Download 2. No solvency- humans are egotistical and seek to - ddi09

CP 1NC
CP Text:
The United States federal government should provide shelter, food, health care, and education to all
persons in the United States regardless of citizenship
Only the CP solves- “the Other” cannot be classified into a single group- only the CP provides for all
Others
Claire Elise Katz and Lara Trout, 5 (Katz is an assistant professor of philosophy, Trout is a professor of philosophy @ University
of Portland, “Emmanuel Levinas: Beyond Levinas” http://books.google.com/books?id=GaQJxcVzE
dq=levinas+and+ %22who+is+the+other%22#v=onepage&q=&f=false, 2005)
gEC&pg=PA5&
For Levinas, there is not an other who is the Other. There is not simple the stranger and the neighbor. Ricoeur makes a
similar point about the neighbor in his 1954 essay “the Socius and the Neighbor.” He does it in a way that can serve as a
valuable introduction to Levinas’s ideas, in spite of the fact that he is drawing on a text from the New Testament. Ricoeur’s
essay takes up Jesus’s response to the question “and who is my neighbor?” Jesus answered the question by telling the
parable of the Good Samaritan culminating in the command “Go and do likewise.” In the course of the parable, the term
“neighbor” cease to function as a sociological category and becomes “a pattern for action.” “Thus there is no sociology of
the neighbor. The science of the neighbor is thwarted by the praxis of the neighbor. One does not have a neighbor; I make
myself someone’s neighbor” (HV 100; HT 99). The priest and the Levite of the parable correspond to categories. By
contrast, being a Samaritan is, according to Ricoeur, a “non-category.” It is to be a “man without a past of authentic
traditions; impure in race and in piety; less than a gentile; a relapse.” Ricoeur concludes that the neighbor “is characterized
by the personal manner in which he encounters another independent of any social mediation” and that the meaning of the
encounter “does not come from any criterion immanent to history” (HV 110; HT 109). This is his explanation of why there
cannot be a sociology of the neighbor. Even if ignorance and prejudice exclude access to the neighbor as such,
understanding is not sufficient to provide it. Had Levinas identified the stranger as literally a foreigner, one whose country
of origin is other than my own, he would have neglected the disruptive sense of being a stranger and reduced the term to a
sociological category. And yet there are still questions to be raised about Levinas’s apparent exclusion of the encounter
between cultures from the dimension of alterity.
And not only the poor have needs that can be addressed by social services
Waxman, prof sociology Rutgers, 77
(Chaim I. Waxman, professor of sociology at Rutgers University, 1977, “The Stigma of Poverty”)
To effect basic change in the stigma of poverty, to really integrate the poor, requires, as we have suggested, the designing
and implementation of policies and programs in which the non-poor can see clear benefits for themselves and with which
they can themselves identify. This means the creation of programs that are designed for the benefit of all in the society, as a
right of citizenship, if you will, and not because of membership in a particular class (the lower class) which experiences
economic "problems." This means the availability and extension of services to all, as members of the society, rather than as
members of a particular segment of the society. Along these lines, Alfred J. Kahn and Sheila B. Kamerman (1975) have
recently argued that in the United States we must cease thinking of social services and public welfare as being limited
solely to the poor and trou-bled. Rather, we must recognize that there are essentially only two categories, "social services
and benefits connected to problems and breakdowns (and these are not limited to the poor), and social services and benefits
needed by average people under ordinary circumstances" (p. x, emphasis in original). After surveying a variety of
European social services, they suggest that we carefully develop an adequate system of "public social utilities" (p. 172)
which, like other public utilities, are available to all in the society. It is not only the poor who have needs and problems, and
the United States should, therefore, emphasize the need of "social services for all" (pp. 171ff). We would add that by
doingso, not only would the needs of a much broader segment of the population be addressed but, simultaneously, there
would be services available that would serve to integrate, in place of those that currently isolate, the poorJj
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A. Means testing recreates the deserving/undeserving poor dichotomy
Seekings Prof at University of Cape Town 8
(Jeremy Seekings Prof at University of Cape Town Transformation 68 2008 MUSE)
Social assistance programmes mitigate significantly poverty among groups of deserving poor – the elderly, the disabled,
and children – and among their dependents more broadly (Samson 2002, Bhorat 2003). The three categories of deserving
poor comprise people who cannot work on the grounds of either age or disability. The social assistance system makes no
provision for able-bodied adults of working age, ie between the ages of 16 (the age at which young people can leave
school) and 60 or 65 (the ages at which women and men respectively become eligible for the old-age pension). (The
absence of any provision for children aged 14 or 15 is the starkest anomaly in the design of the social assistance system.)
