Generic 2ac

Framework
1. The judge should weigh the aff against the kritik
A) Fairness- moots the 1AC which is the only source of aff
offense. Internal link turns education as competitive equity is
key to rigorous participation
B) Policy education- Focusing on the details and inner-
workings of government policy-making is productive critical
approaches cant resolve real world problems
McClean, 01 Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Molloy College, New York (David E., The Cultural Left and
the Limits of Social Hope, Presented at the 2001 Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of
American Philosophy, www.american-philosophy.org/archives/past_conference_programs/pc2001/Discussion
%20papers/david_mcclean.htm)

Yet for some reason, at least partially explicated in Richard Rorty's Achieving Our Country, a book that I think is long
overdue, leftist critics continue to cite and refer to the eccentric and often a priori ruminations of people like those
just mentioned, and a litany of others including Derrida, Deleuze, Lyotard, Jameson, and Lacan, who are to me
hugely more irrelevant than Habermas in their narrative attempts to suggest policy prescriptions (when they
actually do suggest them) aimed at curing the ills of homelessness, poverty, market greed, national belligerence
and racism. I would like to suggest that it is time for American social critics who are enamored with this group,
those who actually want to be relevant, to recognize that they have a disease, and a disease regarding which I
myself must remember to stay faithful to my own twelve step program of recovery. The disease is the need for
elaborate theoretical "remedies" wrapped in neological and multi-syllabic jargon. These elaborate theoretical
remedies are more "interesting," to be sure, than the pragmatically settled questions about what shape democracy
should take in various contexts, or whether private property should be protected by the state, or regarding our
basic human nature (described, if not defined (heaven forbid!), in such statements as "We don't like to starve" and
"We like to speak our minds without fear of death" and "We like to keep our children safe from poverty"). As Rorty
puts it, "When one of today's academic leftists says that some topic has been 'inadequately theorized,' you can be
pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of language, or Lacanian psychoanalysis, or some
neo-Marxist version of economic determinism. . . . These futile attempts to philosophize one's way into political
relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats from activism and adopts a spectatorial approach to
the problems of its country. Disengagement from practice produces theoretical hallucinations"(italics mine).(1) Or
as John Dewey put it in his The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy, "I believe that philosophy in America will be lost
between chewing a historical cud long since reduced to woody fiber, or an apologetics for lost causes, . . . . or a
scholastic, schematic formalism, unless it can somehow bring to consciousness America's own needs and its own
implicit principle of successful action." Those who suffer or have suffered from this disease Rorty refers to as the
Cultural Left, which left is juxtaposed to the Political Left that Rorty prefers and prefers for good reason. Another
attribute of the Cultural Left is that its members fancy themselves pure culture critics who view the successes of
America and the West, rather than some of the barbarous methods for achieving those successes, as mostly evil,
and who view anything like national pride as equally evil even when that pride is tempered with the knowledge and
admission of the nation's shortcomings. In other words, the Cultural Left, in this country, too often dismiss American
society as beyond reform and redemption. And Rorty correctly argues that this is a disastrous conclusion, i.e.
disastrous for the Cultural Left. I think it may also be disastrous for our social hopes, as I will explain. Leftist
American culture critics might put their considerable talents to better use if they bury some of their cynicism about
America's social and political prospects and help forge public and political possibilities in a spirit of determination
to, indeed, achieve our country - the country of Jefferson and King; the country of John Dewey and Malcom X; the
country of Franklin Roosevelt and Bayard Rustin, and of the later George Wallace and the later Barry Goldwater. To
invoke the words of King, and with reference to the American society, the time is always ripe to seize the
opportunity to help create the "beloved community," one woven with the thread of agape into a conceptually single
yet diverse tapestry that shoots for nothing less than a true intra-American cosmopolitan ethos, one wherein both
same sex unions and faith-based initiatives will be able to be part of the same social reality, one wherein business
interests and the university are not seen as belonging to two separate galaxies but as part of the same answer to
the threat of social and ethical nihilism. We who fancy ourselves philosophers would do well to create from within
ourselves and from within our ranks a new kind of public intellectual who has both a hungry theoretical mind and
who is yet capable of seeing the need to move past high theory to other important questions that are less
bedazzling and "interesting" but more important to the prospect of our flourishing - questions such as "How is it
possible to develop a citizenry that cherishes a certain hexis, one which prizes the character of the Samaritan on
the road to Jericho almost more than any other?" or "How can we square the political dogma that undergirds the
fantasy of a missile defense system with the need to treat America as but one member in a community of nations
under a "law of peoples?" The new public philosopher might seek to understand labor law and military and trade
theory and doctrine as much as theories of surplus value; the logic of international markets and trade agreements
as much as critiques of commodification, and the politics of complexity as much as the politics of power (all of
which can still be done from our arm chairs.) This means going down deep into the guts of our quotidian social
institutions, into the grimy pragmatic details where intellectuals are loathe to dwell but where the officers and
bureaucrats of those institutions take difficult and often unpleasant, imperfect decisions that affect other peoples'
lives, and it means making honest attempts to truly understand how those institutions actually functio n in the
actual world before howling for their overthrow commences. This might help keep us from being slapped down in
debates by true policy pros who actually know what they are talking about but who lack awareness of the dogmatic
assumptions from which they proceed, and who have not yet found a good reason to listen to jargon-riddled
lectures from philosophers and culture critics with their snobish disrespect for the so-called "managerial class."

Existential risk is irreversible- Aff is a pre requisiste

Bostrom 2
(Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, Director of the Future of Humanity
Institute, and Director of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology at the University of Oxford, recipient
of the 2009 Eugene R. Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
from the London School of Economics, Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related
Hazards, Journal of Evolution and Technology, Volume 9, Number 1, 2002,
http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html)

Existential risks are distinct from global endurable risks. Examples of the latter kind include: threats to the
biodiversity of Earths ecosphere, moderate global warming, global economic recessions (even major ones), and
possibly stifling cultural or religious eras such as the dark ages, even if they encompass the whole global
community, provided they are transitory (though see the section on Shrieks below). To say that a particular global
risk is endurable is evidently not to say that it is acceptable or not very serious. A world war fought with
conventional weapons or a Nazi-style Reich lasting for a decade would be extremely horrible events even though

they would fall under the rubric of endurable global risks since humanity could eventually recover (On the other.
hand, they could be a local terminal risk for many individuals and for persecuted ethnic groups.) I shall use the
following definition of existential risks: Existential risk One where an adverse outcome would either annihilate
Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential. An existential risk is one where
humankind as a whole is imperiled. Existential disasters have major adverse consequences for the course of human
civilization for all time to come.

Engagement with the state is key---the alt cant escape its reach
which proves engagement is better
Orly Lobel 7, University of San Diego Assistant Professor of Law, The Paradox of Extralegal Activism: Critical
Legal Consciousness and Transformative Politics, 120 HARV. L. REV. 937,
http://www.harvardlawreview.org/media/pdf/lobel.pdf

In all of these cases, it is the act of engagement, not law that holds the risks of
cooptation and the politics of compromise. It is not the particularities of lawyers as a professional
group that create dependency. Rather, it is the dynamics between skilled, networked, and resourced components and those who
It is not the particularities of the structural
need them that may submerge goals and create reliance.
limitations of the judiciary that threaten to limit the progressive vision of social
movements. Rather, it is the essential difficulties of implementing theory
into practice. Life is simply messier than abstract ideals . Cooptation
analysis exposes the broad, general risk of assuming ownership over a rhetorical
and conceptual framework of a movement for change. Subsequently, when, in practice, other
factions in the political debate embrace the language and frame their projects in similar terms, groups experience a sense of loss of
in the absence of a more
control or possession of their vision. In sum, in the contemporary context,
programmatic and concrete vision of what alternative models of social reform
activism need to achieve, the conclusions and rhetoric of the contemporary critical
legal consciousness are appropriated by advocates representing a wide range of
political commitments. Understood from this perspective, cooptation is not the result of the turn
to a particular reform strategy. Rather, cooptation occurs when imagined ideals are
left unchecked and seemingly progressive rhetoric is reproduced by a conservative
agenda. Dominant interpretations such as privatization and market competitiveness come out ahead, whereas other values,
such as group empowerment and redistributive justice, receive only symbolic recognition, and in turn serve to facilitate and stabilize
the process.185 B. Conceptual Boundaries: When the Dichotomies of Exit Are Unchecked At first glance, the idea of
opting out of the legal sphere and moving to an extralegal space using alternative modes of
social activism may seem attractive to new social movements. We are used to thinking in binary categories,
constantly carving out different aspects of life as belonging to different spatial and temporal spheres. Moreover, we are
attracted to declarations about newness - new paradigms, new spheres of action,
and new strategies that are seemingly untainted by prior failures . n186 However,
the critical insights about law's reach must not be abandoned in the
process of critical analysis. Just as advocates of a laissez-faire market are
incorrect in imagining a purely private space free of regulation, and just as the
"state" is not a single organism but a multiplicity of legislative,
administrative, and judicial organs, "nonstate arenas" are dispersed, multiple, and
constructed. The focus on action in a separate sphere broadly defined as civil society can be self-
defeating precisely because it conceals the many ways in which law continues to play a crucial
role in all spheres of life. Today, the lines between private and public functions are increasingly blurred, forming what
Professor Gunther Teubner terms "polycorporatist regimes," a symbiosis between private and public sectors. n187 Similarly, new
economic partnerships and structures blur the lines between for-profit and nonprofit entities. n188 Yet much of the current literature
on the limits of legal reform and the crisis of government action is built upon a privatization/regulation binary, particularly with
regard [*979] to social commitments, paying little attention to how the background conditions of a privatized market can sustain or
curtail new conceptions of the public good. n189 In the same way, legal scholars often emphasize sharp shifts between regulation

and deregulation, overlooking the continuing presence of legal norms that shape and inform these shifts. n190 These false
dichotomies should resonate well with classic cooptation analysis,
which shows how social reformers overestimate the possibilities of
one channel for reform while crowding out other paths and more
complex alternatives. Indeed, in the contemporary extralegal climate, and contrary to the
conservative portrayal of federal social policies as harmful to the nonprofit
sector, voluntary associations have flourished in mutually beneficial relationships
with federal regulations. n191 A dichotomized notion of a shift between spheres -
between law and informalization, and between regulatory and nonregulatory schemes - therefore neglects
the ongoing possibilities within the legal system to develop and sustain desired outcomes
and to eliminate others. The challenge for social reform groups and for
policymakers today is to identify the diverse ways in which some
legal regulations and formal structures contribute to socially
responsible practices while others produce new forms of exclusion
and inequality. Community empowerment requires ongoing
government commitment . n192 In fact, the most successful community-based projects have been those
which were not only supported by public funds, but in which public administration also continued to play some coordination role.
n193 At both the global and local levels, with the growing enthusiasm around the proliferation of new norm-generating actors, many
envision a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization-led democratization of new informal processes. n194 Yet this Article has begun
to explore the problems with some of the assumptions underlying the potential of these new actors. Recalling the unbundled
taxonomy of the cooptation critique, it becomes easier to identify the ways extralegal activism is prone to problems of
fragmentation, institutional limitation, and professionalization. [*980] Private associations, even when structured as nonprofit
entities, are frequently undemocratic institutions whose legitimacy is often questionable. n195 There are problematic structural
differences among NGOs, for example between Northern and Southern NGOs in international fora, stemming from asymmetrical
resources and funding, n196 and between large foundations and struggling organizations at the national level. Moreover, direct
regulation of private associations is becoming particularly important as the roles of nonprofits increase in the new political economy.
Scholars have pointed to the fact that nonprofit organizations operate in many of the same areas as for-profit corporations and
government bureaucracies. n197 This phenomenon raises a wide variety of difficulties, which range from ordinary financial
corruption to the misrepresentation of certain partnerships as "nonprofit" or "private." n198 Incidents of corruption within
nongovernmental organizations, as well as reports that these organizations serve merely as covers for either for-profit or
governmental institutions, have increasingly come to the attention of the government and the public. n199 Recently, for example,
the IRS revoked the tax-exempt nonprofit status of countless "credit counseling services" because these firms were in fact motivated
primarily by profit and not by the not-for-profit cause of helping consumers get out of debt. n200 Courts have long recognized that
the mere fact that an entity is a nonprofit does not preclude it from being concerned about raising cash revenues and maximizing
profits or affecting competition in the market. n201 In the [*981] application of antitrust laws, for example, almost every court has
rejected the "pure motives" argument when it has been put forth in defense of nonprofits. n202 Moreover, akin to other sectors and
arenas, nongovernmental organizations - even when they do not operate within the formal legal system - frequently report both the
need to fit their arguments into the contemporary dominant rhetoric and strong pressures to subjugate themselves in the service of
other negotiating interests. This is often the case when they appear before international fora, such as the World Bank and the World
Trade Organization, and each of the parties in a given debate attempts to look as though it has formed a well-rounded team by
enlisting the support of local voluntary associations. n203 One NGO member observes that "when so many different actors are
drawn into the process, there is a danger that our demands may be blunted ... . Consequently, we may end up with a "lowest
common denominator' which is no better than the kind of compromises the officials and diplomats engage in." n204 Finally, local
NGOs that begin to receive funding for their projects from private investors report the limitations of binding themselves to other
interests. Funding is rarely unaccompanied by requirements as to the nature and types of uses to which it is put. n205 These
concessions to those who have the authority and resources to recognize some social demands but not others are indicative of the
sorts of institutional and structural limitations that have been part of the traditional critique of cooptation. In this situation, local
NGOs become dependent on players with greater repeat access and are induced to compromise their initial vision in return for
limited victories. The concerns about the nature of both civil society and nongovernmental actors illuminate the need to reject the
notion of avoiding the legal system and opting into a nonregulated sphere of alternative social activism. When we understand these
different realities and processes as also being formed and sustained by law, we can explore new ways in which legality relates to
social reform. Some of these ways include efforts to design mechanisms of accountability that address the concerns of the new
political economy. Such efforts include treating private entities as state actors by revising the tests of joint participation and public
function that are employed in the state action doctrine; extending public requirements such as nondiscrimination, due process, and
transparency to private actors; and developing procedural rules for such activities as standard-setting and certification by private
groups.206 They may also include using the nondelegation doctrine to prevent certain processes of privatization and rethinking the
tax exemption criteria for nonprofits.207 All of these avenues understand the law as performing significant roles in the quest for
reform and accountability while recognizing that new realities require creative rethinking of existing courses of action. Rather than
opting out of the legal arena, it is possible to accept the need to diversify modes of activism and legal categories while using legal
reform in ways that are responsive to new realities. Focusing on function and architecture, rather than on labels or distinct sectors,
requires legal scholars to consider the desirability of new legal models of governmental and nongovernmental partnerships and of
the direct regulation of nonstate actors. In recent years, scholars and policymakers have produced a body of literature, rooted
primarily in administrative law, describing ways in which the government can harness the potential of private individuals to
contribute to the project of governance.208 These new insights develop the idea that administrative agencies must be cognizant of,
in fields ranging from
and actively involve, the private actors that they are charged with regulating. These studies,
occupational risk prevention to environmental policy to financial regulation, draw on
the idea that groups and individuals will better comply with state norms once they internalize them.209
For example, in the context of occupational safety, there is a growing body of evidence that focusing on the implementation of a
culture of safety, rather than on the promulgation of rules, can enhance compliance and induce effective self-monitoring by private
firms.210 Consequently, social activists interested in improving the conditions of safety and health for workers should advocate for
the involvement of employees in cooperative compliance regimes that involve both top-down agency regulation and firm- and
industry-wide risk-management techniques. Importantly, in all of these new models of governance, the government agency and the
courts must preserve their authority to discipline those who lack the willingness or the capacity to participate actively and
dynamically in collaborative governance. Thus, unlike the contemporary message regarding extralegal activism that privileges
private actors and nonlegal techniques to promote social goals, the new governance scholarship is engaged in developing a broad
menu of legal reform strategies that involve private industry and nongovernmental actors in a variety of ways while maintaining the
necessary role of the state to aid weaker groups in order to promote overall welfare and equity. A responsive legal architecture has
the potential to generate new forms of accountability and social responsibility and to link hard law with softer practices and
normativities. Reformers can potentially use law to increase the power and access of vulnerable individuals and groups and to
develop tools to increase fair practices and knowledge building within the new market.
 Perm Solvency

