1ac

History hitherto has been the history of Being the evolution of the world is a process by
which Being disclosing itself each epochal manifestation of Being metamorphoses in the
flux of its withdrawal and disclosure which makes their defining essences intelligible
Irwin and Peters, 2k2
[Ruth (Senior Lecturer in Ethics at Auckland University of Technology); Michael (Research
Professor in Education at the University of Glasgow); Earthsongs: Ecopoetics, Heidegger and
Dwelling, The Trumpeter Journal of Ecosophy, 2002]
Again harking back to the tradition of philosophy which assumes that a teleological process
guides history, Heidegger posits that there are underlying laws and a telos or destiny to history.
Haar regards Heideggers theory as an inversion of the telos of Hegelianism. Although Haar is
not arguing that the destiny of Being is in any way a dialectical process. Destiny (Geschick) holds
within it all the potential possibilities of history. Resonating, not with Hegel we would argue, but
with Aristotles notion of the essence as a seed that defines the potential pattern of growth. This
is why the commencement is so important to Heidegger. The sending of destiny (Geschick) is
held in its commencement. We merely note aspects of the essence that has already unfolded.
Heideggers teleology does not reach towards a heavenly otherworldliness, or a technological
and social utopia. He pessimistically characterises the evolution of the world as an ever-
increasing fall from grace. The History of Being is the history of the increasing oblivion of
Being.60 This process is not a logical inevitability, nor does it follow a law of causality that, to
some extent following Nietzsche, Heidegger rejects. He explains that, Between the epochal
metamorphoses of being & the withdrawal one can perceive a relation, which nevertheless has
nothing to do with a relation of causality. One can say that the further away one is from the
dawn of western thinking and from aletheia, the greater is the oblivion into which it falls, the
clearer is the manner in which knowledge and consciousness break into the open, and the
manner in which being thus withdraws.61 Heidegger believes each epochal manifestation of
Being has a finitude that excludes it from being able to comprehend dimensions other than its
own disclosure. The destiny of Being has reached its closure with the technological
apprehension of everything as resource. But Haar says: Final totalization does not mean that
History is a total unveiling. What could the term Geschick mean if not that being gives itself,
sends itself (schicken), gathers itself at each moment into a domain of unity (Ge-)? This unity is
that of an epoch. But each epoch is completely closed and blind to what does not enter into it.
There is a radical finitude to an epoch and to all epochs. Every epoch of History is epoch, which
means a holding itself back, self-suspension, or withdrawal, of being which goes hand in
hand with its manifestation. The epochal or historical as such is deployed on the basis of a free
emergence closed in itself.62 The (unlooked for) defining principles make an enclosed, finite
epochal period, and the inhabitants of any epoch are not in the position to be able to activate
pathways or even see outside it. The enclosure or Enframing; in our case of Technology, limits
the field of agency.


Susik 14(Abigail Susik 2014 Convergence Zone: The Aesthetics and Politics of the Ocean in
Contemporary Art and Photography Assistant Professor of Art History at Willamette University.
Her interdisciplinary work traces metahistorical shifts and transference across material, textual
and visual cultures in European and American contexts in between the 19th and 21st centuries.)

One of the primary themes of twentieth-century art concerned the various structures of
capitalism, and surely it was the first two stages of this cycle of commerce that received the
most attention, from dada, to surrealism to pop and beyond: namely, industrial production and
mass consumption. It is telling, however, that contemporary art of today instead resoundingly
invests the most interest in the last stage of the production cycle, that of discard and waste. A
significant amount of critical literature has emerged regarding this theme, and several critical
terms such as informe, the abject and base, the outmoded, and others touch upon this
constellation of meanings. Various twentieth-century mediums such as the readymade, the
assemblage, the found object, the accumulation, etc., confront our culture of detritus head
on.[6] In addition, an intermediary step in that cycle, namely the packaging and
transportation of goods, also appears to be gaining in significance for artists in the last
three decades. While the planets oceans are certainly also sites of production (oil,
power, etc.) and consumption (seafood, tourism, leisure sports, etc.), contemporary artists
have proven to be significantly drawn to contemplate oceans as sites of commercial
dissemination and excess. In my mind, this is arguably a partial result of the former
symbolic and formal associations of the ocean in nineteenth- and twentieth-century art.
While the deconstruction of ideology that postmodernism has achieved is undoubtedly a cause
for celebration, the breakdown of mythologies linked to the ocean carries with it an
invariably tragic ethical message. Whether we like it or not, the ocean is no longer a
signifier of boundlessness and self-reflexive emptiness because, like everything else
within our reach, we have made full-use of the ocean as just another standing-reserve
for the prowess of techne, to put it in Heideggarian terms.[7] Although oceans have
arguably been a key site for anthropological exploits of all kinds throughout the
evolution of humankind, the current state of total infiltration of the human and the
oceanic, the near-complete acculturation of the ocean so to speak, has taken on
unmatched, super- or sur- natural proportions. To bolster this point, I will address a
selection of works that focus on the oceans role as a mega-highway for global capitalism, its
role in the incessant transport of commodities. The American artist Allan Sekula and the
Canadian Photographer Edward Burtynsky offer two prominent examples of a documentary
concern with the shipping industry, wherein gargantuan cargo vessels become the
international sentinels of the blue expanse, dramatically transforming global waterways
and the many ports that shelter them. Between the late 1980s and the mid-1990s Sekula
worked on a remarkable documentary project entitled Fish Story, which took form as large-
format color photographs, a continuous slide show of still color photographs, an installation, a
book with a long essay by Sekula, and a series of lectures.[8] Sekula continues to work on an
extended version of the project and has made two documentary films in the last decade, Tsukiji
and The Lottery of the Sea, and one film essay entitled The Forgotten Space (2010) with Nol
Burch. One the one hand, for Sekula, Fish Story was a politically-motivated reportage project in
which he studied firsthand the impact of maritime economics upon working classes and port
towns across the globe. As part of the project, Sekula travelled internationally capturing
photographs and video of ships, goods, sailors, ports and markets, even crossing the Atlantic in a
cargo ship laden with containers. On the other hand, Fish Story had explicit art historical and
sociological implications for Sekula in that he viewed the massive scale of the worldwide
shipping industry to be indicative of a shift from a human understanding of the ocean
as spatially panoramic, unable to be encompassed, to a view of the ocean as full of
atomized details, securely enframed (Fig. 5). On a macrocosmic level, global shipping
industries enframe and contain the vast reaches of the ocean through the constant
mapping that occurs via crisscrossing routes between different national ports. These
routes palpably impact the shifting waters around them, to the extent that the interrupt animal
migration patterns and even whale sonar. On a microcosmic level, this containment is
epitomized by the standardization of commercial exchange, from the multicolored
hues of shipping container boxes to prefabricated product packaging.Oddly enough, this
blunt formal awareness has a direct correlate in an ethical message, hence the distinctly
composite nature of documentary-based photography related to the ocean today: aesthetic
formality is often intermingled with implicit or explicit political critique, as I have already
touched upon. Such technical means combined with pointed ideological ends have certainly
been witnessed before in various developments of twentieth-century art beyond the
propagandistic, as merely a straightforward mode of sound visual rhetoric that convincingly
persuades the viewer. The novel approach of Sekulas work, however, has more to do with the
direct, one-to-one relationship of the formal and the political in the current capitalist culture of
most of the world. What begins with an impression of the sheer sensorial and formal fascination
of capitalist structures flips over in the next moment of reception to the stark awareness of the
social and environmental ramifications of this economic system, hence producing a powerful
kind of self-criticism and even paranoia in the viewer. Sekula therefore presents an ominous
breed of beauty in his project, which quite stealthily inculpates the viewer as consumer. The
sharp eye of the documentary camera effortlessly records the decorative nature of
patterning that results from the systematized nature of commercial shipping. This
formal play readily computes to the trained eye of the viewer as the language of art
and the language of commercial design, creating an atmosphere of visual pleasure.
That these means have once again fooled the viewer into reading beauty where disgust instead
might lay upon second and third glance, drives home the psychological effect of the amalgam of
formal and political all the more stringently


Technological solutions to global warming only ensure further environmental destruction and
are destined to fail

Joronen, 2k10
(Mikko, Dept of Geography and Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, U of Turku, The Age of Planetary Space: On Heidegger,
Being, and Metaphysics of Globalization, pg 224-5)

Perhaps one of the most striking examples of the need for non-violent resistance and power-
free following of the abyssal earth is the contemporary event of global warming. While this
devastating change is affecting all parts of the earth, even the atmosphere, some of the most vulgar
solutions, especially the geo-engineering proposals, aim at intentional, even global scale,
climate modification either by reducing the incoming radiation from the sun for instance, by using the
refractive screens or sunshade of autonomous spacecrafts installed in space (Angel 2006), and by spraying cooling sulphate
particle concentrations in the stratosphere (Crutzen 2006) or by removing CO2 from the atmosphere for instance, by
increasing carbon sequestration with iron fertilization pumped at oceans (Buesseler&Boyd 2003).
These various potential geoengineering implementations seem to do nothing but follow the
baseline of the gigantic machination, the subjugation of things into orderable reserve
commanded to stand by so that they may be manipulated by the operations of calculation.
Even though such geo-engineering may eventually mitigate the negative consequences of
climate change, it offers a calculative moulding of even more complex systems of orderings as
a solution to the problem of global warming, which is by itself subordinate to, as well as an outcome
of, this manipulative and calculative subjugation of earth, the logic of circular self-overcoming
in the ever greater modalities of exploitative power. As Malpas writes, although it is evident that
more complex systems of orderings also increase the possibilities of their failure, machination
always presents itself as a source for continuous improvements by simply viewing these
failures as an indication of a further need for technological perfection (2006:298). In other words,
machination does not implicate an achievement of total ordering, but a drive toward total ordering where this drive
itself is never under suspicion. Nevertheless, as contemporary climate change indicates, earth never allows
itself to become captured, completely controlled, or emptied into unfolding that frames it in terms of
orderable and exploitable standing-reserve. Earth rather resists all attempts to capture it: it resists by
pointing out the lack that leads to the failure of all systems of orderings. It is precisely this lack,
the line of failure that has always already started to flee the perfect rationalization and total
capture of things, which presents the earth aspect of Heidegger. Instead of the calculative engineering of
technical solutions, the non-violent resistance allows the earth to become a source of abyssal
being, a source of self-emerging things that always retains a hidden element since the earth
never allows itself to become completely secured though particular world-disclosures (see Harrison
2007:628; Peters&Irwin 2002:8). In other words, instead of mere calculative manipulation, we can resist the manipulative
machination of earth and thus let the living earth become a source of abyssal being, an earth-site for our dwelling.

The politics of the standing reserve reduce all beings to objects of its own manipulation
destroys value to life by sacrificing ethics in the name of protecting instrumental value
Mitchell, 2k5
(Andrew J., Stanford University, Heidegger and Terrorism, Research in Phenomenology, 35)

The elimination of difference in the standing-reserve along with the elimination of national
differences serve to identify the threat of terrorism with the quest for security. The absence of this threat would be the
absence of being, and its consummation would be the absence of being as well. Security is only needed where there is a threat. If a threat
is not perceived, if one believes oneself invulnerable, then there is no need for security. Security is for those who know they can be injured, for those who can be damaged. Does
America know that it can be damaged? If security requires a recognition of ones own vulnerability, then security
can only be found in the acknowledgment of ones threatened condition, and this means that it
can only be found in a recognition of being as threat. To be secure, there must be the threat. For this reason, all of the
planned securities that attempt to abolish the threat can never achieve the security they seek .
Security requires that we preserve the threat, and this means that we must act in the office of preservers.
As preservers, what we are charged to preserve is not so much the present being as the concealment that inhabits it. Preserving a thing means to not
challenge it forth into technological availability, to let it maintain an essential concealment. That we
participate in this essencing of being does not make of it a subjective matter, for there is no isolated subject in preservation, but an opening of being. Heidegger will name this
the clearing of the truth (Wahrheit) of being, and it is this clearing that Dasein preserves (bewahrt). When a thing truthfully is, when it is what it is in truth, then it is preserved. In
preserving beings, Dasein participates in the truth (preservation) of being. The truth of being is being as threat, and this threat only threatens when Dasein preserves it in terror.
Dasein is not innocent in the terrorization of being. On the contrary, Dasein is complicit in it. Dasein refuses to abolish terrorism.
For this reason, a Heideggerian thinking of terrorism must remain skeptical of all the various measures taken to
oppose terrorism, to root it out or to circumvent it. These are so many attempts to do away with what threatens, measures that are themselves in the
highest degree willful. This will can only impose itself upon being, can only draw out more and more of its wrath, and this inward wrath of
being maintains itself in a never-ending supply. The will can only devastate the earth. Rather than approaching the world in terms of resources
to be secured, true security can only be found in the preservation of the threat of being. It is precisely
when we are busy with security measures and the frantic organization of resources that we
directly assault the things we would preserve. The threat of being goes unheeded when things are restlessly shuttled back and forth,
harried, monitored, and surveilled. The threat of being is only preserved when things are allowed to rest. In the notes
to the Evening Conversation, security is thought in just such terms: Security (what one understands by this) arises not from securing and the measures taken for this; security
resides in rest [in der Ruhe] and is itself made superfluous by this. (GA 77: 244)23 The rest in question is a rest from the economic
cycling and circulating of the standing reserve. The technological unworld, the situation of total
war, is precisely the era of restlessness (The term totality says nothing more; it names only the spread of the hitherto known into the
restless *GA 69: 181+). Security is superfluous here, which is only to say that it is unnecessary or useless. It
is not found in utility, but in the preserved state of the useless. Utility and function are precisely
the dangers of a txnh that has turned antagonistic towards nature. In rest, they no longer determine the being of the thing. In
resting, things are free of security measures, but not for all that rendered insecure. Instead, they are preserved. There is no security; this is what
we have to preserve. Heideggerian thinking is a thinking that thinks away from simple presence and absence. It thinks what Heidegger calls the between (das
Zwischen). This between is a world of nonpresence and nonabsence. Annihilation is impossible for this world and so is security.
The terror experienced today is a clue to the withdrawal of being. The world is denatured,
drained of reality. Everything is threatened and the danger only ever increases. Dasein flees to a
metaphysics of presence to escape the threatened world, hoping there to find security. But security cannot
do away with the threat, rather it must guard it . Dasein guards the truth of being in the experience of terror. What is perhaps
repugnant to consider in all this is that being calls for terrorism and for terrorists. With the enframing of being and the circulation of
standing-reserve, what is has already been destroyed . Terrorism is merely the ugly confirmation of this point. As we have seen,
being does not linger behind the scenes but is found in the staging itself. If being is to terrorizeif, in other words, this is an age of terrorismthen being must call for terrorists.
They are simply more slaves of the history of beyng (GA 69: 209) and, in Heideggers eyes, no different from the politicians of the day in service to the cause of Americanism.
But someone might object, the terrorists are murderers and the politicians are not. Granting this objection despite its obvious navet, we can nonetheless see that both
politicians and terrorists are called for by the standing-reserve, the one to ensure its
nonabsence, that the plan will reach everyone everywhere, and the other to ensure its nonpresence, that all beings will now
be put into circulation by the threat of destruction. In this regard, human resources are no different from livestock, and with this,
an evil worse than death has already taken place. Human resources do not die, they perish.


