanced liberal soci¬eties is far more dependent on the role played by
scientific expertise in defining and managing environmental problems than the more traditional state-centric notions of politics and power
would sug¬gest. Scientific ecology has become a political resource that in important respects constitutes the objects of government and , at the
same time, provides the intellectual machinery essential for the practice of such government. Foucault’s ideas of biopolitics and governmentality can
help provide a critical perspective on contemporary environmental prob¬lems. In this chapter I attempt to demonstrate this by developing three basic propositions: first, that
the concern with ecological problems and environmental crises can be seen as a development of what Foucault called ‘the regulatory biopolitics
of the population’; second, that this contemporary biopolitics has given expression to a mode of governmental rationality that is related to the
institution¬alization of new areas of scientific expertise, which in turn is based on a bio-economic understanding of global systems
ecology; and third, that this relatively recent articulation of biopolitics gives rise to new techniques for managing the environment and the population that can be termed
‘ecological governmentality’.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
State
The appeal of government action only serves to create a system of green governmentality thus creating an
eco-managerial regime to extend biopolitical and material control to the entire planet
Lovbrand 2006 (Eva, Phd Canidate in environmental science at Kalmar University, “Planting Trees to Mitigate Climate Change:
Contested Discourses of Ecological Modernization, Green Governmentality and Civic Environmentalism, Feb. 2006)
Alongside the market-oriented approach to environmental problem-solving proposed by ecological modernization, a discourse of green governmentality predominates in industrialized societies.
This discourse epitomizes a global form of power tied to the
modern administrative state, mega-science and big business. It entails the administration of
life itself--individuals, populations and the natural environment. According to the original account proposed by Michel Foucault in the late 1970s, governmentality is
associated with a multiplicity of rationalities, authorities and agencies that seek to shape the conduct of human behavior. By affecting the choices, aspirations and lifestyles of individuals and
groups, these disciplining practices involve the power over and through the individual. Knowledge and various
forms of expertise are intrinsically linked to this biopolitical fostering or management of life. In the late 18th century Europe, when governmentality was associated with the administration of human health, biology, criminology and
medicine represented authoritative areas of expertise. In more recent years global environmental threats have given rise to a new set of "eco-knowledges" that
extend government control to the entire planet.¶ The current green twist to governmentality is manifested through a notion of stewardship of nature and
an all-encompassing management of its resources. In the name of sustainable development and environmental risk management a new set of administrative truths have
emerged that expand bio-politics to all conditions under which humans live. These new eco-knowledges and practices organize and legitimize common
understandings of the environmental reality and enforce "the right disposition of things" between humans and nature. The numerous scientific expert advisors
that have emerged on the environmental arena during the past decades play an authoritative role in the construction of these eco-knowledges. Resting upon a notion
of sound science, these well-trained environmental professionals provide credible definitions of environmental risks as well as legitimate
methods to measure, predict and manage the same risks. Since the growth of "big" science in the mid 20th century, a world-wide techno-scientific infrastructure has
developed that today enables environmental experts to monitor and, in many cases, even manage the Earth's biogeochemical cycles, hydrological flows and human patterns of pollution and
environmental degradation. In the field of climate
change, this physical manifestation of the green governmentality discourse is particularly
pronounced. Satellite supervision of the Earth's vegetation cover, advanced computer modeling of atmospheric and oceanographic processes , a global grid of meteorological
stations and carbon flux towers exemplify the resource-intensive infrastructure used by expert groups to study, monitor and predict the
trajectories of human-induced climate change.¶ In its technocratic expression green governmentality can be understood as an elitist and totalizing
discourse that effectively marginalizes alternative understandings of the natural world. Through a detached and powerful view from above--a
"global gaze"--nature is approached as a terrestrial infrastructure subject to state protection, management and domination. In the attempt to
rationalize human and natural conditions of life, this instrumental control over the natural world forms the basis of a large-scale
"terraforming" project that is in the process of reshaping the Earth into a planetary order of complex socio-technical systems.¶
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Technology
We’ve become slaves to the machines we thought were our slaves – technology is an ever expanding disease
whose sole purpose is management and control
Antolick 3 (Matthew, MA @University of South Florida, “Deep ecology and Heideggerian phenomenology”, 2003, Date Accessed: 621-14) [IB]
Much of Heidegger’s take on technology is relevant here. Like Heidegger, Naess ¶ laments a world in which the tool has become the owner. “ The cog wheels have
brought¶ us into the very machinery we thought was our slave,” says Naess, sounding a lot like¶ Heidegger speaking of humans as standing reserve.108
Further,¶ The technological developments in modern industrial societies have resulted in ¶ continuous pressures towards a kind of lifestyle
repugnant not only to supporters¶ of the deep ecology movement but to those in most alternative¶ movements…Some of the reasons for such a
confrontation are fairly obvious:¶ modern industrial technology is a centralizing factor, it tends towards bigness, it ¶ decreases the area within
which one can say ‘self-made is well made’, it attaches¶ us to big markets, and forces us to seek an ever-increasing income. The¶
administrative technologies are adapted to the physical technologies and ¶ encourage more and more impersonal relations.109¶ A
technological society, it appears, inhibits many of the actions and attitudes¶ necessary for lifestyle consistent with ecosystemic processes.
Diversity is superceded by¶ centralization, calculated bigness replaces a deeper greatness, instrumental justifications¶ for production
replace self-making the self-emergence of life and personal relationships ¶ take second place to an impersonal social structure in which
competition outweighs¶ community, openness, and a deep appreciation of the other.
Technological management of the environment creates an endless cycle of management and disaster – the
1AC is ensnared in the very mindset of the problem
McWhorter 92 (LaDelle, Professor of Philosophy @Northeast Missouri State, 1992, “Heidegger and the Earth”, Date Accessed: 6-2114) [IB]
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
now live 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 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, to scramble to find some way to manage our problems, some
quick 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 ecological 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?
The affirmative reinforces the notion that the Earth belongs to humanity this cannot be accepted the Earth
belongs to itself and we merely inhabit it the latter leads the Earth down the path of ecological destruction
that the 1AC’s technological fixes will inevitably fail to resolve
Antolick 3 (Matthew, MA @University of South Florida, “Deep ecology and Heideggerian phenomenology”, 2003, Date Accessed: 621-14) [IB]
The well-being and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth have value in¶ themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent worth).
These values are independent¶ of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes.¶ In his essay “The Viable Human,” Thomas Berry
writes¶ The basic orientation of the common law tradition is toward personal rights and ¶ toward the natural world as existing for
human use. There is no provision for¶ recognition of nonhuman beings as subjects having legal rights. To the¶ ecologists, the entire
question of possession and use of the earth, either by¶ individuals or by establishments, needs to be profoundly reconsidered. The naïve¶ assumption that the
natural world exists solely to be possessed and used by¶ humans for their unlimited advantage cannot be accepted. The earth
belongs to¶ itself and to all the component members of the community.123¶ Berry points out the mistaken nature of the assumption that the earth exists
solely¶ for present human use. Present social and economic reality reveals humans as selfproclaimed ¶ privileged possessors of natural (animal,
plant, and mineral resources), and¶ even other people, as revealed through the many instances throughout history of slave¶ trading, sweat-shop labor, and harsh
working conditions – pure examples of Heidegger’s¶ standing reserve. As possessors, the earth, along with its inhabitants and resources, ¶ become
possessions – things owned and present for consumptive use. DE challenges the inherent use standpoint, a challenge Naess endorses where he¶
writes, “The earth does not belong to humans.”124 Furthermore, in the deep ecological ¶ approach,¶ Humans only inhabit the lands, using
resources to satisfy vital needs. And if their ¶ non-vital needs come in conflict with the vital needs of nonhumans, then humans ¶ should
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
defer to the latter. The ecological destruction now going on will not be¶ cured by a technological fix. Current arrogant notions in
industrial (and other)¶ societies must be resisted.125¶ A fundamental aspect of ‘intrinsic value’ includes allowing “all entities (including¶
humans) the freedom to unfold in their own way unhindered by the various forms of ¶ human domination.”126 There is a fundamental
distinction between vital needs and¶ created needs (wants): between what we truly need and what we merely think ( or are¶ influenced to think) we
need. The former are intrinsic to flourishing, the latter are not¶ and may, when carried too far, actually hinder flourishing.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Perm Answer
Only through an absolute refusal to adhere to rigid modes of thought can we achieve the letting go specified
in the alternative the permutation merely serves to reify status quo technological linear modes of thinking
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
In chapter 2 I began with suggesting that we attempt this thinking by holding in front of us two hints given by Heidegger .
Releasement toward things and openness to
mystery, he said, may enable us to start thinking. Releasement toward things, as I related it, begins with a willingness to let go of the “things” emerging from and
determined by metaphysical and calculative thinking: method as setting means and ways, the theoretical results, and language understood only as grasping concepts, representations, definitions. In
we attempt to let go of clinging to rigid, linear, dualistic, goal-oriented ways of thinking because we can see their tendency to close
down questioning or, at best, to narrow thought into one track. We first came to a sense of what openness to mystery might mean by way of considering the language that
carries Heidegger’s thinking, since it seems quite likely that that will also help us in our thinking after Heidegger . To encounter words, thoughts, and even texts as joinings
that say or show something significant without rigidly fixing it or reifying it is my starting point. In a way, joinings take the place of two aspects of
traditional thinking: ( ) joining make ways rather than set up a method, and ( ) they do not yield concepts, theories, and so on. The key is to stay with their dynamic
relationality, their mirroring play that refuses to fall to either extreme of identity or difference , instead “saying the same,” gathering and carrying out (difsum,
fering) the complexly simple “one matter.” But that is not all there is to say about joinings.
Their reliance on expertism forecloses chances for new modes of thought ‘letting go’ of the expert is an
essential precondition to solving the alternative
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
Heidegger is here attempting to provoke us to see how our tendency to grasp and cling, to reduce everything possible to an idea or a concept, prevents us not only from
staying with things but from even genuinely encountering them in the first place. I have already, more than once, spoken of releasement toward things as being applicable to
letting go of this obsessive tendency to grasp at concepts. But there is more that we need to release if we hope to learn to dwell, to stay with things long enough to hear what
they say to us. We must let go of our reliance on “the experts.” I am not advocating some kind of reactive, wholesale rejection of science.
Some of the best contemporary science is not nearly as rigid and limiting as what we are presented with in the popular science and “the studies” presented to us in the media.
What I am suggesting is that we let go of (and at times this might mean forcefully tossing out) our passive, unquestioning acceptance of
anything that is presented to us as expert opinion, as authoritatively reflecting what “they say.” As early as Being and Time Heidegger let us know
some of the ways that we are shaped, constrained, closed in, and closed off by this “they.” We can become and in fact ordinarily are so
molded that our very “self” becomes, effectively, a “they-self.” The they-self does not think, not in the sense in which we are now using that word. The
theyself goes rather mindlessly about its business, business that has also been laid out for it by “them.” Stop and think: How much of what we call our beliefs, our ideas, our
values, and our lifestyle comes not only from the Western philosophical tradition but also from Wall Street,Madison Avenue, and Washington, D.C.? In its interactions with
things the they-self is incapable of face-to-face encounter, of hearing what things say, of heeding any intimations of timing-spacing-
thinging. The they-self does not even have the time to stop and pause long enough to wonder about this, being herded about and
channeled within the framework of public time, clock time. The theyself is incapable of dwelling unless it can undergo radical transformation.
The permutation fails seven reasons
1. Denies the alternatives ambiguity
2. Fails to let go of what blocks or hinders thinking and dwelling
3. Continues to embrace the traditional rules, norms, and expectations of what constitutes “good
thinking”
4. Theorizes an end to be achieved
5. Is constrained within a framework of ethics
6. Wills action from the position of the subject
7. Treats language as a game of incorporation
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
If we can succeed to a significant extent in releasement toward things, letting go of the things that constitute calculative, metaphysical
thinking and letting go of the most powerful notions that have emerged from that thinking, then “openness to mystery,” already at work,
can come even more to the fore. Releasement toward things is multifaceted, and, as it comes into play, it already begins to converge with
openness to mystery. Why do I say that? Gathering up the “things” to be released and the sense of “releasing” enacted in each case will help answer that question. The
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
phrase “releasement
toward things” is ambiguous; that very ambiguity is part of its power in helping us engage the thinking of be-ing and
open up what it might mean to dwell in timing-spacing-thinging. On the one hand, releasement means letting go of what blocks or hinders
thinking and dwelling. On the other, releasement means releasing ourselves toward things, opening to them in a new way. What things are
released in the first sense, and how are their releasements related to one another? ¶ 1. The traditional rules, norms, and expectations of what
constitutes good thinking: conceptual grasping and fixing, method, theory, system. ¶ 2. The idea of “being” as something that is reified
upon being conceptually lifted out and separated from beings. ¶ 3. The things that such traditional philosophizing begins from and works
toward: arche- and telos. Releasing the idea of being also releases the idea of its primary function: to serve as the ground of beings and of
thinking. Be-ing is ab-ground, and there is no arche-, no first principle, to be found in its thinking. With no arche- there is no telos, no
ultimate end or aim that could somehow be attained in carrying out the thinking. ¶ 4. Therefore, the notion of “an ethics” is also released
along with other kinds of theorizing (metaphysics, epistemology). Dwelling cannot be constrained within the frameworks of ethics. ¶ 5.
The various interpretations of “beings” that are grounded on some concept of “being.” This involves releasing such notions as substance
(and the related philosophical notion of “accidents”), matter with its form, subject and object, and dualistically conceived mind and body.¶
6. The idea of ourselves as beings, conceived in any of the ways listed in point five.¶ 7. And finally, the one that Heidegger himself gives when he
first speaks of releasement toward things in “Memorial Address,” letting go of our entrapped fascination with the products of technocalculative thinking, including taking language as merely information or entertainment.
The permutation fails – denies new modes of thinking found in the alternative through is strategy of
management and incorporation
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
Conceivably, we could enter this web of gems at any point, any facet. As Heidegger said more than once, genuine thinking is not just following a
track predetermined by someone else (whether the bland but powerful “they” of Being and Time or a great thinker like Heidegger himself); rather, “it is enough if
we dwell on what lies close and meditate on what is closest; upon that which concerns us, each one of us, here and now” (
unless this work of thinking is Heidegger’s and his alone. But to jump immediately there would perhaps be premature. We
). In the long run that becomes necessary,
are so strongly shaped and constrained
by our linguistic, intellectual, and cultural inheritance that “thinking” and “thinking” are not the same! That is, we think we are thinking,
but we may well be running along in the same old rut, the gerbil-wheel that society gives us to play with in our cages. This is not, on the
other hand, to assert that “following Heidegger” is the only way to go. In fact, following as in copying or repeating or shuffling apparent
facts and propositions into some kind of cohesive theoretical structure is precisely not the way to go. In his most extended discussion of the nature
of thinking Heidegger told the students attending the lecture course that if that is all any of them wanted to do, “in that case, burn your lecture notes, however precise they
may be—and the sooner the better” (
;
). There are other ways into transformative thinking, starting from other questions. In chapter , for instance,
I bring the Tibetan thinker Longchenpa into dialogue with this thinking; he has a different starting point but thinks into a similar region of transformation. But the work of
thinking that we call “Heidegger” is deep and powerful and filled with openings into thinking that—and this is vitally important—start from where we are now, in the
contemporary Western world. It is, therefore, an excellent and perhaps even necessary place to start.
Permutation fails – the affirmative gets massively outweighed by the alternative alone empirics prove
Doremus 2K (Holly, Professor of Law, University of California at Davis, J.D., University of California at Berkeley, Ph.D., Cornell
University, Winter, The Rhetoric and Reality of Nature Protection: Toward a New Discourse, 57 Wash & Lee L. Rev. 11)
Combining esthetic and ethical arguments with the material discourse does not automatically solve this problem. Because material benefits
are more readily quantified, they are likely to outweigh nonmaterial benefits in the cost-benefit comparisons encouraged by the
material focus. The predictable result is that material benefits will be maximized at the cost of nonmaterial ones. The national parks provide a concrete
example. Park proponents first argued that national parks were important for their esthetic qualities, which could express and strengthen the national character. But in order
to build political support they added that parks would benefit local and national economies. As a result, park managers felt compelled to promote heavy visitation in order to
realize the economic benefits they had promised, at the expense of maintaining the parks' distinctive esthetic and character-building values. n228 With this history as
background, environmentalists should be wary of emphasizing the material discourse in political debates. They are likely to find that the
political benefits of that strategy, although real, are outweighed by its tendency to skew policies in ways that systematically
underestimate, or even deny, the nonmaterial values of nature .
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
MPX
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Being
The end of Being outweighs the annihilation of humanity and the destruction of the earth
Zimmerman 93 (Michael E., Professor of philosophy @The University of Tulane, “Contesting Earths Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity”, 1993, Date
Accessed: Jun 24, 2014) [IB]
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.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Calculative Thought
The affirmative’s technological thinking is inherently calculative.