Perm: do both.

Organic experience in existence through physical materialism

is the precursor to understanding the general concepts of the
will and of wisdom. Net benefit to the plan - the alternative
precludes the ability to access this knowledge.
Schopenhauer 1819 [arthur, the world as will and representation, vol. ii, p. 247-8]
Strictly speaking, all thinking, i.e., combining of abstract conceptions, has at the most the recollections of earlier
perceptions for its material, and this only indirectly, so far as it constitutes the foundation of all conceptions. Real
knowledge, on the contrary, that is, immediate knowledge, is perception alone, new, fresh perception, itself.
Now the concepts which the reason has framed and the memory has preserved cannot all be present to
consciousness at once, but only a very small number of them at a time. On the other hand, the energy
with which we apprehend what is present in perception, in which really all that is essential in all
things generally is virtually contained and represented, is apprehended, fills the consciousness in one
moment with its whole power. Upon this depends the infinite superiority of genius to learning; they stand to
each other as the text of an ancient classic to its commentary. All truth and all wisdom really lies ultimately in
perception. But this unfortunately can neither be retained nor communicated. The objective conditions of such
communication can certainly be presented to others purified and illustrated through plastic and pictorial art, and
even much more directly through poetry; but it depends so much upon subjective conditions, which are not at the
command of every one, and of no one at all times, nay, indeed in the higher degrees of perfection, are only the gift
of the favored few. Only the worst knowledge, abstract, secondary knowledge, the conception, the mere shadow of
true knowledge, is unconditionally communicable. If perceptions were communicable, that would be a
communication worth the trouble; but at last every one must remain in his own skin and skull, and no one can help
another. To enrich the conception from perception is the unceasing endeavor of poetry and philosophy. However,
the aims of man are essentially practical; and for these it is sufficient that what he has apprehended
through perception should leave traces in him, by virtue of which he will recognize it in the next
similar case; thus he becomes possessed of worldly wisdom. Thus, as a rule , the man of the world
cannot teach his accumulated truth and wisdom, but only make use of it ; he rightly comprehends each
event as it happens, and determines what is in conformity with it. That books will not take the place of
experience nor learning of genius are two kindred phenomena. Their common ground is that the abstract can
never take the place of the concrete. Books therefore do not take the place of experience, because
conceptions always remain general, and consequently do not get down to the particular, which,
however, is just what has to be dealt with in life ; and, besides this, all conceptions are abstracted from
what is particular and perceived in experience, and therefore one must have come to know these in
order adequately to understand even the general conceptions which the books communicate. Learning
cannot take the place of genus, because it also affords merely conceptions, but the knowledge of genius consists in
the apprehension of the (Platonic) Ideas of things, and therefore is essentially intuitive. Thus in the first of these
phenomena the objective condition of perceptive or intuitive knowledge is wanting; in the second the subjective;
the former may be attained, the latter cannot.
 Sexism DA

Schopenhauers claims about women lack of rationality

results in their exclusion from the political sphere
Pamela Paxton 2000 . . Womens Suffrage in the Measurement of Democracy: Problems of
Operationalization, Studies in Comparative International Development, Fall 2000, Vol. 35, No. 3,92-111

Most of the justification for women's exclusion from politics by philosophers such as Aristotle,
Rousseau, Hegel, and Schopenhauer was due to the assumed non-rational nature of women. Women
were considered inferior in intellect and reasoning ability (Aristotle, [322BC] 1977; Darwin, [ 1871 ] 1977;
Rousseau, [1755] 1977, Schopenhauer; [1851] 1977) as well as in their sense of justice (Schopenhauer; [1851]
1977). Theorists therefore hypothesized that women were unfit for the public sphere, which was then
reserved solely for men: "If women were to control the government, the state would be in danger, for
they do not act according to the dictates of universality, but are influenced by accidental inclinations
and opinions" (Hegel [1821] 1977: 167). See Dahl (1989, chapter 9) or Okln (1979) for discussions of older,
non-inclusive theories of democracy.

Claims to males superiority due to rationality cause

otherization and warfare
V. SpikePeterson 2003 , . Professor of Political Science at Arizona State University, A Critical Rewriting
of Global Political Economy: Integrating Reproductive, Productive, and Virtual Economies, p 183

Similarly, the structural and direct violence constituting colonialism is ideologically naturalized
through discourses that cast natives (both male and female) as other relative to the selfs
hegemonic masculinity, thus operating to legitimate elite (European) male domination of power,
authority, and resources. Modern othering discourses invoked scientific legitimation of class, race,
and gender hierarchies and institutionalized a belief that women and natives were irrational ,
incompetent, submissive, and not in control. Note that these discursive practices not only legitimate
the hierarchy of Self over Other but also essentialize a particular model of manhood. In this model, it is
mans nature to seek control, and he must do so under competitive conditions, given that all other males are
assumed to be seeking control. In this sense, structural and direct violence within states and between them
is both practiced as violence against the Other who is feminized and legitimated ideologically by
naturalizing the subordination of the feminine to the control of real men.
 Sexism DA Extensions
Schopenhauers devaluation of women results in exclusion
from education
Gary K. Clabaugh 2000 , , EXTERMINATING THE MERITS OF HER SEX? SCHOOLING AND "WOMAN'S"
THOUGHT. Educational Horizons, Winter 1995, Vo. 73, No. 2, pp. 54-56.

In times past liberal, even revolutionary, males commonly argued that men and women think
differently. Johann Fichte (1762- 1814), for example, a philosopher hero of nineteenth century democratic
reformers, notes in The Science of Rights, "She [woman] cannot and shall not go beyond the limit of her feeling."
But it is a short step from claims of "difference" to assertions of "inferiority;" and in the past that is
how the issue of man's versus woman's thinking has commonly been exploited. For instance, in On
Women the celebrated "philosopher of pessimism" Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) claims deficit not just
difference when he avers, "Women are defective in the powers of reasoning and deliberation ."
Likewise, in The World as Will and Idea Schopenhauer alleges, "Women have great talent, but no
genius, for they always remain subjective." A related negative notion, very popular with misogynists, is that
what women lack in abstract intelligence they make up for in "cunning." The Austrian philosopher and social critic
Otto Weininger (1880-1903) gives typical expression in this idea in his Sex and Character when he asserts:
"Woman is neither high-minded or low-minded, strong-minded or weak-minded. She is the opposite of all these.
Mind cannot be predicated of her at all; she is mindless. That, however, does not imply weak-mindedness in the
ordinary sense of the term, the absence of the capacity to "get her bearings" in ordinary life. Cunning, calculation,
"cleverness," are much more usual and constant in the woman than in the man, if there be a personal selfish end in
view."" Assertions that woman's thinking is different and inferior, have been used repeatedly to justify
the exclusion of women from serious schooling (and serious most anything else). In The Philosophy of
Right , for instance, the eminent philosopher Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) argues: "Women can, of course, be
educated, but their minds are not adapted to the higher science, philosophy, or certain of the arts. These demand a
universal faculty. Women may have happy inspirations, taste, elegance, but they have not the ideal. The difference
between man and woman is the same as that between animal and plant. The animal corresponds more closely to
the character of the man, the plant to that of the woman. In woman there is a more peaceful unfolding of nature, a
process, whose principle is the less clearly determined unity of feeling." Elsewhere in The Philosophy of Right
Hegel also claims, "The education of woman goes on one hardly knows how, in the atmosphere of picture - thinking,
as it were, more through life than through the acquisition of knowledge.""

Patriarchy sponsors a form of politics that guarantees

extinction
Reardon, a UN consultant and human rights education author, 1993 (Betty, Women and Peace-
Feminist Visions of Global Security, p. 30-31)

In an article entitled Naming the Cultural Forces That Push Us toward War (1983), Charlene Spretnik focused on
some of the fundamental cultural factors that deeply influence ways of thinking about security. She argues that
patriarchy encourages militarist tendencies. Since a major war now could easily bring on massive
annihilation of almost unthinkable proportions, why are discussions in our national forums addressing the
madness of the nuclear arms race limited to matters of hardware and statistics? A more comprehensive analysis is
badly needed. -. A clearly visible element in the escalating tensions among militarized nations is the
macho posturing and the patriarchal ideal of dominance, not parity, which motivates defense ministers and
government leaders to strut their stuff as we watch with increasing horror. Most men in our patriarchal culture are
still acting out old patterns that are radically inappropriate for the nuclear age. To prove dominance and control, to
distance ones character from that of women, to survive the toughest violent initiation, to shed the sacred blood of
the hero, to collaborate with death in order to hold it at bayall of these patriarchal pressures on men have
traditionally reached resolution in ritual fashion on the battlefield. But there is no longer any battlefield. Does
anyone seriously believe that if a nuclear power were losing a crucial, large-scale conventional war it would refrain
from using its multiple-warhead nuclear missiles 12 because of some diplomatic agreement? The military theater
of a nuclear exchange today would extend, instantly or eventually, to all living things, all the air, all the soil,
all the water. If we believe that war is a necessary evil, that patriarchal assumptions are simply
human nature, then we are locked into a lie, paralyzed. The ultimate result of unchecked terminal
patriarchy will be nuclear holocaust. The causes of recurrent warfare are not biological. Neither are
they solely economic. They are also a result of patriarchal ways of thinking, which historically have generated
considerable pressure for standing armies to be used. (Spretnak 1983)
 Alt => Otherization

Schopenhauers foundational claims of ontological sameness

are flawed and lead to a reliance on devaluation of others
Michael Ure. 2006 . The Irony of Pity: Nietzsche contra Schopenhauer and Rousseau, JOURNAL OF
NIETZSCHE STUDIES, Issue 32,

