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Evaluate discourse first.

1) We as debaters are intellectuals, not policy makers, meaning we should be able engageand criticize ideas. The fact that we are able to challenge existing power structures is

valuable in and of itself. Valuing criticism only if it produces results ensures that there is

no such thing as meaningful criticism. Instead we should view criticism as an end itselfvaluable in the alternative perspective that it offers.2) Fiat is only illusory. Because the judge can directly shape in-round impacts and the ways

issues are discussed with their ballot, the judge has a pre-fiat obligation to reject bad in-

round discourse. Further, the judge is a person before a debater, so even if debate calls toevaluate argumentation, the judge is personally bound to preventing in-round harm. But

even if I lose this argument, the K functions post-fiat as well.

3) Language shapes reality because it is the only medium of thought; we cant understand,abstract or learn unless we have created a method of thinking things through.

A. Links: The negative endorses abstraction, which is the projection of human socialrelations into nature. Nature shifts into a mere tool for the human will, and this drive todominate nature results in a form of reasoning which exists independently of what human

nature is, PEPPERELL1

To follow briefly the narrative from Dialectic of Enlightenment: Adorno and Horkheimer start with the category of mimesiswith the imitation

of heterogenous, volatile nature within thought. They speak of the spontaneous awe and dread experienced in the face of overwhelming nature

arguing that the primitive belief in unidentified and volatile mana (pp. 20-21)as a situation in whichmana, the moving spirit, is no

projection, but[is] the echo of the real supremacy of nature in the weak souls of primitive men(p. 15). This objective powerlessness leads to a kind of conceptual and practical imitation ofnature in an attempt to master objective dependenceit results in a bringing into the self of a

heterogenous perception of nature very different from the universalising distance characteristic of contemporary sciencea perception

predicated on natures absolute and unpredictable power. Adorno and Horkheimer criticise later thinkers for

anachronistically interpreting this reaction to nature as a projection, arguing that a projection would require a sharp division between self and

nature (subject and object) that does not exist at this point in prehistory. Adorno and Horkheimer argue, Like science, magic pursues aims, but

seeks to achieve them by mimesisnot by progressively distancing itself from the object. It is not grounded in the sovereignty of ideas, which

the primitive, like the neurotic, is said to ascribe to himself; there can be no ove r-evaluation of mental processes as against reality where there is

no radical distinction between thought and reality (p. 11).Projection arises,for Adorno and Horkheimer, only when the

reality principle with which the self resigned itself to its own impotence before nature

the fatality by means of which prehistory sanctioned the incomprehensibility of death

(pp. 28-29)is carried over into a situation in which natural conditions exert their power

no longer directly but through the medium of human consciousness(p. 17). At this later historical

moment, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, a class of professionals in magic come to use the awe and fear others feel toward nature to justify

their class positionsuch that humans began worshipping what they were once in thrall to only in the same way as all other creatures (p. 17). It

is this shiftfrom the natural awareness of material constraints, to the ritualised worship of naturethat generates the projection of human social

relations onto nature.

1Nicole Pepperell Fragmentary Thoughts on Dialectic of Enlightment July 12, 2006http://www.roughtheory.org/content/fragmentary-

thoughts-on-dialectic-of-enlightenment/

http://www.roughtheory.org/content/fragmentary-thoughts-on-dialectic-of-enlightenment/http://www.roughtheory.org/content/fragmentary-thoughts-on-dialectic-of-enlightenment/http://www.roughtheory.org/content/fragmentary-thoughts-on-dialectic-of-enlightenment/http://www.roughtheory.org/content/fragmentary-thoughts-on-dialectic-of-enlightenment/http://www.roughtheory.org/content/fragmentary-thoughts-on-dialectic-of-enlightenment/http://www.roughtheory.org/content/fragmentary-thoughts-on-dialectic-of-enlightenment/

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The result is a cry of terror, we create a horror originated out of the human fear over which we

have little control as we confront the unknown, destroying our ability to attain knowledge and

our power to know ourselves ROBERTS2

The source ofthis compulsion to know everything in advance (Vorwegbescheidwissen) is, according to the authors, partly psychopathic and partly the result of fear (DE 18; HGS v, 46). The fear is the primitive fear of nature, the

hostile other which brings death.The psychopathic element is described as projection. Projection is, as Horkheimer and Adorno put it,an animalattempt to create instruments tomaster the outside world. It stabilizes what would otherwise be chaotic and formless . In itself, this is