The essence of truth and technology does not permanently endure rather it is the
historically contingent way in which Being discloses itself and is understood by Dasein
metaphysics supplies each epochal period with an ontotheological grounding the
metaphysics of presence underlying modern technological thought represents the total
closure of thought that forgets the question of Being and disincentivizes ontological inquiry
Thomson, 2k1
[Iain, University of New Mexico, Heidegger on Ontological Education, or: How We Become What
We Are, Inquiry, 2001]
Heideggers pronouncement that the essence of truth transforms sounds paradoxical; how can an essence change? This will
seem impossible to someone like Kripke, who holds that an essence is a property an entity possesses necessarily, the
referent of a rigid designator the extension of which is . xed across all possible worlds.4 The paradox disappears, however,
once we realize that Heidegger too uses essence (Wesen) as a technical term, albeit quite differently from Kripke. To
understand essence in phrases such as the essence of truth and the essence of technology,
Heidegger explains, we cannot conceive of essence the way we have been doing since Plato, as what
permanently endures, for that makes it seem as if by essence we mean some mythological
abstraction. Instead, Heidegger insists, we need to think of essence as a verb, as the way in which
things essence (west) or remain in play (im Spiel bleibt).5 In Heideggers usage, essence picks out the
extension of an entity unfolding itself in historical intelligibility. Otherwise put, Heidegger understands
essence in terms of being, and since being is not a real predicate (as Kant showed), there is little likelihood that an entitys
essence can be picked out by a single, . xed predicate or underlying property (as substance metaphysics assumes). Rather,
for Heidegger essence simply denotes the historical way in which an entity comes to reveal itself
ontologically and be understood by Dasein.6 Accordingly, essence must be understood in terms
of the ek-sistence of Da-sein, that is, in terms of being set-out into the disclosedness of
beings.7 In On the Essence of Truth (1929), Heidegger applies this historical understanding of essence to truth,
contending famously (if no longer terribly controversially) that the original historical essence of truth is not
simply unforgottenness (Unvergessenheit, a literal translation of the original Greek word for truth: Aletheia the
alpha-privative un- plus Lethe, the mythological river of forgetting), but phenomenological un-
concealedness (Un-verborgenheit) more generally. Historically, truth . first refers to revealedness or
phenomenological manifestation rather than to accurate representation; the locus of truth is not
originally the correspondence of an assertion to a state of affairs, but the antecedent fact that
there is something there to which the assertion might correspond. So conceived, the essence of
truth is a revealedness fully co-extensional with Daseins existence, the basic fact of our
standing-out (ek-sistere) historically into phenomenological intelligibility. The essence of truth
thus refers to the way in which this revealedness takes shape historically, namely, as a series of
different ontological constellations of intelligibility. It is not surprising, then, that Heidegger rst began to
elaborate his history of being in On the Essence of Truth; for him the essence of truth is the history of
being. Of course, such strong claims about the radically historical character of our concepts (even cherished concepts like
essence, truth, history, concept, and being) tend to make philosophers nervous. When Heidegger historicizes
ontology by re-rooting it in the historical existence of Dasein, how does his account avoid simply dissolving intelligibility into
the ux of time? Heideggers answer is surprising; it is the metaphysical tradition that prevents
intelligibility from dissolving into a pure temporal flux. Indeed, careful readers will notice that when
Heidegger writes that ek-sistent, disclosive Da-sein possesses the human being so originarily that only it secures for
humanity that distinctive relatedness to the totality of beings as such which first grounds all history, he is subtly invoking
his account of the way in which metaphysics grounds intelligibility. Unfortunately, the complexity of Heideggers
idiosyncratic understanding of Western metaphysics as ontotheology, coupled with his seemingly strong antipathy to
metaphysics, has tended to obscure the unparalleled pride of place he in fact assigns to metaphysics in the historical
construction, contestation, and maintenance of intelligibility. Put simply, Heidegger holds that our
metaphysicians ontological understandings of what entities are as such ground intelligibility
from the inside-out (as it were), while their theological understandings of the way in which the
totality of beings exist simultaneously secure the intelligible order from the outside-in. Western
historys successive constellations of intelligibility are thus doubly grounded in a series of
ontotheologically structured understandings of the being of beings (das Sein des Seienden),
understandings, that is, of both what and how beings are, or of the totality of beings as such (as
Heidegger puts it above).8 This account answers our worry; for although none of these ontotheological
grounds has served the history of intelligibility as an unshakeable foundation (Grund), nor have
any of the major ontotheologies instantly given way like a groundless abyss (Abgrund). Rather,
each ontotheology has served its historical constellation of intelligibility as an Ungrund, a
perhaps necessary appearance of ground, that is, as that point at which ontological inquiry
comes to a rest.9 Because each ontotheology serves for a time as the point where the spade
turns (as Wittgenstein put it), the history of intelligibility has taken the form of a series of relatively
durable, overlapping historical epochs rather than either a single monolithic understanding of
what-is or a formless ontological flux.10 Thus metaphysics, by repeatedly supplying intelligibility
with dual ontotheological anchors, is able to hold back (epoche) the floodwaters of intelligibility
for a time the time of an epoch. It is this overlapping historical series of ontotheologically
grounded epochs that Heidegger calls the history of being.

The loss of Being that defines our historical epoch shapes the dominant social imaginary
through instrumental reasoning this denies intrinsic value to other beings and the natural
world which legitimates the practices and institutionalization of war, structural violence,
and environmental destruction
Chwastiaka and Lehmanb, 2k8
[Michele University of New Mexico, Anderson School of Management, United States, Glen,
School of Accounting, University of South Australia, Accounting for war, Accounting
Forum,Volume 32, Issue 4, December 2008, Pages 313326]
Many peace researchers argue that the sources for physical violence can be found in passive violence
(disrespect for ourselves and others lives), structural violence (daily acts of exploitation and
repression) and cultural violence (the ideologies, religions, laws, etc. which legitimize violence
in all its forms) (Galtung & Ikeda, 1995; Galtung, 1996). This paper argues that accounting is a form of cultural violence in
that it legitimizes the exploitation inherent in a capitalist economy by reconstructing it
positively as productive, necessary and normal. The basic hypothesis is that accounting is part of a moral
order based on instrumental rationality that was central to the rise of Western modernity.
This mentalist image of the world was at first just an idea in the minds of some influential thinkers, but it later
came to shape the social imaginary of large strata, and then eventually whole societies. Instrumental
reasoning does not allow us to glimpse the wholeness of being and as such stifles our
ability to see the intrinsic value of others and the natural realm. If our conceptual
representation of the world masks the intrinsic value of others, our ability to feel empathy
will be constrained making it possible for us to ignore, for instance, the fact that five of the six
billion people on earth live in poverty (Ramonet, 2004, p. 84). For as Bauman (1991, p. 155) notes, The
more rational is the organization of action, the easier it is to cause sufferingand remain
at peace with oneself and as Arias (1999, p. 57) states, While our technological capability to destroy has multiplied,
our ability to empathize with the problem of the afflicted has faltered. This paper will explore accountings contribution
towards masking the intrinsic value of others and how this assists with rationalizing war and war-like behaviors by first
discussing the rise of modernity and its impact on social organization and daily life. The argument is developed using Charles
Taylors Modern Social Imaginaries (2004) and A Secular Age (2007) which traced the historical trends that have led us to the
present point in our social narratives. Towards this end, it is interesting to note that one of the primary ideologues of
capitalism, Adam Smith, who provided much of the intellectual foundation for the system, was deeply concerned that moral
sentiments toward others could easily be forgotten in the pursuit of profits. In A Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith was clear
about the limitations of capitalism and emphasized that it was always necessary to be sceptical about proposals from the
employer class as their interest is never exactly the same with that of the public (Smith, 1790, p. 250). It is worth
remembering that Smith was also clear that constant care was needed to ensure that ethical values did
not deteriorate. As Keller (2007) argues, in a very interesting paper which contrasts Smith and Friedman, the situation
where the interests of corporations often take precedence over the interests of society would be Smiths worst nightmare.
(pp. 159188). Second, the paper examines specific applications of the way in which accountings indifference towards
the intrinsic value of others assists with rationalizing war and war-like behaviors. First, the
maintenance of capitalism requires us to believe that preserving wealth, rather than the sanctity of life, is the supreme end for
society. Accounting supports this delusion by denying an object any value other than its financial contribution or detriment.
Second, by viewing nature as a good, accounting nullifies its intrinsic value, leading to
unbridled exploitation which in turn has brought about resource wars in many forms. Third,
war and accounting parallel one another in the fact that they render violence more doable by denying the intrinsic value of
the other through employing a dehumanized rhetoric and creating a distance between the perpetrator and the victim.
Fourth, accounting contributes to rationalizing the inequities, exploitation and outright denial of life created by the corporate
globalization agenda through elevating economic development over all other considerations. Fifth, economic sanctions follow
the impeccable logic of accounting in that they produce brutal consequences for the enemy, which are rendered invisible, at
minimal cost for the perpetrator. Lastly, accounting makes war appear as reasonable a business venture as health care by
condensing the value of an activity to profit or loss. 1. The social imaginary underlying accounting Accounting as a technology
is, like most modern institutions, ignorant of the structures and values upon which it is based. In the opinion of hermeneutic
thinkers such as Charles Taylor this is because humans have become unaware of the social
imaginarythe way of thinking which gives shape to the society which spawns
technology ( [Taylor, 2003] and [Taylor, 2004]). My basic hypothesis is that central to Western modernity is a
new conception of the moral order of society. This was at first just an idea in the minds of some influential
thinkers, but it later came to shape the social imaginary of large strata, and then eventually whole societies. It has now become
so self-evident to us, that we have trouble seeing it as one possible conception among others. The mutation of this
view of moral order into our social imaginary is the coming to be of certain social forms
which are those essentially characterizing Western modernity: the market economy, the public
sphere, the self-governing people, among others. (Taylor, 2002, p. 1). Accordingly, any accounting for
violence and war first involves an understanding of how certain values and ideas, and not others,
have come to shape and dominate our culture and institutions and how these in turn have impacted the way we account. The
social imaginary is that shared understanding of the world which makes possible
common practices and a collective sense of legitimacy (Taylor, 2002). It is the process by which
ordinary people make sense of their social surroundings. As such, it is frequently expressed in
stories, legends, myths, and other pre-Enlightenment narratives. According to Taylor: This approach is
not the same as one which might focus on the ideas, as against the institutions of modernity. The social imaginary is not a
set of ideas; rather it is what enables, through making sense of, the practices of a society. (Taylor, 2002, p. 1). The social
imaginary that enables current day practices of accounting is a product of Enlightenment
thought with its emphasis on technical and scientific achievement. The rise of Western modernity
was most clearly stated in the new theories of Natural Law which emerged in the 17th century, largely as a
response to the domestic and international disorder wrought by the wars of religion (Kant,
1795). The moral background was one of natural rights where people have certain
obligations towards one another independent of politics, community, culture, religion,
and other associated phenomena. This moral order upset traditional views that a persons roles and obligations
were dependent upon their position within a particular community. As such, it created an individualized and
atomized society which gave way to an abstract, instrumental view of others. It gave rise to not
only a secular culture, but a social order that emphasizes continued economic growth and expansionary processes that have
colonized other life-worlds and social structures (see Taylor, 2007).1 In this modern social imaginary,
political and social obligations are seen as an extension or application of these natural
rights. Political authority is perceived to be legitimate only if it is based on a social contract
consented to by individuals. Since the time of Locke, the idea that society and politics exist for the benefit of individuals and
the defense of their rights has taken on more and more importance. This notion became the dominant view by marginalizing
older theories and newer rivals, and in so doing generated far-reaching claims on political life. The doctrine of original consent
(e.g., Lockes consent to taxation) underlies the popular sovereignty under which we now live. The theory of natural
rights spawned a dense web of limits to legislative and executive action, via the
entrenched charters which have become an important feature of contemporary
government. During these last four centuries, the social imaginary of natural rights has undergone a double expansion.
This expansion can be traced in a number of ways. First, the discourse of natural law started off in a rather specialized niche. It
provided philosophers and legal theorists a language with which to talk about the legitimacy of governments and the rules of
war and peace, the nascent doctrines of modern international law. It then began to infiltrate and transform the discourse in
other niches. Second, it has been extended because more people live by it. It was the Scottish philosopher Hume who
emphasized the importance of habit, custom and tradition in transforming a way of thought into a social norm. A
commitment to rights, procedure and precision underlie most social contracts in the
modern world. Hence, what started as an idea in the minds of a few influential thinkers, eventually came to shape the
social imaginary2 of a large strata of people and then whole societies (Taylor, 2007). As stated previously, the theories of
natural law which helped to spawn the social imaginary of modernity were built on a
series of individualist assumptions. This, together with the Enlightenments emphasis on
precise technical and scientific achievement elevated an instrumental and positive
epistemology as the only rational means for viewing the world. What we account for has
been over-determined by this positivist epistemology. Hence, if we are to subject accounting to a critical
interpretation we must look beyond its instrumental logic. We need to reconsider the societal
images and practices upon which it is based. The positivist epistemology which created the
dominant institutions of Western modernity (e.g., the market economy, the public sphere, self-governing
people, etc.) assumes that history, culture and the social world can be ignored in a system of
valuation. Hence, from such a perspective terrorism and war, for instance, simply create new
business opportunities or distract from others (Chwastiak & Young, 2003). As Weidenbaum states,
Although the continuing struggle against international terrorism imposes significant costs on society in general and on
business in particular, it is also a source of new or expanded market opportunities for some companies (2003, p. 10). Hence,
according to an article in Forbes, terrorism can be a lucky break for some individuals: The failed car bombings in the U.K. last
month gave a showcase role to security technology. Security cameras recorded men leaving the scene of the two unexploded
car bombs in London. License-plate-reading software on highway cams helped lead police to Scotlandand the fiery auto
attack on Glasgow Airport. Such threats represent opportunity to Andrew Malim, a 64-year-old Brit who sells video analytics
software for the U.K.s ubiquitous closed-circuit TV cameras (Fitch, 2007, p. 80). Thus, the number one problem for
accounting and modern social science has from the beginning been modernity itself. According to
this perspective, modernity and its processes reflect the historically unprecedented amalgam of new
practices and institutional forms (science, technology, industrial production, urbanization);
of new ways of living (individualism, secularization, instrumental rationality) and of new
forms of malaise (alienation, meaninglessness, a sense of impending social dissolution). As
Bauman (1991) and others have noted the failure to move beyond the rational tends to impose a
certain vision of the world on others and nature. This imaginary can turn into a violent
attitude towards the other by setting forth a series of dualisms that deny the value of
the ostensibly negative term (e.g., slave in master/slave, irrational in rational/irrational, etc.). Hence, through
modernity, we created a social imaginary which perpetuates a limited means to
understand others, as well as the significant relationships which shape the world. This social
imaginary denies the legitimacy of non-Western forms of social organization, calling them barbaric,
uncivilized, etc. By understanding these limits to modernity we can better understand the
processes that legitimize war, violence and terrorism. The remainder of the paper examines how
accounting is wedded to those aspects of modernity which have made cruelty a way of life by denying the intrinsic value of
others starting with expansionistic logic of capitalism.