Those who pity, in short, recognize and love their own true inner nature in all others; the partition that normally
separates them from others dissolves through this mystical act of recognition. Pity, in short, is the practical
manifestation of the metaphysical unity of all things. Schopenhauer believes only this metaphysical explanation
can show us how we surmount our colossal egoism. Pity, he insists, does not arise from imagining ourselves in the
position of the suffering and believing we are suffering their pains in our person. Rather, Schopenhauer believes
that pitiers experience the others suffering in just the same way as they experience their own but in the other
person: [H]e is the sufferer not we; and it is precisely in his person, not in ours, that we feel the suffering, to our
grief and sorrow. We suffer with him and hence in him; we feel his pain as his, and do not imagine that it is ours.25
Pity, he claims, does not stem from merely imagining the others suffering as our own but, rather,
actually experiencing his suffering in him. This is what Schopenhauer means when he describes
the pitier as participating in the others suffering as such. Such immediate participation in the others
suffering is possible, he claims, because the separation among individuals is an illusionontologically
we are all expressions of one and the same metaphysical will to life. Schopenhauer argues that Mitleid
involves the immediate participation, independent of all ulterior considerations, primarily in the suffering of
another, and thus in the prevention or elimination of it. . . . As soon as compassion is aroused, the weal and woe of
another are nearest to my heart in exactly the same way . . . as otherwise only my own are. Hence the difference
between him and me is now no longer absolute.26 Schopenhauers suggestion is that just as our own suffering
moves us to seek alleviation, so when we experience the others misery in him this experience provides us with
exactly the same kind of incentive to alleviate his suffering. Now if Schopenhauer is correct about the
ontological identity of all individuals, then it should also be possible for one person to participate
directly in anothers pleasures or joys. Yet he does not consistently maintain his metaphysical
conviction that there is no ontological gap among human beings. In fact, Schopenhauer qualifies this claim
to such an extent that he undermines the metaphysical foundations he uses to support the ethics of pity.
For he ultimately claims that it is only the suffering of others and not their joy that motivates the moral agent.
According to Schopenhauer, whereas other peoples distress inspires disinterested action, their joy
never spurs the same kind of non-egoistic response.27 This restriction is incompatible with his claim that
good persons make no distinction between their own and anothers interests and recognize in every creature an I
once more.28 Schopenhauer, in other words, unwittingly undermines his metaphysical conviction that pity is the
practical expression of the unity of all things. For he claims that far from directly participating in the others
feelings, the Mitleidigen feel no sympathy for the lucky person, on the contrary, as such he remains
a stranger to our hearts.29 The expressions of that pure, disinterested, objective participation in the lot and
conditions of another, he claims, are reserved for him who in any way suffers.30 The others good fortune as
such may easily excite envy, which, if he should once fall from the heights of fortune, threatens to turn into
Schadenfreude.31 According to Schopenhauer, the reverse side of pity is envy of the others good fortune. Thus, in
elaborating his notion of pity he gradually unravels his own metaphysical doctrine. Although he claims that, given
the metaphysical unity of all creatures, sharing joy is at least in principle possible, he in fact begins with the view
that the Mitleidigen are merely apathetic toward the others joy before finally suggesting that far from being
indifferent, they are envious of this joy and cannot have any regard for others until misfortune strikes. This is the
same conceptual shift we witness in Rousseaus analysis of pity. It constitutes a dramatic shift in Schopenhauers
perspective: from the initial claim that the only condition for pity is a mysteriously immediate participation in the
others feelings, he now maintains that pity only flows when ones envy is appeased by the sight of the lucky
persons fall from grace: For as soon as the lucky man falls, there occurs a great transformation in the hearts of
others, which for our consideration is instructive. . . . Envy is reconciled and has disappeared with its own cause;
Mitleid takes its place and gives birth to loving-kindness. Those who were envious of and hostile to the man of
fortune have often become, after his downfall, his considerate, consoling, and helpful friends. . . . For misfortune is
the condition of compassion, and this is the source of philanthropy.32 We can see here how Schopenhauers
account of the genesis of pity departs radically from his metaphysical claim that pitiers recognize their own inner
nature in others and act toward them without any egotistical motive, for he now suggests that this recognition is
contingent on others not enjoying good fortune lest they stir up envy. Putting the matter somewhat too facetiously
perhaps, for Schopenhauer there is one and the same essence that manifests itself in all living things, and this is
the basis on which it is possible for us to participate in the condition of all creatures. However, apparently this
essence does not manifest itself in the happy person, for it is certain that the pitier does not participate in fortunate
individuals happiness in exactly the same manner as they do.33 Schopenhauerian pitiers are obviously not
sharing the feeling of pleasure in the happy other but, rather, responding to the displeasure they
experience in themselves at the sight of the others state of gratification. The relationships that
pitiers forge are profoundly self-interested: on the one side, their pitying response springs from their
own painful feelings of deprivation, which leads them to deny, negate, or spoil others pleasure in
themselves. On the other, pitiers cleave to the sorrowful and misfortunate because the sight of
anothers suffering brings them relief from the feelings of deprivation and impotence that fuel envy.
Schopenhauers philanthropic souls suffer less from themselves when they see the other suffer; hence
their sense of well-being depends on others weakness and emasculation. For Schopenhauer the exercise
of friendship is therefore contingent on the diminution or weakening of others; where others continue to enjoy good
fortune, they remain estranged objects of envy. Of course, the corollary of Schopenhauers position is that although
the visible signs of envy may disappear with the misfortune of others, the paranoid-schizoid position that fuels envy
remains even more firmly entrenched. For rather than curing envy, this kind of pity merely serves to satisfy
the envious need for others to be diminished so that one can feel whole and complete. Though by this
means pitiers pleasurably assuage their narcissistic wound, it is, as Nietzsche underscores, a damaging and
enervating means of doing so because it creates an addiction to finding pleasure in themselves through
enviously spoiling the other. According to Nietzsche, the tonic effect of envy is outweighed by its harmful effects
on not only the envied but the envier. The psychological consequence of this addiction to envy is
melancholia: that is to say, not only do we attack and spoil the others joy, but inevitably this spoiling
constructs a world in which we feel that our own joy may similarly become the object of attack.38 If
Schopenhauers analysis of the moral psychology of pity is correct, then the others return to joy must make them
strangers to our hearts and excite our envy, and with this envy must also come the return of the menace of
Schadenfreude. Nietzsche makes just this point regarding the disjointed rejoicing of pity: The compassionate
Christian.The reverse side of Christian compassion for the suffering of ones neighbour is a profound suspicion of
all the joy of ones neighbour, of his joy in all that he wants to do and can (D 80). In other words, within the
framework of Schopenhauers ethics of pity we can regard others as of equal worth only so long as they suffer
equally. Suffering thus bridges the gulf among egosbut not, as we have seen, because as pitiers we mysteriously
enter into or participate in the condition of others but, rather, because their demise brings them down to our level
and thus appeases the envy we feel at the sight of their self-sufficient happiness (see D 138). The sight of others
suffering, in short, makes their independence more palatable to us because in this debased state they no longer
arouse in us painful feelings of deprivation or the anxiety that we may be abandoned. To recall Rousseau on this
latter point, the suffering of others is a pledge of their affection for us. As Schopenhauers analysis implies, taking
pleasure in the others suffering is a tonic for restoring damaged narcissistic self-affection. It is for this reason,
Nietzsche believes, that when persistent feelings of envy threaten to attenuate our self-affection we pursue social
or intersubjective means for reviving the pleasant feeling of Schadenfreude. In other words, when we enviously
spoil others we surreptitiously restore to ourselves our narcissistic self-affection. Our envy does so by enabling us to
construct ourselves as those who, by comparison with the spoiled object, are exempt from suffering, need, and loss.
Through envy we aim to make the other abject or pitiable so that we no longer feel or experience our own
abjection. The damage we inflict through envy reduces the other to the needy, insufficient, pitiable condition that
we ourselves experience. It thereby soothes our painful feeling that in the face of a fantasized self-sufficient other
we are superfluous or unloved. The imaginative work of envy reaches a successful resolution when it enables us to
achieve a reversal of roles and our formerly abject self can feel itself as whole and complete in comparison with the
now diminished other: Sometimes we love the rich man in the midst of misfortunes; but so long as he prospers he
has no real friend, except the man who is not deceived by appearances, who pities rather than envies him in spite
of his prosperity.39 In Rousseaus framework, pity is the use to which envy puts the imagination. To clarify, it is the
means through which Rousseau believes that wounded narcissists can reverse the positions of lack/plenitude: by
pitying others we transform ourselves into those who, like the Epicurean gods, are divinely free of anxiety and
exempt from suffering and pain. In this respect the conception of the moral subject that lies at the heart of his
ethics of pity exemplifies the paranoid-schizoid defenses of pathological narcissism. It is apparent, to begin with,
that Rousseaus moral subjects have not relinquished or tempered their fantasy of narcissistic plenitude insofar as
they harbor the regret that they do not occupy the privileged position of the needless Epicurean gods. Indeed, it is
partly because they bitterly measure their own loss against this fantasy of divine tranquility that they brim with
painful envy at the sight of others joy. (In accusing the other of seeking happiness for himself alone they repeat
what Klein describes as the basic complaint of infantile envy: the accusation that its first object has an unlimited
flow of milk that it keeps for its own gratification. For Klein this image of a wholly self-gratifying object is the
egos projection of its own most desired state.)40
 Alt = Unethical

Schopenhauers conception of universal empathy precludes

their ability to access moral claims
Robert Wicks. 2002 . Schopenhauerian Moral Awareness as a Source of Nietzschean Nonmorality . The
Journal of Nietzsche Studies 23 (2002) 21-38

Schopenhauer happens to interpret this empathetic awareness in sympathy with Christian morality: he emphasizes
that since, within this mode of awareness, we come to understand what it is like to be a universal victim, or to feel
timelessly guilty as the embodiment of universal violence, we therefore understand, firsthand, how horrible these
conditions truly are. As a consequence, he maintains that this knowledge will motivate a person to resist injuring
anyone, lest she or he become involved in perpetuating an already-too-repulsive situation. In effect,
Schopenhauer's view is that once we empathetically locate ourselves at the very "inside" of "humanity
itself," we are led to understand the essentially selfish desire that resides at the source of most, if not
all, immorality. And insofar as we are sickened by this experience, we will become good. Knowing the true nature
of violence, he believes, generates a repulsion from violence. 10 What is obscured in Schopenhauer's
interpretation of universal empathy is that in becoming "everyone," one must fully adopt not only the
consciousness of those upon whom suffering is inflicted but also the consciousness characteristic of
the thoroughly malicious; one must become both the tormentor and the tormented. The contents of this
universally-encompassing consciousness, consequently, do not express moral purity. This consciousness
is more obviously a mixture of moral and immoral consciousnesses, all of which are given equal value,
if only because every human is taken to be of the same value, as human, within this imaginative
condition. If one empathizes with a "tormentor," however, one must savor whatever deep pleasures there are in
being a tormentor, and these pleasures cannot be ignored, or factored out of the resulting global consciousness.
Which is to say that Schopenhauer's prescribed universal empathy, contrary to Schopenhauer's own Christian
understanding of it, appears to generate a nonmoral, or morally leveled, consciousness that includes the
qualities of everyone's consciousnesses without diminishing any of those qualities.

Schopenhauers method of morality is flawed, it is a veil

for self-interested escapism
David Cartwright, 1984 . Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche on the Morality of Pity, Journal of the
History of Ideas, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1984), pp. 83-98

Nietzsche reinforces his criticisms of these methods for assessing the moral worth of actions and characters by
mentioning less metaphysically charged problems. Not only are introspective techniques problematic because they
are essentially interpretive, they are also misleading because self-consciousness is subject to deception, false forms
of consciousness, and rationalizations. For example, our love of others, Nietzsche observes may just be an example
of a bad love of ourselves. Instead of being concerned for others because of their own worth, we may be concerned
for their well-being because we hate ourselves; my interests and well- being, etc. are so unimportant, I am so
worthless, that others count more than myself. On the other hand, this concern for others may be a symptom
of our own lack of self-respect and self-confidence, a way of turning away from our own problems
because they are too hard: .. all such arousing of pity and calling for help is secretly seductive, for our "own
way" is too hard and demanding and too remote from the love and gratitude of others, as we do not really mind
escaping from it-and from our own conscience-to flee into the conscience of the others and into the
lovely temple of the "religion of pity."48 These may be the real reasons why one pities others, reasons
which are very self-interested and personal, the immorality behind morality, Nietzsche observes. One has
been taught, conditioned, and threatened, however, not to be immoral. Thus we hide these facts and deceive our-
selves. Our pity is viewed simply as our concern for others, our "benev- olence," our simple respect for the moral
law. These are, Nietzsche suggests, masks and veils behind which lies the truth. Yet it is the veils and
masks which Schopenhauer and Kant use to assess the worth of action and characters.
Schopenhauer has no basis for his morality claims no
universal human nature
David Cartwright, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche on the Morality of Pity, Journal of the History of
Ideas, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1984), pp. 83-98

By limiting ethics to the description of the actual motives out of which human beings perform actions
to which we must ascribe moral worth, Schopenhauer believed that he avoids the empty, pedantic
formalism of Kantian moral philosophy. Nietzsche, however, while being more sympathetic towards
Schopenhauer's methodology than Kant's, believed the projects of both philosophers were equally flawed. In their
own ways, both were like most moralists who ". . . accept the morality esteemed by the people as holy and true and
only attempt to systematize it, i.e., they hang their gown of science around it."36 The only difference between
Kant and Schopenhauer, Nietzsche argues, is that they adopt different means to glorify and absolutize
conventional morality. Kant did this through his a priori constructions, while Schopenhauer performed the
same task through a posteriori descriptions . Nietzsche was particularly amused by the pretenses of
Schopenhauer's methodology. Not only does he believe that he ". . . knows what specifically
constitutes morality,"37 his claim that pity was ". . . the source of all and each past and future moral
action . . ."38 showed that he lacked any sense of history, e.g., "that the history of all phenomena of
morality could be simplified in the way Schopenhauer believed-namely, so that pity is discovered as
the root of all moral impulse hitherto-only a thinker denuded of all historical instinct . . . could have
attained to this degree of absurdity and naivete."39 Had Schopenhauer possessed any insight into the
history of morality, Nietzsche argues, he would have discovered that the taste for pity was a relatively
modern phenomenon, one that has not been shared by other cultures and moralities.4 Both the Stoics
and the Epicureans, he notes, found no place for pity among their tables of value. Indeed, in noble-class morality,
and among those of discriminating taste, pity is viewed as either a weakness or danger, "as with the Greeks, as an
unhealthy, periodical affect from whose danger one could take temporary, voluntary release."41 Schopenhauer's
lack of historical sense was equally balanced by a lack of psychological acumen, Nietzsche observes. Pity is both
"imperfectly observed" and "poorly described" by Schopenhauer."42 In order to fantasize about pity as he does,
Nietzsche argues, ". . . one must not be acquainted with it from experience."43 If Schopenhauer had correctly
analyzed pity, Nietzsche maintains, he would never have described it as a simple, unselfish desire for another's
well-being, which results from the experience of another's pain and misfortune. The passion to which we refer to by
the term "pity," he claims, has depth and obscurities which are hidden by such superficial descriptions. Against
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche emphasizes the complex psycho- logical underpinnings and the diversity of drives and
affections which may constitute the passsion we call "pity." It is within this context Nietzsche makes a second
appeal to Kant, although it may be better described as a point of agreement. In a well-known passage from the
Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant suggests that motives are epistemically opaque. In this passage Kant
says that we can never know our motives with certainty, and therefore we cannot know whether there has ever
been an action having moral worth. Thus Kant thought it was possible that an action we believed was performed
out of respect for the moral lav may have been performed out of self-love or some other inclination.44 That
Nietzsche subscribed to the thesis that motives are epistemically opaque can be seen in the following
criticism of Schopenhauer: Another's calamity offends us; it would convince us of our impotence,
perhaps our cowardliness, if we could do nothing to help him; or in itself it brings a diminution of our
honor in the eyes of others or ourselves. Or the misfortune and suffering of others indicate to us our
own danger, and already as signs of human peril and frailty, they could painfully affect us. We repulse
this sort of pain and offense and requite it through an action of pity, which can be a subtle form of
self-defense or revenge.45 Part of what Nietzsche is doing is offering a set of alternative expla- nations of an
action which apparently has as its end the well-being of another, and has this end because of another's misery. This
type of action is paradigmatic of an action to which Schopenhauer would ascribe com- passion or pity as its
motive.46 Nietzsche's point is that we cannot be sure of the motivation of this type of action. Not only do
alternative explanations of this type of action carry equal explanatory force, any one or more of these alternative
explanations could pick out the actual motive or motives underlying an action which we would, from an uncritical
and naive point of view, attribute to pity. For all we know, Nietzsche suggests, it might be that honor, fear, self-
defense, or revenge moved us to help the sufferer even though we believe that some desire solely for the other's
well-being moved us to help. Human nature, Nietzsche argues, has depths and obscurities which makes it
extremely difficult, if not impossible, to specify the drives and urges from which our actions stem.
Insofar as Schopenhauer fails to appreciate this, Nietzsche considers his views naive and unconvincing.
 A2 Suicide
Even if we should adopt a personal stance of nihilism, refusing to allow

others to embrace their lives is worse than the embrace itself

Alex Scott, MD, Rush Medical College, Author, 2008, Schopenhauers The World as Will and Idea
http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/schopenhauer.html

Schopenhauer also argues that the voluntary renunciation of egoism is achieved by a denial of the will-
to-live. Morally right action may consist of denying one's own will-to-live, and may consist of not
denying the will-to-live which is affirmed by other individuals. Morally right action may also consist of not
forcing other individuals to submit to one's own will-to-live, and may consist of not forcing other
individuals to deny their own will-to-live. Justice may be achieved when the affirmation of the will-to-live by
one individual does not conflict with the will-to-live of any other individual. According to Schopenhauer, justice is
merely the negation of injustice. If an action by one individual does not deny the affirmation of the will-to-
live by any other individual, then that action is not morally wrong.