Zimmerman 1990 (Michael E., Professor of Philosophy @Tulane University, “Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity”, 1990)
For modern commercial-technological humanity, nothing is "sacred." Everything has its price; everything can be calculated and evaluated
according to the economic interests of someone or other. In the pre-technological era, when humanity still felt itself to be a part of the world
instead of its master, people had to adapt themselves to the natural order as best they could. Even medieval humanity, to be sure, projected a certain order onto
the world, but at least that "order" was believed to have been created and sustained by God—not by humans. The old-fashioned view that people must adapt themselves to the pre-existing order of
things may be discerned in the objection which many people made in regard to the first airplanes: "If God had intended us to fly, He would have given us wings!" In
the technological age,
however, instead of conforming to the natural order, people force nature to conform to their needs and expectations. Whenever nature proves
unsatisfactory for human purposes, people reframe it as they see fit. For Heidegger, such technological ''reframing" compels entities to be
revealed in inappropriate ways. The "factory farm," for example, treats corn and cattle as if they were merely complex machines, not living
things. Such reframing, however, is a necessary consequence of the economic imperatives of the food industry.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Environment
Calculative thought brings us to the edge of environmental destruction
McWhorter 92 (LaDelle, Professor of Philosophy @Northeast Missouri State, 1992, “Heidegger and the Earth”, Date Accessed: 6-2114) [IB]
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.
Technological thought causes complete environmental destruction
Beckman 2000 (Tad, Professor of Philosophy, Harvey Mudd College, “Martin Heidegger and Environmental Ethics”, Date Accessed:
Jun 25, 2014) [IB]
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.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Forgetting Nature
Settlement over resources is only dealt with through technological means – this univocal understanding
creates means to destroy all of nature and its meanings
Hasst 8 (Sanna, Philosophy @University of Jyvuasyla, "RELEASING UPPER LAPLAND Martin Heidegger and the question
concerning nature", 2008, www.metla.fi/hanke/3400/Pro-gradu-Sanna-Hast.pdf, Date accessed: Jun 26, 2014) [IB]
In Upper Lapland, the different parties appear to be arguing over the use of the same natural resources for different purposes, but what if
the situation is in fact so that they are arguing over the different understandings they have of nature, of different natures? We now turn to back Martin
Heidegger again to look at the situation in Upper Lapland from a different angle. If technology is indeed the most compelling metaphysics of our time, can it be seen as a
reason why a compromise is still lacking? In the previous chapters, it has been established that technology is dominating our way of relating with nature, our
ways of defining, understanding and using nature; leaving little room for other ways. The forest conflict will now be analysed as a result
of clashing conceptions of nature. Perhaps the conflict in Upper Lapland is not merely a conflict of interests or user-rights, nor only a result of
the overexploitation of limited natural resources, but in fact a manifestation of the hegemony of technology, which may not have reached
completion yet.¶ If people have to resort to the only language that is considered relevant, the technological language or the language of the
natural sciences, they may be unable to convey their whole understanding of the nature they believe is in question, which can result in a
situation, where the different interest groups will never reach a compromise. Or, what may be even worse and will be more thoroughly looked at later on, a
compromise is found, but it will be at the cost of the other natures: the destruction and forgetting of them, their meanings and the
experiences they carry.¶ It is important to find out the meaning of nature for the local people: if the relationships and definitions of nature differ from each other, whether
they have changed during the years and how they are present in their everyday practises. Here, the concept of nature is to be understood as a socially constructed entity, this means its
meaning can and does change. Where else would this change occur than in language understood in the wider sense? In those collective meanings, grounding experiences and practices that also
Heidegger was concerned with? Language goes beyond every individual’s experience and conveys the locally bound meaning of nature,
which has been revealed in the communal relationship with nature in the course of time.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Standing Reserve
By making the world simply an operation of mechanics meant to serve the needs of humans, we reduce the
dignity of its being and convert it to the status of a slave. Even if the environment is not polluted, the very
action of enframing it produces it as slave to humanity’s master. We are in a unique time where technology
is at its most dangerous point. Once we convert the environment to standing reserve, we will begin
producing humans as slaves to our will. The status quo is moving in that direction now. Makes it try or die
for the alt.
Waddington 2005 David Waddington, “A Field Guide to Heidegger: Understanding ‘The Question Concerning Technology,’” Educational Philosophy and Theory, Volume 37. No. 4. 2005
Heidegger comments, ‘It is said that modern technology is something incomparably different from all earlier technologies ...’ (1977, p. 14) Heidegger attributes this ‘incomparable difference’ to the ability of human beings to think in the mode of challenging forth—an ability
The revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging, which puts
to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such. But does this not hold true for the old
windmill as well? No. Its sails do indeed turn in the wind; they are left entirely to the wind’s blowing. But the windmill does not unlock
energy from the air currents in order to store it. (Heidegger 1977, p. 14)¶ However, if I were an ambitious and avaricious miller living in the middle ages, I
might want to maximize flour production in my mill. To this end, I would make sure that my windmill had enormous sails in order to
maximize wind-catching efficiency. By processing the grain, I would unlock its food energy in the form of flour and hold it in reserve in
my granary. I could then maximize profit by selling the flour during the wintertime when the peasants were starving. The intuitive
plausibility of the hypothetical miller suggests that Heidegger is wrong to think that challenging- forth is a phenomenon unique to modern
times.¶ However, despite the fact that thinking in the mode of challenging-forth is not limited solely to the reign of modern technology, there is
certainly a link between modern technology and challenging-forth. The forester of old with his horses and chains could not even conceive
of machines like the Caterpillar tree ‘harvester’, which can liquidate a forest at ‘the highest level of productivity and efficiency’ using
‘extremely high levels of horsepower’ (Caterpillar 2003). Since modern technology enables challenging-forth to achieve extraordinary results,
thinking in the mode of challenging-forth is more dangerous and alluring now than at any other time in history. ¶ Tree ‘harvesters’ are a particularly unpleasant
example of modern technology. Yet, critics of Heidegger are quick to point out that modern technology has improved our standard of living. Hydroelectric
dams, for example, have allowed power to be brought to the homes of many people around the world, thus improving their lives immensely. Although
which, he maintains, only emerged recently. Apparently, older technologies cannot involve or facilitate this sort of thinking:¶
there are some environmental problems associated with hydroelectric dams, it is a relatively clean form of energy generation. Heidegger, however, is outraged by the building of a hydroelectric dam on the Rhine: ¶ In the context of the interlocking processes pertaining to the
orderly disposition of electrical energy, even the Rhine itself appears as 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 dammed up into the
power plant. What the river is now, namely, a water power supplier, derives from out of 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 speaks out of the two titles,
Even the most rabid capitalists may become uneasy when forced
to watch a tree ‘harvester’ in the process of liquidating a forest; intuitively, one can see that there is a certain monstrousness about this
kind of wholesale destruction. Yet, although the same kind of destruction is not taking place in the context of the dam on the Rhine,
Heidegger still asks us to ‘consider the monstrousness that reigns here’. (1977, p. 16) In order to solve this puzzle in Heidegger’s thinking, let us clarify the terms of the problem with some assumptions:
assume that the dam has improved the standard of living for many Germans and that no significant environmental damage has resulted
from its construction and operation. If these assumptions are made, how can Heidegger still deem the dam monstrous?¶ In his polemic against the dam,
Heidegger comments, ‘What the river is now, namely a water power supplier, derives from out of the essence of the power station’ (1977, p. 16). Heidegger does not hate the dam because it physically damages
the river; instead, he hates it because it reduces the river. Subsumed under both the idea and the material fact of the hydroelectric dam, the
river no longer stands on its own. Implicitly, Heidegger is using the following syllogism:¶ Premise: The building of the Rhine dam has compromised the standing-on-its-own of the Rhine River.¶ Premise: All actions in which we compromise
the standing-on-its-own of something are monstrous actions.¶ Conclusion: The building of the Rhine dam is a monstrous action. ¶ It is still unclear, however, what it means for something to stand on its
own. Aristotle may enlighten us in this regard with his description of what it is for a human being not to stand on their own: ‘Hence we see what is the nature and office of a slave; he who is ... not his own but another’s man, is by nature a slave ...’ (1995, 1254a13) The
person whose nature is subsumed under that of another has been reduced—reduced to slavery. No standing or dignity remain for the
slave; ‘he’ or ‘she’ has been reduced to an ‘it’. The slave, regarded as slave, is a mere piece of property that is disposable in both the
technical and conventional senses of disposability described in the summary. ¶ Laboring under the material and conceptual mastery of the
dam, the river has also been reduced to slavery. It no longer stands on its own; it is merely a piece of property to be manipulated by the
various gigantic states and corporations of the world. The Rhine and the Columbia, the Nile and the Yangtze—they were once the greatest
and most holy of rivers, but are now merely the most useful of our slave-objects.¶ Most of the countries of the world have signed agreements that grant that human beings possess a certain
inviolable dignity; humans cannot be reduced to slavery and they must be treated with a measure of respect. Human beings, however, are not the only entities in the world that seem to possess
dignity. For example, a Sequoia in the forest stands on its own, and, as such, it seems to have some kind of dignity. Once that tree has been cut
down and reduced to a technically and conventionally disposable log, whatever dignity it may once have had is lost. ¶ Suppose it is true
that all human beings possess a kind of inviolable dignity. Animals differ from human beings only in the fact that they are not rational.
Does their lack of reason make animals unworthy of dignity? Surely not: when humans lose their minds to Alzheimer’s disease, we all
agree that their dignity remains inviolable. We would not even consider consigning a witless Alzheimer’s patient to a cage in a research
laboratory.¶ One can expand the scope of this argument from animals to other living and non-living entities. In each case one can ask, ‘Does their lack of property Z make entity X less worthy of dignity than entity Y?’ Admittedly, as one traces the course of this
argument through the hierarchy of being—from animals all the way down to manufactured objects—dignity becomes increasingly attenuated. Yet, I would argue that dignity persists all the way down the hierarchy of
being; even the plastic soft-drink bottle possesses an extremely small amount of dignity. Heidegger would probably concur with this view; he was fascinated by the work of Cezanne, who thought that even inanimate objects had dignity:¶ People think that a sugar bowl
‘The Rhine’ as dammed up into the power works, and ‘The Rhine’ as uttered out of the art work, in Hölderlin’s hymn by that name. (1977, p. 16)¶
has no physiognomy, no soul. But that also changes from day to day. One has to know how to take them, flatter them, these gentlemen. These glasses, these plates, they speak to each other, they are always exchanging confidences. (Jamme, 1994, p. 140)¶ In his essay, ‘The
‘Whatever stands by in the sense of standingreserve no longer stands over against us as object’ (1977, p. 17). The notion of the dignity and standing of objects can help us understand Heidegger’s cryptic remark. Objects like the river lose
their dignity by being subsumed under the material and conceptual command of objects like the dam, which, for their part, are under the
complete control of human subjects. Therefore, in a sense, whatever is reduced to standing- reserve is no longer an object because it has been
Thing’, Heidegger expresses views that are similar to those of Cezanne. (1971, p. 182) ¶ At one point, while discussing the reduction of objects to standing-reserve, Heidegger remarks,
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
completely subsumed under the material and conceptual reign of the subject. A kind of objectlessness results—the only significance these
objects have is that they are the property of the subject. In light of this view, another of Heidegger’s puzzling remarks begins to make sense:¶ Meanwhile man ... 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
[italics mine]. (1977, p. 27)¶ Heidegger feels that we should not underestimate the importance of the dignity of objects; once the objectlessness of standing-reserve
prevails, the next target for reduction to material/conceptual slavery is other subjects—human beings. Already, says Heidegger (1977, p.
18), we can discern the beginnings of this trend in the talk of ‘human resources’. As Michael Zimmerman ominously remarks, ‘While humanity cannot yet
manufacture itself in factories, it is moving in that direction’ (1990, p. 201).
In the technological method of thinking, nature as well as humans are reduced to standing reserve.
Waddington 2005 David Waddington, “A Field Guide to Heidegger: Understanding ‘The Question Concerning Technology,’” Educational Philosophy and Theory, Volume 37. No. 4. 2005
Modern technology, however, has its own particular mode of revealing, which Heidegger calls challengingforth. Thinking in the mode of challenging-forth is very different from thinking in the mode of bringing-forth: when challenging-forth,
one sets upon the elements of a situation both in the sense of ordering (i.e. setting a system upon) and in a more rapacious sense (i.e. the wolves set upon the traveler and devoured
him). In bringing-forth, human beings were one important element among others in the productive process; in challenging-forth, humans
control the productive process. Efficiency is an additional important element of thinking in the mode of challenging forth; the earth, for example, is set upon to yield
the maximum amount of ore with the minimum amount of effort. Essentially, challenging-forth changes the way we see the world—as
Michael Zimmerman pointedly remarks, ‘To be capable of transforming a forest into packaging for cheeseburgers, man must see the forest not as a display
of the miracle of life, but as raw material, pure and simple’ (1977, p. 79).¶ Production in the mode of challenging-forth reveals objects that have
the status of standing-reserve. Objects that have been made standing-reserve have been reduced to disposability in two different senses of
the word: (1) They are disposable in the technical sense; they are easily ordered and arranged. Trees that once stood chaotically in the
forest are now logs that can be easily counted, weighed, piled, and shipped. (2) They are also disposable in the conventional sense; like
diapers and cheap razors, they are endlessly replaceable/interchangeable and have little value.¶ For the most part, challenging things forth into
standing-reserve is not a laudable activity, and thus it makes sense to wonder what drives human beings to think in this way. Heidegger’s answer to
this motivational question is unconventional— instead of suggesting that the origins of this motivation are indigenous to human beings, he postulates the existence of a phenomenon that ‘sets upon
man to order the real as standing-reserve’ (1977, p. 19). Heidegger calls this mysterious phenomenon enframing (Ge-stell in German). The word ‘Ge-stell’ gathers
together several meanings of the -stellen family of German verbs: in Ge-stell, humans are ordered (bestellen), commanded (bestellen), and entrapped (nachstellen) (Harries 1994, p. 229).
Heidegger thinks that our default state is that of being trapped by Ge-stell; this is what he means when he writes, ‘As the one who is challenged forth in this way, man stands within the
essential realm of [Ge-stell]. He can never take up a relationship to it only subsequently’ (1977, p. 24; Sallis, 1971, p. 162).
Bringing-forth is the mode of revealing that corresponds to ancient craft.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Ontological Damnation > Nuke war
The loss of authentic relation to Dasein intrinsic to the technological thought processes employed by the
affirmative robs us of our humanity and damns us to a state of ontological damnation in which everything that
makes life worth living is squandered in the name of material comfort. The endpoint of this mechanized
society is a nuclear war and unbounded destruction.
Zimmerman 94 (Michael, 1994, Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, “Contestinq Earth's Future” p. 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 than a nuclear war that might "bring about the complete annihilation of humanity and the
destruction of the earth. 1114 This controversial claim is comparable to the Christian teaching that it is better to forfeit the world than to lose one's soul by losing one's
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 an ontological clearing through which such life could manifest itself. Further, since modernity's one
dimensional disclosure of entities virtually denies them 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 to pure
energy. The unleashing of vast quantities of energy in nuclear war would be equivalent to modernity's slowmotion destruction of nature:
unbounded destruction would equal limitless consumption. If humanity avoided nuclear war only to survive as contented 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.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Warming
Warming is anthropogenic and happening now it will culminate in mass extinction and collapse of
civilization
Grego 2007 (Dr. Richard, “Global Warming, Environmental Philosophy and Public Policy: John Dewey vs. Martin Heidegger”, 2007,
Date Accessed: Jun 21, 2014) [IB)
Heidegger, Dewey, and Environmental Philosophy¶ Concern over global warming and other environmental problems has garnered a great deal of public attention recently. The February 2007 report issued by the United Nation's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is controversial (and the technical scientific details of its various possible interpretations are beyond the purview of this essay), but it appears to confirm what many environmentalists
The planet is heating up, and this phenomenon is man-made. This heating process is part of a century-long trend — likely caused in large-part by
its long-term consequences
(which, again, cannot be detailed here but include such possibilities as heat waves, droughts, new wind patterns, melting polar ice, and species extinction) could
be catastrophic for both the natural environment and human civilization. ¶ At this time therefore, environmental policy makers are attempting to answer two main questions:¶ 1) What
is causing the problem? And 2) What can/should we do about it?¶ Scientists have provided some obvious technical answers here. Global warming is caused by
greenhouse gas emissions and the solution to the problem of global warming is to reduce emissions via improved technologies, policies,
and regulations where necessary (one of the most recent ideas in the U.S. along these lines is a change in the federal tax code to encourage
the use and development of alternate energy sources by corporations).
have been asserting for some time now:
greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, etc) — that is already having adverse environmental effects on many levels. Much of the scientific community agrees that
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
War
Technological-calculative thought causes massive security wars in the name of existence – this renders
opposing bodies disposable as there is no distinction between combatant and non-combatant in modern
warfare for as long as there is an enemy extermination will follow
Burke 7 (Anthony, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at UNSW, “Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and
Reason”, 2007, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2007,Date Accessed: Jun 26, 2014) [IB]
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 of policy by other
Thus
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
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. Ot her officials stated that the complete destruction of Hezbollah was their
objective. It is telling that at
ew 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'.