Contention Two: Ontological Inquiry

Resolved: Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase
its non-military exploration of the Earths oceans.


Resolve is not to be found in a willful action, but as a steadfastedness to allow the revelations
of being. This allows for a new mode of political action outside the arbitrary whims of the
sovereign ego

Pezze, 2k6
(Barbara, PhD Philosophy at Honk Kong U, Heidegger on Gelassenheit, Minerva, vol .10,
http://www.ul.ie/~philos/vol10/Heidegger.html)

Let us pause for a moment to consider a possible misunderstanding. It could appear, from what we have been
saying, that Gelassenheit floats in the realm of unreality and so in nothingness, and, lacking all
power of action, is a will-less letting in of everything and, basically, the denial of the will to live!
(1966a, p. 80). But this is not the case, for in the Gelassenheit we find something that recalls the power of
action, but which is not a will. It is a resolve *Entschlossenheit+ (ibid., p. 81), but not as an act of will
that makes a decision and finds a solution to a problem or a situation. This resolve, as Heidegger
himself suggests, must be thought as the one that is spoken of in Being and Time, that is, it is a letting oneself be
called forth (1996, p. 283) to ones ownmost possibility of being. Resoluteness as Entschlossenheit is
translated in Being and Time is authentic being a self (1996, p. 274).
It is quite difficult to think a resolve that is not a matter of will that moves to an action; we tend, in fact, to consider resoluteness as
a strong determination to attain something. As we read in Heideggers Introduction To Metaphysics (2000), the essence of the
resolve, as he intends it, is not an intention to act; it is not a gathering of energy to be released into action.
Resolve is the beginning, the inceptual beginning of any action moved. Here acting is not be taken as an action undertaken
by Dasein in being resolute. Rather, acting refers to the existential and fundamental mode of being of Dasein, which is to be care,
and which is the primordial being of Dasein.
Resoluteness, in its essence, is the remaining open of Dasein for be-ing. In the context of the Conversation, this resolve should thus
be understood as the opening of man particularly undertaken by him for openness *als das eigens bernommene Sichffnen des
Daseins fr das Offene+ (Heidegger 1966a, p. 81). It is a resolve to remain open to be-ing, and therefore to what is
ownmost to mans nature, which is disclosed in relation to be-ing. This resolve is what Heidegger, in the Conversation, indicates as
releasement to that-which-regions, the resolve to release oneself to that-which-regions, to remain open towards the
openness itself.
Now, there is another element that pertains to Gelassenheit: there is, in fact, not only a resolve, but also a steadfastness
[Ausdauer] (Heidegger 1966a, p.81) proper to Gelassenheit. Thinking, becoming more and more aware of its nature, and
experiencing more clarity about it, remains firm and resolute. Thinking stands within and rests in this composed steadfastness
(ibid., p. 81+). The steadfastness proper to Gelassenheit
would be behavior which did not become a swaggering comportment, but which collected itself into and remained always the
composure of releasement [Verhaltenheit der Gelassenheit]. (Heidegger 1966a, p. 81)


Our stance of resolve in the face of modern technological enframing allows for a new
relationship with Being and spaceremaining open to new modes of revealing is a
prerequisite for allowing new forms of political action to reveal themselves outside of the
standing reserve

Joronen, 2k10
(Mikko, Dept of Geography and Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, U of Turku, The Age of Planetary Space: On Heidegger,
Being, and Metaphysics of Globalization, pg 97-99)

What Heidegger obviously rejects here is both the logical continuity of the history of being (even the dialectical one of
Hegel) as well as the sense of plain discontinuity of history. As Heidegger puts it in Platos Doctrine of Truth, such
doctrines of thinkers do not merely consist of the intelligibility they create, but of the
oblivion (Lethe): in addition to what doctrine says, it also refers to that which, within what is said, remains unsaid (1998b: 155). Thus, the
inquiry of the operative history of being never simply returns to past, but steps back to a domain, which in spite of being still affective has been systematically skipped over:
to the concealed destining constituted by the oblivion of the finite Event of be-ing. From a
viewpoint of contemporary epoch, such Lethe comes forth as we first become aware of the
prevailing mode of veiling-revealing, and hence open up ourselves to think how conceptual
pro-gressions and purposeless changes, even seemingly innocent linguistic translations, contain
a disposure, a non-rational legacy of forgetting and veiling, by which be-ing hands itself from one epoch to another through the veiling
doctrines. Altogether, the incubational maturation of the oblivion has a double outlet: the history of being is not just a history of a loss of sense of be-ing and its
finitude through metaphysical groundings; it also presents a genealogical incubation of these grounding postulates through the unthought possibilities they release. In order
to further clarify such sense of maturation in the history of being, it is crucial, at least for heuristic reasons, to separate two different planes of maturation: the general inter-
epochal plane, where the major modes of withdrawal take place (i.e. the pre-socratic, the ancient, the medieval, the modern, including its planetary outcome), and the more
specific intra-epochal plane, which consists of the incubation within specific epochal modes of sending (Haar 1993:74, See also Gillespie 1984:136; Thomson 2005:9; Davis
2007:161184). Thus, there is not just a cumulative maturation between epochs, where the decisive oblivion of first beginning inaugurates the gradual maturation of the
oblivion of being, but also an incubation within epochs, such maturation taking place, for instance, through the way Kants idea of transcendental conditions of
possibility unconscious ly reinforced Leibnizs principle of rationality (i.e., nothing is without ground), or through the way the
unthought of Nietzsches will to power, the will to will, prepared technological self-willing (circular heightening of will) and
hence the technological maxim (the endless production of things as orderable resource) (See Heidegger
1968:165; Haar 1993:49; Davis 2007:161162, 179). Thus, when exploring the genealogy of the conditions of planetary unfolding, we should pay attention to all of these
aspects, to what are the conditions of planetary unfolding, how they incubated within the epochal unfolding, as well as to how such incubation epochs are part of a longer
succession of preparing moves and turns. As already mentioned above, due to the matter that the history of the oblivion of be-ing and the sedimented layers of metaphysical
grounding it constituted become remembered in the other beginning retrieving what was constitutive but yet withheld, what may be seen as awakened by the end of
metaphysics is the possibility of its overcoming through the recovery of the finite power of Event. As Claudia Baracchi sums up, at the end of its history
(Geschichte) being constitutes the very possibility of an other inception (2006: 29). However, at the same such turning
into Event of other inception should be itself seen in terms of historical play of oblivion: after the final possibility of metaphysics in Nietzsche and technological unfolding it
becomes for the first time possible to turn to view the unity of the whole history of oblivion in terms of pointing the finite Event veiled behind such an onto-theological
mechanism (Davis 2007:268). 24 Yet, even though such other beginning is constituted in terms of
remembering the forgotten history of the Event, the exact content of the other beginning is
apparently left open : Heidegger speaks about essential waiting that takes place through the mindful
thinking releasing the power of open be-ing and self-emerging earth (I will return to these issues later), but this
is above all to emphasize the impermanency of his own thought against the paradoxal essence
of the Event as the impossible that excesses all expectations by becoming possible. In fact, to determine the
new final ground to come in other beginning would speak against the finitude of the Event as well as against the decisive and hence unpredictable role of the giving of be-ing
it is waiting that lets the Event to come into its own, into its surprising unfolding of
happening, when human ordering and moulding prevent the Event to take place on its own. In
other words, in order to draw the precedence of being over the comportments of human will into its
final conclusion, it is the destining of being that should be seen as letting the Event to come
forth, such an Event signifying what already secretly constituted the whole tradition of destining. Be-ing indeed does not occur as a process in the span of time, but as a
disposure: when the succession that grew from the first disposure was based on the oblivion of be-ing and its Event, the other beginning would bring
a new tradition based on awareness and mindfulness of finite modes of revealing, the Events. Hence,
the awakening into finitude of the Event does not merely bring forth what has been send but yet
disposed, but also opens up a chance for completely new and unseen modes of happening of
be-ing. Nevertheless, at the same time Heidegger quite straightforwardly claims that we should handle the other beginning out of the originally proposed direction of
the first beginning: we must perhaps only direct the historically mindful deliberation toward the
thinkers in the history of the first beginning and, by way of questioning dialogue with their questioning posture,
unexpectedly plant a questioning that one day finds itself expressly rooted in an other
beginning (2000:119). The possibility for other beginning, then, undoubtedly expresses the
fundamental aim of Heideggers overcoming of metaphysics. Instead of mere suspension of
metaphysics and its history, its history becomes preserved and hence transformed into truth of
be-ing (i.e. to the truth about the happening of finite determination of unfolding delimiting the originary abyssal abundance of be-ing), which in turn may
lead to the leap into other beginning completely free from the tradition constituted by the
first beginning. This leap, however, can not be based on our personal inventions, but upon granting of being, which is why Heidegger also claims that the
planetary metaphysics is an order of the earth which will supposedly last for a long time, even though in such an end thinking is equally already in transition to other
beginning, due to the circumstance that thinking is starting to become aware of the ontological limits of technological manipulation (1973e: 95). Perhaps in
proportion to the radical aspect concerning the new modes of unfolding inaugurated by the
dawn of liberation from the tradition of first beginning we should merely talk about
preparatory thinking that anticipates such a leap without predetermining it, but when
thought in proportion to first beginning such preparing thinking is more of a remembering, of
genealogical retrieval, of the hidden relation of other beginning to first beginning. What is perhaps the most important point to emphasize here is that in
order to reach the other beginning it is a requirement to turn back towards the hidden
sending of being in a manner that investigates the genealogical consummation of this veiling as
a preparing history of be-ing (e.g. Krell 1992:109; Thomson 2005:29; Elden 2003b:191196). Accordingly, Ereignis is not a newly
invented mode through which be-ing can now take place, but something that has already ruled
without being revealed Ereignis denotes something that we revitalize, something in which we are awaken to. This brings out two
general methodological notions, which will be further discussed in the following sub-section. Firstly, it is precisely the
happening of ontological difference between abyssal be-ing (Seyn) and metaphysical covering of being (Sein) as beingness (Seinendheit) of beings
(Seiende), which points out the need to recover the hidden mission, where be-ing sends itself by
covering its finite nature. The task of thinking is to turn back towards what calls for thinking, and
thus to point out the nature of this call of the sending and its mission. Thinking of the specific
ontological conditions that appropriated their ground from the possibility of rich be-ing
thereby cannot be based on a representation of objects, such representation only preparing
beings for calculative knowability, but on a remembering that turns back towards what already
positioned us towards the contingent happening of ownness that outstrips all theory and all
universals (Polt 2006:53). Such representations, in spite of their capability to legitimate their correspondence with objects, are mere by-products of this primordial
happening of owning; in particular, of a modern technological mode of owning that grounds the beingness
(Seiendheit) in terms of objectivity by viewing beings as knowable objects standing over against
the certainty of subject (Heidegger 1973e:88; See also Part II of the present work). Thinking of such world-historical Event
of unfolding, thereby, cannot be based on representative thinking, but on a remembrance that
takes place out of this Event itself thinking the Event denotes a reproductive recovery and return to the primordial allowing of unfolding.
Secondly, such being-historical thinking gradually turns to explore and destruct the power of those
sedimented layers of tradition that have governed and limited our efforts to think,
conceptualize, and understand it is fundamentally consisted of awareness concerning the limiting and enabling power of ontological groundings.
Instead of what Heidegger calls an historiographical (Historie) exploration of history, which only represents history, thinking of the history of being (Geschichte) requires us to
go into details of those modes of concealing-revealing that constitute the legacy of oblivion, such legacy preparing the conditions of contemporary planetary unfolding.
Historie, the historiographical exploration of history, then, is always historical (geschichtlich) it is grounded upon the more fundamental disposure where the Event of being
covers up itself when the inquiry of the true history (Geschichte), the succession of disposal of being, is never primarily or necessarily historiographical (Heidegger
1977e:175). Exploration of the history of being rather requires that we recover the genealogical preparations made by the onto-theological oblivions. Hence, such
exploration does not try to trace the causal chain of events, but rather inquires what secretly
determines an entire tradition of unfolding: the source of be-ing lost by the tradition of its
oblivion.