legitimate.It ceases to be legitimate at the point where a dogmatic insistence takes over that fixity is notmerely a feature of instruments, but is a characteristic of the world in general. This insistence is no

longer a particular combative response to the needs of survival; it becomes a generalized pathologicalresponse to the subjects sense of

powerlessness when faced with a nature it perceives to be irresistible. Pathological or paranoid

projection is convinced that everything is always the same. Only in this way can it cope

with the fear that it is itself, eternally, the victim of omnipotent nature. The paranoid subject projects on to the outside world a

conviction that all things circle within a closed system of eternal necessity; only thus can it

survive its sense of absolute powerlessness. The closure of the eternally same becomes a surrogate of omnipotence (DE 157; HGS v, 220).Theexclusion of the self from the outside world, however, and the denial that free individuals can

intervene to change anything in the circuitous mechanisms of nature, is an illness.Unfortunately it

is one that has extended deep into the thinking of modern cultures. It is particularly evident in the depredations of science, which has done more than anything else to alienate humankind from nature.The nature depicted by

science has become the object of a paranoid desire to dominate, and by that token,the human beings ejected from participation in nature really have become its victims. What Adorno and Horkheimercall absolute realism,

indeed, culminates in Fascism: it is a special case of the paranoid illusion which depopulates nature and eventually the peoples themselves(DE 159; HGS v, 223). The specific manner of this scientific projection is something I

have already noted in the context of the market economy:it involves the evacuation of knowledges human center in favor of

systematic, procedural, and functional necessities. The substantive intuitions of true

knowledge are replaced by the ghostly compulsions of deduction and all the logical hierarchies of

systematic knowledge(DE 16; HGS v, 44). These compulsions and hierarchies, of course, mirror those of the capitalist world. At the same time they convert material objects into values for functional

variables, into elements of unremitting subsumption (DE 21; HGS v, 50).

The impact is that our existence becomes an illusion, AND we lose all semblance of knowledge.

This comes before the NC since it indicts the ontological assumptions of it. Ontology is thetheorizing of existence. In the same way that metaethics comes before ethics, even ontology

comes before metaethics.

The Alternative is vote affirmative to become the steward of the four-fold. Only by embracing

the four fold can we escape the mathematical project, Kisner3

In these essays Heidegger understands human existence in terms of mortal dwelling, and "dwelling in the sense of the sojourn of mortals on the earth."32To dwell on the earth at the same time signifies

"under the sky" and "with others"others who can die and so are mortal as well. Heidegger also adds "remaining before the gods," perhaps the most problematic member of the

fourfold.33The primal four: earth and sky, gods and mortals, "belong together in one."

34Earth

and sky is the region of regionsthe original and ultimate spatial closure for human

existence.The closure of a region is not merely its circumference, but is that which

provides the definition of the region, its specific character and "atmosphere." Thus theclosure pervades throughout the entirety of the region it determines. The ultimate spatial

region, phenomenologically speaking,is the horizon of earth and sky, and this horizon pervades every other

region within it. Only within the context of this horizon are particular regions, locales, sites, and places themselves determined. "Mortals dwell insofar as[since]

they save the earth."JJ

"Saving" here means bringing a thing to its own most proper

2Julian Roberts The Dialectic of Enlightment in The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory edited by Fred Rush September 13, 2004

3Kisner, Wndell. The Fourfold Revisited: Heideggerian Ecological Practice and the Ontology of Things. 2008. The Trumpeteer.

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manner of appearance, that is, allowing it to show itselfin its own terms irrespective of themathematical project. Thus such saving "does not merely rescue something from a danger; to save properly signifies: to release something into its own proper manner of emergence."36 In other

words,saving is not merely reactive, acting against a threat, but above and beyond this it attends to the integrityof that which it wishes to saveand only thereby truly saves it. Such "saving" may thereby indeed be a precondition of the

environmentalist desire to "save" natural ecosystems, particularly if environmentalism takes upon itself the task of thinking and understanding that which it seeks to preserve.Any attempt to "save

the earth" without a fundamental re-thinking will only appear within the mathematicalproject as a fanciful projection of subjective values onto a collection of indifferent objects

that are valueless in themselves.Dwelling comes to pass when the four are each 'released' into their essential manner of appearance and thereby allowed to belong together in one. Inthis way, dwelling preserves the fourfold. But dwelling is always a dwelling alongside and among thing s. If it were not for things, "the fourfold" would be only an empty abstraction. Thus Heidegger writes: How do mortalsaccomplish their dwelling as this preserving? Mortals would never be capable of this if dwelling were only a residence on the earth, under the sky, before the divinities, with mortals. Rather, dwelling is always already a residence

alongside things. Dwelling as preserving secures the fourfold in that with which mortals reside: in things.37Dwelling allows the four to be gathered together into one, and this gathering can only happen in things. It does not primarilyhappen as representations in our headswe don't imagine the four together in a neat mental picture. Rather, the four ar e concretely gathered together and brought into presence in and only in concrete things.