Many adults of working age benefit indirectly from social assistance programmes in that they are the dependents of the
recipients of the grants. The state has chosen to focus its efforts on poor adults of working age on public
works programmes, which are supposed to provide the poor with the ‘dignity of work’. The design of
the social assistance system – including public works programmes – reflects a classic ‘northern’ conception of
desert, ie the conception that underlies the design of welfare states in most of the global North. Those poor
who are unable to work should be assisted, but those of working age must go out and earn a living (or be
dependent on a breadwinner, for example, through marriage). This design makes sense if two conditions are met. First,
unemployment must be low, whether through Keynesian macro-economic policies, active labour market policies or
American-style growth of low-wage employment. Secondly, working people can insure themselves against the risk of
short-term unemployment or joblessness because of poor health through contributory welfare programmes. A third
condition is of a lesser importance: enough working people provide for their own retirement through contributory pension
schemes that the cost of paying pensions is sustainable.
B. Targeting undermines the agency of the targets
Sen Nobel prize winner in economics 1995
(A Sen Nobel prize winner in economics 1995 Public spending and the poor: Theory and evidence)
The use of the term “targeting” in eradicating poverty is based on an analogy–a target is something fired at. It
is not altogether clear whether it is an appropriate analogy. The problem is not so much that the word “target” has
combative association. This it does of course have, and the relationship it implies certainly seems more adversarial than
supportive. But it is possible to change the association of ideas, and in fact, to some extent, the usage has already shifted in
a permissive direction. The more serious problem lies elsewhere–in the fact that the analogy of a target does
not at all suggest that the recipient is an active person, functioning on her own, acting and doing things.
The image is one of a passive receiver rather than of an active agent. To see the objects of targeting as patients
rather than as agents can undermine the exercise of poverty removal in many different ways. The people
affected by such policies can be very active agents indeed, rather than languid recipients waiting for their handouts. Not to
focus on the fact that they think, choose, act, and respond is to miss something terribly crucial to the entire exercise. This is
not just a terminological problem. The approach of what is called targeting often has this substantive feature
of taking a passive view of the beneficiaries, and this can be a major source of allocational distortion.1
There is something to be gained from taking, instead, a more activity-centered view of poverty
removal.
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This concept of agency outweighs and turns the case- Establishing a framework in which life is worth
living is a prerequisite to ethical decision-making
Jeffrey Isaac, Professor of Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, American Political Science Review, March 1996 v90
n1 p61(13)
Action, then, represents a kind of civic initiative whereby humans resist degradation and assert their dignity. When we act we
define ourselves for ourselves, and in so doing we inscribe the world as our world.(18) This sheds a different light on why
Arendt laments the "politically pernicious doctrine" that life is the highest good. It is not because she devalues life but precisely
because she values living freely - both terms are important here - that she places so much emphasis on the capacity to begin
anew, the basis of courageous civic initiative. A careful reading of the chapter on labor in The Human Condition reveals that
the "philosophy of life" Arendt deplores is not really a strong conviction about the dignity of the human personality or the
sanctity of human life; it is the ethos of consumption that she associates with modern mass society, the idea that the essence of
life is the appropriation of material objects, and that human productivity is the preeminent criterion of human well-being. It is
this idea she resists. Yet, she is careful not to dismiss categorically the emphasis on basic material thriving that is the product of
the Enlightenment. She describes it as politically rather than humanly pernicious. Why? Perhaps because she does not wish to
deny completely the value of such an ethos but only to caution against its hegemony. The emphasis on basic human needs that
has informed so much of modern moral philosophy has helped to advance the idea of an elemental, universal humanity, an idea
Arendt does not reject but cannot embrace. For the irony is that the modern age, which proclaims the value of life above all
else, is also the age of genocidal mass murder. This was surely not an irony lost on Arendt. I would suggest, then, that when
she places action over life, she is not endorsing a mystique of heroic sacrifice or the existential confrontation with death but,
rather, a conception of civic initiative that alone can affirm basic human rights and dignities. She wants to resist the enormous
brutality and suffering characteristic of the twentieth century. She does so, however, not by appealing to a doctrine of natural
rights before which men are passive recipients but by emphasizing the activity of human beings, who can only achieve their
dignity by doing something about it. In a world filled with cruelty, mendacity, and callous indifference, such activity will
surely often involve danger, and the person who acts will be a person of courage, willing to endure sacrifice and perhaps risk
death in the name of a higher value. But the risk is endured in the name of a higher value - human dignity - and not out of an
existential attraction to limit-situations.