Evaluate ontology first failure to prioritize ontological inquiry is tantamount to a loss of
Being which impoverishes understanding while locating social-political institutions as
isolated from their natural context and eliminates an authentic relationship to Being
destroying value to life and causing unchecked environmental destruction
Magrini, 2k12
[J.M., Professor at the College of DuPage Illinois, Worlds Apart in the Curriculum: Heideger,
Technology, and the Poietic Attunement of Literature, Educational Philosophy and Theory,
Volume 44, Issue 5, Pages 500-521, July 2012]
Writing in 1927, Heidegger uses the term Dasein to describe the human in his magnum opus, Being and Time. This term is not
psychological, biological, or anthropological in nature. Instead, Dasein denotes specifically the way of life, or Being, of the human. Dasein is unlike any other entity in the
world. For Dasein is neither an object nor subject we hypostatize. When we designate this entity with the term Dasein*there-being+, we are
expressing not its what (as if it were a table, house, or tree) but its Being (Heidegger, 1962, p. 67/42). It is possible to envisage Dasein
functioning uniquely as both noun and infinitive, as it indicates that we are always on-the-way, always moving toward our own potential for being what we will become
through the enactment of our unique possibilities for an authentic, flourishing existence that is consistent with Heidegger's notion of authentic worldly dwelling.
Ontology, as conceived by Heidegger, raises both the fundamental question concerning Being in general and the concomitant concern with the Being of beings.
This latter concern presupposes that there are existential structures sustaining and enabling our Being-in-the-world. Science does not engage in ontological inquiry,
rather it focuses exclusively on learning facts about entities, without concern for their Being. Science conducts ontical investigations, and asks questions that can be
answered with empirical certainty. To conduct an inquiry into Being, or the Being of entities, is to do ontology, and ontological questions are much more difficult, if
not impossible, to answer with certainty. Ontology unfolds in the form of an inquiry as opposed to an investigation, e.g. ontology is concerned with more primordial
questions than science, such as What is it to be as a human being? or, Why is there something rather than nothing?. Heidegger's
philosophy of 1927, which attempts to elucidate the meaning of Being through the fundamental ontology of the Dasein, places great importance on revealing the
existential structures underlying our lives, and in particular, the various inauthentic and authentic ways we exist. Our potential for a rich and fulfilling existence is
bound up with the understanding of these structures. Living authentically, as Being-in-the-world, relates directly to the ontological ways in which we are free, beholden
and responsible to our ownmost potential for living, which includes the understanding of mortality and our solicitous Being-with-others. When caring for our Being and the
Being of others, which represents an authentic existence, we are living in such a way as to exercise critical thought and engage in creative intellectual and artistic problem-
solving. Heidegger lived this type of existence as a philosopher, educator, and learner, for Heidegger placed the highest value on
education, stating that the teacher's vocation is perhaps the most important and difficult role to assume. Heidegger's entire
philosophy, from Being and Time through his later works on art, poetry and authentic thinking, which includes his thinking on education, is directed
toward awakening humans to their authentic ontological potential for living as true guardians of Being, for dwelling poetically on the earth. In Heidegger's later
philosophy (writings of the turn), from the 1930s onward, a decidedly new approach to the fundamental topic of addressing the
question of Being qua Being is evident. During this time, Heidegger adopts a more poetic style of thinking and writing that is
removed from the academic tone of his earlier work. Rather than philosophizing, Heidegger is concerned with embracing poetic,
meditative thought. Heidegger also attempts to overcome metaphysics by moving beyond the linguistic and conceptual constraints
of traditional Western philosophy, which includes graduating beyond thinking the ontological-ontical distinction. The turn (Kehre)
in Heidegger's philosophy represents the movement toward thinking on the human as a true guardian of Being, i.e. one who dwells poetically, which is an authentic
existence characterized by caring for the earth and others in relation to the overwhelming and sublime mystery of Being. It must be noted that this turn in
Heidegger's thought does not result in a change to the fundamental topic of Being and Time. Rather, it represents a reorientation to
the various ways in which the Being-event occurs, e.g. after Being and Time, Heidegger considers alternative paradigms for pursuing
the question of Being, which includes speculation on the origin of art and the essence of poetry as related to the event of truth as
aletheia, or un-concealedness. Educational research focused on Heidegger's philosophy must take seriously the crucial role that
moods play in situating the human being in its world, for to gloss over this issue, misses the point that educational reform, from the
perspective of Heidegger's thinking, depends on the following understanding: in order to change our theories and views on educational
practice, we must change our grounding attunement. Heidegger views the history of the Western world in terms of the primary concern for beings and
present-at-hand entities, a concern for what comes to presence as opposed to a concern for how this is made possible in the first instance. We tend to value scientific
investigation over ontological inquiry into the nature of Being, into the essence of our unique potentiality-for-Being, i.e. what we can be as ontological sites of potential
and transcendence. This phenomenon, the loss of Being , the forgetting of the original question of ontology, dramatically effects our lives and world, and this includes
the dehumanization of our social-political-educational institutions. According to Heidegger, this relates directly to the way in which our contemporary world is in
the grip of an adverse form of attunement, which is the spawn of modern technology, causing us to understand and discourse about our lives in impoverished ways.

The ontological inquiry of the 1ac is a form of counter-education that provides a starting
point from which we can engage normalizing education that prioritizes disinterested
instrumental rationality in politics as well as debate instead of focusing on the successful
imposition of policy we should begin from a position of transcendence that allows reflection
on the meanings, identities, and quests of technological thought
Gur-Zeev, 2k2
[Ilan, The University of Haifa, Martin Heidegger, transcendence, and the possibility of counter-
education, Heidegger, Education and Modernity, 2002]
So even in face of the success of modern science and technology, even in face of the present situateness, even
in face of the absence of thinking - transcendence into learning to think is still an open human
possibility. The presence of the absence of thinking does not halt genuine learning - and unlearning:
it is its starting point. Once we are so related and drawn to what withdraws, we are drawing into what withdraws,
into the enigmatic and therefore mutable nearness of its appeal. Whenever man is properly drawing that way, he is
thinking - even though he may still be far away from what withdraws, even though the withdrawal may remain as veiled as
ever.31 But in what sense is that which calls us to think preferable to concealment, framing, and unauthentic life? For
Heidegger there is no way to justify the one rather than the other. In this sense, on Heideggerian grounds there is no way to
favor this kind of learning over the conventional kind. The two ways represent opposing versions of concern. The reception
of Heideggers ideas in the field of philosophy of education and within different pedagogies varies. Some scholars claim that
it has no relevance whatsoever, or at least that he never really had a great deal to say about education.32 Some see
Heidegger's educational implications as nothing but "nonsense".33 Others are basically critical of his abstractness and still
others propose various means to implement, instrumenatalize, or domesticate Heideggers philosophy and make it
relevant to actual teaching in schools.34 For all their differences, these responses to Heidegger's thought consider it in
respect of schooling and normalizing education. Even at their best, when following Heidegger they refer to teaching as an
artistic-noninstrumental process.35 Normalizing education, as was shown, guarantees not only security, prosperity,
cooperation and reproduction: it offers even concern and transcendence. This kind of concern, however, represents an
abandonment of another kind of concern, an authentic one, which does not satisfy itself by
successful imposition on the things in the world; it does not fulfills itself as technological success
or social cooperation and solidarity. This other kind of concern makes another kind of transcendence possible.
Here truth as letting-be the otherness of beings realizes human freedom. It is transcendence not as "progress" or
self-oblivion but as an outcome of the worthy suffering of facing meaninglessness and living-
towards-death. As such, transcendence faces the infinity of nothingness and makes the absent freedom and truth
present. It becomes what Heidegger never speaks of: worthy suffering. It sheds light on the futility of the mere
thingness in the beings which have been stripped of their uniqueness by human
instrumentalism. Worthy suffering makes possible a kind of transcendence, which allows
reflection on the production of meanings, identities, and quests. It even reflects on the representation
apparatuses and their manipulations.36 But can it also offer transcendence from pain/pleasure into the worthy
suffering/happiness of facing the truth of Being/nothingness as a transcendence into a worthier way of life? Into the terrain
of truths which are not fabricated by successful violent manipulations? Is there a way of transcending metaphysical violence
itself in the form of the closure/arbitrariness of enframing (Ge-stell), of human beings as standing-reserve (Bestand), of the
limits of language and the effects of the essence of Being as ontological exile? The kind of counter-education to which
Heidegger's concepts of "unlearning", unconcealment", and "transcendence" are not foreign is still voiceles. It cannot
become institutionalized or avoid becoming a dogmatic positive Utopia. It should avoid the quest for "authentic
authority" and the acceptance of mundane violence as a tool for overcoming metaphysical
violence as it is invested in normalizing education. When counter-education is not true to itself, in the name
of authenticity and transcendence it will speak, with Heidegger, the vulgar language of National Socialism and other
positive Utopias, and create a rhetoric of this kind: The knowledge of true scholarship does not differ in its tradition from
the knowledge of farmers, lumberjacks, miners and craftsman. For knowledge means being at home in the world in which
we live as individuals and as part of a community. Knowledge means growth of resolve and action in the performance of a
task that has been given usKnowledge means being in the place where we are put.37 From here the way easily leads to
the conception of "we are but following the glorious will of our Fuehrer".38 Every historical collectivistic-oriented
situateness or normalization process has its Fuehrer: even the process of McDonaldization of
reality or the infantilization processes in cyberspace as a totalistic pleasure machine. But
counter-education can find in Heidegger's philosophy a different kind of the concept of transcendence.
In it transcendence is conditioned by overcoming authority, any authority, especially that of the
one who "knows"39 or sets the standards, quests or telos. Here it is impossible to differentiate
between self-overcoming as "let-learn" and unconcealment as let-things-be what they already
are in their essence. In both, thinking manifests itself, and the presence of the exile of Being allows authentic
transcendence or a kind of religiosity in which redemption as a relevant pole of existence is saved. Transcendence into
thinking, which is normally absent, is transformed into a special existential "moment". Facing the
presence of its absence is already thinking: And what withdraws in such a manner keeps and develops its own incomparable
nearness. Once we are so related and drawn to what withdraws, we are drawing into what withdraws, into the enigmatic
and therefore mutable nearness of its appeal. Whenever man is properly drawing that way, he is thinking even though he
may still be far away from what withdraws, even though the withdrawal may remain as veiled as ever.40 But even here,
when it is not the Fuehrer who calls for transcendence into thinking but that to which the Fuehrer's voice responds or that
call which he betrays, it is always "the call" which chooses us. It is always "the call" which selects us,
challenges us in a way which, while it gives itself to the human, swallows the not-yet-
reallyhuman as an act of its creation. The transcendence from contingent human power relations
and the contextualized imposed production of truths, values, identities, consciousness, and
representation apparatuses in its turn offers another kind of arbitrariness. It manifests the other face of
metaphysical violence: And what it gives us to think about, the gift it gives to us, is nothing less than itself itself, which
calls on us to enter into thinking. The question What calls for thinking? asks for what wants to be thought about
in the preeminent sense: it does not just give us something to think about, nor only itself, but it first
gives thought and thinking to us, it entrusts thought to us as our essential destiny, and thus first
joins and appropriates us to thought.41 Here, as a danger, counter-education unveils its essence and
makes human transcendence possible with no security, no promised "success", consensus or
pleasure. And this is only the first step in the long way of counter-education, which should at the
same time address the most concrete and banal manifestations of reality and the politics of the
distribution of evils.


Our mode of being-in-the-world is determined by the knowledge we value and pursue
when education in the debate community regarding topics like energy production becomes
grounded in the metaphysics of enframing our community becomes fragmented and
devolves into vocationalism rather than emphasizing critical thinking as an activity with
intrinsic value
Thomson, 2k1
[Iain, University of New Mexico, Heidegger on Ontological Education, or: How We Become What
We Are, Inquiry, 2001]
Heidegger began developing his critique of higher education in 1911 and continued elaborating it well into the 1960s, but
perhaps his most direct answer to this question comes in 1929.20 Having nally been awarded a full professorship (on the
basis of Being and Time), the 39-year-old Heidegger gives his of cial Inaugural Lecture at Freiburg University, the famous
What isMetaphysics? He begins boldly, directing his critical attention to the university itself by emphasizing philosophys
concrete existential foundations (since metaphysical questioning must be posed from the essential position of the
existence *Dasein+ that questions). Within the lifeworld of the university, Heidegger observes, existence
(Dasein) is determined by Wissenschaft, the knowledge embodied in the humanities and natural
sciences. Our Dasein in the community of researchers, teachers, and students is determined
by science or knowledge *durch die Wissenschaft bestimmt+.21 Our very being-in-the-world is shaped
by the knowledge we pursue, uncover, and embody. When Heidegger claims that existence is
fundamentally shaped by knowledge, he is not thinking of a professoriate shifting in the winds of
academic trends, nor simply arguing for a kind of pedagogical or performative consistency,
according to which we should practice what we know. His intent, rather, is to emphasize a troubling sense in
which it seems that we cannot help practicing what we know, since we are always already
implicitly shaped by our guiding metaphysical presuppositions. Heideggers question thus becomes: What
is the ontological impact of our unquestioned reliance on the particular metaphysical presuppositions which tacitly
dominate the academy? What happens to us essentially, in the ground of our existence, when the Wissenschaft pursued in
the contemporary university becomes our guiding passion, fundamentally shaping our view of the world and of ourselves?
Heideggers dramatic answer introduces his radical critique of the hyperspecialization and consequent
fragmentation of the modern university: The elds of science are widely separated. Their ways of handling the
objects of their inquiries differ fundamentally. Today only the technical organization of universities and faculties
consolidates this multiplicity of dispersed disciplines, only through practical and instrumental
goals do they maintain any meaning. The rootedness of the sciences in their essential ground has dried up and died.2 2
Here in 1929 Heidegger accurately describes the predicament of that institution which, almost half a century later, Clark
Kerr would satirically label the Multi-versity: an internally fragmented Uni-versity-in-name-only, where the sole communal
unity stems from a common grievance about parking spaces.23 Historically, as the modern university loses
sight of the shared goals which originally justified the endeavors of the academic community as
a whole (at rst, the common pursuit of the uni ed system of knowledge, then the communal dedication to the
formation of cultivated individuals), its members begin to look outside the university for some purpose
to give meaning to lives of research. Since only those disciplines (or sub-disciplines) able to produce
instrumentally useful results regularly find such external support, all disciplines increasingly try
to present themselves in terms of their use-value. Without a counter-ideal, students too will
adopt this instrumental mentality, coming to see education merely as a means to an increased
salary down the road. In this way fragmentation leads to the professionalization of the university
and, eventually, its deterioration into vocationalism. At the same time, moreover, the different disciplines,
lacking any shared, substantive sense of a unifying purpose or common subjectmatter, tend by the logic of specialization to
develop internal standards appropriate to their particular object-domains. As these domains become increasingly
specialized, these internal standards become ever more disparate, if not simply incommensurable. In this way, disciplinary
fragmentation leaves the university without common standards other than the now ubiquitous but entirely empty and
formal ideal of excellence. Following in Heideggers footsteps, critics such as Bill Readings and Timothy Clark show how our
contemporary university of excellence, owing to the very emptiness of the idea of excellence, is becoming an excellent
bureaucratic corporation, geared to no higher idea than its own maximized self-perpetuation according to optimal
input/output ratios.24 Such diagnoses make clear that the development of our educational institutions
continues to follow the underlying metaphysical logic of enframing, the progressive
transformation of all entities into mere resources to be optimized. Unfortunately, these critics fail to
recognize this underlying ontohistorical logic, and so offer diagnoses without cures. Indeed, Readings materialist
explanation for the historical obsolescence of Bildung as the unifying ideal of the modern university (the result of an
implacable bourgeois economic revolution) leads him to succumb to a cynicism in which future denizens of the university
can hope for nothing more than pragmatic situational responses in an environment increasingly transformed by the logic
of consumerism.25 While such critiques of the university convincingly extend and update aspects of Heideggers analysis,
they lack his philosophical vision for a revitalizing reuni cation of the university. To see that Heidegger himself did not
relinquish all hope for the future of higher education, we need only attend carefully to the performative dimension of his
Inaugural Lecture. On the surface, it may seem as if Heidegger, welcomed fully into the arms of the university, rather
perversely uses his celebratory lecture to pronounce the death of the institution which has just hired him, proclaiming that:
The rootedness of the sciences in their essential ground has dried up and died. Yet, with this deliberate
provocation Heidegger is not beating a dead horse; his pronouncement that the university is
dead at its roots implies that it is fated to wither and decay unless it is revived, reinvigorated
from the root. Heidegger uses this organic metaphor of rootedness (Verwurzelung) to put into effect what Derrida
(who will restage this scene himself) recognizes as a phoenix motif: One burns or buries what is already dead so that life
will be reborn and regenerated from these ashes.26 Indeed, Heidegger begins to outline his program for a renaissance of
the university in the lectures conclusion: Existence is determined by science, but science itself remains
rooted in metaphysics, whether it realizes it or not. Since the roots of the university are
metaphysical, a reinstauration of the scientific lifeworld requires a renewed attention to this
underlying metaphysical dimension. Only if science exists on the basis of metaphysics can it
achieve anew its essential task, which is not to amass and classify bits of knowledge, but to
disclose in ever-renewed fashion the entire expanse of truth in nature and history.27 What exactly is
Heidegger proposing here? To understand his vision for a rebirth of the university, we need to turn to a text he began
writing the next year: Platos Teaching on Truth.28 Here, tracing the ontohistorical roots of our educational crisis back to
Platos cave, Heidegger (quite literally) excavates an alternative.