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.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
ALTs
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Meditation
The affirmative endorses an idea that the entire world is manageable by humanity – this is rationale is
rooted in a technological being based inside western metaphysics – this flawed form of understanding not
only extinguishes alternative forms of knowledge but also risks planetary destruction
McWhorter 92 (LaDelle, Professor of Philosophy @Northeast Missouri State, 1992, “Heidegger and the Earth”, Date Accessed: 6-2114) [IB]
What it most illustrative is often also what is most common. Today, on all sides of ecological debate we hear, with greater and greater frequency, the word
management. On the one hand, business people want to manage natural resources so as to keep up profits . On the other hand, conservationists
want to manage natural resources so that there will be plenty of coal and oil and recreational facilities for future generations. These groups
and factions within them debate vociferously over which management policies are the best, that is, the most efficient and manageable. Radical
environmentalists damn both groups and claim it is human population growth and rising expectations that are in need of
management. But wherever we look, wherever we listen, we see and hear the term management. We are living in a veritable age of management. Before a
middle class child graduates from high school she or he is already preliminarily trained in the arts of weight management, stress management, and time management, to
name just a few. As we approach middle age we continue to practice these essential arts, refining and adapting our regulatory regimes as the pressures of life increase and
the body begins to break down. We have become a society of managers - of our homes, careers, portfolios, estates, even of our own bodies - so
is it surprising that we set ourselves up as the managers of the earth itself? And yet, as thoughtful earth-dwellers we must ask, what does this
signify? In numerous essays - in particular the beautiful 1953 essay, "The Question Concerning Technology" - Heidegger speaks of what he sees as the danger
of dangers in this, our age. This danger is a kind of forgetfulness – a forgetfulness that Heidegger thought could result not only in nuclear
disaster or environmental catastrophe, but in the loss of what makes us the kind of beings we are, beings who can think and who can stand
in thoughtful relationship to things. This forgetfulness is not a forgetting of facts and their relationships; it is a forgetfulness of something far more
important and far more fundamental than that. He called it forgetfulness of 'the mystery.’ It would be easy to imagine that by 'the mystery' Heidegger means some sort of
entity, some thing, temporarily hidden or permanently ineffable. But 'the mystery is not the name of some thing; it is the event of the occurring together of revealing and
concealing. Every academic discipline, whether it be biology or history, anthropology or mathematics, is interested in discovery, in the 'revelation of new truths"
Knowledge, at least as it is institutionalized in the modern world is concerned, then, with what Heidegger would call revealing, the
bringing to light, or the coming to presence of things. However, in order for any of this revealing to occur, Heidegger says, concealing must
also occur. Revealing and concealing belong together. Now, what does this mean? We know that in order to pay attention to one thing, we must stop
paying close attention to something else. In order to read philosophy we must stop reading cereal boxes. In order to attend to the needs of
students we must sacrifice some of our research time. Allowing for one thing to reveal itself means allowing for the concealing of
something else. All revealing comes at the price of concomitant concealment. But this is more than just a kind of Kantian acknowledgment of human
limitation. Heidegger is not simply dressing up the obvious, that is, the fact that no individual can undergo two different experiences simultaneously. His is not
a point about human subjectivity at all. Rather, it is a point about revealing itself. When revealing reveals itself as temporally linear and causally
ordered, for example, it cannot simultaneously reveal itself as ordered by song and unfolding dream. Furthermore, in revealing, revealing itself is
concealed in order for what is revealed to come forth. Thus, when revealing occurs concealing occurs as well. The two events are one and cannot
be separated. Too often we forget. The radiance of revelation blinds us both to its own event and to the shadows that it casts , so that revealing
conceals itself and its self-concealing conceals itself, and we fall prey to that strange power of vision to consign to oblivion whatever cannot be seen. Even our
forgetting is forgotten, and all races of absence absent themselves from our world. The noted physicist Stephen Hawking, in his popular book A Brief History of Time,
writes, "The eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe.,'5 Such a theory, many people would assert, would be a systematic
arrangement of all knowledge both already acquired and theoretically possible. lt would be a theory to end all theories, outside of which no information, no revelation could,
or would need to, occur. And the advent of such a theory would be as the shining of a light into every corner of being. Nothing would remain concealed. This dream of
Hawking's is a dream of power; in fact, it is a dream of absolute power, absolute control. It is a dream of the ultimate managerial utopia. This, Heidegger would
contend, is the dream of technological thought in the modern age. We dream of knowing, grasping everything, for then we can control,
then we can manage, everything. But it is only a dream, itself predicated, ironically enough, upon concealment, the self-concealing of the mystery. We can never
control-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 sort s. Those other approaches or paths of thinking must already have been
obliterated; those other knowledges must already have concealed themselves in order for technological or scientific revelation to occur. The danger of a managerial
approach to the world lies not then in what it knows nor in its planetary on into the secrets of galactic emergence or nuclear fission – but
in what it forgets, what it itself conceals. It forgets that any other truths are possible, and it forgets that the belonging together of revealing with
concealing is forever beyond the power of human management. We can never have, or know, it all; we can never manage everything .
Alternative: Vote negative to refuse action in favor of meditative thought
Ignore their constant calls for action it is the only way to break free of the endless cycle of management and
disaster – this key disruption allows for the world to reveal itself to us
McWhorter 92 (LaDelle, Professor of Philosophy @Northeast Missouri State, 1992, “Heidegger and the Earth”, Date Accessed: 6-2114) [IB]
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
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.
The affirmative forgetting of being ruins humanities essential nature and is worse than extinction – only
through meditative thought can we reconfigure our very existence this allows for a use of technology
without a reification of technological thought
Heidegger 66 (Martin, “Discourse on Thinking”, 1966, Jun 17, 2014) [IB]
Is man, then, a defenseless and perplexed victim at the mercy of the irresistible superior power of technology? He would be if man today abandons any intention to pit meditative thinking decisively
once meditative thinking awakens, it must be at work unceasingly and on every last occasion—hence, also,
here and now at this commemoration. For here we are considering what is threatened especially in the atomic age: the autochthony of the works of
man. Thus we ask now: even if the old rootedness is being lost in this age, may not a new ground and foundation be granted again to man, a foundation and ground out of which man's nature and all
against merely calculative thinking. But
his works can flourish in a new way even in the atomic age? What could the ground and foundation be for the new autochthony? Perhaps the answer we are looking for lies at hand; so near that we
all too easily overlook it. For the way to what is near is always the longest and thus the hardest for us humans. This way is the way of meditative thinking. Meditative thinking demands of us not to
cling one-sidedly to a single idea, nor to run down a one-track course of ideas. Meditative
thinking demands of us that we engage ourselves with what at first sight
does not go together at all. Let us give a trial. For all of us, the arrangements, devices, and machinery of technology are to a greater or lesser
extent indispensable. It would be foolish to attack technology blindly. It would be shortsighted to condemn it as the work of the devil. We depend on technical devices;
they even challenge us to ever greater advances. But suddenly and unaware we find ourselves so firmly shackled to these technical devices that we fall into
bondage to them. Still we can act otherwise. We can use technical devices, and yet with proper use also keep ourselves so free of them, that we may let go of them any
time. We can use technical devices as they ought to be used, and also let them alone as something which does not affect our inner and real core. We can affirm the unavoidable use
of technical devices, and also deny them the right to dominate us, and so to warp, confuse, and lay waste our nature. But will not saying
both yes and no this way to technical devices make our relation to technology ambivalent and insecure? On the contrary! Our relation to technology will become wonderfully simple and relaxed. We
let technical devices enter our daily life, and at the same time leave them outside, that is, let them alone, as things which are nothing absolute but remain dependent upon something higher. I would
Having this comportment we no longer view
things only in a technical way. It gives us clear vision and we notice that while the production and use of machines demands of us another relation to things, it is not a meaningless
call this comportment toward technology which expresses "yes" and at the s time "no," by an old word, releasement towards things.
relation. Farming and agriculture, for example, now have turned into a motorized food industry. Thus here, evidently, as elsewhere, a profound change is taking place in man's relation to nature and
to the world. But the meaning that reigns in this change remains obscure. There is then in all technical processes a meaning, not invented or made by us, which lays claim to what man does and leaves
undone. We do not know the significance of the uncanny increasing dominance of atomic technology. The
meaning pervading technology hides itself. But if we explicitly
and continuously heed the fact that such hidden meaning touches us everywhere in the world of technology, we stand at once within the
realm of that which hides itself from us, and hides itself just in approaching us. That which shows itself and at the same time withdraws is the essential trait
of what we call the mystery. I call the comportment which enables us to keep open to the meaning hidden in technology, openness to the mystery. Releasement towards things and openness to
the mystery belong together. They grant us the possibility of dwelling in the world in a totally different way. They promise us a new ground and foundation upon which
we can stand and endure in the world of technology without being imperiled by it. Releasement towards things and openness to the mystery give us a vision of a new autochthony which someday even
might be fit to recapture the old and now rapidly disappearing autochthony in a changed form. But for the time being—we do not know for how long—man
finds himself in a perilous
situation. Why? Just because a third world war might break out unexpectedly and bring about the complete annihilation of humanity and
the destruction of the earth? No. In this dawning atomic age a far greater danger threatens—precisely when the danger of a third world war has been
removed. A strange assertion! Strange indeed, but only as long as we do not meditate. In what sense is the statement made valid? The assertion is valid in the sense 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. What great danger then might move upon us? Then there might go
hand in hand with the greatest ingenuity in calculative planning and inventing indifference toward meditative thinking – total
thoughtlessness. And then? Then man would have denied and thrown away his own special nature—that he is a meditative being. Therefore,
the issue is the saving of man’s essential nature. Therefore, the issue is keeping meditative thinking alive. Yet releasement toward things and openness to the mystery
never happen of themselves. They do not befall us accidentally. Both flourish only through persistent, courageous thinking.
Meditative thought is key to solve humanity’s indigineous nature
Heidegger 66 (Martin, “Discourse on Thinking”, 1966, Jun 17, 2014) [IB]
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
There are, then, two kinds of thinking, each justified and needed in its own way: calculative thinking and meditative thinking. This meditative thinking is what we
have in mind when we say that contemporary man is in flight-from-thinking. Yet you may protest: mere meditative thinking finds itself floating unaware above reality.
It loses touch. It is worthless for dealing with current business. It profits nothing in carrying out practical affairs. And you may say, finally, that mere meditative thinking, persevering meditation, is
"above" the reach of ordinary understanding. In
this excuse only this much is true, meditative thinking does not just happen by itself any more than does
calculative thinking. At times it requires a greater effort. It demands more practice. It is in need of even more delicate care than any other genuine craft. But it must also be
able to bide its time, to await as does the farmer, whether the seed will come up and ripen. Yet anyone can follow the path of meditative thinking in his own manner and within his own limits. Why?
Because man is a thinking, that is, a meditating being. Thus meditative thinking need by no means be "high-flown." It is enough if we dwell
on what lies close and meditate on what is closest; upon that which concerns us, each one of us, here and now; here, on this patch of home ground; now, in
the present hour of history. 'What does this celebration suggest to us, in case we are ready to meditate? Then we notice that a work of art has flowered in the ground of our homeland. As we hold this
simple fact in mind, we cannot help remembering at once that during the last two centuries great poets and thinkers have been brought forth from the Swabian land. Thinking about it further makes
clear at once that Central Germany is likewise such a land, and so are East Prussia, Silesia, and Bohemia. We grow thoughtful and ask: does not the flourishing of any genuine work depend upon its
roots in a native soil? Johann
Peter Hebel once wrote: " We are plants which whether we like to admit it to ourselves or not-must with our roots
rise out of the earth in order to bloom in the ether and to bear fruit" ( Works, ed. Altwegg III, 314.) The poet means to say: For a truly joyous and salutary human work
to flourish, man must be able to mount from the depth of his home ground up into the ether. Ether here means the free air of the high heavens, the open realm of the spirit. We grow more thoughtful
and ask: does this claim of Johann Peter Hebel hold today? Does man still dwell calmly between heaven and earth? Does a meditative spirit still reign over the land? Is there still a life-giving homeland
in whose ground man may stand rooted, that is, be autochthonic? Many Germans have lost their homeland have had to leave their villages and towns, have been driven from their native soil. Countless
others whose homeland was saved, have yet wandered off. They have been caught up in the turmoil of the big cities, and have resettled in the wastelands of industrial districts. They are strangers now
to their former homeland. And those who have stayed on in their homeland? Often they are still more homeless than those who have been driven from their homeland. Hourly and daily they are
chained to radio and television. Week after week the movies carry them off into uncommon, but often merely common, realms of the imagination, and give the illusion of a world that is no world.
Picture magazines are everywhere available .
All that with which modern techniques of communication stimulate, assail, and. drive man-all that is already
much closer to man today than his fields around his farmstead, closer than the sky over the earth, closer than the change from night to day, closer than the conventions and
customs of his village, than the tradition of his native world. We grow more thoughtful and ask: What is happening here-with those driven from their homeland no less than with those who have
remained? Answer: the rootedness, the
autochthony, of man is threatened today at-its core. Even more: The loss-of-rootedness is caused not merely by circumstance and fortune,
The loss of autochthony springs from the spirit of the age into which all of us
were born. We grow still more thoughtful and ask: If this is so, can man, can man's work in the future still be expected to thrive in the fertile ground of a homeland and
mount into the ether, into the far reaches of the heavens and the spirit? Or will everything now fall into the clutches of planning and calculation, of organization
and automation?
nor does it stem only from the negligence and the superficiality of man's way of life.
Meditative thought solves – allows for us to escape the prison of the ego and see the interconnectedness of
every being
Devall and Sessions 85 (Bill, professor of sociology at Humboldt State Univ., and George, professor emeritus of philosophy¶ at
Sierra College. Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered)
the deep ecology norm of self-realization goes beyond the modern Western self which
is defined as an isolated ego striving primarily for hedonistic gratification or for a narrow sense of individual salvation in this life or the
next. This socially programmed sense of the narrow self or social self dislocates us, and leaves us prey to whatever fad or fashion is
prevalent in our society or social reference group. We are thus robbed of beginning the search for our unique spiritual/biological
personhood. Spiritual growth, or unfolding, begins when we cease to understand or see ourselves as isolated and narrow competing egos
and begin to identify with other humans from our family and friends to, eventually, our species. But the deep- ecology sense of self
requires a further maturity and growth, an identification which goes beyond humanity to include the nonhuman world. We must see
beyond our narrow contemporary cultural assumptions and values, and the conventional wisdom of our time and place, and this is best
achieved by the meditative deep questioning process. Only in this way can we hope to attain full mature personhood and uniqueness. ¶ A
nurturing nondominating society can help in the "real work" of becoming a whole person. The "real work" can be summarized symbolically as the realization of
"self-in-Self" where "Self" stands for organic wholeness. This process of the full unfolding of the self can also be summarized by the
phrase, "No one is saved until we are all saved," where the phrase "one" includes not only me, an individual human, but all humans,
whales, grizzly bears, whole rain forest ecosystems, mountains and rivers, the tiniest microbes in the soil, and so on.
In keeping with the spiritual traditions of many of the world's religions,
Meditative thought key to self transformation
Antolick 3 (Matthew, MA @University of South Florida, “Deep ecology and Heideggerian phenomenology”, 2003, Date Accessed: 621-14) [IB]
Both Heidegger and Naess are urging their readers towards some kind of selftransmutation .¶ For Naess, this transmutation is self-realization,
a widening and¶ deepening of the typical narrowness of the isolated subject for which the world (subject¶ included) presents itself as an object.
For Heidegger, this transmutation is an opening of¶ Da-sein to the primordial self-giving of poiesis expressed by the givenness of Ereignis.¶ Although
these two transmutations appear different in terms of the language through¶ which each view is expressed, they are the same. The deep self of Deep
Ecology is the¶ open Da-sein of Heideggerian phenomenology, especially as expressed in Heidegger’s¶ later philosophy. Poiesis as bringing forth is the
mutual origin of both conceptions. It is¶ this mutuality that serves as the basis for the assertion of their identity. ¶ We must remember
however that to understand this “identity” in substance ¶ ontological terms is to fail to understand its nature. The event ontology of
Heidegger’s¶ thinking provides the proper basis not only for getting at the nature of the activity that is being designated by self-realization
and the opening of Da-sein, but for understanding¶ just “what is to be done” in order to bring about such a deepening and opening of
oneself.¶ But the expectation of an instrumental explanation of “what is to be done” is a ¶ misunderstanding of the nature of poiesis in the same way that the rendering of a
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
is to be doneӦ cannot be laid out in means-ends terms without
stumbling headlong into substance¶ ontological terminology. No action of the individual subject qua subject can bring about ¶ the kind of
openness of which both Heidegger and Naess are speaking.
natural¶ area in cost-benefit analysis terms is a misunderstanding of nature. “What
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Let Nature Be
Attempts to work within the current technological thought processes to solve ecological problems are doomed
to failure - the alternative to the status quo is not to enact environmental reform but to think - to engage in a
transition away from the technological ontology of western metaphysics and to a way of engaging nature that
is based on the principle of “letting nature be” and disclose its being freely while not being enframed as a tool
to human ends.