And that requires minimizing suffering

Edelglass 6 William Edelglass is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Marlboro College, LEVINAS ON
SUFFERING AND COMPASSION Sophia, Vol. 45, No. 2, October 2006

Because suffering is a pure passivity, lived as the breach of the totality we constitute through
intending acts, Levinas argues, even suffering that is chosen cannot be meaningfully systematized
within a coherent whole. Suffering is a rupture and disturbance of meaning because it suffocates the
subject and destroys the capacity for systematically assimilating the world. 9 Pain isolates itself in
consciousness, overwhelming consciousness with its insistence. Suffering, then, is an absurdity, 'an
absurdity breaking out on the ground of signification.'1~ This absurdity is the eidetic character of
suffering Levinas seeks to draw out in his phenomenology. Suffering often appears justified, from the
biological need for sensibility to pain, to the various ways in which suffering is employed in character
formation, the concerns of practical life, a community's desire for justice, and the needs of the state.
Implicit in Levinas's texts is the insistence that the analysis of these sufferings calls for a distinction
between the use of pain as a tool, a practice performed on the Other's body for a particular end, and
the acknowledgement of the Other's lived pain. A consequence of Levinas's phenomenology is the idea
that instrumental justifications of extreme suffering necessarily are insensible to the unbearable pain
theyseek to legitimize. Strictly speaking, then, suffering is meaningless and cannot be comprehended
or justified by rational argument. Meaningless, and therefore unjustifiable, Levinas insists, suffering is
evil. Suffering, according to Levinas's phenomenology, is an exception to the subject's mastery of
being; in suffering the subject endures the overwhelming of freedom by alterity. The will that revels in
the autonomous grasping of the world, in suffering finds itself grasped by the world. The in-itself of
the will loses its capacity to exert itself and submits to the will of what is beyond its grasp. Contrary to
Heidegger, it is not the anxiety before my own death which threatens the will and the self. For, Levinas
argues, death, announced in suffering, is in a future always beyond the present . Instead of death, it is
the pure passivity of suffering that menaces the freedom of the will. The will endures pain 'as a
tyranny,' the work of a 'You,' a malicious other who perpetrates violence (TI239). This tyranny, Levinas
argues, 'is more radical than sin, for it threatens the will in its very structure as a will, in its dignity as
origin and identity' (TI237). Because suffering is unjustifiable , it is a tyranny breaking open my world
of totality and meaning 'for nothing.' The gratuitous and extreme suffering that destroys the capacity
for flourishing human activity is generally addressed by thinkers in European traditions in the context
of metaphysical questions of evil (is evil a positive substance or deviation from the Good?), or
problems of philosophical anthropology (is evil chosen or is it a result of ignorance?). For these
traditions it is evil, not suffering, that is the great scandal, for they consider suffering to be evil only
when it is both severe and unjustified. II But for Levinas suffering is essentially without meaning and
thus cannot be legitimized; all suffering is evil . As he subsumes the question of death into the
problem of pain, 12 so also Levinas understands evil in the context of the unassumability and
meaninglessness of suffering. 13 The suffering of singular beings is not incidental to an evil
characterized primarily by the subordination of the categorical imperative to self-interest, or by
neglect of the commands of a Divine Being. Indeed, for Levinas, evil is understood through suffering:
'All evil relates back to suffering' (US92). No explanation can redeem the suffering of the other and
thereby remove its evil while leaving the tyranny of a pain that overwhelms subjectivity.

Their own ethics demands an evaluation of bodily harm

Nussbaum 94

Martha Nussbaum (born Martha Craven on May 6, 1947) is an American philosopher with a particular interest in
ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy and ethics.

Nussbaum is currently Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago,
a chair that includes appointments in the Philosophy Department, the Law School, and the Divinity School. She also
holds Associate appointments in Classics and Political Science, is a member of the Committee on Southern Asian
Studies, and a Board Member of the Human Rights Program. She previously taught at Harvard and Brown where she
held the rank of university professor.Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality, By Richard

We now turn to the heart of the matter, the role of "external goods" in the good human life. And here we
encounter a rather large surprise. There is no philosopher in the modern Western tradition who is more
emphatic than Nietzsche is about the central importance of the body, and about the fact that we are
bodily creatures. Again and again he charges Christian and Platonist moralities with making a false
separation between our spiritual and our physical nature; against them, he insists that we are physical
through and through. The surprise is that, having said so much and with such urgency, he really is very loathe to
draw the conclusion that is naturally suggested by his position: that human beings need
worldly goods in order to function. In all of Nietzsche's rather abstract and romantic praise of solitude
and asceticism, we find no grasp of the simple truth that a hungry person cannot think well; that a
person who lacks shelter, basic health care, and the basic necessities of life, is not likely to become a great
philosopher or artist, no matter what her innate equipment. The solitude Nietzsche describes is comfortable
bourgeois solitude, whatever its pains and loneli- ness. Who are his ascetic philosophers? "Heraclitus, Plato.
Descartes, Spi- noza, Leibniz, Kant, Schopenhauer"none a poor person, none a person who had to perform menial
labor in order to survive. And because Nietzsche does not grasp the simple fact that if our abilities are
physical abilities they have physical necessary conditions , he does not understand what the
democratic and socialist movements of his day were all about. The pro-pity tradition, from Homer on,
understood that one functions badly if one is hungry , that one thinks badly if one has to labor all day
in work that does not involve the fully human use of one's faculties. I have suggested that such thoughts were
made by Rousseau the basis for the modern development of democratic-socialist thinking. Since Nietzsche does
not get the basic idea, he docs not see what socialism is trying to do. Since he probably never saw or knew
an acutely hungry person, or a person performing hard physical labor, he never asked how human self-command is
affected by such forms of life. And thus he can proceed as if it does not matter how people live front day to day,
how they get their food. Who provides basic welfare support for Zarathustra? What are the "higher men" doing all
the day long? The reader docs not know and the author does not seem to care. Now Nietzsche himself obviously
was not a happy man. He was lonely, in bad health, scorned by many of his contemporaries. And yet, there still is a
distinction to be drawn between the sort of vulnerability that Nietzsche's life contained and the sort we find if we
examine the lives of truly impov- erished and hungry people. We might say. simplifying things a bit, that there are
two sorts of vulnerability: what we might call bourgeois vulnerabil- ityfor example, the pains of solitude,
loneliness, bad reputation, some ill health, pains that are painful enough but still compatible with thinking and doing
philosophyand what we might call basic vulnerability, which is a deprivation of resources so central to
human functioning that thought and character are themselves impaired or not developed. Nietzsche, focuv
ing on the first son of vulnerability, holds that it is not so bad; it may even be good for the philosopher.* The
second sort. I claim, he simply ne- glectsbelieving, apparently, that even a beggar can be a Stoic hero, if only
socialism does not inspire him with weakness.5"
 Life Isnt Suffering
Reducing suffering doesnt consume all existence it can be
balanced and is an extension of life only they enable
complete self-denial
Conway 99 (David, Middlesex University, Nietzsche's Revaluation of Schopenhauer as Educator,
http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/MPsy/MPsyConw.htm)

Nonetheless, Nietzsche was mistaken in supposing that it was

contrary to the interests of an individual who is otherwise free from
suffering to feel sympathy and pity for those who do suffer (through no fault of their own).

Pity is not the baneful emotion which Nietzsche claims it to be. This verdict leaves unresolved the
ultimate issue. In a world which does as a matter of fact contain the

enormous amount of suffering that ours contains, is not an individual

who is open through sympathetic identification to this

suffering bound like Schopenhauer says to be revolted by the world to the point of
revulsion with it? Nietzsche, of course, thought the strong can and should

disengage their sympathies from the suffering of the weak. I think this is a mistake.
One's world is impoverished by such disengagement of
sympathies. Yet how can one continue to affirm the will when
one feels with all the suffering there is? Nietzsche is correct
that existence could only be tolerable if we were able to
live without being constantly affected by the suffering
of others. However, it was wrong to think that in order to achieve this enviable state,

pity should be condemned and avoided. No, on this matter I think we are
entitled to place more trust in life itself than did
Nietzsche. The fact is that there are strict psychological limits
on our susceptibility to feel pity. Pity is in part a function of our
attention. To what we attend is a function of our
will. Our sentiments very largely determine to what we attend. Consequently, it is only
where people have disengaged themselves from pursuit of personal projects, like
appreciating and producing art or caring for loved ones, and so on , that there can be scope for

a degree of pity of the sort that alone can give rise to denial
of will. Where denial of will becomes psychologically possible, therefore, it can hardly be thought of as unwarranted.
Nietzsche himself spoke approvingly of taking leave of life at the time before one became a burden and life lost its point. Surely, he
would not have wished to frown on Sannyasis who give up all attachments at that stage in life after they have made their way
through it. In conclusion, therefore, I wish to say that their are elements of truth and error in both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche on
the matter of greatest divide between them. Schopenhauer is right to see denial of will where it occurs in such figures as religious
recluses as a legitimate response to the suffering of the world. Nietzsche is right to see denial of the will as not always a legitimate
response to the world's suffering. Nietzsche is right that life need not contain suffering of the magnitude Schopenhauer claims is

an attitude of sympathy for all

integral to it. Schopenhauer is right that

suffering creatures is a benefit and not a bane to the

person who has the attitude.

Denying the will to live leads to internal conflict and strife

Schroeder 6 (William R., Associate Professor of Philosophy University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Review
of Julian Youngs Schopenhauer, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 9-7, http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=7583)

Finally, Young argues that Schopenhauers ethics fails to transcend egoism because ones care for others is only
an extension of ones care for oneself. At the deepest level, self and others are not distinct; thus, Schopenhauers
view provides no respect for others as such (182-4). Schopenhauer might reply that standard conceptions of ethics
presuppose the principle of individuation that he rejects. Schopenhauer is trying to show how ethical
responsiveness is possible given his metaphysics, even if he rejects the classical presuppositions of ethics. To
Youngs core objection that Schopenhauer never succeeds in showing how the atemporal thing -in-itself becomes
temporal, some interpreters might reply by emphasizing his double-aspect theory of the Will. (The universal
atemporal Will is one aspect while the individual temporal instantiations of the Will is its other aspect.) Though
Young acknowledges the double-aspect theory (60-1; 78-9), he notes that this does not render any more intelligible
how an atemporal entity and temporal ones can be mirror-aspects of each other. Elaborating several of Youngs
criticisms, I would argue that Schopenhauer never did render his empiricist aspirations coherent with his
metaphysical goals. Also, I would suggest that a single fundamental choice that would bind persons to their
characters is insufficient to explain the continued experience of responsibility most people feel for their specific
faults or failures. Would they even have any consciousness of such a basic choice? I agree with Young that
Schopenhauer simply failed to see the potentially stimulating effects of suffering; it can certainly be taken as a
challenge to greater efforts and more intense self-development. This is one of Nietzsches many departures from
Schopenhauer, and it allows Nietzsche to adopt a life-affirming orientation toward life that sharply contrasts with
Schopenhauers life-negation. Nietzsche retained Schopenhauers goal of a kind of Dionysian, mystical merging with
ultimate reality, but he believed that the this-worldly life-process constituted that ultimate reality. Schopenhauers
salvation allegedly helps individuals transcend death, but all that survives is the atemporal Will (or the more basic
thing-in-itself); nothing of individuality survives. Nietzsche took similar solace in the eternity of the this-worldly life-
process, but at least individuals might contribute to--and even reshape--that process, and its existence is far more
certain. Schopenhauer is an extreme example of one path within philosophy--accepting a transcendent reality and
construing freedom or salvation as dissociation from the perceived world and any interest in it. A quite different
path takes the perceived world to be primary, rejecting any escape to some alternate, hidden reality; it also insists
that freedom requires a sense of being expressed by this-worldly actions. Withdrawal from and indifference to the
world of human affairs, from this perspective, seems like a desperate form of egoism. Moreover, it fails to achieve
the peace Schopenhauer valued because denying the will to live can only lead to endless internal conflict
and strife. Suffering and strife thus penetrate the most refined efforts to achieve salvation[3]. Schopenhauers
metaphysics seems to undermine, rather than reinforce, his aim of achieving peace . Youngs book acknowledges
the grandeur of Schopenhauers effort, but it also demonstrates the many ways it remains inadequate.

(NOTE Young is Julian Young, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland)

 Preventing Premature Death is Good
Preventing premature death is vital to maximize temporal and
spiritual existence they preclude the possibility for people to
confront the meaning of life on their own terms
Tallis 97 (Raymond, Professor of Medicine University of Manchester, Enemies of Hope: A Critique of
Contemporary Pessimism, p. 400-402)

At any rate, we may anticipate that the future progress in medical science will make possible only finite additions to

This raises the question of

lifespan, palliating rahter than curing our transcience.

what (finite) additions to a finite lifespan are worthwhile? The

answer will change our perceptions of the curve of life are altered by medical and social advances; in particular

the definition of premature, 'tragically early', death will be

revised upwards. Nietzsches Zarathustra recommended that,
since we cannot live for ever, we should at least die at the right time .