The pedagogical practice of ontological inquiry attuned by an authentic openness to Being
creates a paradigm shift away from standardized models of unreflective praise for
contemporary norms grounded in vocational, economic, and technological which holds the
potential to awaken authentic ways of being-in-the-world
Magrini, 2k12
[J.M., Professor at the College of DuPage Illinois, Worlds Apart in the Curriculum: Heideger,
Technology, and the Poietic Attunement of Literature, Educational Philosophy and Theory,
Volume 44, Issue 5, Pages 500-521, July 2012]
The understanding of Being in relation to an authentic existence can prove meaningful for our
practices in the classrooms, and this is not limited to institutions of higher learning. When
considering the current state of educational, viewing the curriculum in terms of either the factory-model or the
corporate model, both espousing a philosophy grounded in vocational, economic, and technological
concerns, our contemporary schools are exemplars of inauthentic existence, and we can see it in
many of their practices, such as the emphasis on rote memorization and unreflective praise of contemporary
norms, as contributors to the development of a pervasive inauthenticity (Dwyer et al., 1988, p. 146).
Educational reform, as inspired by Heidegger's philosophy, represents the recovery of our lost potential to
develop ontologically. Dwyer claims that it is possible to envisage a time when students progress to the point where
they are no longer bound, to a considerable extent, by the possibilities which their own tradition offers (ibid., p. 146).
However, this movement to recover our ontological potential for Being is not an easy or simple
matter to conceive, for it must not be mistakenly understood in terms of one educational
philosophy overtaking another, a battle between warring curriculum models, where progressivism usurps essentialism
and neo-constructivism overtakes progressivism. Rather, it entails our confronting and overcoming the
metaphysics of presence, the traditional metaphysical view that tacitly and insidiously determines
the way that we are in the world (Thomson, 2002, p. 141). For Heidegger, educational reform is not simply about a
change in our mind-set or radical conscious awakening as we find in Sartre's existentialism or Freire's spiritually inspired
educational philosophy. Rather, it is about transcending our inauthentic modes of attunement, and
thereby enacting the authentic possibilities of our Being-in-the-world. What is called for is a radical
paradigm shift, from an inauthentic existence to one that is highlighted by resolute openness to
our potential for Being, and this change means that along with our mood, our understanding of the
world and the ways in which we interpret and discourse about it has also been reconfigured.
Whatever is adversely attuned can undergo a change of attunement, where there is attunement there is also the possibility of
an awakening attunement (Heidegger, 1995, p. 181). We hold the potential to change our attunement, and it
is possible to be in the right mood. Some moods, which Heidegger classifies as fundamental moods, are forms
of awakening attunement and include: Angst, deep boredom, melancholy, and the mood of the
holiday (das Festliche, or The Festival), or the mood of art. In the later works, Heidegger focuses on the
fundamental attunement of wonder (Erstaunen), which is associated with authentic dwelling, a way of
Being-in-the-world in which there exists a serene openness (Gelassenheit) to a possible change in our
understanding of Being (Dreyfus, 2001, p. 170). These are all forms of awakening attunements that provide
insight into our Being as a whole, revealing our world in terms of its authentic ontological nature. A
change in attunement would put us back in touch with our lost potentiality-for-Being. Awakening
attunement is a manner and means of grasping Da-sein with respect to the specific way it is, of grasping Da-sein as
Da-sein, or better, of letting Dasein be as it is, or can be, as Da-sein (Heidegger, 1995, p. 68). As stated, Heidegger
claims that we are under the spell of das Gestell, the Frame-up, or the inauthentic Enframing mood
of modern scientific-technology. Authentic educational reform requires that we undergo a change
of attunement, which is the paradigm shift from inauthentic to authentic existence. Education
conceived in terms of a meditative inquiry into the ontological nature of our Being, has the
potential to attune students anew, to inspire their transcendence beyond the numbing attunement
grounded in the misunderstanding and misinterpretation of today's technology. Heidegger is clear about
the path we must tread in order to recover our potentiality-for-Being, our ontological potential for living in an authentic
manner, and interestingly enough, it is real education that first makes this transformation a legitimate
possibility. According to Heidegger, Real education lays hold of the soul itself and transfers it in its
entirety by first of all leading us to the place of our essential Being and accustoming us to it (cited in
Thomson, 2002, p. 134). Heidegger's philosophy does indeed have implications for inspiring us to reexamine and
reassess our current educational methods, practices, and curriculum content. The ontological
concerns of which Heidegger speaks, the return to the place of our essential Being, should form the
essential grounding for any authentic philosophy of educational theory and practice.

Now is the key time to reconceptualize the hyper-separation of humanity from nature
attempts at mastery have pushed the atmosphere, forests, and oceans past their capacity to
absorb the externalities of modern technology freedom beyond modernity require a
recognition of these conditions, salvaging redeemable parts of the modern system while
dismantling and disposing those that enact physical destruction and ontological violence
Irwin in 8
[Ruth; Heidegger, Politics and Climate Change: Risking it All]
Environmental concerns are forcing us to reconceptualize the age-old assumption that
humanity has mastery over nature. The exponential growth of the global economy creates
a situation where every year market turnover and consumption increases and the rate of
increase is greater and greater year upon year. We are now at the stage that the atmosphere,
the forests and the oceans cannot carry on absorbing the 'externalities' of pollution, and
dramatic climate change is beginning to be upon us. Given these facts, and assuming for a
moment that we have the capacity to reconceptualize the traditional 'hyperseparation' of
humanity from nature - how do we begin the process of education and cultural change?
The Kyoto Agreement attempted to bring exponential increase to a standstill and halt consumption and pollution to 1990
levels. However, the Agreement rests on market assumptions about the mode of interaction between humanity and the earth
(or resources). The Brundtland Report rarely mentions the physical environment, ecology or wilderness. Instead, it refers to
'sustainable development' which is another metaphor for ongoing, progressive technological improvement and
universalization of modern cultural practices of consumerism. While the market metaphor structures all
interaction and ways of knowing, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to withdraw from
the rubric of economic growth. Ideas are not 'constructed' first and then followed by
material conditions. Neither do material conditions exist independently of the world-view
by which they are interpreted. An avenue to a freedom beyond technological enframing is
the collapse of the dualism between culture and nature, which simultaneously collapses
the position of technical mastery held by Man over an innocent, if wild and savage natural
environment. One of the recurring problems with dealing with environment issues is the
pessimistic belief that nothing can really change. Many people have a despondent view of
the world yet see their own efforts to change things as futile or falling on deaf ears.
Sometimes this feeling of futility is based on the minimal scale of individual effort - a small drop in a
vast ocean of ongoing environmentally destructive behaviour and beliefs. No single one of
us can stand outside the system we are thrown into; so that, even while we may abhor
using fossil fuels and cycle each day to work, we still wear clothes with synthetic,
petroleumbased material, or we eat food packed in plastic or we fly occasionally to a
conference on the other side of the planet. Even those who live in closed communities and
grow their own organic food, refuse to use money, and live wonderfully ecologically
friendly lifestyles are still at some points tied into the global economy. Their very
antagonism and self-imposed exile is a reaction that confirms the dominance of
modernity.1 Given the unavoidability of participating in the culture of modernity, the
question arises about how to institute cultural, technological and economic change that
will deeply alter the ethical relationship between humanity and the earth. The first step is
to recognize the conditions into which we are thrown. This can be a depressing and
disempowering stage where one wonders if there are any possibilities of emerging from a
pathway that appears determined to carry on along the lines of anthropocentric economic
growth no matter the anxiety about sustainable living in our ecological niche. The next
step is to try to discern which aspects of the modern system relies upon industrial
production, which upon the Enlightenment, which upon monotheistic religion, which upon
democratic Liberalism, which upon positivism and which upon technology itself. Having teased
some of these aspects apart, it is simpler to dismantle and reassemble a culture that keeps some
aspects of modernity: environmentally friendly technology, for example, and egalitarian
forms of political power but disposes of consumerism and commensurately, large-scale
industrial production for its own sake. Optimistic management of environmental issues
fails completely to honestly engage with the full implications of modern behaviour. This is
partly because the technological enframing of our world-view inhibits us from seeing the
earth or ourselves in a way that is outside of 'standing-reserve'. Sustainable development has
become fully integrated into the enframing of technology and the optimistic mastery over nature. <71-72>















2ac a2: framework
1. Counter-Interpretation: the affirmative must provide a topical engagement of the resolution
either by defending a policy or a critical affirmation of the resolution

2. We meet: We affirm the resolution through ontological inquiry

3. This interpretation solves 100% of their policy good offense: we only need to win a risk
that including the option to critically affirm the resolution through non-instrumental engagement
is beneficial to education and preserves sufficient limits that preserve clash

4. Education:

A. Theirs is a form of enframing: Thompson indicates that instrumentalism only values
knowledge for external ends thinking as an end-in-itself is subordinated in the quest to produce
rationally calculating, politically expedient policy-makers

B. Extend Gur-Zeev: normalizing education forces us defend the metaphysics of presence this
is not a benign attempt to preserve fairness or ground but reflects commitment to an unthinking
ontology instead we should start from a position of transcendence to counter traditional
practices in debate

C. Extend Nelson: they havent justified how you can could adjudicate questions of educational
and fair debate without answering the question of Being

D. Extend Magrini: framework is a question of how we pedagogically engage scholarship
their argument is that the only way we can be political is through the instrumental models offered
by technocrats this forgets the question of Being and creates detached rather than emotionally
engaged debate

E. The impact is our Chwastiaka Evidence: this social imaginary makes excludes difference
it allows us to ignore structural violence both inside and outside debate only by challenging
instrumentalism can we begin the process of interrogating, understanding, and changing
scholarship, thinking, and material violences



5. Limits and Ground

A. No ground loss: wind power bad is the only guaranteed ground against wind affs there is
no right to ground you still get links to ks ,you should be prepared to defend instrumental
policy-making on every topic and, given the nature of this topic, you should be prepared to
answer Heidegger

B. They over-limit: we are forced to engage the subject position of a policy-maker which none
of us occupy authentic education requires there be ground which allows affirmation from our
existential location

6. Predictability:

A. Predictability doesnt exist and is impossible to universalize: no universal standard and
voting on framework cant implement a static model of predictable debate

B. Even if absolute predictability were possible it wouldnt be desirable: debate would be an
endless repetition of the same arguments without innovation or creativity people leave the
activity when it becomes stale, lifeless, un-relatable and exclusionary


7. Dont evaluate competing interpretations default to reasonability

A. Voting against us a big penalty: they should have to win that we have made debating
impossible

B. Infinitely regressive: so long as we dont follow their interpretation to the t they will always
find some minute distinction to limit us out reasonability solves