Zimmerman 2003 (Michael E., “Heidegger and Deep Ecology”,
Deep ecologists, who represent one branch of the radical ecology movement, are said to be "deep" because they purportedly ask profounder questions about the origins of
today's ecological crisis. Like Heidegger, deep ecologists insist that this crisis is not accidental, but instead is a symptom of the arrogance of
anthropocentric humanism, which diminishes humankind while wantonly destroying nature. Heidegger would agree with deep ecologists
that attempts by "shallow" environmentalists to "reform" technological modernity (e.g., by passing pollution-control laws) only serve to
further its quest for total control over nature. Like Heidegger, deep ecologists believe that only a basic shift in humanity's selfunderstanding
and its attitude toward nature will prevent social and ecological catastrophe. According to deep ecology, for humanity to realize its genuine potential, and
thus to be authentic, people must let other things "be" what they are, instead of treating them merely as resources for human ends. For Heidegger and deep
ecologists, existing authentically does not mean achieving ever greater technical power and security at the expense of everyone and everything
else, but rather existing in a manner that lets things manifest themselves in ways that are appropriate to the things themselves. Modernity's
interconnected social and ecological crisis will end, then, only when humanity sheds its dissociative attitude toward nature and begins
instead to identity more widely with all things.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Phenomenology of Water
The alternative is to embrace the Phenomenology of Water
The attempt to control the world conceals its nature. Rather than fixing problems as soon as they arise so
that tools return to their inconspicuous state, we ought to take a moment in order to think their essence and
allow them to show themselves. This is particularly true in the case of water.
Barbaza 2012 (Remmon E., Associate Professor in Philosophy @Manila University, “Letting it Flow: Towards a Phenomenology of
Water in the Age of Modern Technology,”, 2012, Date Accessed: 6-20-2014) [IB]
we are now in a position to work out a phenomenology of water. A phenomenology of
water, thus, would mean letting water be seen from itself, just as water shows itself from itself. Water is a phenomenon insofar as it shows
itself. But it must be allowed to show itself, "just as it shows itself from itself." What we are concerned here is therefore not just the showing itself of
water, but the showing itself of water "just as it shows itself from itself." ¶ How does water show itself and from itself? We must first recall from Being
and Time that for the most part of our lives anything at all appears within the context of everyday human existence- with all the things we
preoccupy ourselves with and the useful things we take hold of and employ to meet our needs, to accomplish tasks, and to achieve
objective goals. We are always already in a world (which means a horizon of meaning, a context or web of references), and we always already
know our way about our daily lives. Water, like the other things we use in our daily lives, appears to us as handy, made readily available by the faucet in our
kitchen or the shower in our bathroom. We do not really pay attention to water, which is only in keeping with the being of useful things as
they recede into the background and remain inconspicuous for the most part. As Heidegger observes, "what is peculiar to what is initially at hand is
that it withdraws, so to speak, in its character of handiness in order to be really handy" (Being and Time 65).¶ But useful things can sometimes rise
out of their inconspicuousness and make themselves present before us, as happens when they malfunction, break down, run out, or get
lost. "When
we discover its unusability," Heidegger says, "the thing becomes conspicuous" (Being and Time 68). What is "initially and for the most part" ready-to-hand
(zuhanden), for the moment becomes present-at-hand (vorhanden)2 A breakdown of a tool or a piece of equipment can cause an interruption to the everyday and
familiar character of our human existence. We strive to bring our lives back to normalcy by bringing back our things to their normal,
useful state. And then we are back to our familiar, everyday world. "Pure objective presence," notes Heidegger, "makes itself known in the useful
thing only to withdraw again into the handiness of what is taken care of, that is, of what is being put back into repair" (Being and Time 68).¶
Interruptions to the normal flow of our daily existence are not always only negative. They can also become opportunities for us to take a
second look at our lives and how we stand in relation to the things that have broken down or been removed from us. We recall how in Chinese language
Having now seen in broad strokes what Heidegger means by phenomenology,
the word for crisis denotes both danger and opportunity.
We have to have a moment of retreat in order to critically investigate our relationship with water. What is
needed is a letting be. The current frame within academia, the government, NGO’s and private actors is
one of managerialism that only creates destruction. Rather, we need to take a step back and allow water to
show itself. This is the only way to avoid the catastrophes they have identified.
Barbaza 2012 (Remmon E., Associate Professor in Philosophy @Manila University, “Letting it Flow: Towards a Phenomenology of
Water in the Age of Modern Technology,”, 2012, Date Accessed: 6-20-2014) [IB]
the history of civilization is always closely tied with water. Nearly every great city was established near rivers or by the sea. And in
any case human life is not possible in places where there is no freshwater or no possibility of accessing it from a neighboring place. This
historical fact alone-that we build our lives around water-manifests our dependence as human beings and communities on water, particularly freshwater. But it seemed that we have reversed this relation of
dependence, making water adjust to our lives and projects and ambitions, as when residential communities built on watersheds or huge
dams erected on rivers force water to redirect itself as it seeks its own level, and many times with deadly repercussions. ¶ Perhaps there is
indeed some truth in the saying that nature does not know catastrophes, and that water always seeks its own level. But perhaps there is also
truth in the intuition that nature itself has its own wisdom that we human beings must allow to make itself manifest, and from which
human beings must learn, so that in letting water find its own level according to the designs of nature, we can also begin to level ourselves
with water, with nature as a whole, in a way that reflects the delicate balance of our relationship with all beings as a whole.¶ The water
crisis that is affecting more and more parts of the world is bringing together scientific experts, government officials, NGO workers,
academics, and ordinary citizens in their desire to address our common issues concerning water. The levels of responses range from the
practical and technical, to the ethical and theoretical. But overall the response is generally framed as a question of better water
management and governance. We want to manage and govern water well. ¶ This predominantly managerial and technical approach to
water, however, should give us pause. McWhorter offers an incisive critique of the managerial approach that dominates Western culture, asking whether our primarily managerial approach to environment through
We know that
the use of modern science and technology could very well be just a management of our guilt (which is just the other side of claiming success or superiority over nature) ("Guilt as Management Technology").¶ Brown and Schmidt,
one of the first things we need to do is "to critically evaluate ideas in the broader Western narrative that have tended to
privilege human welfare, scientific knowledge, and technological know-how," and thereby "to recognize that all knowledge is partial and
limited" and, finally, suggest that we take the stance of what they call "compassionate retreat" (265-66). Retreating, or taking a step back, as
opposed to the aggressive stance of control and management, is precisely what is called for by the disposition of letting, of letting-be and
letting-be-seen.¶ To a large extent of course the goals of better water management and governance are necessary and the efforts made
for their part, claim that
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
towards it laudable. But we might do well to make room for the question whether an approach that is primarily managerial and technical
is enough to make us realize the kind of stance we need to adopt in relation to water, or to know whether we need to restore a primordial
relationship with water that we lost in the midst of modern technology. As Heidegger says, "unless man first establishes himself beforehand in the
space proper to his essence and there takes up his dwelling, he will not be capable of anything essential within the destining now holding
sway" (The Question 39). For a primarily managerial or technical approach to our water issues does not really bring us to that "space proper to our
essence," where we might be
able "to take up our dwelling," nor does it make it possible for us to take the stance of letting that
phenomenology really is.¶ Such a stance of letting is perhaps the hardest to take, but it is the only one that can make it possible for water
to show itself as we restrain ourselves from foiling it at every turn as it, like us, seeks its way back home.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Releasement
The alternative is the do nothing as a renouncement of will
This renouncement of will allows for a revelation of Being outside of the space of calculation, the will and
metaphysics – where thinking is able to take place
Zimmerman 1981 (Michael E., Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University; Eclipse of the Self: The Development of Heidegger’s
Concept of Authenticity, pp. 245-248)
Under the domination of egoism and self-will, an individual regards himself as the self-grounding vantage point around which everything
else is organized as an object for him. In fact, however, we are born into a play of appearances which has no "center" and no "interiority." Only if we are released from the
isolation imposed by self- I willed egoism, however, can we become fully open for this play. In releasement, the playful region
"appropriates the presence [Wesen] of man for its own regioning.. . . " (G, 62/83) The released individual no longer experiences himself as looking
out on objects; instead, he feels that beings are appearing to each other through him ! How is this extraordinary releasement accomplished? First of all, since representational or
objectifying thinking is itself a kind of willing, we can hardly expect to stop such thinking by an act of will. Willing only reinforces will. Yet the release does not occur unless one is
somehow ready for it. Hence, the scientist says to the teacher: "You want a non-willing in the sense of renouncing of willing, so that through this we may release, or at least prepare to release, ourselves to the soughtfor essence of a thinking that is not a willing." (G, 31/59-60) Renouncing will, however, requires a "trace" of willing which disappears entirely in releasement.
This "trace of willing" is how we are to "think 'resoluteness' as it is thought in Being and Time: as the properly [eigens] undertaken self opening of Dasein for
the open.. . . " (G, 59/81) Since releasement lies beyond willing, it stands outside of the ordinary distinction between activity and passivity. In the context
of this dialogue, "doing" means acting to achieve a goal posited by the ego. The "not-doing" characteristic of the released individual, however,
"is in no way a matter of weakly allowing things to slide and drift along." (G, 33/61). Instead, such not-doing is "something like the power of action
and resolve." (G, 58/80) Releasement means resolving to let the nature of truth (un-concealment) be revealed. This resolve, a kind of "endurance" (Ausdauer) which increases as
releasement itself increases, is called "constancy" (Instandigkeit). (G, 59/81) Releasement is a noble-mindedness (Edelmut) which humbly awaits the disclosure of the Being of beings. Awaiting the manifestation
of Being can involve practical activity. As released, we are open for the possibilities of beings. Instead of subjecting things to our will, we seek
to let them be what they already are. There are two ways of tilling the soil, for example. Subjectivistic man treats the earth merely as raw material to be exploited for profit; hence, he uses chemicals which
dramatically improve crop "production" for a time, but which ultimately degrade the earth. Released man regards the earth as the source of life; hence, in tilling it, he takes care that the soil remains fertile and healthy. "Waiting" on
Being can mean nurturing and caring. True nobility resides in such waiting. If the noble is that which has origins (Herkunft), and if our origin as human , beings is the region of regions (Ereignis), we are noble when we let
the ego gives way to what is more fundamental – openness
ourselves be appropriated by the region. When appropriated,
. TEACHER: A patient noble-mindedness would be pure resting in
itself of that willing, which, renouncing willing, has released itself to what is not will. SCHOLAR: Noble-mindedness would be the essence of thinking [Denken] and thereby of thanking [Danken]. TEACHER: Of that thanking
Thinking" does not mean deductive reasoning, calculating, or categorizing.
These dualistic operations reduce beings to objects for the subject. In genuine thinking, the "self" or "subject" disappears. In the released individual, there is no
longer a self-conscious ego; instead, Ereignis is aware of itself through the cleared individual. i The ego-subject is eclipsed by the self-manifesting play of appearances. Heidegger remarks in his essay, "The
Turning": Only when the human essence, in the Ereignk of the insight by which he himself is behold, renounces human self-will [Eigensinn] and projects himself toward that insight
and away from himself, does he correspond in his essence to the claim of that insight . In thus corresponding man is gathered into his own [ge-eignet], so that he, within the
safeguarded element of world, may, as mortal, look out toward the divine. (TK, 45/47) Thinking is a kind of thanking. In thanking, we accept the gift of existence. In accepting
which does not have to thank for something, but only thanks for being allowed to thank. (G, 64- 65/85) "
ourselves, we become ourselves. As released, we gratefully enter into the play of which we are already a part. Releasement means "homecoming" (Holderlin). Thinking as thanking means loving. In What Is Called Thinking?,
Heidegger cites Holderlin's line: "Who the deepest has thought, loves what is most alive." (WHD, 9/20) Thinking as thanking means being "poor in I spirit," seeking nothing, and submitting to the necessity of the play of
appearances. The "thinking which recalls" (andenkendes Denken) I preserves, gathers, and reveals the cosmic play analogously to how the cosmic play gathers the absence (aeon) in which beings can appear to one anpther. In a
poem called "Thanks," written for Rene' Char, Heidegger says: "Giving thanks: announcing one's belonging to/the needy, appropriating event." (D, 87) Because we always belong to the appropriating event, we are always open for
Releasement means becoming aware of our openness. Because Heidegger wants to avoid describing Ereignis as an agent, he cannot quite say that ¶ Ereignis releases us. The release
simply comes unexpectedly as a gift, in a way similar to the advent of what Christianity calls b b grace." As John D. Caputo and Reiner Schiirmann have demonstrated, Heidegger's concept of releasement
it.
(Gelassenheit) resembles the I Christian mystic Meister Eckhart's concept of releasement (Gelkenheit, J6 According to Caputo, the following "analogy of proportionality" holds between Heidegger's concept and that of Eckhart:
Being is to Dasein as God is to the soul. For both thinkers, releasement (redemption) is not an achievement of the self; rather, it is a matter of becoming what we already are. For Heidegger, this means becoming the clearing in
which the cosmic play can display itself; for I Eckhart, this means becoming the clearing for the birth of Jesus I (the advent of God) in the soul. Eckhart explains that the soul is the "image" of God insofar as God gives birth to His
Son (hence, to Himself) in it. This divine birth, however, requires that the soul be cleared and prepared through grace. God does not give birth to Himself in a soul seized with self-will. Self-will includes being attached to worldly
affairs. Hence, for Eckhart, releasement is detachment (Abgeschiedenheit) from things. So free is the released soul from purposive or willed activity that it does not even act in order to please God. It cannot please Him, for it is
united with Him. Indeed, l it is united with the Godhead (Gottheit), the abyss which lies beyond the personal God of Creation.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Rethink
The alternative is to renounce the affirmative and their calls for solutions – instead we should embrace the
mysterious and random universe and carry on the path of thinking never asking for answers but accepting
tension of persistent questioning which remains radically exotic to calculative thinking this method of
thinking is completely foreign to both incorporation and cooptation
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
In being open to this possibility, in being open to its mysterious pull on us, we are heeding something in us, something that tells us (even
if only by way of hinting and by eluding our intellectual grasp) that be-ing is not something separate from us. Somehow, it—in its very
withdrawing—speaks to us at a very deep level. That is why Heidegger could say to his neighbors that, to get under way in thinking, it is
enough to genuinely heed and ponder what is of concern to us, what is close to us. Whether this call to think the mystery of be-ing is provoked by
pulling a perfect scallion from the soil, by being plunged into darkness when the power goes out, or by trying to understand how the history of Western philosophy shapes
us, it draws us into (the) be-ing that is not just of “beings” in some vague and general sense but is unique in each instance and pertains to us and everything of concern to us.
This dynamic, relational enowning and arising of everything is so near to us that it could be said—as Heidegger does say— of it that it is our very heart’s core. But as close
as this is it calls us to think, because the more we are touched and moved and drawn by it, the more elusively compelling it becomes. ¶ Being drawn on by what thus
withdraws is what sets us on the way of thinking and inclines us to continue moving along the way. It compels and attunes our
questioning. Over and over Heidegger says that what is worthy of questioning is what is worthy of thought, of attempting to bring to
language “the inconspicuousness of a withholding, its riches” (marginal note). The questioning that is intrinsic to thinking that always
remains on the way does not ask for answers. It places “questions that seek what no inventiveness can find” because the matter itself is
inexhaustible and utterly resistant to calculative thinking. To persist in this thinking is not to persist in the attempt to find an answer but
rather to persist in questioning, to remain in motion, in unresolved tension and openness to transformative possibility. The questioning
that holds thinking on the way is in no way a matter of question and answer (distinct moments in a linear process). Rather, being drawn on
by withdrawal into ab-ground keeps thinking ever more deeply, even compellingly, engaged with the matter. This unfolds as a different
experience of questioning, jarring our presuppositions about what questions and answers are. “If an answer could be given it would
consist in a transformation of thinking, not in a propositional statement about a matter at stake.”And such a radical transformation of
thinking also transforms us, whose very nature is in question and at stake, as this thinking proceeds. Withdrawing and the questioning it
evokes are in oscillating play, pulling thinking along, opening a way into the matter. Going the way of this interplay calls forth, is called
forth by, and enacts an attuning. What does this say? In the first place, it indicates that neither thoughtful questioning nor attuning causes one another. Instead, there
is a resonance between questioning and attuning whereby the attuning both compels and responds to the questioning and the ever-deepening questioning calls forth a
response that in turn attunes further questioning. The questioning responds to the beckoning hints and traces and echoes of be-ing’s withdrawing and in turn “challenges being to thoroughly attune the questioning” in its very withdrawing. So it is that thinking takes its bearings from be-ing while opening the region of the
thinking of be-ing and getting under way within it.