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Obligation 1NC
1. Entrance of a third party undermines the universality of Levina’s obligation
David Campbell, professor of international politics at the University of Newcastle, Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World
Politics, ed. by Campbell and Shapiro, 1999, p. 37
Levinas*s philosophy, although clearly nonindividualist and antihumanist in its rendering of subjectivity, is nonetheless
located within the logic of an individual, one-to-one relationship with the Other. Which is not to say that it is asocial. Aside
from the fact that the basic premise of the one-too-one relationship is the interdependent character of subjectivity, Levinas
clearly recognizes that the world does not simply comprise one-to-one relationships. “In the real world there are many
others,” he writes. But can Levinas’s articulation of ethics as first philosophy and of responsibility as the primary structure
of subjectivity, be expanded from the one-to-oe to the one-and-the-many? And if so, how is this expansion achieved? While
some have argued it cannot, Levinas’s discussions of the “third person,” the state, and morality indicate that transference is
considered within his thought. The question is, then, whether the means by which that transference is possible fulfill the
radical promise of Levinas’s argument.
If ethics is “a responsible, non-totalizing relation with the Other,” then politics for Levinas is “conceived of as a relation
to the third party (le tiers), to all others, to the plurality of beings that make up the community/*43 There is thus a
distinction derived from the existence of the third party in Levinas's thought concerning others, which contrasts the Other as
neighbor, the participant in the one-to-one relationship, with all others, those with whom my neighbor is the third party,-*4
Additionally, the neighbor appears to exercise the primary demand of responsibility, and then serves as the basis for my
relationship with all others: "Ivly relationship with the other as neighbor gives meaning to my relations with all the others"45
Levinas recognizes that the (inevitable) entry of the third party poses a dilemma: "The responsibility for the other is an
immediacy antecedent to questions, it is proximity, it is troubled and becomes a problem when a third party enters."46 The
concern arises because the third party dissolves the uniqueness of the one-to-one relationship, not just because it presses
the numerical claim that the world comprises many others, but because it establishes that "the third party is simultaneously
other than the other, and makes me one among others/*47 However, as Lingis observes, “To find that the one before whom
and for -whom I am responsible is responsible in his turn before and for another is not to find his order put on me
relativized or cancelled/*'*8
Nonetheless, the entry of the third party does raise questions that potentially put in doubt the universality of responsibility
to the Other. As Levinas remarks, u[W]hen others enter, each of them external to myself, problems arise. Who is closest to
me? Who is the Other?"49 These questions suggest the need for a calculation as to the nature of responsibility. Because
there are always three people in the world, Levinas says, this means that we are obliged to ask who the other is, to try to
define he undefinable, to compare the incomparable, in an effort to juridically hold different positions together.*
2. No solvency- the aff just passes a policy, it does not change individual’s commitment to the other
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3. Even Levinas agrees being for the other does not apply in every case
Michael Shapiro, professor of political science at the University of Hawai’i, Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics, ed.