C. You should encourage emotional over detached education
Peters, 2k3
[Michael, Research Professor in Education at the University of Glasgow, Technologising
Pedagogy: The Internet, Nihilism, and Phenomenology of Learning, Studies in Media &
Information Literacy Education, February 2003, Vol. 3, Issue 1]
Through greater experience, more instruction, and an extended range of examples, the student learns to recognise that
there are a large number of potentially relevant elements and advanced procedures for dealing with them. This is the third
stage: competency. In the face of potential overload of information, students learn to devise a plan or to adopt a
perspective, which narrows the range of potentially relevant features and aspects in any situation and permits better
understanding and easier decision making. In order to achieve competence, the student seeks rules and reasoning
procedures by which to choose the right plan or perspective, that is, the plan or perspective that will help them to avoid
mistakes. These rules, unlike the rules a novice first learns, are not easy to discover and rest upon a greater familiarity with
the vast number of situation in any domain that differ from one another in subtle ways. The competent student must be
able to decide which plan or perspective to adopt under conditions of uncertainty where the outcomes are never certain.
Crucially, this stage requires a special kind of involvement that arise from the student's engagement and his/her acceptance
of responsibility for their decision. This engagement is what separates us from a computer, as embodied
and emotional beings increasingly we come to care: success and failure matter to us. As the
competent learner becomes more emotionally involved with the task, it becomes increasingly
more difficult to adopt the detached, analytic and rule-following stance of the advanced
beginner. Resistance to involvement and engagement under conditions of uncertainty leads to
boredom and self-stultification. The teacher or mentor plays an important role in developing
competence. As Dreyfus (2001) argues: "Since students tend to imitate the teacher as model, teachers
can play a crucial role in whether students will withdraw into being disembodied minds or
become more and more involved in the learning situation. If the teacher is detached and
computer-like, the students will be too. Conversely, if the teacher shows his involvement in the
way he pursues the truth, considers daring hypotheses and interpretations, is open to students'
suggestions and objections, and emotionally dwells on choices that have led him to his
conclusions and actions, the students will be more likely to let their own successes and failures
matter to them, and rerun the choices that have led to these outcomes" (pp. 38-39). [27]


8. Switch Side debate is bad:

A. Its a myth: policy and k only teams never truly switch sides teams will read framework on
the aff and neg to preserve their preferred ground

B. Doesnt solve: affirmation of the windmill as an ontological inquiry into energy production
from wind power is not possible or guaranteed on the negative

C. Switch-side is an instrumental form of education which seeks to socialize debaters
into good liberal-democratic subjects
Hicks and Greene in 2k5
(darrin and walter, LOST CONVICTIONS Debating both sides and the ethical self-fashioning of
liberal citizens, cultural studies, vol 19 no 1)
But why dredge up this event from the archive of communication education? First, since the collapse of the Soviet
Union there has been a vigorous trade in debate as a tool for democratic education, often
with the hope of inculcating students with the norms necessary for deliberative democracy.
For example, since 1994, the International Debate Education Association has introduced debate to secondary schools and
universities throughout Central and Eastern Europe, the Former Soviet Union, Central Asia and Haiti and continues to grow
throughout the world (idebate.org 2004). The promotion and circulation of debate as a technique of
democratic decision-making suggests a need to explore the history of its ethical
problematization. As a cultural technology, the value of debate rests on its claim to cultivate the
ethical attributes required for democratic citizenship. Therefore, those challenges to debates civic function
require special consideration in order to assess the role of communication in the selffashioning of liberal citizens.1 In
Foucauldian fashion, we are interested in the ethical problematization of debating both sides so
that we might learn how this pedagogical technique organizes forms of democratic
subjectification available in the present (Foucault 2001). The second reason to write about the debating
both sides controversy is because it highlights how communication becomes an object, instrument
and field of cultural governance. The emphasis on the linguistic dimension of
communication tends to privilege a methodological and political commitment to read the
circulation of power as an ideological phenomenon mediated by the process of generating
and controlling the meaning of contested values, identities, and symbols (Nelson & Gaonkar 1998, Rosteck 1999).
As an alternative to this vision of a communicational cultural studies (Grossberg 1997) this paper highlights the
technical dimension of speech, that is, its circulation as an object and instrument for
regulating the conduct of citizensubjects. 2 Therefore, we approach the debating both sides controversy in
terms of what Michel Foucault (2001) calls a history of thought _/ a history of how people become anxious about this or that
(p. 74). Moreover, to write a history of debate as a cultural technology reveals how power works
productively by augmenting the human capacity for speech/communication. For us, an under-
appreciated aspect of the productive power of cultural governance resides in the
generation of subjects who come to understand themselves as speaking subjects willing to
regulate and transform their communicative behaviours for the purpose of improving their
political, economic, cultural and affective relationships.3 This paper argues that the strong liberal defence of
debating both sides separates speech from conviction. Debating both sides does so by de-
coupling the sincerity principle from the arguments presented by a debater. In place of the
assumption that a debater believes in what he or she argues, debating both sides grooms one to appreciate
the process of debate as a method of democratic decision-making. We argue the debating both
sides controversy articulates debate to Cold War liberal discourses of American exceptionalism
by folding the norm of free and full expression onto the soul of the debater. In turn, a debater
willing to debate both sides becomes a representative of the free world. Furthermore, we will
demonstrate how debating both sides as a technique of moral development works alongside specific aesthetic modes of class
subjectivity increasingly associated with the efforts of the knowledge class to legitimize the process of judgment. Debating
both sides reveals how the globalization of liberalism is less about a set of universal norms
and more about the circulation and uptake of cultural technologies.


More Cards

Universal standards destroy transformative education and agency
Bleiker in 2k3
(Roland, School of Political Science @ University of Queensland, Contemporary Political Theory,
Discourse and Human Agency)
Approaching the political and by extension dilemmas of agency requires tolerance towards various
forms of insight and levels of analysis, even if they contradict each others internal logic.
Such differences often only appear as contradictions because we still strive for a universal
standard of reference that is supposed to subsume all the various aspects of life under a
single totalizing standpoint (Adorno, 1992, 1718). Every process of revealing is at the same time
a process of concealing. Even the most convincing position cannot provide a form of insight
that does not at the same time conceal other perspectives. Revealing always occurs within a frame.
Framing is a way of ordering, and ordering banishes all other forms of revealing. This is, grossly
simplified, a position that resonates throughout much of Heideggers work (1954, 35). Taking this argument to heart is to
recognize that one cannot rely on one form of revealing alone. An adequate understanding of
human agency can be reached only by moving back and forth between various insights. The
point, then, is not to end up with a grand synthesis, but to make most out of each specific form of revealing (for an exploration
of this theme, via an analysis of Kants Critique of Judgement, see Deleuze, 1994). <P39-40>

Essentializing ground is founded on the same logic that justifies the violent political order of
modernity
Bleiker in 2000
(Roland, Senior Lecturer and Coordinator of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the
University of Queensland, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics)
The larger picture that emerges from such a genealogy of popular dissent is, of course, neither new nor particularly surprising.
The right to criticism has been recognised, at least since Hegel, as a key feature of modernity. Thus, the existence of
strong similarities between radical dissident movements and the political practices they
oppose only confirms the larger boundaries that surround modernitys celebration of
diversity. And that these boundaries are drawn, at least in part, by the inability to come to terms with the death of God, has
been discussed extensively since Nietzsche first tried to capture the modern condition with this metaphor. William Connolly
is among those who have most convincingly elucidated the long struggle in a world where
there is no longer a God that serves as a unifying centre for humanity. He shows that while
successive attempts to ground certainty in other external sources run into grave
difficulties, the insistence that such foundations must be found has remained a prominent
modern theme. This quest for a grounded and perfectly ordered world, Connolly argues,
can only be sustained by treating everything that does not fit into this order as irrational,
perverse, in need of punishment or destruction.18 It is self-evident that systems of
exclusion emerge from such practices, even if they engage, as the la Botiean tradition does, in the
very attempt to resist domination. P30


No authentic education without ontological inquiry
Thomson, 2k1
[Iain, University of New Mexico, Heidegger on Ontological Education, or: How We Become What
We Are, Inquiry, 2001]
With this philosophical background in place, we can now understand the reasoning behind Heideggers claim that our
changing historical understanding of education is grounded in the history of being.11
Heidegger defends a kind of ontological holism: By giving shape to our historical understanding of what
is, metaphysics determines the most basic presuppositions of what anything is, including
education. As he puts it: Western humanity, in all its comportment toward beings, and even
toward itself, is in every respect sustained and guided by metaphysics.12 The great
metaphysicians focus and disseminate an ontotheological understanding of what and how
beings are, thereby establishing the most basic conceptual parameters and ultimate
standards of legitimacy for their historical epochs. These ontotheologies function
historically like self-fulfilling prophecies, reshaping intelligibility from the ground up. For as
a new ontotheological understanding of what and how beings are takes hold and spreads,
it transforms our basic understanding of what all entities are.13 Our understanding of
education is made possible by the history of being, then, since when our understanding of
what beings are changes historically, our understanding of what education is transforms
as well. This conclusion is crucial; not only does it answer the question that has guided us thus far, it positions us to
understand what exactly Heidegger nds objectionable about our contemporary understanding of education (and the
educational institutions which embody this understanding). For Heidegger, our changing historical
understanding of what education is has its place in an historical series of ontological
epochs, holistic constellations of intelligibility which are themselves grounded in a series
of ontotheological understandings of what and how beings are. In order fully to comprehend
Heideggers critique of contemporary education, then, we need to answer three interrelated questions: First, what exactly is the
nature of our own ontological epoch? Second, in which ontotheology is our constellation of intelligibility grounded? And third,
how has this underlying ontotheology shaped our present understanding of education? I will take these questions in order.

Non-predictability is key to confront totalizing structures of debate and politics
Nelson, 2k7
[Eric, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, History as Decision and
Event in Heidegger, UDK 398.21 930.1, 2007]
Heidegger calls attention to how such explanatory forms prevent the recognition of the inexhaustible strangeness of the
unfamiliar (GA 51: 82-83). The history of being opens up the possibility of encountering this
strangeness and confronting totalizing accounts, including teleological reconstructions, insofar as
there is no privileged standpoint at the end of philosophy, simply a different standpoint,
one that is as much defined by what it lacksa word for beingas by its positive
characteristics.8 The history of beingbeing in its forgottenness, oblivion, and withdrawaldoes not itself operate as an
explanation. According to Robert Bernasconi: Nor can the oblivion of being serve as a principle of explanation, so long as we
understand by explanation a referring of the unknown to the known. The oblivion of being is in principle an
unknown; the history of such oblivion errancy.9 Instead of assuming the identity of history,
thought exposes itself to the unfamiliar for the sake of genuinely encountering the
historical as historical. Al- ready in the early 1920s, Heidegger challenged the traditional hermeneutical model of
understanding better with the practice of Auseinandersetzung (GA 25: 3-5). Auseinanderstezung literally signifi es setting-
apart-from-each-other. What it suggests, nonetheless, is a responsive confrontation. It is a confrontation in
dismantling reified structures, and responsive in that it dismantles precisely in order to
listen to what is said and left unsaid. Such historical confrontation is intensified in his
thinking of the upsurge and event of being (GA 66: 76-77).




There is no value to life within the framework of automobility.
Backhaus 2009 April 20, Gary, Loyola College in Maryland, Department of Philosophy
Automobility: Global Warming as Symptomatology, Sustainability 1, 187-208, online
What about humankind? Humankind engaged in, subject to, the orderings of automobility
becomes automata-like. But in terms of spatiality it is to be characterized as uprootedness.
Human beings need an existential foothold, a concretization of existential spatiality. But the
spatial transformations of the auto-mobile culture result in the loss of place, the loss of
the sense of place, disorientation, displacement, endless movements with no differentiated
wheres to go. The literature abounds with the disappearance of human-scale, human-
friendly landscapes at the same time that humanity has all but destroyed natural
landscapes. As the modern landscape becomes more and more homogeneous through
globalization, the moving to and fro, the freedom of movement of the auto-mobile age
becomes utterly insipid and intolerable as we are ordered about in its time consuming
flow. This uprooting (from place and thus a loss of identification and orientation) in which
we find ourselves ordered about like the entities of material culture is exactly what keeps
us on the move, for to stay put is to become aware of the poverty of auto-mobile spatiality,
while it is necessary to engage automobility in order to conduct everyday life. So we
participate in the spatial flow of its functional demands and let ourselves be consumed by
its frenzied orderings as a consumer of auto-mobile material culture. The way of Being that
calls on humankind to challenge the earth to be ordered through automobility is an
uprooting of ourselves as our lives are organized in its image while we engage a plethora
of mobile machines destroying place-Being. An essential characteristic of the modern
challenging forth of man is uprootedness. Because humankind engages in automobility
human being is uprooted and the automobility maintains an un-free relation to an ecology
subject to de-geographication. Our uprootedness alienates us from the earth and this is
why we have done so little about the environmental crises. By being alienated from the
earth due to the uprooting of auto-mobility, we are neither attuned to the needs of the
earth nor to our own needs as earth dwellers. What calls on humankind to eradicate
earthly spatial meanings? The same meanings that constitute the modern science
paradigm of a quantifiable mechanical universeprogress understood to be the
quantifiable increment. The more material culture, the faster material culture, the highest
GNP, the bigger burger, the more TV shows, the more automobiles sold, the more money
made, the most efficient beer can plant, all constitute progress. Globalization inqsures that
material culture gets bigger, gets faster, gets richer, gets jazzier, etc. All of this is spatially
constitutive of automobility, its unearthing, its unrooting, its leveling, and our uprooting
follows from the mechanization of motion and its accelerating progress of quantitatively
incremental additions and subtractions. As automata of automobility, humankind measures
the matter in motion of material culture and the more and the faster of its flow is the
progress that blinds humankind to the destruction of its Beingde-geographication. And
even in the face of its symptom, global warming, one of the famous automata by the name
of Al Gore, stills cannot resist its ideology.