Adjusting our thinking is key
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
What does this mean? Why is it significant? Heidegger’s “one question” has many facets. In a way, that comment seems almost trivial. We take “being” to refer to anything
that exists in any way at all. So, of course, that includes everything! That seemingly trivial obviousness, however, only covers over what is really going on here. Because
being “includes everything,” a transformation in the way we think “being” is going to bring a change in, at the very least, thinking and
language (the “is”). But thinking and language shape our understanding of time, space, things, and ourselves. In the contemporary world
our understanding of all of these things is also shaped by science and technology . So it is not just the fact that Heidegger questions the meaning of being
that results in his ongoing concern with all these other areas but that his way of thinking and questioning concerning being is already in and of itself
radically transformative. One of the ways it transforms thinking is in the direction of a much clearer idea of the dynamic relationality of
everything that is. At the moment, this early on, I can only assert this: change one key thing, and everything else changes, too. For Western
philosophy the “meaning of being” is the keystone. Move it, change it, and everything else changes; remove it, and the whole
metaphysical edifice falls. And, as will gradually become more and more clear, all these crucial matters (being, time, space, language, thinking,
mind, technology’s dominance, things, earth, world, us) resonate and dance with one another in a complex and dynamic intertwining.
Again: change one thing, change everything. Not, however, in the way we usually think of change, in terms of linear cause and effect. How, then? This must
emerge as we go on.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
ALT- Solvency
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Solves Bio D
Only the alternative solves ecological diversity
Thiele 1995 (Leslie Paul, Professor of Political Science, University of Florida, TIMELY MEDITATIONS, p. 186)
Heidegger's unwillingness to exchange anthropocentrism for biocentrism, however , does not weaken his contribution to an ecological
politics. Arguably, it makes his contribution more significant. Celebrating the unique capacities of human being to disclose in a way that
preserves best ensures humanity's caretaking of the earth and the world. The fostering of human freedom, understood as a disclosive
letting-be rather than a sovereign control, is precisely the measure that will best safeguard the earth's ecological diversity and health. One of
Heidegger's favorite Heraclitean fragments is "Nature loves to hide." Nature loves to hide, one might say, because it resists becoming an open book. However we disclose
the natural world, something else remains hidden yet beckoning: relationships of interdependence, evolutionary legacies, biological and aesthetic properties. The vast
diversity of nature solicits the manifold modes of disclosure to which humans are heir because of their capacity for freedom. Hence our disclosive guardianship of
nature marks, at the same time, the preservation of the greatness and uniqueness of human being .
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Solves Extinction
Humanity is barreling towards extinction only by rethinking via the alternative can we avert catastrophe
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
I was on the right track for at least two good reasons. “In the question of being, we are dealing solely with the enactment of this preparation for our history. All specific
‘contents’ and ‘opinions’ and ‘pathways’ of the first attempt in Being and Time are incidental and can disappear. But reaching into the free-play of time-space
of
be-ing must continue” (
:
/
). So there is much more to be thought, and this thinking has still only just begun. The
way of thinking opened up by Heidegger is a powerful way— though by no means the only way—to recover much that has been lost to us
through the dominance of a way of thinking and living that disallows genuine questioning and, in so doing, disempowers us and is on the
brink of destroying the earth and our fellow living beings. Recovering lost possibilities is already something significant , but I think if we can
follow through with thinking after Heidegger, we will also open the way to as yet unimagined possibilities . This is no panacea; it takes work and the
willingness to be radically changed. But, I wager, the effort and risk are well worth it.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Solves Identity
Deep Ecology solves identity conflict – fluid forms of identification creates and interdependency between
both subjects and objects guarantees just treatment
Antolick 3 (Matthew, MA @University of South Florida, “Deep ecology and Heideggerian phenomenology”, 2003, Date Accessed: 621-14) [IB]
Intrinsicality and instrumentality are interdependent in the manner of organisms in ¶ symbiosis. This is the conception of “identification” in DE. To substantiate it into a ¶
statement of pure sameness is to fall into a wider atomism, but atomism nonetheless. By¶ contrast, identification in DE is fluid and dynamic, similar to how things
are rooted in¶ Logos in the Heraclitean conception of the term: things have identities, but not strictly out¶ of themselves as individuals qua individuals.
In the same way, neither ought and is, nor¶ value and fact, are substantially distinct.¶ Our opinions as to what is or ought to be done are highly
dependent upon our¶ hypotheses as to how the world is organized. Applied to ecological relationships,¶ this implies that our norms are dependent
upon our beliefs regarding the ¶ interdependency relations within the biosphere.97 ¶ Interdependency relations entail as well an
interdependency of self-realization(s).¶ A identifies with the other (B) to such a degree that “when B seeks a just treatment, A¶ supports the
claim.”98 All of the interdependencies cited thus far point again to something¶ that unites them. This “thing” is no substantial thing: it is more mysterious than¶ any neatly
boxed or categorized “it.”
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Solves Value to Life
Alt solves agency in the world on the negative is not human and non-humans centered it is instead the
assemblages created between the two that increase value to life
Bennett 2005 (Jane, ProfessorPolitical Theory @Johns Hopkins University Department of Political Science, “The Agency of
Assemblages and the North American Blackout”, 2005, Date Accessed: Jun 27, 2014) [IB]
the grid is the biggest gizmo
ever built. . . . On Thursday [August 14, 2003], the grid’s heart fluttered. . . . Complicated beyond full understanding, even by experts—[the grid] lives and occasionally dies by
its own mysterious rules.”3 What can it mean to say that the grid’s “heart fluttered” or that the grid lives “by its own rules”? What is this power it wields? Can it be described as a kind of agency, despite the fact
The International Herald Tribune, on the day after the blackout, reported that the “vast but shadowy web of transmission lines, power generating plants and sub- stations known as
that the term is usually restricted to intentional, human acts? What happens to the idea of an agent once nonhuman materialit ies are figured less as social constructions and more as actors and once humans are themselves assessed as
members of human-nonhuman assemblages? How does the agency of assemblages compare to more familiar notions, such as the willed intentionality of persons, the disciplinary power of society, or the automatism of natural
processes? How does recognition of the nonhuman and nonindividuated dimensions of agency alter established notions of moral responsibility and political accountability?¶ My strategy is to focus attention on the distributive and
composite nature of agency. Are there not human, biological, vegetal, pharmaceutical, and viral agents? Is not the ability to make a difference, to produce effects, or even to initi- ate action distributed across an ontologically diverse
Some actants have sufficient coherence to appear as entities; others, because of their great
volatility, fast pace of evolution, or minuteness of scale, are best conceived as forces. Moreover, while individual entities and singular forces
each exercise agentic capacities, isn’t there also an agency proper to the groupings they form? This is the agency of assemblages: the
distinctive efficacy of a working whole made up, variously, of somatic, technological, cultural, and atmospheric elements. Because each
member-actant maintains an energetic pulse slightly “off” from that exuded by the assemblage, such assemblages are never fixed blocks
but open-ended wholes.5¶ Before elaborating such a distributive and composite notion of agency, let me say a bit about the materialist ontology with which it is allied. This faith, or better, this wonder,
can be described as a kind of vitalism, an enchanted materialism. Within this materialism, the world is figured as neither mechanistic nor
teleologi- cal but rather as alive with movement and with a certain power of expression. 6 By “power of expression,” I mean the ability of bodies to
become otherwise than they are, to press out of their current configuration and enter into new compositions of self as well as into new
alliances and rivalries with others.7 Within the terms of this imaginary, there are various sources or sites of agency, including the intentionality of a
human animal, the temperament of a brain’s chemistry, the momentum of a social movement, the mood of an architectural form, the
propensity of a family, the style of a corporation, the drive of a sound-field, and the decisions of molecules at far-from-equilibrium states.¶
range of actors—or actants, to use Bruno Latour’s less-anthropocentric term?4
So, my profession of faith (with a nod to the Nicene Creed): I believe in one Nature, vibrant and overflowing, material and energetic, maker of all that is, seen and unseen. I believe that this “pluriverse” “is continually doing things,
this “generative mobility”9 “resists full translation and exceeds our comprehensive grasp.”10
to experience materiality as vital and animated is to enrich the quality of human life.
things that bear upon us . . . as forces upon material beings.”8 I believe that
I believe that
Or, as Spinoza suggests, the more kinds of bodies with which a human
body can productively affiliate, the greater the prospects for an intelligent way of life: “as the body is more capable of being affected in many ways and of affecting external bodies . . . so the mind is more capable of thinking.”11¶
More needs to be said to flesh out this materialism. But let me return to the focus of this essay: a distributive, composite notion of agency; an agency that includes the nonhumans with which we join forces or vie for control. Back,
then, to the blackout of August 2003.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
AT – Turns
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
AT – Alt = Anarchy
The alternative does advocate an complete overhaul of the status quo instead a simple reorientation to the
way we treat nature is sufficient to maintain agricultural sustainability
Drengson 11 (Alan, University of Victoria¶ Victoria, BC, Canada¶ Bill Deval l, Humboldt State University¶ Arcata, CA, USA¶ Mark A
Schroll 2¶ Co-Editor, Restoration Earth “The Deep Ecology Movement: ¶ Origins, Development, and Future Prospects¶ (Toward a
Transpersonal Ecosophy)”, 2011, Date Accessed: 6-21-14) [IB]
An image of human adaptation to the world and [an]¶ acceptance of [its] given conditions without escape,¶ rebellion, or egotistical insistence upon human¶ centrality.
(Meeker, 1972, p. 182)¶ In other words, those urging a transformation of¶ consciousness do not support the belief that humanity will¶ be saved
by
supernatural forces from the consequences of¶ mistreating nature. This is not to suggest that those urging ¶ a transformation of
consciousness are in favor of totally¶ abandoning humankind’s relationship with the sacred, or¶ a total and complete overthrow of the
status quo. What¶ is being suggested is the need to transcend the narrow¶ piety of the established social order, whose governance is¶ predicated on
idealistic platitudes far beyond the reach¶ of the common citizen. Humankind is being invited¶ to participate in the fullness of nature as a wilderness, ¶
not a well-manicured garden that is dominated and ¶ controlled for human use. This does not require giving¶ up gardening and agriculture
in the practical sense, but¶ an end to the treatment of nature as an object that exists ¶ only for instrumental use: an idea whose goal, according¶
to Wes Jackson (1992), is to “seriously begin to build a¶ science of agricultural sustainability, where nature is the ¶ measure” (p. 92). The goal of
sustainable agriculture is to¶ move away from monocultural farming techniques and ¶ seasonal reliance on herbicides and pesticides to
control¶ weeds and insects.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
AT – CTP
Theory is a prerequisite to politics
Brown 05 (Wendy, Princeton in 1983, http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8079.html)
On the one hand, 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.
Ontology before political reform it cannot succeed without it
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 transcendentalontological 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 quasitranscendental ‘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 anti-democratic
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-
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
Communist dissidents such as Havel overlook, then, is that
pragmatic double, has dismissed Havel as a ‘socialist’.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
AT – Do Nothing Alts Bad
our alternative is not merely ‘inaction’ in the sense of doing nothing instead stands on the forefront of
ethical action with the other while allowing space for thinking to flourish
****DO NOT READ THIS CARD IF YOU ALREADY READ IT AS AN ANSWER TO ETHICS CROSSAPPLY THE PROPER WARRANT
AND MOVE ON****
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
It does not mean simply pulling back and letting whatever happens happen or simply refraining from all action in regard to
things . Again, that could only be an imaginary sort of freedom or freeing, bearing no relation to our experience of things. We are already
thoroughly entwined with things, mutually shaping one another, with no way out short of death (a rather unappealing notion of freedom). Words that
tend to come into play and join with one another when Heidegger discusses this matter are opening, clearing, freeing, lighting, lightening, gathering, sparing-and-preserving
(one word: Schonen), and, of course, thinking. What does this joining say to us? In the first place, it evokes everything that has already been said of our situation in regard to
the relational dynamic of timing-spacing-thinging as briefly recapitulated just above. This is the site of our dwelling, moment by moment. These are the
moments when the openly radiant play of timing-spacing-thinging breaks through and arises into our fully embodied awareness in face-toface encounter with things, not “things in general” but this thing. This fig, this stapler, this blade of grass, this hand held in front of my face, or these hands
holding the injured goldfinch, or this ladybug eating an aphid, or this bolt of lightning, or this sip of gin and tonic sliding coolly down my throat. In Heidegger’s discussion
of space in “Building Dwelling Thinking” he helped us to think clearly through to the insight that we are not just encapsulated bodies. We are not just
“physical objects” housing a mind, as my discussion of the dualisms released by this thinking made clear. This also must open up our understanding
of things. We already know that things are their own gathering of timing-spacing-thinging, so they cannot be thought of as encapsulated
objects. “Thing” is not at all synonymous with “object.” The scope of what thinking can call “thing” comes to awareness only in encounters with things themselves. The
conceptual determinations of “part and whole” or “one and many” cannot be overlaid on the thinging of the thing. It cannot be
predetermined or predefined. That is one way that we free things in learning to dwell with them: we learn to let them say themselves
rather than assigning our own designations to them ahead of time. ¶ This also frees us in that our own responses to things are not to be
conceptually predetermined. This leads me into a question that has to be taken up at some point. One of the main ways our responses to things and,
even more so, to each other get predetermined is by way of ethics. I have already said that ethics is not dwelling and that it is, in fact, a
hindrance to dwelling . But then how are we to dwell, how are we to live well and thoughtfully, if not within some ethical framework that can guide our thoughts and
actions? In the first place, there is no substitute for thinking, and we must do this thinking ourselves. That does not imply, of course, that it
happens in a vacuum, ex nihilo. If that were the case, I would not be writing a book called Thinking after Heidegger. On the other hand, Heidegger himself was quite
clear, as I have already pointed out here and there, that ( ) his thinking is not to be taken as any kind of doctrine and ( ) each person must do her own thinking
in her own situation, each time. As he put it, if all we intend to do is parrot Heidegger, then we would be better off to burn our “notes, however precise they may
be—and the sooner the better” (
/
). The operative word here, in my title, is the ambiguous after. After: in the manner of, according to. After:
later, going beyond. However, since it is Heidegger whom I am thinking after, the two senses converge. Thinking in the manner of Heidegger, in the way opened up by
Heidegger, is to think not according to Heidegger but according to the matter for thinking, which always goes beyond any one saying attempt, no matter how brilliant it may
be. The ineffability of the radiant emptiness of be-ing always refuses to be captured in words. Thus the most careful and insightful and co-responding thinking will always
open onto more; it will always have something to say later as it continues to engage the matter. This matter, be-ing, is also said in this way: timing-spacing-thinging. Being
is inseparable from us, from things. So the matter for thinking, what calls for thinking, is to be engaged as it comes to meet us in language and as it comes to meet us in our
encounters with things.¶ In both cases, having let go of a predetermined response, our corresponding to the saying and showing in language and of
things must be a spontaneous response. And there you have it: my response to the question of how we enact dwelling in the absence of
ethics. This spontaneity arises in and accords with the simultaneity of timing-spacing-thinging, which is our t\here, whether or not we are
aware of it. The point of thinking is to become aware of it. The simultaneity of timing-spacing-thinging is, then, the simultaneity of
radiant emptiness and lucidity.6 Therefore, “ spontaneous response” is nothing at all like any mere thoughtless, knee-jerk, “on the
spot” reactivity. It is, in fact, quite the opposite, as it arises in each case from our fully embodied heart-mind, the thanc. In chapter I
described, in a preliminary way, how thinking arises in the responsiveness of our heart’s core, the heart-mind, the thanc. What I am saying here is
that this thought carries over into the question of our responses and actions in relation to things. How we respond and relate to things also
can emerge spontaneously from the thanc , without rule, or doctrine, or ethical normativity having any role to play .