By Campbell and Shapiro, 1999, p. 68-69
To approach this supplement to the history of philosophical discourse it is useful to consider two of Levinas's more
egregious blind spots, in which he gives in wholly to the already "said." One of these emerges in his understanding
of Israel's relationship with Palestinians. When the question of Palestinians as Other was posed bluntly
to Levinas ("[I]sn't the 'other' above all the Palestinian?") Levinas's response was to refer to the Palestinians as
aggressors and enemies, concluding that "there are people who are wrong."46
What makes Palestinians wrong? It becomes evident in Levinas's understanding of what "Israel" is: a
"coincidence of the political and spir¬itual."47 Israel provides the "opportunity to carry out the social law of
Judaism."48 This is astounding partisanship from one committed to wholly non-anticipator)' ethics of encounter, one who
grants rights to
the "neighbor" that are "prior to all entitlement," rights based on "absolute identity,"49 Levinas attempts to take Israel
beyond partisanship by interpreting "Jewish life" as it is represented through Israel past and present as a model for all
humanity. Jewish doctrine—the rabbinic tradition as Levinas reads it-is "a doctrine that is none the less offered to
everyone... this is the sovereignty of Israel."56
Ironically, the same thinker who has charged ontological commitments to space with a "usurpation of
spaces belonging to the Other"51 who has argued that "the defense of the rights of man corresponds to
a vocation outside the state,"52 can say that the "sovereignty of the state incorporates the universe ," that
"in the sovereign state, the citizen will finally exercise a will" and that "man recognizes his spiritual
nature in the agency he achieves as a citizen, or even more so, when acting in the ser¬vice of the state"53 It is
clear that Levinas's attachment to the venerable story of state sovereign:)', and even to a Hegelian spiritualization of states
as instruments of spiritual reconciliation, makes him veer away from his commitment to an ethical bond that precedes all
such ontological/ spatial attachments, In his perspective on Israel, his model of alterity seems ultimately not
to heed the Other's stories of self and space,
This neglect of competing narratives is even more evident when one examines Levinas's other blind
spot, his neglect of the feminine aspect of alterity. Apart from his use of pronouns (his statements about
sovereignty invariably construct the ethical subject as masculine) and apart from his more general indifference to gender
difference,54 Levinas's treatment of Jewish women in the Hebrew Bible is wholly inattentive to women's effective public
roles and to their victimization. In the case of Jewish women, Levinas, the Talmudic scholar and exemplar of the close
reader, offers a bleary-eyed celebration of women as "charming" and woman as "genius of the hearth," "[T]he house is
woman the Talmud tells us,"55 he writes, adding that "Jewish women are mothers, wives and daughters" whose "silent
footsteps in the depths and opacity of reality" make "the world precisely inhabitable."56
4. The concept of an absolute imperative destroys personal responsibility
Zygmunt Bauman Emeritus Professor of Sociology at The University of Leeds “Life in Fragments” jc 1995
When unmitigated and unassuaged, that loneliness in the face of endemic ambivalence of moral condition is excruciatingly
painful to live with. No wonder much of human inventiveness was dedicated throughout history to designing ways of
alleviating the burden. In pre-modern times the principal designs were religious in character. The hub of every religious
system was not the idea of sin, but that of the repentance and redemption. No religion considered sinless life a viable
prospect nor proposed a way towards a life without evil. On the whole, religions realistically accept the inevitability of sin
(that is, the pangs of conscience, unavoidable in view of the incurable uncertainty of the moral situation), and concentrate
their efforts instead on ways to assuage the pain through the clear-cut prescripting for repentance, tied to the promise of
redemption. The essence of religious solutions to moral ambivalence is so to speak, dealing with it retrospectively – by
providing the means of balancing out the burden of a wrong choice. What has been done, may be undone – the wrong may
be made good again. Responsibility for choice is still a lonely matter – it rests fair and squarely on the individual‟s
shoulders, as do the consequences of choosing evil over good; but an ex post facto cure is provided, and it is provided
collectively, in the name of an authority transcending the power and the understanding of the sinner, and thus guaranteeing
freedom from worry in exchange for obedience.
(Continues…No Text Removed)
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(Continues… No Text Removed)
It was only the modern project of remaking the world to the measure of human needs and capacities, and according to a
rationally conceived design, that promised life free from sin (now renamed as guilt). Legislation was to be the principal tool
of the rebuilding (seen as a „new beginning‟ in the fullest sense of the term; a beginning unbound by anything which went
on before, a virtual „starting from scratch‟). In the case of the moral condition, legislation meant designing an ethical code:
one that (unlike the religious strategies of repentance and forgiveness) would actually prevent evil from being done, lending
the actor an a priori certainty as to what is to be done, what can be left undone and what must not be done. (The feasibility
of the project was assured in advance, tautologically; following the ethical rules could produce nothing but good, since
‟good ‟has been defined in unambiguous terms as obedience to the rules.) The modern project postulated the possibility of
a human world free not only from sinners, but from sin itself; not just from people making wrong choices, but from the very
possibility of wrong choice. One may say that in the last account the modern project postulated a world free from moral
ambivalence; and since ambivalence is the natural feature of the moral condition, by the same token it postulated the
severance of human choices from their moral dimension. This is what the substitution of ethical law from autonomous
moral choice amounted to in practice.
In effect, the focus of moral concerns has been shifted from the self-scrutiny of the moral actor to the philosophical/political
task of working out the prescriptions and proscriptions of an ethical code; meanwhile the „responsibility for the
responsibility‟ – that is the responsibility for deciding what practical steps the responsibility requires to be taken and what
steps are not called for („go beyond the call of duty‟) – has been shifted from the moral subject to supra-individual agencies
now endowed with exclusive ethical authority.