When is the right time to die? According to Paul Valery's M. Teste. It is said that
there are two kinds of death, the natural (complete) and the
ordinary - giving back to the world nothing but a corpse empty of its possible consciousness. The
ordinary is the ordinary dead man (and on his features, the expression of a man surprised and slightly shocked,

The natural of true

impolitely interrupted by some trifle in an interesting conversation).

death would be the total exhaustion of the

possibilities of the system of an individual [person]man. All the inner
combinations of his capacities, incomplete in themselves, would be
exhausted. He has told himself everything he knew. This seems an unlikely prospect and we may
assume that all human beings will leave much unfinished business behind when they die and death will remain as

poignant. Does not the Utopian dream of progress, therefore distract from
this fundamental certainty and so render us spiritually more shallow? I

don't think so; indeed, I would argue the reverse:

life and death in Utopia will be more, not less,
metaphysical. With more effective ways of retarding the onset of diseases and limiting their
adverse effects, it seems likely that 'old age' will come to play a bigger role in limiting the quality and duration of
life. The distinction between disease and ageing is not as clear-cut as has been suggested by those who have been
appropriately anxious that woes in older people should not be dismissed as (untreatable) 'ageing' and oppurtunities
for improving (treatable) illness lost. Even, however, supposing ageing and disease were clearly separable, they
would still interact and converge, having a common ultimate outcomes - death - and a common pathway to that
outcome - homoestatic failure. The question that then concerns us is whether death purely or predominantly by
ageing would be an advance over death by clearly defined disease. Death in old age will, of course, seem more
appropriate (or less inappropiate) that ht edeath in youth; but, beyond this, death from old age may be less
unpleasant, not being associated with intrusive symptoms such as pain, nauses, shortness of breath and gross
disability. Instead, we may envisage a subtle and progressive reduction in life-space associated withan increased
probability of a demise that is more easily achieved - as if the distance to be traversed between life and death has

been abbreviated. The image of death by ageing as the end-result of gradual

but harmonious failure of all organs is attractive. It is compatible with the current conceptions of ageing in the
absence of clearly defined disease, which suggest a picture of progressive, roughly synchronous decline in function

would seem to be likely to be

of many different organs. Such a death

more conscious more metaphysical, than death typically is at

present. Do not go gentle into that good night. No; but do not
go kicking and screaming, either instead proceed by a series of grey-scale
gradations of evening to oblivion. The tragedy is not blunted, but purified of the kind of distraction that dominate

Physical suffering is not necessarily a more

decline and death at present.

translucent metaphysical window than painless

decline quite the reverse; to suffer is to be nailed
to the particular to endure an involuntary
narrowing of an attention made almost absolute.
Utopia and Utopian medicine will not therefore cure transcience but may permit a death that is more in keeping

It is absurd, therefore to see

with the possibilities of man the metaphysical anumal.

progress towards Utopia as being a means by which humankind is

made shallower; on the contrary it may be the
means by which human beings come nearer to fulfilling
the mysterious potential within them to become ever more
richly and complex aware of themselves and of the world
around them.

Dying makes celebration of life impossible suffering will

consume existence and obliterate reflection
Nussbaum 94 (Martha, David Benedict Professor, Professor of Philosophy and Classics, and Adjunct
Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University, Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsches On
the Genealogy of Morals, ed. Richard Schacht, p. 158-59)

We now turn to the heart of the matter, the role of external goods in the good human life. And here we encounter
a rather large surprise. There is no philosopher in the modern Western tradition who is more emphatic than
Nietzsche is about the central importance of the body, and about the fact that we are bodily creatures. Again and
again he charges Christian and Platonist moralities with making a false separation between our spiritual and our
physical nature; against them, he insists that we are physical through and through. The surprise is that, having said
so much and with such urgency, he really is very loathe to draw the conclusion that is naturally suggested by his

position: that human beings need worldly goods in order to function. In all of
Nietzsches rather
praise of solitude and asceticism, we find no grasp of the simple truth that a
abstract and romantic
hungry person cannot think well; that a person who lacks shelter, basic health care, and the basic
necessities of life, is not likely to become a great philosopher or artist, no matter what her
innate equipment. The solitude Nietzsche describes is comfortable bourgeois solitude ,
whatever its pains and loneliness. Who are his ascetic philosophers? Heraclitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza,
Leibniz, Kant, Schopenhauernone a poor person, none a person who had to perform menial labor in
order to survive. And because Nietzsche does not grasp the simple fact that if our abilities are
physical abilities they have physical necessary conditions, he does not understand what the
democratic and socialist movements of his day were all about. The pro-pity tradition , from
Homer on, understood that one functions badly if one is hungry , that one thinks badly if one has to
labor all day in work that does not involve the fully human use of ones faculties. I have suggested that such
thoughts were made by Rousseau the basis for the modern development of democratic-socialist thinking. Since
Nietzsche does not get the basic idea, he does not see what socialism is trying to do . Since he
probably never saw or knew an acutely hungry person, or a person performing hard physical labor, he
never asked how human self-command is affected by such forms of life. And thus he can
proceed as if it does not matter how people live from day to day, how they get their food. Who
provides basic welfare support for Zarathustra? What are the higher men doing all the day
long? The reader does not know and the author does not seem to care. Now Nietzsche himself
obviously was not a happy man. He was lonely, in bad health, scorned by many of his contemporaries. And yet,
there still is a distinction to be drawn between the sort of vulnerability that Nietzsches life contained and the sort
we find if we examine the lives of truly impoverished and hungry people. We might say, simplifying things a bit, that

there are two sorts of vulnerability: what we might call bourgeois vulnerability
pains that are painful
for example, the pains of solitude, loneliness, bad reputation, some ill health,
enough but still compatible with thinking and doing philosophyand what we might call basic
vulnerability , which is a deprivation of resources so central to human functioning that
thought and character are themselves impaired or not developed. Nietzsche, focusing on the
first sort of vulnerability, holds that it is not so bad; it may even be good for the philosopher.49
The second sort, I claim, he simply neglects believing, apparently, that even a beggar can
be a Stoic hero, if only socialism does not inspire him with weakness.
 FoD good/life good/etc/random cards
Fear of extinction is a legitimate and productive response to
the modern condition---working through it by validating our
representations is the only way to create an authentic
relationship to the world and death
Macy 2K Joanna Macy, adjunct professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, 2000, Environmental
Discourse and Practice: A Reader, p. 243

We are confronted by
The move to a wider ecological sense of self is in large part a function of the dangers that are threatening to overwhelm us.

social breakdown, wars, nuclear proliferation , and the progressive

destruction of our biosphere . Polls show that people today are aware that the world, as they know it, may come to an end. This loss of
certainty that there will be a future is the pivotal psychological reality of our time. Over the past twelve years my colleagues and I have

worked with tens of thousands of people in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, helping them
confront and explore what they know and feel about what is happening to
their world. The purpose of this work, which was first known as Despair and Empowerment Work, is to
overcome the numbing and powerlessness that result from suppression
of painful responses to massively painful realities. As their grief and fear for the
world is allowed to be expressed without apology or argument and validated as a wholesome, life-
preserving response , people break through their avoidance mechanisms,
break through their sense of futility and isolation . Generally what they break
through into is a larger sense of identity. It is as if the pressure of their
acknowledged awareness of the suffering of our world stretches or collapses
the culturally defined boundaries of the self. It becomes clear, for example, that the grief and fear
experienced for our world and our common future are categorically
different from similar sentiments relating to ones personal welfare. This pain cannot be
equated with dread of ones own individual demise. Its source lies less in concerns for personal survival than in apprehensions of collective suffering of what looms for human life and

It is the distress we feel

other species and unborn generations to come. Its nature is akin to the original meaning of compassion suffering with.

on behalf of the larger whole of which we are a part. And, when it is so

defined, it serves as a trigger or getaway to a more encompassing sense of
identity, inseparable from the web of life in which we are as intricately
connected as cells in a larger body. This shift in consciousness is an appropriate, adaptive response. For the crisis that
threatens our planet , be it seen in its military, ecological, or social
aspects, derives from a dysfunctional and pathogenic notion of the self .
It is a mistake about our place in the order of things. It is the delusion that the self is so separate and fragile that we must delineate and defend its boundaries, that it is so small and
needy that we must endlessly acquire and endlessly consume, that it is so aloof that we can as individuals, corporations, nation-states, or as a species be immune to what we do to
other beings.

Life has intrinsic value--- biological death eliminates ontological

realization- turns ethics
Paterson 3 - Department of Philosophy, Providence College, Rhode
Island (Craig, A Life Not Worth Living?, Studies in Christian Ethics, Sage)//trepkaOnly Personal Life? As we have
seen above, human life is often perceived only as an instrumental good at the
service of the person. It is said that human life, as such, is not a basic human good, and is merely a necessary
means utilised in the promotion of other goods. When human life itself fails to live up to our expected requirements,
it can ultimately be dispensed with. Merely being a living member of the species, Homo sapiens, is considered to
offer no valid ground for ascribing to all humans an inviolability that protects them from being intentionally
killed.16Lying behind such accounts are forms of threshold sufficiency criteria
used to establish whether or not individual human beings are able to qualify
as human persons. On one side of the threshold is considered to be a human life worthy of being valued
since that life instantiates feature(s) X . . . Z. A human life with feature(s) X . . . Z is alone
considered worthwhile, since it instantiates that which is sufficient to attribute real value to human
existence. Thus, there are effectively two primary categories of human life to be identified: personal life
manifesting feature(s) X . . . Z, and non-personal life that is incapable of manifesting feature(s) X . . . Z. Human life
is valued as long as it is capable of instantiating the feature(s) sufficient to constitute personal life. Mere non-
personal life (not worth living and thus not worthy of full protection from intentional killing) is thus heavily
contrasted with personal life (worth living and thus alone worthy of full protection from intentional killing). Jonathan
Glover, James Rachels, Peter Singer, Helga Kuhse and John Harris all subscribe to the notion that what is truly
valued is not human life as such but personal life, life that is capable of manifest- ing the sufficient feature(s) X . . .
They therefore
Z rationality, self-awareness, consciousness, etc., or some composite thereof.17
identify certain attributes that alone are sufficient to warrant the
classification of being a person. The voice of John Locke can be seen to echo strongly in these
approaches, for he defined a person as a thinking intelligent being that has reason and reflection and can consider
itself as itself.18 In the conclusions reached by the above-mentioned authors, all would argue that patients
suffering from advanced forms of senility, or the permanently comatose, cannot be regarded as persons, and will
not therefore be classified as being possessed of lives truly worth living. Since they are not properly capable of
being categorised as persons, they cannot be accorded the same protections that we ascribe to those we do
The principal difficulty with such theories of the worth of
identify as persons.19