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
AT – Ethics
Only our alternative is not merely ‘inaction’ in the sense of doing nothing instead stands on the forefront of
ethical action with the other while allowing space for thinking to flourish
****DO NOT READ THIS CARD IF YOU ALREADY READ IT AS AN ANSWER TO DO NOTHING ALTS CROSSAPPLY THE PROPER
WARRANT AND MOVE ON****
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
It does not mean simply pulling back and letting whatever happens happen or simply refraining from all action in regard to
things . Again, that could only be an imaginary sort of freedom or freeing, bearing no relation to our experience of things. We are already
thoroughly entwined with things, mutually shaping one another, with no way out short of death (a rather unappealing notion of freedom). Words that
tend to come into play and join with one another when Heidegger discusses this matter are opening, clearing, freeing, lighting, lightening, gathering, sparing-and-preserving
(one word: Schonen), and, of course, thinking. What does this joining say to us? In the first place, it evokes everything that has already been said of our situation in regard to
the relational dynamic of timing-spacing-thinging as briefly recapitulated just above. This is the site of our dwelling, moment by moment. These are the
moments when the openly radiant play of timing-spacing-thinging breaks through and arises into our fully embodied awareness in face-toface encounter with things, not “things in general” but this thing. This fig, this stapler, this blade of grass, this hand held in front of my face, or these hands
holding the injured goldfinch, or this ladybug eating an aphid, or this bolt of lightning, or this sip of gin and tonic sliding coolly down my throat. In Heidegger’s discussion
of space in “Building Dwelling Thinking” he helped us to think clearly through to the insight that we are not just encapsulated bodies. We are not just
“physical objects” housing a mind, as my discussion of the dualisms released by this thinking made clear. This also must open up our understanding
of things. We already know that things are their own gathering of timing-spacing-thinging, so they cannot be thought of as encapsulated
objects. “Thing” is not at all synonymous with “object.” The scope of what thinking can call “thing” comes to awareness only in encounters with things themselves. The
conceptual determinations of “part and whole” or “one and many” cannot be overlaid on the thinging of the thing. It cannot be
predetermined or predefined. That is one way that we free things in learning to dwell with them: we learn to let them say themselves
rather than assigning our own designations to them ahead of time. ¶ This also frees us in that our own responses to things are not to be
conceptually predetermined. This leads me into a question that has to be taken up at some point. One of the main ways our responses to things and,
even more so, to each other get predetermined is by way of ethics. I have already said that ethics is not dwelling and that it is, in fact, a
hindrance to dwelling . But then how are we to dwell, how are we to live well and thoughtfully, if not within some ethical framework that can guide our thoughts and
actions? In the first place, there is no substitute for thinking, and we must do this thinking ourselves. That does not imply, of course, that it
happens in a vacuum, ex nihilo. If that were the case, I would not be writing a book called Thinking after Heidegger. On the other hand, Heidegger himself was quite
clear, as I have already pointed out here and there, that ( ) his thinking is not to be taken as any kind of doctrine and ( ) each person must do her own thinking
in her own situation, each time. As he put it, if all we intend to do is parrot Heidegger, then we would be better off to burn our “notes, however precise they may
be—and the sooner the better” (
/
). The operative word here, in my title, is the ambiguous after. After: in the manner of, according to. After:
later, going beyond. However, since it is Heidegger whom I am thinking after, the two senses converge. Thinking in the manner of Heidegger, in the way opened up by
Heidegger, is to think not according to Heidegger but according to the matter for thinking, which always goes beyond any one saying attempt, no matter how brilliant it may
be. The ineffability of the radiant emptiness of be-ing always refuses to be captured in words. Thus the most careful and insightful and co-responding thinking will always
open onto more; it will always have something to say later as it continues to engage the matter. This matter, be-ing, is also said in this way: timing-spacing-thinging. Being
is inseparable from us, from things. So the matter for thinking, what calls for thinking, is to be engaged as it comes to meet us in language and as it comes to meet us in our
encounters with things.¶ In both cases, having let go of a predetermined response, our corresponding to the saying and showing in language and of
things must be a spontaneous response. And there you have it: my response to the question of how we enact dwelling in the absence of
ethics. This spontaneity arises in and accords with the simultaneity of timing-spacing-thinging, which is our t\here, whether or not we are
aware of it. The point of thinking is to become aware of it. The simultaneity of timing-spacing-thinging is, then, the simultaneity of
radiant emptiness and lucidity.6 Therefore, “ spontaneous response” is nothing at all like any mere thoughtless, knee-jerk, “on the
spot” reactivity. It is, in fact, quite the opposite, as it arises in each case from our fully embodied heart-mind, the thanc. In chapter I
described, in a preliminary way, how thinking arises in the responsiveness of our heart’s core, the heart-mind, the thanc. What I am saying here is
that this thought carries over into the question of our responses and actions in relation to things. How we respond and relate to things also
can emerge spontaneously from the thanc , without rule, or doctrine, or ethical normativity having any role to play .
The affirmatives ethics are a byproduct of their calculative mindset of ‘problem solving’ this attempt to
adopt ethics fails and denies the transformative potential of the alternative
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
try to derive “an ethics” from the thinking of be-ing would be to expect both too much and too little. It would
expect too much in looking for a way to solve problems and to expect this solution to come by way of the usual mechanics of theory
production: concepts, principles, argumentation. The thinking of be-ing is, for this purpose, useless (
:
/
). But the
So the bottom line is that to
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
demand for an ethics also expects too little. The kind of transformation that becomes possible here runs much deeper than a willed change
of attitude, a new set of values, or a different kind of ethics ever could. “With all the good intentions and all the ceaseless effort, these
attempts are no more than makeshift patchwork, expedients for the moment. And why? Because the ideas of aims, purposes, and means,
of effects and causes, from which all these attempts arise—because these ideas are from the start incapable of holding themselves open to
what is” and thus fall far short of the kind of radical transformation opened up in the thinking of be-ing, the possibility of dwelling with
things in mindfulness of our interrelationality in timing-spacing-thinging (
–
/
;
:
,
–
/
–
,
). Furthermore, the very basis of ethical theory, its grounding on some definite idea of the nature of beings, is thoroughly
shaken in the thinking of be-ing. “All calculating according to ‘purposes’ and ‘values’ stems from an entirely definite interpretation of
beings. . . . [H]ereby the question of be-ing is not even intimated, let alone asked[,] . . . [resulting in] all noisy talk . . . without foundation
and empty” (
:
/
). The thinking of be-ing and its opening toward dwelling is not an attempt to solve our problems
and aim at utopia through some kind of ethical-political planning. It is also not subject to the kinds of limits that pertain to such attempts, attempts that
limit transformation to incremental change within predetermined bounds. We cannot predict what may come, but one thing is clear: a way of thinking
that alters all our deepest presuppositions about ourselves and the nature of the world is going to have unimaginably far-reaching
ramifications, if it can be thought and imagined and lived. I said earlier in this book, as the all-pervasive nature of dynamic relationality began to come to the
fore, “Change one thing, and everything changes.” If that “one thing” is the thought of be-ing, and the next thing is our understanding of
ourselves, then everything else begins to follow. I hope it is clear that I do not mean “follow” here in the sense in which each premise in an argument follows
from another. What follows from (and accompanies) the thinking of be-ing is a multifaceted shifting in which “all relationship to a being is transformed.” Here the imagery
of Indra’s net is again helpful. I brought it into play at first to help explain the way that the joinings of guidewords work. Those guidewords, however, say and show
something of the dynamic of the turnings in enowning, of timing-spacing-thinging. One way that Heidegger gives us to think the possibility of transformation is of turning
with the turnings in enowning (
:
/
). This transforming will not be subject to planning and prediction. On the contrary, it
depends on being attuned to the dynamic of timing-spacing-thinging, being attuned to the reservedness that echoes being’s withdrawal
from any grasping attempt.We might well wonder, then, what comes next. We proceed by once again gathering ourselves to releasement
toward things and openness to mystery.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
AT – Util
their utilitarian calculations – nature and its usefulness in terms of development is all that matters
Sachs 1995 (Wolfgang, fellow @ Institute for Cultural Studies. “Global Ecology and the Shadow of ‘Development’,” in Deep Ecology
for
the 21st Century, ed. George Sessions, p. 385)
Even bearing in mind a very loose definition of development, the anthropocentric bias of the statement springs to mind; it is not the¶ preservation of nature’s dignity which
is on the international agenda, but to extend humancentered¶ utilitarianism to posterity. Needless to say, the naturalist and biocentric current of¶
present-day environmentalism has been cut out by this conceptual operation. With¶ “development” back in the saddle, the view on nature
changes. The question now becomes:¶ which of nature’s “services” are to what extent indispensable for further development? Or the ¶
other way around: which “services” of nature are dispensable or can be substituted by, for¶ example, new materials or genetic engineering? In other
words, nature turns into a variable,¶ albeit it a critical one, in sustaining development. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that “nature capital” has already¶
become a fashionable notion among ecological economists.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
AT – Ev To Generic
Hasst 8 (Sanna, Philosophy @University of Jyvuasyla, "RELEASING UPPER LAPLAND Martin Heidegger and the question
concerning nature", 2008, www.metla.fi/hanke/3400/Pro-gradu-Sanna-Hast.pdf, Date accessed: Jun 26, 2014) [IB]
Another important goal of this research is to take part in the discussion in the larger sphere of environmental philosophy as part of
environmental problems and conflicts. In a way, this particular case represents a typical conflict of interests, land- use, rights and exploitation
of natural resources. Similar situations can be found practically all over the world. How can Heidegger’s philosophy contribute to this multidimensional field of environmental
philosophy?¶ In one of his essays Hubert Dreyfus (1997) places a very significant question: he wants to know, how we can relate ourselves to technology in a way that not only resists its devastation but also gives it a positive role
If, indeed technology is the most compelling mode of revealing of our time, the most
compelling way of dealing with nature, how does this manifest in the situation in Upper Lapland and how should we proceed? Furthermore, is a
in our lives. In a similar way, I want to explore the situation in Upper Lapland.
constructive reform of technology possible and is it necessary?
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
AT: Heidegger is a Nazi
No impact on his philosophical work
Inwood 14 (Michael, Prof of philosophy @Oxford, "Martin Heidegger: the philosopher who fell for Hitler", Apr 12, 14,
www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10739165/Martin-Heidegger-the-philosopher-who-fell-for-Hitler.html,Date accessed: Apr 16, 2014)
[IB]
Heidegger’s repellent political beliefs do not contaminate his philosophical work. His writings are of intrinsic worth and interest; they
show few, if any, signs of political involvement; and they are at odds with central Nazi beliefs such as biological racism and a conspiracy view
of history. Nowadays Heidegger’s thought is too deeply implicated in European philosophy to be extracted from it: not only philosophers fell under his influence – Sartre,
Derrida, Foucault – but also such theologians as Bultmann, Rahner and Tillich. But Heidegger the man is still an enigma. What did he expect from Nazism? Perhaps the
establishment of Plato’s ideal city. But he lacked Plato’s sense of humour. Why did he authorise the publication of the Black Notebooks? Perhaps he
wanted to defy the finality of death by being read and discussed after his bodily demise. He arranged the publication of his notes and
lectures in stages for this purpose. He came to realise that his Nazism, far from being an obstacle to this project, could be exploited to
serve it. His philosophical writings would need to be explored in order to make sense of their mysterious author. Like the Greek hero,
Achilles, Heidegger aspired to eternal renown. So far the plan seems to be working .
Heidegger’s political actions contradict his philosophy
Young 97 (Kenan Professor of Humanities at Wake Forest University. Julian, Heidegger, philosophy, Nazism)
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.
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)
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 lastmodern 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).
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
AT – Reps not important
The framing is key it affects how we attempt solving 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)
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
In Experiment 1, we explored whether framing a crime problem with
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.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
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 against his philosophical
Heidegger's central vision in Being and Time is that
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 decision-making
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.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
AFF – Answers
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Perm
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
AT – Perm Turns
The permutation is an actualized form of ‘thinking in gathering’ – bringing in the alternative just enough to
solve the AFF and the advocacy but keeping it far enough as to avoid their permutation offense
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
This guiding thought also says that gathering involves bringing things near in the play of time-space. As nearing, gathering brings things
near to one another. This is not so much meant spatially (in terms of our usual notions of parametric or measurable space) but more in the sense in which we say of
people, “They are very close to one another.” Part of what they are (what is their own) is their relationship with the other person. More: part of what is their own is
the other, and vice versa. Yet in this bringing near nearing preserves farness. Nearing, bringing near, preserves what is each thing’s own. It is
not a blending or joining into an undifferentiated oneness. Nearing is also a differencing, dif-fering (carrying apart and carrying out) each
thing from the other. The gathering that is thinging is a mirror-play of nearing and distancing in which each thing comes into its own. The
distancing and nearing are the same: they belong together. To understand this better, let’s bring it a bit more down to earth. This will also move us closer to
being able to bring time and space into the discussion.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Do Both
Devall and Sessions 85 (Bill, professor of sociology at Humboldt State Univ., and George, professor emeritus of philosophy¶ at
Sierra College. Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered)
Today man's mounting numbers and his technological power to pollute his environment reveal a single demanding necessity: the
necessity for him consciously to reenter and preserve, for his own safety, the old first world from which he originally emerged. His
second world, drawn from his own brain, has brought him far, but it cannot take him out of nature, nor can he live by escaping into his
second world alone. He must incorporate from the wisdom of the axial thinkers an ethic not alone directed toward his fellows, but
extended to the living world around him. He must make, by way of his cultural world, an actual conscious reentry into the sunflower
forest he had thought merely to exploit or abandon. He must do this in order to survive. If he succeeds he will, perhaps, have created a
third world which combines elements of the original two and which should bring closer the responsibilities and nobleness of character
envisioned by the axial thinkers.
Perm do both: the alternative fails alone three reasons a. Concedes that calculative thought is some times
necessary b. it can never actually be done and c. it is not mutually exclusive
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
Heidegger is not saying any of this to demonize technology or science. He even says that
calculative thinking is at times necessary. It bears remembering, again and again, the way that all of this discussion takes place as thinking in the crossing of
So what do we do with this? I hope it is clear that
the first and other beginning. All of what is discussed here in “Memorial Address” and What Is Called Thinking? shows that the culmination of the history of metaphysics in
enframing (and the possibility of opening another way of thinking at this extremity of thinking and human action) is no mere philosophical abstraction. It also shows that
breaking through to a different way of thinking is going to take more than an act of will or a change of attitude. Neither is it saying or
implying that the possibility of transformative thinking, preparing to leap into the thinking of be-ing, will “solve all these problems.” This
is more than a set of problems, and, in any case, problem solving is what calculative thinking does best (or at least does endlessly).
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 TwentiethCentury 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)
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
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)
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.
Once in a while the conceptual interplay of theory and praxis is put against this attempt.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
AT – Alt
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Releasement
Alternative is illogical end goal is the ability to say yes and no this has zero practicality to solving the impact
debate
Stenstad 2006 (Gail, professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities @East Tennessee State University, associate editor of
Heidegger Studies, and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
“Transformations Thinking After Heidegger”, 2006, Jun 19, 2014) [IB]
What Heidegger actually says in “Memorial Address” is that releasement
toward things is meant as letting go of our attachment to the wonders of
technology; such letting go, or being able to say “both yes and no” toward such things, is a necessary step in disentangling us from the
pervasive trap of one-track thinking. This letting go in connection with concrete things (and not just technological things) is taken up as a major topic of chapter
Here it seems appropriate to note that there are also some philosophical “things” that we need to release if we are to learn the kind of
thinking suitable for attempting to think nonreifiable be-ing (and the whole domain that opens up with it). I already alluded to this in a preliminary way by
pointing out what Heidegger says about the necessity of unlearning what thinking already is if we are to learn what thinking might become. So far I have given some
indication that the predominantly calculative mode of thinking shapes us so decisively that we can barely imagine how we might let go of it. So now it is necessary to take a
closer look at some of the key features of our usual manner of thinking, all of which have led toward and move within enframing.
.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Meditative thought
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
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
Time. On
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,
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
worse still, to "values"), but "disclosed" or "unveiled." Yet,
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.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Heidegger is a Nazi
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
126]
Question concerning Technology," which originated as a lecture in 1949 under the title "Enframing" but which was altered in the version published in 1954.[
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
127]
food industry."[
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.
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.
For
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Do Nothing Bad
Heidegger advocates doing nothing has net zero practicality
Grego 2007 (Dr. Richard, “Global Warming, Environmental Philosophy and Public Policy: John Dewey vs. Martin Heidegger”, 2007,
Date Accessed: Jun 21, 2014) [IB)
Heidegger also says that any attempt to engineer yet another scientifically calculated solution to this dilemma would be, paradoxically, a
perpetuation of the very nihilistic mentality that has caused it. Scientifically generated public policies, ecological initiatives, and
environmental regulations, are part of the mentality that 'enframes' or objectifies nature by controlling and manipulating it via science and
technology. Neither humanity nor nature can be redeemed in this way. In fact, since the only hope for an authentic encounter with nature
involves appreciating it in 'freedom' — which means 'letting-be', rather than trying to change or improve it — Heidegger seems to be
claiming that inaction (simply doing nothing) is our best course of action. We must, he states, wait patiently for the 'soundless voice of Being' to reveal
itself once again. But it must come to us during an experience of the kind of quietism in which the 'frenzy of rationalization' is finally
stilled.¶ How any of this might translate into an actual environmental policy is anyone's guess (and contemporary interpreters of Heidegger are certainly doing a lot of
Unfortunately,
guessing!) but some general possibilities come to mind. Environmentally, Heidegger is heir to the legacy of Medieval Christian mysticism, German idealism, and romanticism, and he is the inspiration for much contemporary
thinking associated with 'deep ecology'. He encourages a heartfelt awareness of and appreciation for the natural world as a dwelling-place of the sacred. With this awareness and appreciation may perhaps come a general shift in the
Such dwelling or living will then lead
effortlessly to policies that sustain this harmony. However we cannot make these policies unless the shift in consciousness occurs first.
public consciousness (a renewed revelation of 'Being') that can lead, in turn, to a new way of 'dwelling authentically' or living harmoniously with the natural world.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Turns
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
CTP
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. 112127 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1964019)
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
In other words, we would have to show that
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 oldfashioned 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.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Can’t Solve: Nuke War/Environment/Totalitarianism
Modern technology is anthropogenic, and is the only way to stop nuclear war, environmental catastrophe,
or new forms of totalitarianism.