From the moral actor‟s point of view, the shift had much to be commended. (Indeed, this shift was one of the main reasons
why the surrender of autonomy could be credibly represented as emancipation and the increase of freedom.) Having
reduced the vague notoriously underdefined responsibility to a finite list of duties or obligations, it spares the actor a lot of
anxious groping in the dark, and helps to avoid the gnawing feeling that the account can never be close, the work never
finally done. The agony of choice (Hannah Arent‟s „tyranny of possibilities‟) is largely gone, as is the bitter aftertaste of a
choice never ultimately proved right. The substitution of rule-following for the intense, yet never fully successful, listening
to infuriatingly taciturn moral impulses results in the almost unimaginable feat of not just absolving the actor from the
personal responsibility for the wrongs done, but freeing the actor from the very possibility of having sinned. More promptly
than the equivalent religious remedies – because in advance before the act has been committed – the guilt is eliminated
from choice, which is now simplified to the straightforward dilemma of obedience or disobedience to the rule. All in all, the
modern shift from moral responsibility ethical rulings offered a compensatory drug for an ailment induced by another
modern accomplishment: the foiling of many determinants that once kept the actor‟s actions within tight and strictly
circumscribed limits, so producing an „unencumbered‟, „disembedded‟ personality that is allowed (and forced to) selfdefine and self assert. To the moral self, modernity offered freedom complete with patented ways of escaping it.
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5. That allows for atrocities-those deemed undesirable can be
eliminated for smooth functioning.
Jacques Derrida, Ecole Des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Socials, “The Gift of Death” 1995
The sacrifice of Isaac is an abomination in the eyes of all, and it should continue to be seen for what it is – atrocious,
criminal, unforgivable; Kierkegaard insists on that. The ethical point of view must remain valid: Abrahan is a murderer.
However, is it not true that the spectacle of this murder, which seems intolerable in the denseness and rhythm of its
theatricality, is that at the same time the most common event in the world? Is it not inscribed in the structure of our
existence to the extent of no longer constituting an event? It will be said that it would be the most improbable for the
sacrifice of Isaac to be repeated in our day; and it certainly seems that way. We can hardly imagine a father taking his son
to be sacrificed on the top of a hill at Montmartre. If God didn‟t send a lamb as a substitute or an angel to hold back his
arm, there would have been a prosecutor, preferably with expertise in Middle Eastern violence, to accuse him of infanticide
or first-degree murder; and if a psychiatrist who was both something of a psychoanalyst and something of a journalist
declared that the father was “responsible”, carrying on as if psychoanalysis had done nothing to upset the order of discourse
on intention, conscience, good will, etc., the criminal father would have no chance of getting away with it. He might claim
that the wholly other had ordered him to do it, and perhaps in secret (how would he know that?), in order to test his faith,
but it would make no difference. Things are such that this man would surely be condemned by any civilized society. On the
other hand, the smooth functioning of such a society, the monotonous complacency of its discourses on morality, politics,
and the law, and the exercise of its rights (whether public, private, national or international), are in no way impaired by the
fact that because of the structure of the laws of the market that society has instituted and controls, because of the
mechanisms of external debt and other similar inequities, that same “society” puts to death or (but failing to help someone
in distress accounts for only a minor difference) allows to die of hunger and disease tens of millions of children (those
neighbors of fellow humans that ethics or the discourse of the rights of man refer to) without any moral or legal tribunal
ever being considered competent to judge such a sacrifice, the sacrifice of others to avoid being sacrificed oneself. Not only
is it true that such a society participates in this incalculable sacrifice, it actually organizes it. The smooth functioning of its
economical, political, and legal affairs, the smooth functioning of its moral discourse and good conscience presupposes the
permanent operation of this sacrifice. And such a sacrifice is not even invisible, for from time to time television shows us,
while keeping them at a distance, a series of intolerable images, and a few voices are raised to bring it all to our attention.