Impact Devastation

Their ontology devastates the earth and renders it an unworld devoid of being this is worse
than mere annihilation because devastation represents the foreclosure of all possibilities of
life while annihilation is merely a leveling out to zero.
MITCHELL 2005, ANDREW J., Stanford University, HEIDEGGER AND TERRORISM, Research in
Phenomenology 35, 181-218
Devastation (Verwstung) is the process by which the world becomes a desert (Wste), a
sandy expanse that seemingly extends without end, without landmarks or direction, and
is devoid of all life.20 If we follow the dialogue in thinking an ancient Greek notion of life
as another name for being, then the lifeless desert is the being-less desert. The world that
becomes a lifeless desert is consequently an unworld from which being has withdrawn.
The older prisoner makes this connection explicit, The being of an age of devastation would
then consist in the abandonment of being (GA 77: 213). As we have seen, this is a process
that befalls the world, slowly dissolving it of worldliness and rendering it an unworld (cf.
GA 7: 88, 92f./EP, 104, 107f., etc.). Yet this unworld is not simply the opposite of world; it
remains a world, but a world made desert. The desert is not the complete absence of
world. Such an absence would not be reached by devastation (Verwstung), but rather by
annihilation (Vernichtung); and for Heidegger, annihilation is far less of a concern than
devastation: Devastation is more uncanny than mere annihilation *bloe Vernichtung+.
Mere annihilation sweeps aside all things including even nothingness, while devastation
on the contrary orders [bestellt] and spreads everything that blocks and prevents (WHD,
11/2930; tm). Annihilation as a thought of total absence is a thought from metaphysics. It
is one with a thinking of pure presence: pure presence, pure absence, and purely no contact
between them. During another lecture course on Hlderlin, this time in 1942 on the hymn
The Ister, Heidegger claims that annihilation is precisely the agenda of America in regards
to the homeland, which is here equated with Europe: We know today that the Anglo-
Saxon world of Americanism has resolved to annihilate [zu vernichten] Europe, that is, the
homeland, and that means: the inception of the Western world. The inceptual is
indestructible *unzerstrbar+ (GA 53: 68/54; tm). America is the agent of technological
devastation, and it operates under the assumptions of presence and absence that it itself is
so expert at dissembling. America resolves to annihilate and condemns itself to failure in so
doing, for the origin is indestructible. We could take this a step further and claim that only
because the origin cannot be annihilated is it possible to destroy it. This possibility of
destruction is its indestructible character. It can always be further destroyed, but you will
never annihilate it. Americanism names the endeavor or resolution to drive the
destruction of the world ever further into the unworld. America is the agent of a
malevolent being. This same reasoning explains why the older mans original conception of
evil had to be rethought. Evil is the devastation of the earth and the annihilation of the
human essence that goes along with it (GA 77: 207), he said, but this annihilation is simply
too easy, too much of an Americanism. The human essence is not annihilated in evil
who could care about that? Instead it is destroyed and devastated by evil. Devastation
does not annihilate, but brings about something worse, the unworld. Without limit, the
desert of the unworld spreads, ever worsening and incessantly urging itself to new
expressions of malevolence. Annihilation would bring respite and, in a perverse sense,
relief. There would be nothing left to protect and guard, nothing left to concern ourselves
withnothing left to terrorize. Devastation is also irreparable; no salvation can arrive for
it. The younger man is able to voice the monstrous conclusion of this thinking of
devastation: Then malevolence, as which devastation occurs [sich ereignet], would indeed
remain a basic characteristic of being itself (GA 77: 213, 215; em). The older man agrees,
being would be in the ground of its essence malevolent (GA 77: 215). Being is not evil; it is
something much worse; being is malevolent. Malevolent being is a being that threatens. It
threatens itself with annihilation, with both total absence and total presence, for they are
the same; it places itself in danger.21 This is so much as to say that all of the supposed
enemies of beingtechnology, metaphysics, the ontic, even being itself in regards to
beyngthese are so many ways of beings self-showing, where beings self-showing is not
to be understood as though beyng somehow remained behind all of these surrogates and
was imaged in them. Being is found only in these situations, a point Heidegger makes in the
Contributions to Philosophy, Here, in the unavoidable ordinariness of beings, beyng is the
most non-ordinary; and this estranging of beyng is not a manner of its appearing but rather
it itself (GA 65: 230/163; tm). Being is endangered and withdrawn in essence. Just as we
saw that there is no sense in talking about evil in itself, so too is there no sense in talking
about being by itself: there is only malevolent beyng. If beings exist in the shadow of a
threatened annihilation, and if such an existence is an existence in terror, then, as
reprehensible as this might sound, being itself is what terrorizes. Terror is the threat of
being.

Impact Nihilism

Their enframing of the earth culminates in endless nihilistic expansion and consumption.
Joronen 2008 Mikko, Department of Geography, University of Turku, The technological
metaphysics of planetary space: being in the age of globalization, Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space 2008, volume 26, pages 596 ^ 610
As an endlessly growing giganticism of the will, calculative enframing does not offer any
specific goals. Nor does it deny any specific goals, but simply gathers them into the
system, where the only goal is optimal organization of whatever it may be for the sake of
organizing itself. Therefore, it would be indeed too hasty to say that technological nihilism
means only that all goals are gone. The greatest expression of technological calculation
occurs when goallessness is first refused, and when suddenly one believes one has goals
again. In nihilism, calculative setting up and pursuit of goalsfor our `culture', for our
`nation', or for `mankind', in the forms of nationalism or the global reimage of
neoliberalism, for instanceis itself elevated into a goal (Heidegger, 1991, page 176; 1993b,
pages 244, 251). When the erection of values comes to power by dint of enframing, other
meaningful horizons are simply ordered under the calculative cast of enframing. As such,
enframing becomes an event of being which is capable of appearing around the globe in
various guises and disguises of value erection and entrenchment (Heidegger, 1977d, page
135; Kisiel, 2001a). The metaphysics that nihilism maintains is particularly important for
clarifying how globalization became possible through the history of being. As a forgetfulness
of being, nihilism is not a sign of faulty interpretations or bad philosophy. Rather, the
reverse. Since nihilism is true as metaphysics, it belongs to the history of being (Heidegger,
1993c, page 239). By expressing the technological end of the history of metaphysics
correctly, nihilism prepares a way for technological globalization. When the value of all
becomes defined by the supreme will to powerthat is, when willing endlessly constitutes
and challenges humans to will and to posit valuethe unconditioned hegemony of humans
over all beings manifests itself as a global consequence (Heidegger, 1991, page 174).
Globalization becomes a consummation of modern calculation nihilism, which aims to
control all beings by transforming them into a useable and exploitable standing-reserve. In
calculative challenging, spaces are allowed globally through the measurable and orderable
control and gigantic growth. It is precisely when calculation leads towards the eternal
recurrence of gigantic growth that increasing flexibility, efficiency, progress,
competitiveness, consumption, target-setting, and predictability become understandable
as manifestations of the historical age of global calculation.

The planetary enframing of the affirmative results in a nihilistic drive to calculate for the sake
of calculation alone.
Joronen 2010, Mikko The Age of Planetary Space, UNIVERSITY OF TURKU, department of
geography, online
In its way of destroying the earth, by changing it into errant planet, into a globe in astral
universe without a place for dwelling and making manifest of the happening of be-ing,
technological becoming of eternal strengthening opens neither paths nor possibilities,
but a profound nihilism of calculating. As a calculative enframing and endlessly growing
giganticism of the will, Gestell does not offer any specific goals. It neither denies any
specific goals, but simply gathers them into a system, where the only goal is the optimal
organization of goals for the mere sake of their efficient and flexible organizing. Therefore,
it would be indeed too hasty to say that nihilism only means that all goals are gone. Perhaps
the greatest expression of technological calculation occurs when goallessness is first
refused, and when suddenly one believes one has goals again. In such nihilism calculative
setting up the pursuit of goals for our culture, for our nation or for mankind, in the
forms of nationalism or the global regime of neoliberalism, for instance is itself elevated
into a goal (See Heidegger 1991:176; Heidegger 1993c:244).

Impact Extinction

Modern technology is embedded in a mode of ontological revealing which is responsible for
the worst consequences of massive global consumption and for the technology which makes
extinction possible.
Joronen 2010, Mikko The Age of Planetary Space, UNIVERSITY OF TURKU, department of
geography, online
Although Heidegger obviously could not foresee the ontic consequences of technological
thinking the internet, the globalization of capitalism, the way the latter speeded up the
former so that in addition to productionist logic of technological unfolding also the process
of exchange became an integral part of the rise of the globalization his mature
understanding about the ontological structure that eventually led to the rise of the
planetarization is not simply overstepped by referring to ontic nuances of recent
developments. In fact, as Feenberg pinpoints (2005:6), the case is almost the contrary:
when Heidegger wrote about technology it was still intellectually respectable to ignore his
views about gigantic, total, and global characters of the logic intrinsic to technological
revealing. However, during the last few decades we contemporaries have become
increasingly satiated with awareness about the matter that we now live in a technological
age, witnessing its global trajectories. Such awareness, of course, could be understood as a
symptom of the growing number of more and more complex technological devices we are
increasingly dependent on. From the ontological perspective, however, this apparently is
not the case: the multiplicity of the ontic consequences should not blind us from the
matter that behind them lays the age grounding understanding based on a historically
destining mission of being. These contemporary changes, then, are understandable
implications of the intensification and perhaps unpredictably gigantic size of the logic
intrinsic to the ontological condition Heidegger described decades ago as technological
ordering and machination. Heidegger, thus, did not just contrive to discuss the possible
spatial implications of the operations of technological machination already at the end of
1930s; he also managed to show how the emergence of such machination is structured to
lead to a whole new era of gigantic computing in which the whole of the earth eventually
turns into a global resource to be used and used up by a way of greater ordering and
efficiency. Accordingly, Heidegger understands modern technology above all as a
metaphysical project. Modern technological devices, from the manual technology and
manufacture of the industrial age to the revolutions made first by the engine technology
and then by what Heidegger (1998h:132133) calls the ruling determination of modern
technology as cybernetics (i.e. the rise and irruption of the systems of maximum possible
automation of command), all manifest a peculiar mode of revealing that is not just total in
nature, but an ever-growing imperial drive structured to constantly reach towards global
enlargement and intensification. Eventually such technological unfolding leads to a
diversity of phenomena, including the worldwide homogenization of modes of living, the
constant mobilization of cultural and economic practices, the global circulation of
information, goods, capital, people, and knowledge, the establishment of colossal stocks
of energy with massive potentiality of destruction as well (with the weapons of mass
destruction), and the commodification and productisation of all aspects of life from nature
to culture, from genetic information to consumption culture even a certain insensibility
with regard to tragedies of suffering (for instance through the television spectacles of war
and catastrophe), as Haar adds (1993:80; see also Gillespie 1984:128; Mugerauer 2008:xv-
xviii). In spite of the seemingly diverging characters, the former phenomena are nothing but
epiphenomena of the age defining metaphysical scaffolding of technological revealing; it is
the framework of calculative drive, the technological revealing of enframing, which
allows for multiple set of phenomena to emerge. As will be later shown in more detail, such
sense of unity is first and foremost typical for a metaphysical mechanism of unfolding
operative throughout the 2300 year tradition of Western thinking, a mechanism still being
constitutive for the contemporary technological enframing (Gestell) and self-heightening
machination (Machenschaft) of all things. As a matter of fact, it is the planetary outcome
of such a technological mode of unfolding, which according to Peter Sloterdijk (2009) was
first initiated and started as a mathematical globalization as a project that in
Heideggerean reading was boosted into its technological form by early modern philosophers
and mathematical physicists further proceeding as a terrestrial globalization, finally
leading to an age of planetary globe, which eventually turned the earth into a mere
planet under totally penetrable networks of orderings (Thrift 2008:234235; Morin 2009;
See also Heidegger 1998h:133; Dallmayr 2005:44; Radloff 2007b:3648). As the thesis will
show, the contemporary planetary unfolding was first initiated by the latent ground of
thought behind the metaphysical formulations of early Greek philosophers, further boosted
by the mathematical developments of early modern thinkers, finally coming forth as
cybernetic systems of ordering cast upon the planet. In such a planet, conceived as a mass
of matter wandering in empty universe, everything is called to be useable, penetrable,
mouldable, decodable and mobile.

Impact War

The reduction of the earth to standing reserve makes war a permanent condition of society in
which all individuals are implicated. Once everything is rendered replaceable there can be no
end to destruction.
MITCHELL 2005, ANDREW J., Stanford University, HEIDEGGER AND TERRORISM, Research in
Phenomenology 35, 181-218
With everything available as standing-reserve, troops included, the exhaustion of
resources is no longer possible. Resources are precisely in themselves replaceable, to the
extent that, in being given over to replacement, even the idea of an in itself is already
drained of reality ahead of time. There are no longer any losses that cannot be replaced.
In other words, there is no longer any friction. All uncertainty is lost, since it is not
recognized in the first place. Everything is monitored and controlled. The whole battle is
given over to a planning that is able to incorporate everything it encounters, since it only
ever encounters what is already planable in essence, the standingreserve. Strategys
demise is the ascendancy of planning. What this means is that war can now go on
interminably, subject to no other logic or obligation than its own. Nothing can resist it. But
without resistance, war must end. Peace can now go on interminably as well, subject to no
other logic or obligation than its own. The logic in question for both war and peace is the
logic of replacement, the obligation for each is the obligation to consume. There is no law
that would supervene or subtend consumption; there is no order outside of it that could
contain it. Clausewitzs ideal is realized in a manner that collapses the very distinctions that
gave it birth. War is no longer a duel; it recognizes no authority outside of itself. The name
for this new amalgam of war and peace is terrorism. Terrorism is Clausewitzs absolute war
in the mirror of technology. War and peace come to complete agreement and lose their
oppositional identity in the age of value and the ersatz. Without concern for resources,
consumption continues untroubled, since war is a kind of consumption of beings no
different from peace: War no longer battles against a state of peace, rather it newly
establishes the essence of peace (GA 69: 180). The essence of peace so established is a
peace that defines itself in regards to war, which binds itself inseparably to war, and which
functions equivalently to war. In either case, it is simply a matter of resource consumption
and replenishment. In Clausewitzian terms, there is perhaps too much continuity or
continuation between war and peace, War has become a distortion of the
consumption of beings which is continued in peace (GA 7: 89/EP, 104). The peace that
technology brings is nothing restful; instead it is the peace of unhindered circulation. We
cannot even ask when there will be peace or when the war will end. Such a question,
Heidegger specifies, cannot be answered, not because the length of the war cannot be
foreseen, but because the question itself asks for something which no longer is, since
already there is no longer a war that would be able to come to a peace (GA 7: 89/EP, 104;
tm). The basic oppositions of Clausewitzian warfare are undone at this point, an undoing
that includes the distinction between ideal and real. It also includes the distinction
between soldier and civilian. Since such distinctions depend upon a difference between
war and peace, they too can no longer apply. Everyone is now a civilian-soldier, or neither
a civilian nor a soldiera worker, one might say, or otherwise put, a target. With
everyone involved in the same processes of consumption and delivery, everyone is already
enlisted in advance. There are no longer any innocent victims or bystanders in this, and
the same holds true of terrorism. Terrorism is not the use of warfare against civilians (pace
Carr), for the simple reason that there no longer are any civilians.14 It is equally not war
against soldiers, and for this reason we go wrong to even consider it war. Terrorism is the
only conflict available and the only conflict that is in essence available and applicable. It can
have everything as its target. Terrorism follows from the transformation in beings
indicative of the technological age. This transformation remains important at each point of
a Heideggerian thinking of terrorism and is the ultimate consequence of the abolition of war
and peace; beings have become uncommon.