Zimmerman 90 Michael E., Professor of Philosophy, Tulane. 1990. Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity
Second, I examine what some regard as the political danger involved in Heidegger's determinism and in his deconstruction of the foundations of Western metaphysics, including the foundations of
the humanistic, emancipatory project of the Enlightenment. A number of contemporary pragmatists argue that while Heidegger and his deconstructionist followers are correct in
criticizing the foundationalist pretensions at work in much of Western metaphysics and in pointing out the dark side of the Enlightenment's push for technological power over nature, those
are ahistorical and politically naive in their failure to see that the Enlightenment promoted genuine political, economic,
and civil liberties which may be ignored and condemned only at great risk. Heidegger took such a risk by aligning his own critique of Enlightenment
deconstructionists critics
metaphysics with the Nazi attack on the "alien" (French, British, American, and German!) Enlightenment commitment to individual liberty, toleration, rationality, and universal human solidarity.
modern technology is
not a destiny imposed upon humanity, but rather a manifestation of the effort by humanity to gain a measure of control over the forces of nature. Even if
humanity is in important respects capable of self-determination, the question remains open whether humanity can direct the developments of modern
technology in a way that avoids the nightmarish alternatives of nuclear war, environmental catastrophe, or new forms of totalitarianism.
Pragmatists argue that the critique of foundationalism does not go hand in hand with a reactionary determinism which effaces human freedom. From this perspective,
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Alt Fails: Ignores Natural Disasters
The alt ignores the issues created by nature, blaming everything on new technologies.
Meisel 2008 (Lindsay, major in rhetoric and the green movement. 07/23/08. “Buddhism, Nihilism, and Deep Ecology,” Breakthrough
Institute. http://thebreakthrough.org/blog//2008/07/the_nihilism_of_deep_ecology-print.html)
Proponents of biomimicry assume that nature will always act favorably toward humans, when just as often, nature dishes out problems and we must use our uniquely human
ingenuity to solve them. No one today is criticizing nature for smiting us with floods, fires, and diseases, but plenty of people take issue with
new technologies. The Buddhist philosopher John McClellan finds much of this criticism arbitrary: Deep ecologists seem to have the same fear and loathing toward
today's out of control technology as humans have had until just recently toward Uncontrolled Nature, with her savage, untamed wastelands. They call technology
inhuman, cruel, and heartless, using the same words we once used to describe cruel wilderness - and like humans of the 19th century waging
war on wild nature, environmentalists today long only to conquer technology, to subdue and control it, as we have nature herself. Nature is
no wiser than technology, and claiming adherence to nature's laws is an attempt to bypass the messy business of ethics and values. When
environmentalists urge us to follow nature's way, they are referring to a mythical nature that never changes, that is necessarily always in
balance; that is the root of all things good. But this conception of nature is nostalgia masquerading as values. This nature has no place in
politics; it belongs in a museum. And of course, a true museum of the planet's history would contain a catalog of horrors: long stretches without oxygen or anything green;
obliteration after obliteration; Edward Abbey's jagged desert monuments miles underwater. Nature, like technology, follows one prime rule: change. As the
natural and technological scenery changes, it transforms politics, economics, and society with it.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
AT K of Science
Criticizing science undermines the alt and destroys the possibility of truth.
Wagner 2008 (Joseph, Department of Political Science, Colgate. 08/02/08. “The Revolt Against Reason: Mistaken Assumptions In
Post-Positivist Relativism,” originally printed in Critical Thinking: Focus on Social and Cultural Inquiry (1991), ed. Wendy OxmanMichelli and Mark Weinstein, p. 9-10. http://hascall.colgate.edu/jwagner/DownloadFiles/Revolt.doc)
Consider the case of Western science. If truth is only relative to standards and standards must be chosen to be binding, then explaining scientific
truth becomes problematic. How after all can the framework relativist account for the fact that the principles of aerodynamics work in all cultures at all times? In this
case the scientific beliefs of avionics engineers arguably depend upon the truths of aerodynamic principles and not just the enculturation of engineers. How else can we account
for the fact that airplanes do not fall from the sky even if the engineer, the pilot and the passengers forget or become confused about the principles of aerodynamics while the
plane is in flight. The plane does not stay up because contemporary engineers believe in the principles of aerodynamics and the canons of Western science. The plane stays
up because some propositions are true whether or not the principles of aerodynamics are believed, because there is an indubitable difference
between the psychology of belief and the epistemology of belief. Relativist efforts to escape this dilemma fail. For example, since science is the
bete noire of relativism, relativists typically adopt a Kuhnian view of science arguing that scientists are conditioned to believe in certain principles. Scientific beliefs, therefore,
reflect personal and professional investments, so that on this account scientists do not believe in their theories because the theories provide an 'objectively' better fit with world.
The issue is not why the plane stays aloft, but whether the account of why it stays aloft can be grounded on objective belief? Argued in a Kuhnian fashion the relativist
reconstructs the scientist's own discourse about objectivity and offers a metaanalysis, i.e., a reconstruction of what the scientists actually
mean. But here is the rub. Relativists cannot be consistent with their own principles and also offer a meta-analysis. In two important ways
any effort at meta-analysis is problematic for relativists. First, meta-analysis violates critical normative principles that are central to
relativism. Because meta-analysis implies that the scientists' misunderstand what they do when they judge theories and beliefs true or false.
By reinterpreting the scientists' claims, the relativist employs an external standard t o give new meanings to what the scientists say. These meanings are
not the meanings given or acknowledged by the scientists themselves. But relativists always object when this sort of reinterpretation is applied to other cultures, e.g., the
beliefs of the Azande or the Neuer. Thus metaanalysis violates the relativist's normative principle that prescribes attunement. Perhaps we can give the relativist an exemption
on the normative issue in this case. Perhaps for the sake of argument we can offer an exclusive exemption with respect to Western science only. We might do so on normative
grounds for the purpose of preserving the rule in all other cases and therefore remaining attuned to the indigenous meanings of other cultures. However, this is not the only
rule the relativist must violate. For in order pull off the reinterpretation, they must also violate their epistemic standard . To show that scientists' understandings of
themselves cannot be sustained at a deep level, the relativist must apply a trans-systemic standard and assert what is the case. Now either
the relativist is applying a preferred framework to trump Western science or they claim a transcendental point of view, one that assures us
that it is true the Western science misrepresents itself on matters of objectivity and truth. This transcendental view is not embedded in a particular culture
or a particular history. Now if the relativist is applying only a preferred standard and framework, then the relativist's analysis can be discharged as framework bound and the
assertions of relativism are thereby undercut; or the relativist makes a transcendental claim that is framework independent and the so the assertions of relativism
are undercut. The result is a self-defeating paradox. If relativists judge science from a relativist framework, then their framework leaves them
unable to comprehend or criticize the objectivity and truth of Western science; but if they judge Western science from a nonrelative
framework, then they undermine relativism. Either way, relativism loses, for it must be the case that the relativist either has a meta-case or the relativist
does not. If the relativist has a meta-case, then the meta-case demonstrates the falsity of relativism. If the relativist does not have a meta-case, then Western science demonstrates
the falsity of relativism. Either way, relativism is demonstrably false.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Value to Life
Heidegger’s characterization of everydayness devalues life through disconnection with the real world,
turning their alt.
Wolin 90 Richard, Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York Graduate Center. 90. The Politics of Being,
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-relationsa 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?
The alt is nihilistic and causes the very impacts they try to solve, carving out a world utterly devoid of value.
Meisel 2008 (Lindsay, major in rhetoric and the green movement. 07/23/08. “Buddhism, Nihilism, and Deep Ecology,” Breakthrough
Institute. http://thebreakthrough.org/blog//2008/07/the_nihilism_of_deep_ecology-print.html)
For all the environmental movement's talk about the need for societal change ,
many environmentalists are deeply conservative in their attachment to a certain idea
of what nature is and should be. But as any good Buddhist or mildly observant person can attest to, we live lives of constant change. Just as surely as the Mesozoic gave
way to the Cenozoic, our country's agrarian past is giving way to a information-based future. Attachment to a single idea of nature is nihilism; it
denies whole worlds of future possibilities, and carves out a world utterly devoid of value. Nietzsche argued that emulating nature means
living a life of indifference : "According to nature" you want to live? O you noble Stoics, what deceptive words these are! Imagine a being like
nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purposes and consideration, without mercy and justice, fertile and
desolate and uncertain all at the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power--how could you live according to this indifference?
Living--is not that precisely wanting to be other than this nature? Is not living -- estimating, preferring, being unjust, being limited, wanting
to be different? And supposing your imperative "live according to nature" meant at bottom as much as "live according to life"--how can you not do that? Why make a principle out
of what you yourselves are and must be? Since nature isn't rational, it's absurd to try and model our lives after it.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Ontology First = Bad
Prioritizing ontology prevents engagement with reality, trapping us in the abstract world of false destiny.
Wolin 90 Richard, Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York Graduate Center. 90. The Politics of Being,
Heidegger's inability to conceptualize the sociohistorical determinants and character of modern technology raises the oft-discussed question of the "pseudo-concreteness of
his philosophy"; that is, its apparent incapacity to fulfill its original phenomenological promise as a philosophy of "existential concretion." The problem was already evident
in the tension between the ontological and ontic levels of analysis that dominated the existential analytic of Being and Time. For there the sphere of ontic life seemed
degraded a priori as a result of its monopolization by the "They" and its concomitant inauthentic modalities. As a result, both the desirability
and possibility of effecting the transition from the metalevel of ontology to the "factical" realm of ontic concretion seemed problematical
from the outset. Nowhere was this problem better illustrated than in the case of the category of historicity. And thus despite Heidegger's real insight
into limitations of Dilthey's historicism, the inflexible elevation of ontology above the ontic plane virtually closes off the conceptual space wherein
real history might be thought. In truth, it can only appear as an afterthought: as the material demonstration of conclusions already reached by
the categories of existential ontology. Consequently, the "ontology of Being and Time is still bound to the metaphysics that it rejects. The
conventional tension between existentia and essentia stands behind the difference between everyday (factical) and 'authentic historical
existence.'
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Turn: Kills Debate
Objective reason is necessary for any contradiction between people. The alt kills any possibility of debate in
this round.
Wagner 2008 (Joseph, Department of Political Science, Colgate. 08/02/08. “The Revolt Against Reason: Mistaken Assumptions In
Post-Positivist Relativism,” originally printed in Critical Thinking: Focus on Social and Cultural Inquiry (1991), ed. Wendy OxmanMichelli and Mark Weinstein, p. 9-10. http://hascall.colgate.edu/jwagner/DownloadFiles/Revolt.doc)
First, only in objective language does the assertion of a predicate 'is red' and its denial 'is not red' constitute genuine disagreement. For if one persons asserts 'X seems red' and
another 'X does not seem red,' no disagreement exists at all. For these two individuals are not talking about the same thing. Each is only reporting on her internal states and no
contradiction arises in embracing the truth of both subjective claims. If all language were subjective language, no contradictions would ever arise. For in
the subjective language of appearance, our statements about objects turn out to be reports of internal states. Without external reference, we
never confront the question of deciding between claims of different persons; the external world evaporates; and so interestingly enough
does the question of relativism. If all claims are subjective then relativism never arises. For our statements are never incompatible because
we never speak of the same thing. This is the self-defeating nature of subjectivist relativism
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Turn: Calculative Thought = Good: Allows for Debate
Objective reason is necessary for any refutation between people.
Wagner 2008 (Joseph, Department of Political Science, Colgate. 08/02/08. “The Revolt Against Reason: Mistaken Assumptions In
Post-Positivist Relativism,” originally printed in Critical Thinking: Focus on Social and Cultural Inquiry (1991), ed. Wendy OxmanMichelli and Mark Weinstein, p. 9-10. http://hascall.colgate.edu/jwagner/DownloadFiles/Revolt.doc)
First, only in objective language does the assertion of a predicate 'is red' and its denial 'is not red' constitute genuine disagreement. For if one persons asserts 'X seems red' and
another 'X does not seem red,' no disagreement exists at all. For these two individuals are not talking about the same thing. Each is only reporting on her internal states and no
contradiction arises in embracing the truth of both subjective claims. If all language were subjective language, no contradictions would ever arise. For in
the subjective language of appearance, our statements about objects turn out to be reports of internal states. Without external reference, we never confront the question
of deciding between claims of different persons; the external world evaporates ; and so interestingly enough does the question of relativism. If all claims
are subjective then relativism never arises. For our statements are never incompatible because we never speak of the same thing. This is the self-
defeating nature of subjectivist relativism.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Extra
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Kritick
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
SCHMITT (FRIEND ENEMY DISTINCTION)
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
LINK TURN
Antolick 3 (Matthew, MA @University of South Florida, “Deep ecology and Heideggerian phenomenology”, 2003, Date Accessed: 621-14) [IB]
Naess speaks of a “core democracy in the biosphere.”128 This introduces a ¶ necessary “diversity of both human and non-human life.”129
Diversity lends itself to the¶ strength of an ecosystem, such as a wild forest, where a greater number of species leads ¶ to greater resilience
to disease, more mutual resources for the inhabiting organisms of the¶ area, and overall ecosystemic integrity. Naess thus formulates
“Maximum diversity!¶ Maxim symbiosis!” as a core representative tenet of the deep ecological approach. ¶ Core democracy refers to much
more than the organisms in a single¶ environmental niche. Change and interference, such as a lightning strike causing a ¶ wildfire in a
wooded area, are integral aspects of the biosphere. Nevertheless, we can ¶ assert that the maximization of diversity and symbiosis includes
a preservation of¶ otherness. Rather than deriving nature from the single axiomatic point of human benefit, ¶ DE, encourages maximization
of diversity. “What is at issue here is precisely the ¶ question of the integrity of nonhuman species and individuals in terms of their ¶
“otherness” and difference from humans, and a respect for the ongoing integrity of wild ¶ evolutionary processes.”130 The idea is to
minimize human instrumental interference as ¶ much as possible, only causing disturbances for vital needs and interests. ¶ Deep Ecology
thus involves a move away from viewing the other as “enemy,” ¶ and thus away from the Hobbesian paradigm that the state of nature is ¶
fundamentally hostile to human flourishing – “a state of war with any and all¶ others.”131 The preservation of otherness amounts to vastly
different circumstances than¶ current trends towards the humanization of nature. Humbleness and openness replace the ¶ currently dominant
attitude which George Sessions calls “arrogance towards nature.”132
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Economic Rational Good
Michael Shellenberger, President of the Breakthrough Institute and Ted Nordhaus, Director of the Strategic Values Science Project,
November, 04 (The Death of Environmentalism,)
There is no better example of how environmental categories sabotage environmental politics than CAFE. When it was crafted in 1975, it
was done so as a way to save the American auto industry, not to save the environment. That was the right framing then and has been the
right framing ever since. Yet the environmental movement, in all of its literal-sclerosis, not only felt the need to brand CAFE as an
"environmental" proposal, it failed to find a solution that also worked for industry and labor. By thinking only of their own narrowly
defined interests, environmental groups don't concern themselves with the needs of either unions or the industry. As a consequence, we
miss major opportunities for alliance building. Consider the fact that the biggest threat to the American auto industry appears to have
nothing to do with "the environment." The high cost of health care for its retired employees is a big part of what hurts the competitiveness
of American companies. "G.M. covers the health care costs of 1.1 million Americans, or close to half a percent of the total population,"
wrote the New York Times' Danny Hakim recently.5 "For G.M., which earned $1.2 billion [in profits] last year, annual health spending
has risen to $4.8 billion from $3 billion since 1996 ... Today, with global competition and the United States health care system putting the
burden largely on employers, retiree medical costs are one reason Toyota's $10.2 billion profit in its most recent fiscal year was more than
double the combined profit of the Big Three." Because Japan has national health care, its auto companies aren't stuck with the bill for its
retirees. And yet if you were to propose that environmental groups should have a strategy for lowering the costs of health care for the auto
industry, perhaps in exchange for higher mileage standards, you'd likely be laughed out of the room, or scolded by your colleagues
because, "Health care is not an environmental issue." The health care cost disadvantage for US producers is a threat that won't be
overcome with tax incentives for capital investments into new factories, or consumer rebates for hybrids. The problem isn't just that tax
credits and rebates won't achieve what we need them to achieve, which is save the American auto industry by helping it build better, more
efficient cars. The problem is also that these policies, which the environmental community only agreed to after more than two decades of
failure, have been thrown into the old CAFE proposal like so many trimmings for a turkey. Environmentalists -- including presidential
candidate John Kerry, whose platform includes the new turkey trimmings -- as well as industry and labor leaders, have yet to rethink their
assumptions about the future of the American auto industry in ways that might reframe their proposal. Some environmental "realists"
argue that the death of the American auto industry - - and the loss of hundreds of thousands of high-paying union jobs -- isn't necessarily a
bad thing for the environment if it means more market share for more efficient Japanese vehicles. Others say saving the American auto
industry is central to maintaining the Midwest's middle class. "I don't like to bribe everyone into good behavior, but it's not bad to help the
unions," said Hal Harvey. "We need jobs in this country. Union members are swing voters in a lot of states. And a livable wage is
ethically important." Like Harvey, most environmental leaders are progressives who support the union movement on principle. And
though many have met with labor leaders about how to resolve the CAFE quagmire, the environmental movement is not articulating how
building a stronger American auto industry and union movement is central to winning action on global warming. Rather, like everything
else that's not seen as explicitly "environmental," the future of the union movement is treated as a tactical, not a strategic, consideration.