human life, however, stems from an inadequate justification upon which

to make such a determination that an individual human life Y must contain
those sufficient feature(s) X . . . Z in order to qualify for the status of
being regarded by others as a person.20 With regard to non-philosophical usage, people in
general do not make a distinction between attributions of the status person and attributions of the status human
being. Basic patterns of usage point not to the widespread understanding of being a person as actually having self-
awareness . . . X . . . Z but rather to a widespread under- standing that being a person is treated synonymously
with being a particular kind of being (by virtue of his or her membership in that distinct class of being). Y is a
human being, and not, say, a horse or a cat, is interchangeable with Y is a person, since Y is recognisably one of
us.21 This assertion of an interchangeable understanding between person and human being, is borne out by the
prevailing definitions offered by the Oxford English Dictionary, where the noun person is viewed as referring to (1)
an individual human being, and (2) human beings distinguished from other things, especially lower animals. Of 1
course it is right to be wary of dictionary definitions. They are clearly not definitive. Nevertheless, I think that the
patterns of usage wit- nessed by the OED are supportive evidence for the proposition that people generally do not
use person and human being to refer to differences in kind between human persons and human non-persons,
such that the former are entitled to have their lives regarded as worthy of being fully protected by negative
prohibitions while the latter are not.22 Consider further a common reaction to patients
suffering from advanced senility, or to patients in a permanent vegetative
state. Often we will say that the patient is in a profoundly damaged/disabled condition, or that a patients quality
of life is at a minimum, and so on. Often we will be deeply disturbed by the gap that exists between the condition of
the patient and his or her flourishing as a human being. No one (except the perverted) would want to be placed in
Human life is very imperfectly manifested in such a
such a condition.
condition.23 Yet, it simply does not follow that we would generally seek to infer
from this debilitated state of being that the patient has ceased to be a
person and has therefore undergone such a change in kind that we now regard the patient as a non-
person.24 Our ready ability to identify with human non-persons in a way that
we do not seem able to identify with non-human non-persons seems to
offer additional testimony as to why we continue to view such human non-
persons as persons simpliciter despite their profoundly damaged state of
being.25 This ready ability to make such identification helps to make sense of the observation that people can
and do seek to defend and promote human life without seeking an explanation for protecting or preserving human
life in those who are profoundly damaged beyond an appeal to that good itself (i .e.us in a way that actions of this
kind cannot be explained for non-human non-persons.27 Still, it can be argued that the above account is simply
the product of muddled conventional thinking, conventional thinking spurred on by the impact of understandable
There
but ultimately irrational sentiment concerning the state of patients in those kinds of condi- tion.28
is, however, good philosophical reason to affirm that those pre-philosophical
apprehensions that we have concerning the use of the terms person and human being, are indeed sound.
This can be achieved by positing a credible account of what it is to be a human person by virtue of being a member
It explains why our basic identification with profoundly
of the species, Homo sapiens.
damaged human non-persons is not merely a product of convention,
sympathy, or compassion, but is ultimately ontological in nature.29 Aquinas quoted
and affirmed the definition of what it is to be a person, as stated by Boethius. A person is an individual substance
of a rational nature.30 The definition offered by Boethius is inherently more satisfactory than the definition offered
by John Locke, for it is able to account for our understanding of what can be termed our species solidarity a
solidarity that points against the classification or treatment of profoundly damaged human beings as sub-personal
(semihominem) and whose lives are consequently judged to be of less worth than the rest of us.31 Rather than
focusing on the idea that the individual must be actually rational (conscious, self-aware, etc.) in order to be thought
of as a person (as with John Locke), this definition clearly points to a second basic understanding of what it is to be
A person is an individual who is a member of a class of being
a person.32
characterised by those attributes.When we reflect on the nature of our species Homo sapiens, it is
clear that our species is a kind that is rational, self-aware, and so on. This holds true even if some members of that
species are incapable of rational thought, lack self-awareness, and so on.33 Jenny Teichman supports this central
line of argumentation when she states that the
idea that a creature can have a rational
nature without being rational . . . does not appear to me to be any more
intrinsically problematic than the idea that all cattle are mammals even
the bulls.34 Teichman, therefore, challenges the idea that the way in which we classify our own kind ought to
be treated any differently from the way we classify other things. Does a dog cease to be classified as a dog when it
has lost its bark? Does a pail cease to be classified as a pail when it is no longer capable of holding water due a
large hole in its bottom? If not, why should the very senile or the permanently comatose be classified as non-
persons even if they are deeply defective with respect to an exercisable capacity for rational thought or a capacity
for self-awareness?35 We can therefore credibly argue that non-persons in a state of severe impairment are still
fully members of the same species to which we all belong. The very senile or permanently comatose do not become
members of a different species. Through their natural kind they still speak to us as members of the same species
via a common shared human nature and continue to make many of the same moral claims upon us, for example, a
right not to be intentionally killed by other persons in acts of non-consensual euthanasia.36 When Aristotle stated
that we are by nature rational animals, he was not making a statement particular to those fully functional
members of the human species at the height of their faculties. He was, rather, defining the essential universal
nature of the species.37 He was pointing out what the nature of being a member of the human species entails
simply by being a recognisable member of that species. It is a credible principle of reasoning to state that by virtue
of the basic kind of being a thing is, the archetypal characteristics of that kind can be ascribed to any member of
that kind, even though not every member of that kind, may, as a matter of fact, actually manifest those archetypal
characteristics.38 Therefore, it can be stated that all members of our species can justifiably be said to participate
and share in the rightful protection offered to the archetypal members of our species because of what they
essentially are, irrespective of the particular circumstances of any given member.39 Why then should being
profoundly damaged detract from the moral status of certain human beings if they are by virtue of their nature as
damage does not render
fully human as the most fully flourishing members of our species? Such
them a member of a different species, for differences between humans
concerning levels of intelligence, levels of consciousness, levels of coherence
or inco- herence in thoughts, etc. are all questions of degree and not of
kind.40 It is not a question of a decline in, or non-presence of, an ability that is
capable of rendering a substantial change in the nature of a human
being. Rather, it is only the event of death itself that is capable of bringing
about a substantial change in the kind of thing that we are. It is death that
brings about a fundamental ontological change in status, for a corpse is
no longer an individual with a human kind of nature.41 By virtue of the status of being a
member of the human species, then, that status can indeed be said to be one of being a person simpliciter. All
persons are entitled to the same basic types of immunity from intentional killing as are accorded the archetypal
It can, in consequence, never be morally justified to
mature members of the species.

intentionally kill human beings on the ground that individual lives are judged
to be insufficiently worthwhile in order to qualify for the kinds of protection that Rachels, Singer,
Kuhse and Harris would reserve only for humans who are actually capable of individually exercising those attributes
of our kind. Lifes Inherent Value A common link is drawn between a patients right to refuse treatment and the right
of a patient to assess the quality of his or her own life. Such a right, it is claimed, is tantamount to an assessment of
the worth of life, such that a patient with a low life quality can commit suicide, be assisted in that goal, or be
euthanised.42 Here, I would argue, that this train of thought posits a mistaken frame of reference for the moral
evaluation of the duties we have towards the preservation of human life. It carries plausibility, firstly, because it
trades partly on the looseness or open texture of language, and secondly, because it expands upon an appropriate
sphere of decision-making in which patients are indeed intimately involved in the assessment of the burdens and
benefits of treatment.43 No reasonable person would say that a life of less complete, less perfect, human
flourishing is better than a life of more complete, more perfect, human flourishing.44 A life endowed with more
flourishing, that realises more profusion in various horizons of possibility, is a fuller life than a life that is impaired in
its ability to flourish. In that sense there can be said to be more quality, a greater instantiation of good, in the
But it is an illicit move to go from that sense of flourishing
former than the latter.45
and its diminishment, to the conclusion that a life is not worth living, for
there is quite simply no critical threshold that can be crossed, such that a
diminishment in flourishing ceases to instantiate any inherent good genuinely worth preserving.46 An appeal can
be made (and usually is) to various forms of con- sequentialism to justify the conclusion that certain lives are not
Consequentialism purports to offer an answer by posing a common
worth living.
denominator to reckon with these factors, but the com- plexity of human value, most
significantly the incommensurability of certain goods, defies all such levelling attempts.47 W. D. Ross, Charles Fried,
Ronald Dworkin, and other proponents of mixed consequentialist systems, simply propose prima facie duties
without explaining exactly what it is about the nature of the process of human reasoning that determines the
strength of certain values, such that the duty to respect them is overridden in some situations, but not in others.48
Perhaps an appeal to convention may provide some sort of guide. However, this just retreats into a form of sub-
This will not do when we
jectivity, taking comfort in the fact that a practice may be widely spread.
consider the course of human history that has thrown up radically evil forms
of convention, e.g. eugenics, mass killing , etc.49 Again, if a life is judged not worth living,
what is it about death that is supposed to be judged objectively commensurable to staying alive? How is it
calculated? Perhaps intuition can attempt to supply an answer. However, a thoroughgoing appeal to intuition here
simply negates the ability we have to use practical reason to inform our decision-making and guide our choices. But
this will not do, for it is tantamount to saying that in the very situations where human reason is most crucially
needed it is of no use to us! In reality, such a thoroughgoing appeal to intuition readily degenerates into a form of a
posteriori rationalisation to justify choices already opted for on the basis of sub-rational emotion.50 While use of
we
language sometimes leads us to suspect that lives are often evaluated in terms of their overall worth,
should nevertheless be very suspicious of attempting to extrapolate from
statements that (1) doing X is a valuable part of As life and that As life is diminished by
not being able to do X, to (2) As life is no longer worth living and it is therefore right to
intentionally end it because A cannot do X. Such inferences only seem plausible because there is a shift
in the correct locus of evaluation, especially in the framework of medical decision-making, from the worthwhileness
of certain treatments to the worthwhileness of certain lives.51 The correct question to be focused upon, should be
whether a proposed treatment for a patient would be worthwhile; not whether a patients life would be worthwhile.
The distinction between the worthwhileness of certain treatments and the worthwhileness of certain lives is no
mere semantic ploy, for it legitimately seeks to address what the scope of decision-making concerning the preser-
vation of life and health should be. In doing so, it provides for a sphere of delimitation where patient choice
concerning treatment can reasonably be made.52 The responsibility for safeguarding and promoting the good of
health lies primarily with the patient and not with the medical profession. That patient assessment should be
centred squarely on the impact of proposed treatments, however, is not tantamount to endorsing the idea that we
can truly judge the worth of our own lives. The capacity to choose crucially brings with it the responsibility of
making choices that do in fact serve to promote rather than under- mine the ends of integral human flourishing.
Given the diversity of choices that are consistent with human flourishing, there will often be considerable leeway in
a patients deliberation. Yet, leeway does not endorse license, and there are limits on the shaping of reasonable
choice concerning the refusal or withdrawal of treatments.53 The non-consequentialist framework being espoused
here is not one advocating the nave preservation of life at all costs, for in many cases it is indeed licit to withhold
or withdraw life-preserving treat- ment.54 More precisely, there cannot be said to be a duty to undergo a treatment
that is not worthwhile (offering no reasonable hope of benefit to the patient), or that is considered medically
futile.55 Without offering any exclusive listing of factors, Germain Grisez and Joseph Boyle helpfully list several
factors that would offer reasonable grounds for justifying the withdrawal or non-provision of a medical treatment: a
risky or experimental treatment; avoidance of significant further pain or trauma associated with treatment; the
impact that 52 a treatment may have on the patients participation in activities or experiences the patient values;
conflicts with deep-seated moral or religious principles to which the patient is committed to; a treatment
psychologically repelling or repugnant to the patient; compelling burdens on family or finances.56 Such a
framework for decision-making can indeed be abused and can result in the refusal of treatments that would seem to
offer considerable benefits to patients without significant burden being attached to them. This will come as no
surprise, and indeed can result in decisions that are directly suicidal in nature. However, the question that needs to
be faced here is that there need be no essential incompatibility between, on the one hand, placing severe restraints
on interference with the persistent choice of patients, even though they are intentionally suicidal, and yet, on the
other, still uphold the respect due to the good of human life.57 It is a brute fact that interference would be visited
with all manner of difficulty, not least the fact that successful treatment usually requires the active co-operation of
the patient. The problems that would be visited by enforcing treatments against the vehement will of a patient
would be immense. Effects on the morale of the patient, family, and professions would be considerable. One only
has to consider the impact of force feeding against a persons will to see the traumatic means that may have to be
resorted to. Further than that, the imposition of such an overt act of countermanding a patients decision, would
serve only to undermine the already tested repu- tation of the medical profession in the eyes of the public,
suspicious of paternalistic interventionism by physicians, and with it, a concomitant perception of disregard for the
dignity of the individual patient.58 For those reasons, then, the general decision not to overrule a patients suicidal
intent to end life by refusal or withdrawal of treatment, other than by means of, say, persuasion, will sometimes
it
happen. Yet, this does not amount to a policy of condoning the aiding and abetting of a suicide. Rather,
represents a principled decision to intentionally act for a good objective, the
common good of patients, and the community generally. This good objective being acted for may
practically permit the consequence of resultant death as an unintended yet fair side effect of a good intention. This
is a sensible and principled way of responding to the reality, particularly in the context of medicine, that in order to
prevent the execution, even of a serious wrong, there is only so much that can reasonably be done to protect
patients from the consequences of their own wrongful decisions. Better off Dead? A Concluding Caveat Supporters
of suicide and assisted suicide claim that we can justifi- ably argue that it makes sense to say that a person would
be better off dead rather than continuing to live, say, a life of severely diminished quality. Such value judgements,
how is it possible for death to benefit the person
it is said, are compara- tively sound.59 Yet,
who dies? Death destroys the person. How can we produce a benefit, therefore, if we
destroy the self, the potential beneficiary? One of the commonest lines of argumentation made here is termed
the deprivation account. Key exponents include Thomas Nagel, Harry Silverstein and Fred Feldman.60 The
argument advanced basically trades on a parallel question concerning death, arguing that a person can be
posthumously harmed by his or her future loss, even though death means that the person is no longer actually in
existence to experience it.61 For example, suppose Charles Dickenss life would have included more literary
achievement if he had lived for a few more years. Because literary achievement is a good, Dickens can be said to
have had a less good life overall than he would have had if he had lived longer. Living a less good life is a harm to
the person. By excluding those future possible achievements, then, Dickenss death can be said to be a harm to
him, for it prevented a life that would have been better than it was.62 Trading on this parallel, it is then argued that
death can be a benefit in a comparison of future possible lives. Suppose a persons life would go on containing
severe suffering and pain. That person would be better off having a shorter life than having a life of prolonged
misery. Since living a better life is a benefit, it is said that living the shorter life, here, is a benefit, since it is the
better life. By interfering with the infliction of evils, the persons death can therefore be said to be a genuine benefit
By engaging in such comparisons of
to him or her, since it prevents a worse life being lived.63
future lives, the conclusion is reached by deprivation theorists that death is
only an evil for the person if the future lost is one that offers better prospects
for the person than death itself. Deathitself is typically conceived of
as the destruction of the self ; the non-existence of the self; the non-state