Impact Environment

Endless consumption, oppression, and the destruction of nature are inevitable as long as the
question of being remains unasked.
Joronen 2011, Mikko, Dwelling in the Sites of Finitude: Resisting the Violence of the
Metaphysical Globe, Antipode Vol. 00 No. 0, online
One of the features of contemporary planetary homelessness of machination is precisely the
lack of distress and emergency, the lack of mood that affords access to the openness of
being via finitude (Heidegger 2000:266267; see Haar 2002:157; Heidegger 1973:99). It is
the sense of ontological finitude that is crucial to dwelling without it dwelling turns into
moulding securing of being, into the metaphysical capturing of earth, when with the sense
of finitude we are given both the earth-sites of dwelling and the finite unfolding of abyssal
being. It is precisely the distress about the finitude of being that is able to block and cease
the eternal machinery of will to will and hence the endless productisation and
organisation of all in the names of capital accumulation, winning-valuing and profit-
making. Without a sense of finitude, limitation and dependence, thinking is not just lack of
genuine questions concerning our finite existence and ontological situatedness in-the-
world, but also in danger of encouraging the ontological violence of boundless
measurement and complete control. As Zimmerman writes, by affording realms of
personal and collective craving for immortality such violence generates a ground for the
new oppressive social institutions and nature-dominating projects of ecological
aggressiveness (Zimmerman 1994:107; cf. Taylor 1991:68, 1992:267). The dark side of the
denial of finitude and impermanence is the structured aim for total control and
measurement encouraging us to build immortal, megalomaniac and turgid monuments
from violent authoritarianism and hierarchic cultures to the contemporary hegemony of
capital accumulation and nature exploitation. It is the finitude then that works against
what Zizek calls the fantasmatic illusion maintained by the contemporary global
techno-capitalism, the illusion that the world ruled by machination and its capitalist forces
is ontologically complete and perfectly measured by its instrumental-pragmatist problem-
solving calculations ( Zizek 1999:204, 218; see also Brockelman 2008a:84, 2008b).

Impact Root Cause

Machination is the ontological basis which makes war, environmental destruction, and social
domination possible.
Joronen 2011, Mikko, Dwelling in the Sites of Finitude: Resisting the Violence of the
Metaphysical Globe, Antipode Vol. 00 No. 0, online
At the fundamental level Heideggers understanding of planetary machination as a
metaphysical condition that grounds a number of contemporary ontic phenomena
including the global drive of the contemporary forces of capitalparallels the grounding
notion of Heideggers philosophical thinking: the ontological difference between ontic
beings (things or entities) and being (the unfolding). Thus, even though Heidegger aims to
think about this primordial ontological realm of being, being does not signify an abstract
transcendental category but a historical unfolding that grounds and thus takes place
through the concrete sites, through the particular gatherings of things. In spite of their
ontological difference, then, all beings become what they are only out of the particular
sites of unfolding. Hence, the difference between ontic things (beings) and ontological
unfolding (being) does not signify a complete disconnection, but a difference of
possibility.3 Similarly, the systemic-ontological violence promoted by machination is at the
same time ontologically different from the concrete forms of social domination and ontic
manipulation of beings as well as their ontological condition of possibility. Nonetheless,
the overall significance of the systemic-ontological violence of contemporary calculative
machination does not rise from a mere relation between the derivative ontic and the
grounding ontological violence, but from its planetary outgrowth. It is because of the
global outcome that calculative machination does not just signify a mere historical
destining of Western thinking, but an exposure of the entire Westernising of the planet
through a series of metaphysical epochs culminating in the ontological violence exposed
by the global forces of economic and technological manipulation.


>>Framing<<
Ontology First Root Cause

Prioritize ontological investigation over political calculations global machination is based on
a foundational violence that enframes beings within its grasp. This systemic violence makes
actual subjective outbursts of violence possible.
Joronen 2011, Mikko, Dwelling in the Sites of Finitude: Resisting the Violence of the
Metaphysical Globe, Antipode Vol. 00 No. 0, online
As a self-strengthening metaphysical imperative, machination is not just structured to
further maximise the utility and control of beings under the pre-delineating framework of
calculation it imposes, but also to extend its control over the earth and thus to use the
whole planet as its product. Like the planetary earth, human beings are also set up into
this positioning of machination so that everything appears, as Heidegger (2005:2930)
points out in DasGestell, to have the potential to be set up for orderings and profit
making. Hence, the contemporary globe-wide economic subjugation and
commodification of beings under the profit-seeking and utilisation of markets evidently
rise out of the ontological foundation of machination: within machination all beings are
positioned (gestellt) under the power (Macht) that unfolds everything as makeable
(machbar) in the calculation-driven procedures of command (eg Heidegger 1998:47,
2000:8894; see Eldred 2000; Haar 1993:80; Heidegger 1973:107). Thus, machination does
not imply amere levelling of the space of the earth where space becomes amenable to the
manipulative orderings. Machination also promotes an ever expanding and enhancing
power that orders the globe through the pervasive calculations capable of operating in
different disguises disguises such as the contemporary capital-led promotion of the
allembracing market-globe through expanding profit-seeking activities and increasing
consumption of things as a useable resource subjugated under the calculated market
value. It is crucial to notice that because of its joint emergence with the power of
machination, Heideggers notion of calculation can neither be reduced to a simple method
of instrumental counting nor into a mere quantity. The modern notion of calculative
intelligibility belongs to the realm of unfolding that Heidegger calls the quality of the
gigantica colossal condition and pre-requisition that unfolds everything as an
orderable, controllable and measurable resource for universal calculability (2000:9496).
As a quality of unfolding, the gigantic signifies an opening of the totality of beings as a
reserve for the endless calculation; as the gigantic, calculative machination signifies
emergence of the power of flexible and unbounded manipulation of things through an
uncountable number of guises from planning and efficiency to usability and fabricability
of things. Calculation then is the operational intelligibility of the power of machination,
intelligibility with no other ends except further expansion and ordering. Fundamentally
calculation signifies nothing other than the absence of all other ends except the power of
further orderings for their own sake (Haar 2002:156). The most crucial aspect of
Heideggers understanding about calculation and machination is that they both work at a
metaphysical level: machination unfolds the totality of beings as makeable and malleable,
and thus constitutes metaphysical scaffolding for the planetary-wide handling of beings
through the systems of calculative orderings it generates. Although it is rather evident that
machination proposes a violent unfolding of things by its way of total ordering and
manipulation, machination is also an epiphenomenon of a broader mechanism of
ontological violence specific to all the metaphysical ways of moulding the world. As
metaphysics machination possesses violence by forcing beings into its total mould of
unfolding and thus does not let beings selfemerge but violently encloses them in its own
ground. Nonetheless, a discussion about violence, especially in the context of metaphysics,
may sound unnecessary, even obscure, or at least it may evoke a derogatory sense.
Intuitively violence seems as something concrete while metaphysics does not. Heidegger,
however, as will be shown in more detail, does not merely move the issue of violence from
the concrete tragedies to the metaphysical domain, as Hardt and Negri (2000:46), for
instance, seem to worry, but better reads metaphysics, to use Slavoj Zizeks words, as
corresponding to an ontological domain of systemic violence. As Zizek further specifies
(2007:6870), it was implicitly, but clearly Heideggers achievement to show that the
violence of metaphysical grounding needs to be understood as something that, by opening
up a domain of disclosure for concrete things, grounds the outbursts of physical and ontic
violence. Hence, we cannot categorise this realm of violence as merely ontological: by
imposing a certain mould of the world metaphysical violence offers an ontological
grounding of the social relations of domination. In order to further explicate the issue of
ontological violence implicated by the planetary machination as well as the question
concerning the possibility of its resistance, a short introduction to a Heideggerean
understanding about metaphysics and its relation to the question of being, and above all, to
our possibility of overcoming the metaphysical constitution of machination, is therefore
needed.

Ontology First Sustainability

Our understanding of being is foundational world disclosure is the first step to establishing
existential meaning which make social existence possible. Their ontological orientation enacts
a hegemony of consumption and objectification that makes sustainability impossible.
Backhaus 2009 April 20, Gary, Loyola College in Maryland, Department of Philosophy
Automobility: Global Warming as Symptomatology, Sustainability 1, 187-208, online
We must begin by recognizing our fundamental embodied interrelationship with the
EarthBody as the source of life and existential meaning [17]. The spatiality of human life
involves modalities of implacementthe collusion of the lived-body and its milieu, which
constitutes the dimensions and directions of existential spatialitythe fundamental
structures of orientation and identification [18]. The existential structure of human life is
geographically inscribed, rendered by such meanings as path, goal, arrival, sojourn,
destination, etc. Architecture, urban planning, vernacular building, landscape design,
engineering, all concretize existential spatiality in some way or another, therapeutically or
detrimentally, by interpreting the lived-landscape. The making of things for our livelihood
gathers a world. Poiesis, or bringing forth, is the fundamental existentiality of this thing-
making, world-gathering process that is spatially enacted, geographically inscribedthe
manifestation of earthly meanings, either natural or human bringing forth. All human
meanings are generated from the fundamental spatiality of existence. The
spatializing/spatialized processes of world gathering through thing-making involve the
crystallization of a particular way of Being-on-the-Earth. If automobility is an Industrial Age
form of spatial production that applies to or appropriates a great myriad of things, which
indeed it does, then automobility manifests hegemony in terms of world gathering, as it
indeed does. Automobility is constitutive of a spatially inscribed worldviewa historico-
geographical way of interpreting Being, a way of Being-on-the-Earth. In turn, an alternative
goal of achieving sustainability requires its development as a spatializing/spatialized way of
Being-on-the-Earth. The hegemony of auto-mobile spatial production as a way of Being-on-
the-Earth is incompatible with spatial productions based in sustainability as a way of Being-
on-the-Earth. In traditional cultures, the objectivated products of human expressivities, the
things that have been made, take on the place-character of the environment in spatially
contextualized forms of life exhibiting the character of place-oriented culture. The natural
entities on which humankind depends in the production of its cultural identity have their
natural places along the surface of the earth. Social geography teaches us the vital,
localized connections between social and geographical organization. Natural entities come
from somewhere and their origin is intrinsic to their manifestation and they are identified
on the basis of their localized earthly context. The very structure of spatializing/spatialized
existential meanings remain fast even through radical modifications in historical socio-
cultural relations to place-based geographies, even destructive ones [19]. Fundamentally,
meanings are generated through the structures and processes of spatial situatedness that
always manifest as socio-historical forms of culture, as interpreted ways of Being-on-the-
Earth [20]. Radical transformations in the socio-historical contents of these basic
existential structures occur through automobility. Automobility entails fundamental
spatiotemporal transformationsspatially expanded zones of operation on the basis of
truncations of time. Landscapes are appropriated on the basis of the implementation
requirements of operating machines with certain characteristics and spatial requirements,
phenomena that are quite disruptive to natural ecological processes, which are forced to
accept these changes, whether destructive or not. For example, much is naturally changed
just by the surfacing for auto-mobile transport: ground water, water tables in general,
ground surface temperatures, destruction of flora and fauna. But transportation
geographiesroads, parking lots, etc., radically transform the spatial organization of
human life. It does this in a fundamental, overall way, but it is the interpretation of Being,
a worldview that has paved the way for these transmogrifications to which we place our
concern. Again, our point is that a viable doctrine of sustainability requires a deeper
analysis than just an exhibiting that these transmogrifications are non-sustainable, for
solutions then remain in a paradigm or worldview that itself must be called into question.

Ontology B4 Epistemology

Ontology precedes the construction of knowledge and determines the horizon of possible
actions.
Joronen 2008 Mikko, Department of Geography, University of Turku, The technological
metaphysics of planetary space: being in the age of globalization, Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space 2008, volume 26, pages 596 ^ 610
As ontologically different, being itself cannot be understood in terms of `being that is', since
everything of which we say `it is', is represented as an entity. Rather, every `is' endures only
if the granting and enabling allowance of being takes place. Hence, whenever there is
something opened, there has been a sending that is granted by the being. This expression
carries precisely the twofold meaning of the German idiom es gibtan idiom that Heidegger
used in a number of occasions. With its entire resonance `es gibt' means `there is', although
at the same time it sways into ambiguity by signifying the `it' which `gives' (Heidegger, 1972,
pages 16 ^ 19; 1984, page 26; 1993b, pages 237 ^ 238, 240). It is the granting of being which
no longer refers to beings (ie to something that is), but rather signifies a letting-presence, a
sending, which shows its character in bringing into unconcealment. In every
unconcealment and opening, then, there prevails a giving of being concealed. The giving of
being refers to the point that being is required a priori in all doing, saying, and thinking, in
all presence to be more precise.Whenever there is something to be interpreted or thought
about, it is already assumed that something is opened for discussion. It is this presumed
openness that is granted by being. Therefore, as being makes all knowing and assertions
possible, we are always unaware of being itself, although at the same time we always find
ourselves as thrown to the particular opening of being. As a granting, being is a necessary
condition to be taken for granted in any approaching of `entities as entities'. However, if
being is only presumed in every understanding of `entities as entities' without reflecting
the granted event of being within, the question of being becomes veiled in oblivion. It is
for this reason that being cannot be defined as such, although at the same time being has a
meaning which could be repeatedly asked about. Therefore, to ask such a question here
requires us to think how the globalization of space relates to being. Being only signifies the
possibility; accordingly it does not hold any specific substance as such. Since in the
metaphysical disclosure of being as a permanently enduring substance (ie as the everlasting
`is' itself), what becomes self-manifestingly actualized is being itself; whenever presence is
unconcealed it holds ambiguity within. It is precisely the equivocal relation between
metaphysical veiling and the granted opening of being that clarifies the simultaneous
ambiguity between the metaphysics of globalization and the globalizing event of being.
Since metaphysical thinking conceals this ambiguity by withdrawing being into a veiled
condition of beings, only by thinking the event of being, das Ereignis, can we turn towards
the concealed question of being inwards.