Oswitch:4

contextualizes how we embrace the four fold,

In saving the earth, in receiving the sky, in awaiting the divinities, in initiating mortals,

dwelling comes to pass as the fourfold preservation of the fourfold. To spare and preserve

means to take under our care,to look after the fourfold in its essence. What we take under our care must be kept safe. But i f dwelling preserves the fourfold, where does it keep thefourfolds essence? How do mortals make their dwelling such a preserving? Mortals would never be capable of it if dwelling were merely a staying on earth under the sky, before the divinities, among mortals. Rather,

dwelling itself is always a staying with things. Dwelling, as preserving, keeps the fourfold inthat with which mortals stay: in things. Staying with things, however, is not merely something attached to this fourfold preservation as a fifth something. On the contrary:staying with things is the only way in which the fourfold stay within the fourfold is accomplished at any time in simple unity. Dwelling preserves the fourfold by bringing the essence of the fourfold into things. But things themselves

secure the fourfold only when they themselves as things are let be i n their essence.

Oswitch 2 clarifies what it Earth is.

Earth is the serving bearer, blossoming and framing, spreading out in rock and water,

rising up into plant and animal(Gertier). When we say earth, we are already thinking of the other three along with it, but we give n o thought to the simple oneness of the four.3

And, our duty is of dwellings entails building. Oswitch 3

To be a human being means to be on the earth as a mortal. It meansto dwell. The old word bauen, which says that man is insofar as he dwells, this word bauen howeveralsomeans at thesame time to cherish and protect, to preserve and care for, specifically to till the soil, to

cultivate the vine. Such building only takes careit tends the growth that ripens into its fruit of its own accord. Building in the sense of preserving

and nurturing is not making anything.

The implications are as follows:

a) Affirm pre-fiat because the negative endorses rationality based philosophy which creates myth inour in-round discourse, harming our conceptions of knowledge. You as a judge have an

obligation to reject positions that endorse harmful discourse, and thus to deter such abstraction,

affirm. Discourse precedes all else because it is the way in which we engage in discussion.b) Affirm post-fiat by having the actors of the res become one with the four-fold. Since justicerequires becoming a steward of the four-fold which requires caring for the earth, and the animals

in it. This means we have obligations towards animals, meaning we cannot violate them and thus

justice would require the recognition of animal rights.

4Oswitch, Simon P. Heideggers Fourfold and The Animal: A Brief Look at a Reconcilable Inconsistency.http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/an-tpr-oswitch-fourfold.pdf

http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/an-tpr-oswitch-fourfold.pdfhttp://www.all-creatures.org/articles/an-tpr-oswitch-fourfold.pdfhttp://www.all-creatures.org/articles/an-tpr-oswitch-fourfold.pdfhttp://www.all-creatures.org/articles/an-tpr-oswitch-fourfold.pdfhttp://www.all-creatures.org/articles/an-tpr-oswitch-fourfold.pdfhttp://www.all-creatures.org/articles/an-tpr-oswitch-fourfold.pdf

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Evidence Summary

PEPPERELL:

The aff is based on the principle of abstracting ourselves from nature, but this is merely an attempt tomaster nature, as man tries to imitate the awesome power of nature, to which it pales in comparison.

Mans attempts to gain sovereignty over nature is done through the accumulation of objective knowledge.

We take control of nature to understand what it does for us, thus, nature becomes instrumental towards us,

it becomes a mere object of the human will. This view requires us to think of nature as an objectified

model. We thus have to cast off any properties that cant be absorbed into said mode of thinking,

including our identity and reason. Reason then becomes instrumentalized, and we have little control over

what is left, and our idea of the world leaves us as the objects of what we have created. We refer to

abstract principles, rather than ourselves.

ADORNO:

These abstract principles are the result of fear. Thus, we become incentivized to master nature, which in

and of itselfisnt bad. The problem is that we cant stop, when we encounter nature, we rely on our

attempts to master it, because were powerless against it. We become the victims of the force we try to

master, we lose access to knowledge, and are stuck in an illusion.

Some random words defined:

Mimesis-Imitation