of non-being.64 How can we respond to this assessment that death can be said to benefit a patient when
the patients future prospects in life seem so grim? The non-state that death brings in its wake is seen as being
preferable to the continuance of life. Yet, are persons who make and act upon such calculations objectively justified
in opting for death? Can it truly be a rational act for a person to choose the destruction of self over the continuation
of self, even a self racked by the severe impositions of pain and suffering?65 Philip Devine attempts to criticise the
logicality of a decision to self-kill by stating what he considers to be the obscurity of what we can know about
death.66 He argues that if rational choice requires that a person knows what he or she is choosing (a leap in the
dark not sufficing), then it cannot be rationally possible to intentionally choose death because of the opaqueness of
death.67 As Devine says, . . . a precondition of rational choice is that one knows what one is choosing, either by
experience or by the testimony of others who have experienced it or something very like it.68 Death cannot be
rationally commensurated against, for we do not know what we are comparing life to. Life cannot simply be judged
an overall evil and acted against by intentionally embracing death, for the overall evil of life cannot be rationally
traded in for the opaqueness of death. For Devine, choosing death is simply akin to leaping into the bowels of
radical uncertainty that cannot function as a useful ground for objective rational choice.69 While I agree with
Devines conclusion that intentionally opting for death is ultimately an unreasonable act, I think his reasoning for
supporting that conclusion lacks credibility, since the epistemic premise of his argument here is faulty. First, it
can be stated that even if death really is shrouded in mystery, it is
sometimes possible to make rational decisions without our knowing exactly
what we are choosing. Consider a quiz programme in which the contestant is asked to take a fixed prize
of cash or a mystery gift. The participant opts for the mystery gift. This risk seems perfectly reasonable.70 Can this
not function as an analogy for a patient faced with the prospect of suffering and pain who opts for the mystery of
death? Second, I crucially do not think that the mystery option is the actual choice placed before us, for I think
we can have sufficient relevant knowledge about death to understand
that
important impli- cations of the choice being opted for. Unlike Devine, I think that the
unreasonableness of opting for death arises precisely because we do know enough about what is being chosen to
What we can know about death, based on
make it an objectively irrational choice.71
natural human reason alone, is that it results in the destruction of the
self. There will no longer be a human being in existence. There will
be no carrier of value or disvalue. There will be no subject in existence
that is capable of bearing any of the kinds of predication typical of living
human beings. Death is an event that results in the non-being of the human person that was.72 Unlike
Devine, I would argue that an intention to bring about this non-state, given the relevant (if incomplete) knowledge
we have about it, points to the incoherence behind the idea that death can really be said to be a benefit for the
person who is dead, as argued for by contemporary deprivation authors.73 When we assert that a person is harmed
or benefited by a state, this requires that there is actually a subject in existence who is capable of being the bearer
of the value or disvalue. If a person must actually exist in order to be the subject bearer of harms and benefits that
happen, then how can there be said to be a subject who is capable of being benefited posthumously by his or her
death? This line of argumen- tation against deprivation accounts (that death can be a benefit) is convincingly
argued for by John Donnelly and J. L. A. Garcia. If a person succeeds in killing himself or herself, there can be no
it is muddled to argue that a person can be
betterment ascribed to the person. For Donnelly,
said to be posthumously benefited or harmed if the person must first be
destroyed as a prerequisite for the benefit.74 The irrationality of thinking that death can be a
benefit for a person is further addressed by Garcia.75 If it is good to be without pain, as indeed it is under most
If a
circumstances, this presupposes the existence of the subject in order to instantiate that good (any good).
person can be better off dead, then the continued existence of the person
must continue after death. Yet no one on the basis of reason alone can
justifiably claim that death can allow for the continuation of the person qua
person. To realise goods and to minimise evils requires the presence of that single constant, a live human being,
who can possibly make sense of such value statements. For Garcia, therefore, it is quite illicit to jump from the
evaluation of means to minimise, or be free from, the evils of suffering and pain, to the conclusion that the
Consequently, all
destruction of the subject itself can make a person in any meaningful sense better off.
that can reasonably be done is to seek to benefit persons in their present
lives, that is to improve as best we can the extent of their flourishing within
the framework of humanitarian means available at our disposal.76 Contrary to
Donnelly and Garcia, Nagel argues that there are plausible exceptions that render such accounts sensible to us,
notwithstanding the destruction of the subject. For example, Nagel argues that a person can be harmed
posthumously by having his or her reputation harmed, and can therefore be said to be posthumously benefited by
having his or her reputation restored. When all is said and done, therefore, it seems that we can reasonably talk of
benefiting the dead.77 In reply, it can be stated that there are other plausible explanations of what is meant by
the dead being subjected to harms and benefits that do not presuppose that the dead can actually be said to
experi- ence those harms or benefits. Thus, to take Nagels example con- cerning posthumous reputation, we can
plausibly state that it is the reputation of a former person that is harmed, say, by an act of slander, and not a
person as such.78 Similarly we can say that the reputation of a former person is benefited by nice things being said
about the former person. The living seek to protect their reputations because they, while alive, identify with them
and realise that the reputations they identify with are capable of being posthumously harmed or
benefited.79 If the above arguments are sound, (1) that we can have enough
relevant knowledge of what death would entail, and (2) that the dead cannot
really be said to be harmed or benefited, then I think they severely
undermine the contemporary deprivation accounts of death. Contrary to those
accounts, I would argue that it is death per se that is really the objective evil for us, not

because it deprives us of a prospective future of overall good judged better than the alter- native of non-being. It

cannot be about harm to a former person who has ceased to exist , for no
person actually suffers from the sub-sequent non-participation. Rather, death in itself is an evil to us

because it ontologically destroys the current existent subject it is the

ultimate in metaphysical lightning strikes .80 The evil of death is truly an
ontological evil borne by the person who already exists,independently of
calculations about better or worse possible lives. Such an evil need not be consciously
experienced in order to be an evil for the kind of being a human person is. Death is an evil because of the change in
Anything, whether
kind it brings about, a change that is destructive of the type of entity that we essentially are.
caused naturally or caused by human intervention (intentional or unin- tentional) that drastically
interferes in the process of maintaining the person in existence is
an objective evil for the person. What is crucially at stake here, and is dialectically supportive of
the self-evidency of the basic good of human life, is thatdeath is a radical interference with
the current life process of the kind of being that we are. In consequence, death itself can be
credibly thought of as a primitive evil for all persons, regardless of the
extent to which they are currently or prospectively capable of participating in
a full array of the goods of life.81 In conclusion, concerning willed human actions, it is justifiable to
state that any intentional rejection of human life itself cannot therefore be
warranted since it is an expression of an ultimate disvalue for the
subject, namely, the destruction of the present person; a radical 79 ontological good that we
cannot begin to weigh objectively against the travails of life in a rational manner. To deal with the

sources of disvalue (pain, suffering, etc.) we should not seek to irrationally

destroy the person , the very source and condition of all human
possibility .82
Permutation do the aff then the alternative

Life has intrinsic value achieved through subjective pleasures---its

preservation should be a priori
Kacou 2k8
(Amien Kacou 8 WHY EVEN MIND? On The A Priori Value Of Life,
Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy,
Vol 4, No 1-2 (2008)
cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/92/184)
Furthermore, that manner of finding things good that is in pleasure can certainly not exist in
any world without consciousness (i.e., without life, as we now understand the word)
slight analogies put aside. In fact, we can begin to develop a more sophisticated definition of the concept of pleasure, in the broadest
possible sense of the word, as follows: it is the common psychological element in all psychological
experience of goodness (be it in joy, admiration, or whatever else). In this sense, pleasure can always be pictured to mediate
all awareness or perception or judgment of goodness: there is pleasure in all consciousness of things good;
pleasure is the common element of all conscious satisfaction. In short, it is simply the very
experience of liking things, or the liking of experience, in general. In this sense, pleasure is, not only uniquely
characteristic of life but also, the core expression of goodness in lifethe most general sign or
phenomenon for favorable conscious valuation, in other words. This does not mean that
good is absolutely synonymous with pleasantwhat we value may well go beyond
pleasure. (The fact that we value things needs not be reduced to the experience of liking things.) However, what we value
beyond pleasure remains a matter of speculation or theory. Moreover, we note that a variety of things that
may seem otherwise unrelated are correlated with pleasuresome more strongly than others. In other words, there are many
things the experience of which we like. For example: the admiration of others; sex; or rock-
paper-scissors. But, again, what they are is irrelevant in an inquiry on a priori
value what gives us pleasure is a matter for empirical investigation. Thus, we can see now that, in general,
something primitively valuable is attainable in livingthat is, pleasure itself. And it
seems equally clear that we have a priori logical reason to pay attention to the world in
any world where pleasure exists. Moreover, we can now also articulate a foundation for a
security interest in our life: since the good of pleasure can be found in living (to the extent
pleasure remains attainable),[17] and only in living, therefore, a priori , life ought to be

continuously (and indefinitely) pursued at least for the sake of preserving

the possibility of finding that good. However, this platitude about the value that can be found in life turns out to be, at
this point, insufficient for our purposes. It seems to amount to very little more than recognizing that our subjective desire for life in and of
itself shows that life has some objective value . For what difference is there between
saying, living is unique in benefiting something I value (namely, my pleasure);
therefore, I should desire to go on living, and saying, I have a unique desire to go on
living; therefore I should have a desire to go on living, whereas the latter proposition immediately seems
senseless? In other words, life gives me pleasure, says little more than, I like life. Thus, we seem to have arrived at the

conclusion that the fact that we already have some ( subjective) desire for life
shows life to have some ( objective) value . But, if that is the most we can say, then it seems our enterprise of
justification was quite superficial, and the subjective/objective distinction was uselessfor all we have really done is highlight the
correspondence between value and desire. Perhaps, our inquiry should be a bit more complex.

Even if life isnt good unconditional mass death isnt the answer
the permutation allows for an individualized approach to death
solves viviocentrism
Derbyshire 10
(John, Contributing Editor National Review, September Diary,
National Review, 10-6,
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/248613/september-diary-
john-derbyshire#)
Heismans is trapped in the received cant
And like all but the very best intellects,

notions of his time, most particularly in late-20th-century Western hysterias about prejudice and discrimination. He
actually coins a word in this context: viviocentrism, the absurd
and irrational prejudice that favors being alive over being dead. No
kidding: The attempt to go beyond ethnocentrism and anthropomorphism leads towards overcoming the prejudices of what I call viviocentrism, or,
life-centeredness. Just as overcoming ethnocentrism requires recognition of the provincialism of ethnic values, overcoming viviocentrism emerges
from the recognition of the provincialism of life values. . . . Overcoming the prejudice against death, then, is only an extension and continuation of
the Western project of eliminating bias, especially biologically based biases (i.e. race or sex based biases). The liberation of death is only the next
step in the political logic that has hitherto sought to overcome prejudices based on old assumptions of a fixed biological human nature . . . (p. 24)
Heisman believed he had identified the ultimate victim group the dead! Warnt nothin Politically Incorrect about ol Mitch. Perhaps I shouldnt be
making fun of Mitchell Heisman while his family members are still grieving their loss. I cant feel much guilt about it, though. Suicide is always a
supremely selfish business, and Heisman inflicted far more pain on those who loved him than anything my mild mockery might add. And for all the
shallowness and muddle of his suicide note, Heisman was at least tackling a real and deep problem to the best of his ability. How exactly do you

Most of life is pretty boring, and parts of

demonstrate that being alive is better than being dead?

it are perfectly awful. Why bother? If you can persuade yourself

that your thoughts will survive your dying, you have solved the
problem. However you conceive of the Afterlife, it gives you a
reason to live . It may be a grim place, entry into which should be
put off for as long as possible . This was the view of the Ancients, expressed in the Homeric epics, the Odes of
Horace, and the ghost-worlds of Chinese folk religion. Or there may be an alternative Afterlife, a fun place a metaphysical Disneyland,
philosopher Thomas Metzinger calls it but for admission to which you have to have lived correctly, according to rules relayed by the gods through
their human intermediaries. Thats the view taken by the Abrahamic religions. In either case you have a reason to prefer life over death or as
Heisman would see it, a justification for your viviocentric bigotry. If you dont have those powers of self-persuasion, you are stuck with either
irresolvable doubt or blank nihilism. The former was the position of most modern thinkers before the 20th century: Hamlets soliloquy, Pascals
wager, Dr. Johnson, Darwin. The latter came to the fore with Nietzsche, and has been the majority opinion among intellectuals ever since. In this
biological age, so impatient of introspection, our thoughts drift not so much towards the contents of these various notions as towards their
consequences for our species. In that regard, Mitchell Heismans suicide at least serves a useful purpose, reminding us that whatever the truth value

My own life
of nihilism, it is a biological dead end. Heisman, like Nietzsche, left no descendants. Listen to Granny

philosophy is one I call Blithe Nihilism . I believe there is no point

to life, but I try not to let the belief bother me. Blithe Nihilism has its roots in the grand
English anti-intellectual tradition in the conviction that life is to be got on with and not thought about too much. Once in a while after some
string of personal disasters, or in a random melancholy mood, or when reading some blokes 1,905-page suicide note once in a while the defenses

you need to have some habitual

crack and you find yourself looking down into the pit. When that happens,

remedy close at hand. As with hiccups or the common cold, each of us has his own
preferred remedy, which might not work for another person. My
own treatment is to summon up the voice of my grandmother, Esther Knowles. When someone
in her presence was moaning about his misfortunes, Granny would say: Theres many a poor soul in the

churchyard would be glad to change places with you. That settles it for me;
though as I said, it might not work for another person. Granny lived to nearly 86 and bore 13 children. I call that a test of aliquidism (Latin aliquid =
something, as opposed to Latin nihil = nothing), and a pretty successful one. Measuring consciousness Having gotten into a metaphysical mood,
 Dr. Giulio Tononi and some
I may as well comment on this news item about measuring consciousness.

colleagues at the University of Wisconsin want to take your

consciousness pressure: To do so, they are adapting information
theory, a branch of science originally applied to computers and telecommunications. If Dr. Tononi is right, he
and his colleagues may be able to build a consciousness meter
that doctors can use to measure consciousness as easily as they
measure blood pressure and body temperature. Well, the unit of measurement has
already been named. In his 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop, Doug Hofstadter quotes the American music critic James Huneker, writing about
Chopins piano tude Op. 25, No. 11: Small-souled men, no matter how agile their fingers, should not attempt it. Taking his inspiration from that,
Hofstadter suggests the huneker as a unit of ensoulment. You could calibrate your hunekometer so that an ordinary wide-awake human being has
100 hunekers of soul, while a mosquito has, according to Hofstadter, only about one ten-billionth of a huneker to work with. There are some
technicalities to be worked through, soul and consciousness not referring to exactly the same things in common usage (most people would say
that when unconscious, you still have a soul). Its a start, though.

Entropy DA outweighs structural complexity justifies human

survival
Scaruffi 6
(http://www.scaruffi.com/nature/biology.html piero received a degree in Mathematics (summa cum
laude) in 1982 from University of Turin, where he did work in General Theory of Relativity. For a
number of years he was the head of the Artificial Intelligence Center at Olivetti, based in Cupertino,
California. He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard Univ. and Stanford Univ. (conducting research on
Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science), has lectured in three continents on "The Nature of Mind"
and "History of Knowledge" (most recently at U.C. Berkeley), and has published a number of books as
well as hundreds of articles for magazines both in Italy and the U.S. "Thinking About Thought" (2003)
and "The Nature of Consciousness" (2006) are his most recent books on these subjects.)