California's recent decision to require reductions in vehicle greenhouse gas emissions over the next 11 years was widely reported as a
victory for environmental efforts against global warming. In fact, coming after over two decades of failure to reverse the gradual decline
of fuel efficiency, the decision is a sign of our weakness, not strength. Automakers are rightly confident that they will be able to defeat the
California law in court. If they can't, there is a real danger that the industry will persuade Congress to repeal California's special right to
regulate pollution under the Clean Air Act. If that happens, California will lose its power to limit vehicle pollution altogether. Today's
fleet-wide fuel efficiency average is the same as it was in 1980, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. This quarter century of
failure is not due to one or two tactical errors (though there were plenty of those, as we describe above). Rather, the roots of the
environmental community's failure can be found in the way it designates certain problems as environmental and others as not.
Automakers and the UAW are, of course, just as responsible as environmentalists for failing to form a strategic alliance. The lose-loselose that is the current situation on automobiles is the logical result of defining labor, environmental and industry selfinterests so
narrowly. Before his death, David Brower tried to think more creatively about win-win solutions. He spoke often about the need for the
environmental community to invest more energy in changing the tax code, a point reporter Keith Bradsher emphasized in High and
Mighty. "Environmentalists have a history of not taking notice of tax legislation, and paid no ¶ attention whatsoever to the depreciation
and luxury tax provisions for large light trucks. More egregiously, environmental ¶ groups ignored SUVs in the 1990 battle over the Bryan
bill, and even disregarded the air-pollution loopholes for light trucks in the 1990 clean air legislation."6 Some in the environmental
community are trying to learn from the failures of the last 25 years and think differently about the problem. Jason Mark of the Union of
Concerned Scientists told us that he has begun the search for more carrots to the Pavley stick. ¶ "We need to negotiate from a position of
strength. Now is the time for us to propose incentive policies that make sense. We've been ¶ working on tax credits for hybrids. Now we
need to come up with tax credits for R&D into reduced emissions, and something to ease the industry's pension and health burdens. No
one has yet put a big pension deal on the table for them. None of this has yet been explored." In the end, all sides are responsible for
failing to craft a deal that trades greater efficiency for targeted federal tax credits into R&D. One consequence of Japan's public policies
that reward R&D with tax credits, suggests Mark, is that Japanese automakers are run by innovation-driven engineers whereas American
automakers are run by narrowly focused accountants. For Pavley to inspire a win-win-win deal by industry, environmentalists and the
UAW, all three interests will need to start thinking outside of their conceptual boxes. Winning While Losing vs. Losing While Losing
Failure is an opportunity. -- Tao Ti Ching In politics, a legislative defeat can either be a win or a loss. A legislative loss can be considered
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
a win if it has increased a movement's power, energy, and influence over the long-term. Witness the religious right's successful effort to
ban partial-birth abortions. The proposal succeeded only after several failed attempts. Because it was anchored to core values, not
technical policy specs, the initial defeats of the ban on partial-birth abortions paved the way for eventual victory. The serial losses on Rio,
Kyoto, CAFE, and McCain-Lieberman were not framed in ways that increase the environmental community's power through each
successive defeat. That's because, when those proposals were crafted, environmentalists weren't thinking about what we get out of each
defeat. We were only thinking about what we get out of them if they succeed. It's this mentality that must be overthrown if we are to craft
proposals that generate the power we need to succeed at a legislative level. The thing everyone from the Pew Charitable Trusts to
Rainforest Action Network agrees on is the size of the problem. "What we are trying to achieve is a fundamental shift in the way this
country (and the world) produces and consumes energy," said Pew's Environment Director Josh Reichert. "I am confident that we will get
there, primarily because I believe that we have no choice. But how long it will take, and how much will be sacrificed because of the delay,
remains to be seen." Greg Wetstone of the NRDC concurred. "There's an awareness in the scientific community and the public that this is
the most important and difficult environmental challenge we've ever faced. We're not, unfortunately, seeing progress yet in Congress or
the Bush Administration." After the Senate voted against McCain-Lieberman 55 to 43 in October 2003, Kevin Curtis of the National
Environmental Trust spoke for the community when he told Grist Magazine that "It's a start. This may seem to be a defeat now, but in the
end it's a victory. A bill that gets at least 40 votes has a fair chance of passing if it's reintroduced." Not everyone agrees that McCainLieberman is helping the environmental community. Shelley Fiddler said, "It is completely spurious for anyone to call this loss a victory."
Even though Senators McCain and Lieberman have watered down the carbon caps to win more votes, it's not clear that environmentalists
can muster the strength to pass the Climate Stewardship Act through the Congress. Reichert predicts that McCain Lieberman will pass the
Senate by the end of 2005, but acknowledges that the House will be much harder. The political calculation environmentalists are making
now is how subsidies for cleaner coal and carbon sequestration could win over the coal and electric industries, as well as the United
Mineworkers. While we believe that the situation in China and other developing countries makes investments into cleaner coal
technologies and sequestration an urgent priority, it is a disturbing sign that, once again, environmentalists are putting the technical policy
cart before the vision-and-values horse. Investments in cleaner coal should be framed as part of an overall vision for creating jobs in the
energy industries of the future, not simply as a technical fix. In some ways McCain-Lieberman offers the worst of all worlds. Not only
does it fail to inspire a compelling vision that could change the debate and grow the political power of environmentalists, it also
disappoints at the policy level. "Even if McCain-Lieberman were enacted it wouldn't do a hell of a lot of good," said one well-known
Washington energy attorney. "It's a minor decrease in carbon. If you look at what's necessary, which is stabilizing emissions, McCainLieberman isn't going to make a dent. We need 50 -- 70 percent reductions. Part of the job is to stay the course and keep pushing. But
another part of the job is to come up with a more thoughtthrough program." Passing McCain-Lieberman will require more than buying off
or out-flanking industry opponents. It will also require beating savvy neocon strategists who have successfully turned the regulation of
carbon emissions into the bête noire of the conservative movement. And if the political prospects for action on global warming appear
daunting in the U.S., don't look to China for uplift: the 1.2 billion person country, growing at 20 percent a year, intends to quadruple the
size of its economy in 30 years and bring 300 gigawatts -- nearly half of what we use each year in the US -- of dirty coal energy on-line.
The challenge for American environmentalists is not just to get the US to dramatically overhaul its energy strategy but also to help
developing countries like China, India, ¶ Russia and South Africa do so as well. That means environmental groups will need to advocate
policies like technology transfer, ethical trade agreements, and win-win joint ventures. The carbon threat from China and other developing
countries drives home the point that a whole series of major policies not traditionally defined as "environmental," from industrial policy to
trade policy, will be needed to deal with global warming.
Michael Shellenberger, President of the Breakthrough Institute and Ted Nordhaus, Director of the Strategic Values Science Project,
November, 2004 (The Death of Environmentalism)
The marriage between vision, values, and policy has proved elusive for environmentalists. Most environmental leaders, even the most
vision-oriented, are struggling to articulate proposals that have coherence. This is a crisis because environmentalism will never be able to
muster the strength it needs to deal with the global warming problem as long as it is seen as a "special interest." And it will continue to be
seen as a special interest as long as it narrowly identifies the problem as "environmental" and the solutions as technical. In early 2003 we
joined with the Carol/Trevelyan Strategy Group, the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, the Common Assets Defense Fund, and the Institute
for America's Future to create a proposal for a "New Apollo Project" aimed at freeing the US from oil and creating millions of good new
jobs over 10 years. Our strategy was to create something inspiring. Something that would remind people of the American dream: that we
are a can-do people capable of achieving great things when we put our minds to it. Apollo's focus on big investments into clean energy,
transportation and efficiency is part of a hopeful and patriotic story that we are all in this economy together. It allows politicians to inject
big ideas into contested political spaces, define the debate, attract allies, and legislate. And it uses big solutions to frame the problem -not the other way around. Until now the Apollo Alliance has focused not on crafting legislative solutions but rather on building a
coalition of environmental, labor, business, and community allies who share a common vision for the future and a common set of values.
The Apollo vision was endorsed by 17 of the country's leading labor unions and environmental groups ranging from NRDC to Rainforest
Action Network. Whether or not you believe that the New Apollo Project is on the mark, it is at the very least a sincere attempt to
undermine the assumptions beneath special interest environmentalism. Just two years old, Apollo offers a vision that can set the context
for a myriad of national and local Apollo proposals, all of which will aim to treat labor unions, civil rights groups, and businesses not
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
simply as means to an end but as true allies whose interests in economic development can be aligned with strong action on global
warming. Van Jones, the up-and-coming civil rights leader and co-founder of the California Apollo Project, likens these four groups to
the four wheels on the car needed to make "an ecological U-turn." Van has extended the metaphor elegantly: "We need all four wheels to
be turning at the same time and at the same speed. Otherwise the car won't go anywhere." Our point is not that Apollo is the answer to the
environmental movement's losing streak on global warming. Rather we are arguing that all proposals aimed at dealing with global
warming -- Kyoto, McCain-Lieberman, CAFE, carbon taxes, WEMP, and Apollo -- must be evaluated not only for whether they will get
us the environmental protections we need but also whether they will define the debate, divide our opponents and build our political power
over time. It is our contention that the strength of any given political proposal turns more on its vision for the future and the values it
carries within it than on its technical policy specifications. What's so powerful about Apollo is not its 10-point plan or its detailed set of
policies but rather its inclusive and hopeful vision for America's future. "There was a brief period of time when my colleagues thought I
was crazy to grab onto Apollo," said Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, a co-chair of the Apollo Alliance. "They kept looking at
Apollo as a policy outcome and I viewed it as a way of reframing the issue. They kept asking, "How do you know [Teamsters President]
Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. is going to get the issue?' I answered, 'Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. isn't! I'm not doing policy mark-up here, I'm trying to get the
people that work for Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. to do something different.'" Getting labor to do something different is no easier than getting
environmentalists to. Its problems are similar to those of the environmental movement: lack of a vision, a coherent set of values, and
policy proposals that build its power. There's no guarantee that the environmental movement can fix labor's woes or vice versa. But if we
would focus on how our interests are aligned we might craft something more creative together than apart. By signifying a unified concern
for people and the climate, Apollo aims to deconstruct the assumptions underneath the categories "labor" and "the environment." Apollo
was created differently from proposals like McCain-Lieberman. We started by getting clear about our vision and values and then created a
coalition of environmentalists, unions, and civil rights groups before reaching out to Reagan Democrats and other blue-collar constituents
who have been financially wrecked by the last 20 years of economic and trade policies. These working families were a key part of the
New Deal coalition that governed America through the middle of the last century. Though ostensibly liberal on economic issues, Reagan
Democrats have become increasingly suspicious of American government and conservative on social issues, including environmentalism,
due in no small part to the success of conservatives in ¶ consistently targeting this group with strategic initiatives. And yet more than 80
percent of Reagan Democrats, our polling discovered, support Apollo -- higher rates even than college-educated Democrats. Irrespective
of its short-term impact on US energy policy, Apollo will be successful if it elevates the key progressive values noted above among this
critical constituency of opportunity. Viewed as part of a larger effort to build a true, values-based progressive majority in the United
States, Apollo should be conceived of as one among several initiatives designed to create bridge values for this constituency to move,
over time, toward holding consistent and coherent views that look more and more like those of America's progressive and environmental
base. Despite Apollo's political strengths, it irked many environmental leaders who believe that if we don't talk about regulation we won't
get regulation. Nowhere does policy literalism rear its head more than in arguments against Apollo's focus on investment. That's because
instead of emphasizing the need for command-and-control regulations, Apollo stresses the need for greater public-private investments to
establish American leadership in the clean energy revolution -- investments like those America made in the railroads, the highways, the
electronics industry and the Internet. "We've been positive publicly about Apollo," Hawkins said, "but not positive policy-wise because it
doesn't have binding limits, either on CAFE or carbon." Van Jones believes Apollo represents a third wave of environmentalism. "The
first wave of environmentalism was framed around conservation and the second around regulation," Jones said. "We believe the third
wave will be framed around investment." The New Apollo Project recognizes that we can no longer afford to address the world's
problems separately. Most people wake up in the morning trying to reduce what they have to worry about. Environmentalists wake up
trying to increase it. We want the public to care about and focus not only on global warming and rainforests but also species extinction,
non-native plant invasives, agribusiness, overfishing, mercury, and toxic dumps.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
Environmental Pragmatism
Keith Hirokawa, Associate Professor of Law at Texas Wesleyan University School of Law, 2002 "Some Pragmatic Observations about
Radical Critique in Environmental Law"
The environmentalist must choose between two strategies. She can persist in the hope that courts will determine that the current
environmental regime is inherently faulty, which will lead to the destruction of environmental law and property rights as we know them.
Or, alternatively, she can recognize that the perceived barriers to integrating environmental ethics and environmental law are themselves a
result of the rhetoric and persuasion from those opposing radical change. Such a recognition could favor the environmentalist's position as
it has her opponents. Inevitably, the choice [*256] wavers between two types of thinking: the dogmatic and the pragmatic. The dogmatic
"thinks of truth as a vertical relationship between representations and what is represented," n140 whereas the pragmatist "thinks of truth
horizontally - as the culminating reinterpretation of our predecessor's reinterpretation of their predecessor's reinterpretation." n141 The
difference between the two perspectives, in essence, is "the difference between regarding truth, goodness, and beauty as eternal objects
which we try to locate and reveal, and regarding them as artifacts whose fundamental design we often have to alter." n142 This, of course,
is just another way of saying that adapting Kuhn's thesis to legal analysis is itself a paradigm, one that is principally pragmatic in nature.
But by attempting to advance radical theories of nature that lack a viable means of policy implementation, n143 environmentalists find
themselves in an extremely unpersuasive, dogmatic camp. Recent philosophical scholarship on environmental ethics has begun to
recognize the limits of theorizing on intrinsic value in nature. While noble in cause, debates about intrinsic value may not provide useful
answers. n144 Instead, "many writers have begun to outline a pragmatic agenda for environmental ethics by proffering approaches that
attempt to shift the field's mode of inquiry to a more practical dialogue about the multiplicity of values at play in specific matters of
environmental policy." n145 Environmental ethics, it seems, is experiencing a "swelling wave" of support for the "pragmatic turn" in
environmental theory. n146 Pragmatism's success in the environmental debate is owed to its [*257] understanding of the operation of
context as a constraint on persuasion and discourse. Persuasion between foundational theories may result from the attempt to reconcile
differing approaches. Pragmatists rely on a reconciliation-based description of how paradigms and belief systems transform in the face of
competing paradigmatic structures, n147 in which new problems, predictions and solutions can be translated into an existing structure of
beliefs by displacing the fewest other beliefs. Effective dialogue on solutions espoused from otherwise incommensurable positions simply
requires a touch of flexibility toward traditional philosophical questions. n148 In applying this maxim to legal change, the lesson to be
learned from the pragmatist's understanding of paradigm shifts is that revolutionary ideals can be presented in light of dominant beliefs,
rather than in spite of them.
George Mason Debate
2013-2014
[File Name]
LX Turn – Bioregional Communities (underwater colony)
Drengson 11 (Alan, University of Victoria¶ Victoria, BC, Canada¶ Bill Deval l, Humboldt State University¶ Arcata, CA, USA¶ Mark A
Schroll 2¶ Co-Editor, Restoration Earth “The Deep Ecology Movement: ¶ Origins, Development, and Future Prospects¶ (Toward a
Transpersonal Ecosophy)”, 2011, Date Accessed: 6-21-14) [IB]
One responsible adaptation to global warming¶ could be a return to bioregional practices. Communities of¶ people living in life regions
with arable land could locally¶ produce most of their own food and energy resources. ¶ Although these bioregional communities might
remain¶ in contact with each via mail, phone, and the Internet,¶ travel between bioregions could be more limited. (On the ¶ shortcomings of
globalization and the promise of local¶ adaptations see Mander, 2007; Mander & Goldsmith,¶ 1996; McKibben, 2008. For deep design see
McDonough¶ & Braungart, 2002, www.mcdonough.com; see also¶ Weston, 2012.)¶ While bioregional communities might be one¶ form of
adaptation to rapid changes in the natural ¶ environment, the framework discussed in this article¶ offers readers a way to develop their own
ecosophies and¶ worldviews that can lead to different kinds of highly¶ responsible local communities. To have nonviolent¶ communication
and collective effort requires cooperation¶ and mutual respect. The less one identifies their personal¶ worth with their views and culture,
the more they can¶ appreciate others and the diversity found all around. To ¶ allow all beings and humans to flourish is to honor and ¶ care
for diversity, which supports the second Platform¶ Principle of the deep ecology movement. The deep ¶ movement finds depth in all
dimensions and directions,¶ in nature, in ourselves as human persons, in our texts, ¶ in our practices, and in our inquiring spiritual nature as ¶
self-transforming, creative processes and activities.