A different but similar non-biological approach to life is based on information, and directly influenced by
Cybernetics and Information Theory. Life is viewed as information capable of replicating and modifying
itself. The American anthropologist Gregory Bateson believed that the substance of the biological world is "pattern"
(not this or that chemical compost), a position that allowed him to seek a unified view of cognitive and biological
(and cybernetic) phenomena. His definition of information stretched beyond mere computation: a bit of information
is a difference that makes a difference. Thereby implying that, in order to be information, a pattern must affect
something. (Also, information is not a thing, it is a relation). The pioneering work of the Spanish ecologist Ramon
Margalef in the 1960's set the stage. He viewed an ecosystem as a cybernetic system driven by the second law of
Thermodynamics. Succession (the process of replacing old species with new species in an ecosystem) is then a self-
organizing process, one whereby an element of the system is replaced with a new element so as to store more
information at less energetic cost. For example, the German biophysicist Bernd-Olaf Kuppers found an elegant way
to reconcile the paradox of increasing information. Life is biological information, and the origin of life is the
origin of biological information. Information has different aspects: syntactic (as in information theory), semantic
(function and meaning of information for an organism's survival), and pragmatic (following the German physicist
Carl-Friedrich Von Weizsacker, "information is only that which produces information"). Since evolution depends on
the semantic aspect of information, there is no contradiction with the second law of
Thermodynamics, which only deals with the structural aspect of matter (i.e., the syntactic aspect of
information). The origin of syntactic information relates to the prebiotic synthesis of biological macromolecules. The
origin of semantic information relates to the self-organization of macromolecules. The American biologist
Christopher Langton has emphasized that living organisms use information, besides matter and energy, in order to
grow and reproduce. In living systems the manipulation of information prevails over the manipulation of energy. Life
depends on a balance of information: too little information is not enough to produce life, too much can
actually be too difficult to deal with. Life is due to a reasonable amount of information that can move and
be stored. Life happens at the edge of chaos. Ultimately, life is a property of the organization of matter.
As the Canadian biologist Lionel Johnson put it, a bio-system can be compared to an information processor, whose
job is to continuously extract, store and transmit information. Two fundamental and opposed forces compete, one
leading towards increased uniformity (and lower information) over "ecological" time and one leading
towards increased diversity (and greater information) over "evolutionary" time. This results in a hierarchy of
living organisms, which has at the top the one species that developed the best strategy of energy extraction and
storage, the highest resource utilization and the least dissipation (this is a reworking of a principle due to Alfred
Lotka in the 1920s). Extracting information requires an energy flow, which in turns causes production of entropy.
This can also be viewed from the point of view of communication: dissipative structures can exist only if there is
communication among their components, whether in the form of genetic code (communication over stime) or
societies (communication over space). The biosystem is, ultimately, an information processor and a communication
network. At the same time, the Hungarian chemist Tibor Ganti views life as the combination of of two systems:
metabolism and information control. The simplest form of life, in practice, is the "chemoton": an autocatalytic cycle
coupled with an information molecule. Ganti's living organism, therefore, looks more like a computer than a
program, because it includes the "hardware". Life without the hardware is not life, it is just the process that
generates life. It also takes that "information molecule" to have life. Lives The British biologist John Maynard-Smith
defined progress in evolution as an increase in information transmitted from one generation to another. The key to
evolution is heredity: the way information is stored, transmitted and translated. Evolution of life as we know it
relies on information transmission. And information transmission depends on replication of structures.
Evolution was somewhat accelerated, and changed in character, by and because of dramatic changes in the nature
of biological replicators, or in the way information is transmitted by biological replicators. New kinds of coding
methods made possible new kinds of organisms. Today, replication is achieved via genes that utilize the genetic
code. But this is only the latest step in a story that started with the earliest, rudimentary replicators, the first genes.
The first major breakthrough in evolution, the first major change in the technique of replication, was the
appearance of chromosomes: when one gene is replicated, all are. A second major change came with the transition
from the solitary work of RNA to the dual cooperation of DNA and proteins: it meant the shift from a unitary source
of replication to a division of labor. Metabolism was born out of that division of labor and was facilitated by the
chemical phenomenon of autocatalysis. Autocatalysis allows for self-maintenance, growth and reproduction. Growth
is autocatalysis. Early, monocellular organisms (prokaryotes) evolved into multicellular organisms (eukaryotes). The
new mechanism that arose was gene regulation: the code didn't simply specify instructions to build the organism,
but also how cells contributed to the organism. Asexual cloning was eventually made obsolete by sex, and sex
again changed the rules of the game by shuffling the genetic information before transmitting it. Protists split into
animals, plants, fungi, that have different information-transmission techniques. Individuals formed colonies, that
developed other means of transmitting information, namely "culture"; and finally social behavior led to language,
and language is a form of information transmission itself. Each of these steps "invented" a new way of coding,
storing and transmitting information. Maynard-Smith also introduced Game Theory into Biology. The premise of
game theory is that individuals are rational and self-interested Maynard Smith applied this definition to populations
(instead of individuals) and interpreted the two attributes biologically: rationality means that population dynamics
tend towards stability, and self-interest means fitness relative to the environment.

Wearetheonlyintelligentlifeextinctionisadrule
Leslie96(John,isaphilosopherwhofocusesonexplainingexistence.THEENDOFTHEWORLDPg138,Donnie)

Oughtwe,then,tojointheflyingsaucerspotterswhoclaimthatextraterrestrialshaveinfactbeenseen?ItcouldseembettertojoinBarrowandTipler12inreflecting
thatEarthcouldeasilybetheoneandonlyplaceinthegalaxywhereadvancedlife(oranylife)hadbeengoingtoevolve.Itislittleusearguingthatweneedtotreat
theintelligencecarryingplanetonwhichwefindourselvesasfairlytypicaluntilwegetevidencetothecontraryforiftherewereinsteadonlyasingleintelligence
carryingplanetintheuniverse,whereelsecouldweintelligentbeingsfindourselves?Very possibly, almost all galaxies will remain
permanently lifeless. Quite conceivably the entire universe would for ever remain empty of intelligent
beings if humans became extinct.Veryprimitivelifemightitselfariseonlyafterchemicalsinsomeprimevalsouphadcombinedinhighly
improbableways.13Theleapfromprimitivelifetointelligentlifecouldalsobeverydifficult.Andevenifitwereeasyitmightwellnotbemade,becausetherewas
solittleevolutionaryadvantageinmakingit.Thinkofthecleverandcuriousanimalputtingitsheadintosomedarkholeandtellhimtogotobonecitygettingit
snappedoff.Inviewofallthiswehaveastrongdutynottorisktheextinctionofthehumanrace,andaboveallnottoriskitforutterlytrivial
benefits.AssoonasitbecamefairlyclearthatCFCswereefficientatdestroyingstratosphericozone,theiruseforsprayingdeodorants
intoarmpitsoughttohavebeenbannedoutrightandworldwide.

Extinction outweighs ethics

Bok 88 (Sissela Bok, Professor of Philosophy @ Brandeis University, 1988, Applied Ethical Theory, ed.
Rosenthal and Shehadi, pg. 203)

The same argument can be made for Kants other formulations of the Categorical Imperative: So act as to use
humanity, both in your own person and in the person of every other, always at the same time as an end, never
simply as a means; and So act as if you were always through your actions a law-making member in a universal
kingdom of Ends. No one with a concern for humanity could consistently will to risk eliminating humanity
in the person of himself and every other or to risk the death of all members in a universal Kingdom of Ends for the
sake of justice. To risk their collective death for the sake of following ones conscience would be as
Rawls said, irrational, crazy, And to say that one did not intend such a catastrophe, but that one merely
failed to stop other persons from bringing it about would be beside the point when the end of the world was
at stake. For although it is true that we cannot be held responsible for most of the wrongs that others commit, the
Latin maxim presents a case where we would have to take such a responsibility seriously perhaps to the
point of deceiving, bribing, even killing an innocent person, in order that the world not perish. To avoid
self-contradiction, the Categorical imperative would, therefore, have to rule against the Latin maxim on account of
its cavalier attitude toward the survival of mankind. But the ruling would then produce a rift in the application of the
Categorical Imperative. Most often the Imperative would ask us to disregard all unintended but foreseeable
consequences, such as the death of innocent persons, whenever concern for such consequences conflicts with
concern for acting according to duty. But, in the extreme case, we might have to go against even the strictest
moral duty precisely because of the consequences.

Thinking about death is necessary to enjoy life

Christine Overall, Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences at Queens University, Kingston, PhD in Philosophy from the
University of Toronto, 2003, Aging, Death and Human Longevity: A Philosophical Inquiry, p. 2-3

I believe it is neither immature nor irresponsible to dwell on human mortality . Indeed, it is contrary to the history and spirit of the
philosophical enterprise to declare a topic off limits for philosophical thoughteven, or maybe especially, if thinking about it causes negative emotions. In
Remember
Muriel Sparks novel Memento Mori, the characters repeatedly receive anonymous phone messages, conveyed in different voices, saying
you must die. One character, Henry Mortimer, believes much can be learned from these unidentified callers. He remarks to the other characters: If I
had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise , as
it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practise which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches,
ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is
insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs. Now, one factor is constant in all your reports. The words, Remember you must die. It is, you
know, an excellent thing to remember this, for it is nothing more than the truth. To remember ones death is, in short, a way of life. (Spark 1959, 150-151)
To keep directly before ones mind the observation that human beings are mortal , that most obvious and banal fact of human
existence, and to further remind oneself that one is included within that most dreadful generalization, is a stimulus to ongoing reflection
about the nature and purpose of ones life. It is a reminder that, whatever apparent security medical science and technology may offer,
our lives are fragile and our connection to a personal future only tenuous. Although thoughts of death can at times produce
depression and lassitude, such feelings are a signal of the significance of the topic and do not therefore show that it ought not to be
contemplated. Moreover, if they are handled carefully, these feelings are not necessarily an impediment to creative inquiry. It seems unlikely that
philosophical thinking about mortality is a waste of time, unless it should turn out that it is impossible to say anything of value on the subjectan outcome
thinking about mortality and longevity may give new
that I hope the succeeding chapters will obviate. Indeed, one theme of this book is that
life to perennial philosophical questions about human purposes and values.

Human life has inherent value arguing otherwise is a slippery

slope to slavery and eugenics
Melinda Penner (Director of Operations STR, Stand To Reason) 2005 End of Life Ethics: A Primer, Stand
to Reason, http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5223

Intrinsic value is very different. Things with intrinsic value are valued for their own sake. They dont have to achieve
any other goal to be valuable. They are goods in themselves. Beauty, pleasure, and virtue are likely examples.
Family and friendship are examples. Something thats intrinsically valuable might also be instrumentally valuable,
but even if it loses its instrumental value, its intrinsic value remains. Intrinsic value is what people mean when
they use the phrase "the sanctity of life." Now when someone argues that someone doesnt have
"quality of life" they are arguing that life is only valuable as long as it obtains something else with
quality, and when it cant accomplish this, its not worth anything anymore. It's only instrumentally
valuable. The problem with this view is that it is entirely subjective and changeable with regards to
what might give value to life. Value becomes a completely personal matter, and, as we all know, our personal
interests change over time. There is no grounding for objective human value and human rights if its not
intrinsic value. Our legal system is built on the notion that humans have intrinsic value. The Declaration
of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that each person is
endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights...." If human beings only have instrumental value,
then slavery can be justified because there is nothing objectively valuable that requires our respect.
There is nothing other than intrinsic value that can ground the unalienable equal rights we recognize
because there is nothing about all human beings that is universal and equal. Intrinsic human value is
what binds our social contract of rights. So if human life is intrinsically valuable, then it remains
valuable even when our capacities are limited. Human life is valuable even with tremendous
limitations. Human life remains valuable because its value is not derived from being able to talk, or
walk, or feed yourself, or even reason at a certain level. Human beings dont have value only in virtue
of states of being (e.g., happiness) they can experience. The "quality of life" view is a poison pill
because once we swallow it, were led down a logical slippery slope. The exact same principle can be used
to take the life of human beings in all kinds of limited conditions because I wouldn't want to live that way. Would you
want to live the life of a baby with Downs Syndrome? No? Then kill her. Would you want to live the life of an infant
with cerebral palsy? No? Then kill him. Would you want to live the life of a baby born with a cleft lip? No? Then kill
her. (In fact, they did.) Once we accept this principle, it justifies killing every infant born with a condition
that we deem a life we dont want to live. Theres no reason not to kill every handicapped person who
cant speak for himself because I wouldnt want to live that way. This, in fact, is what has happened in
Holland with the Groningen Protocol. Dutch doctors euthanize severely ill newborns and their society has accepted
it.

Preventing the extinction of future generations is a moral

imperative human extinction is normatively bad
Cohen and Lee 1986. Avner, Professor of International Law and Practice Princeton University and
Steven, Professor of Philosophy Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Nuclear Weapons and the Future of Humanity:
The Fundamental Questions, p. 332-333

I shall reinforce this conclusion with several arguments for the claim that, while preventing the existence of
future generations would not be against their interests, it is nevertheless of the utmost moral
importance not to prevent their existence. One such argument appeals to the fact that our lives would be
impoverished by the expectation that we will be the final generation . At present our lives are enriched by
the assumption that they will be linked in various ways with the lives of future people. We rely on future
generations for the furtherance and completion of projects we have begun or taken over from our
ancestors; we depend on them to preserve and enrich our culture, and to help fulfill our ideals; and we
hope that they will benefit from and appreciate our works, providing us with posthumous recognition. If we were to
suppose that there would be no future generations, many of our present activities would be robbed of much
of their meaning. These are undoubtedly important reasons for ensuring the existence of future generations.
Again, however, if the force of these points is only that it would be worse for existing people if there were to be no
future generations, then these points will contribute nothing to the argument against nuclear deterrence that is not
already provided by premises 1b and 1c. It is, however, equally plausible to suppose that there is independent
value in, say, the evolution of our culture, so that it is important for our culture to continue to develop
quite apart from the fact that our lives would be impoverished by the belief that the evolution of our
culture were at an end. If this further claim is accepted, we have a reason for ensuring the existence for
future generations that is independent of the interests of existing people. Another and perhaps stronger
argument for the claim that it is morally important to ensure the existence of future generations also makes no
appeal to the interests of existing people. This argument moves from the claim that there is a principle of non-
malfeasance that provides a moral reason not to bring a person into existence if his life would be worse than no life
at all, or "worth not living," to the claim that there is a principle of beneficence that provides a moral reason to
bring a person into existence if his life would, on balance, be worth living. The argument takes as its first premise
the claim that it would be wrong, other things being equal, to bring a person into existence if his life would
predictably be worth not living. This seems uncontroversial. But how can we best explain why it would be wrong? It
is tempting to appeal to side-effects, to the fact that it is normally worse for existing people if a person who is
utterly wretched comes to exist. But this explanation is excluded by the ceteris paribus clause. And in any case the
appeal to side-effects could provide only a partial explanation of why it would be wrong to bring a miserable person
into existence. For it is only contingently true that it is worse for existing people when miserable people
come into existence. There could be cases in which this would be better for existing people.