But those images and voices are completely powerless to induce the slightest effective change in the situation, to assign the
least responsibility, to furnish anything more than a convenient alibi. That this order is founded on a bottomless chaos (the
abyss or open mouth) is something that will be necessarily be brought home one day to those who just as necessarily forget
the same.We are not even talking about wars, the less recent or most recent ones, in which cases one can wait an eternity
for morality or international law (whether violated with impunity or invoked hypocritically) to determine with any degree
of certainty who is responsible or guilty for the hundreds of thousands of victims who are sacrificed for what or whom one
knows not, countless victims, each of whose singularity becomes each time infinitely singular, everyother (one) being every
(bit) other, whether they be the victims of the Iraqi state or victims of the international collation that accuses the latter of not
respecting the law. For in the discourses that dominate during such wars, it is rigorously impossible, on one side and the
other, to discern the religious from the moral, the legal from the political. The warring factions are all irreconcilable fellow
worshipers of the religions fof the Book. Does that not make things converge once again in the fight to the death that
continues to rage on Mount Moriah over the possession of the secret of the sacrifice by an Abraham who never said
anything? Do they not fight in order to take possession of the secret as the sign of an alliance with God and to impose its
order on the other who becomes for his part nothing more than a murderer? The trembling of the formula “ever other (one)
is ever (bit) other” can also be reproduced. It can do so to the extent of replacing one of the “every others” by God: “Every
other (one) is god,” or “God is every (bit) other.” Such a substitution in no way alters the “extent” of the original
formulations, whatever grammatical function be assigned to the various words. In one case God is defined as infinitely
other, as wholly other, every (bit) other. In the other case it is declared that every other one, each of the others, is God
inasmuch as he or she is like God, wholly other.
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Ethics in Politics 1NC
1. Empirically denied- there are many examples of social service policies- war on poverty, ratifying
Declaration of Human rights- none of these solved ethics and politics
2. No solvency- humans are egotistical and seek to dominate both other states and the environment
Thayer, 04 (Bradley Thayer, senior analyst a the National Institute for Public Policy. “Bringing in Darwin: Evolutionary Theory, Realism, and International
Politics”)
Evolutionary theory allows realists to advance offensive realist arguments without seeking an ultimate cause in either the archaic
international state system or in theological or metaphysical ideas. Realism based on evolutionary theory reaches the same conclusions,
but the ultimate causal mechanism is different: human evolution in the anarchic and perilous conditions of the late-Pliocene,
Pleistocene, and most of the Holocene epochs. Specifically, evolutionary theory explains why humans are egoistic, strive to dominate
others, and make in-group/out-group distinctions. These adaptations in turn serve as a foundation for offensive realism. The central
issue here is what causes states to behave as offensive realists predict. Mearsheimer advances a powerful argument that anarchy is the
fundamental cause of such behavior. The fact that there is no world government compels the leaders of states to take steps to ensure
their security, such as striving to have a powerful military, aggressing when forced to do so, and forging and maintaining alliances,
This is what neorealists call a self-help system: leaders of states are forced to take these steps because nothing else can guarantee their
security in the anarchic world of international relations. I argue that evolutionary theory also offers a fundamental cause for offensive
realist behavior. Evolutionary theory explains why individuals are motivated to act as offensive realism expects, whether an individual
is a captain of industry or a conquistador. My argument is that anarchy is even more important than most scholars of international
relations recognize. The human environment of evolutionary adaption was anarchic; our ancestors lived in a state of nature in which
resources were poor and dangers from other humans and the environment were great – so great that it is truly remarkable that a
mammal standing three feet high – without claws or strong teeth, not particularly strong or swift – survived and evolved to become
what we consider human. Humans evolved because natural selection gave them the right behaviors to last in those conditions. The
environment produces the behaviors examined here: egoism, domination, and the in-group/out-group distinction. These specific traits
are sufficient to explain why leaders will behave, in the proper circumstances, as offensive realists expect them to behave. That is,
even if they must hurt other humans or risk injury to themselves, they will strive to maximize their power, defined as either control
over others (for example, through wealth or leadership) or control over ecological circumstances (such as meeting their own and their
family's or tribe's need for food, shelter, or other resources). Evolutionary theory explains why people seek control over environmental
circumstances – humans are egoistic and concerned about food – and why some, particularly males, will seek to dominate others by
maintaining a privileged position in a dominance hierarchy. C1early, as the leaders of states are human, they too will be influenced by
evolutionary theory as they respond to the actions of other states and as they make their own decisions.
3. They have no evidence that 1 ethical policy will change political framework
4. Security competition is inevitable- means no solvency
Mearsheimer, 95 (John Mearsheimer, Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. International Security, Vol. 19, No. 3
(Winter 1994/1995). “The False Promise of International Institutions.” http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/A0021.pdf)
Realism paints a rather grim picture of world politics. The international system is portrayed as a brutal arena where states look for opportunities to take advantage of
each other, and therefore have little reason to trust each other. Daily life is essentially a struggle for power, where each state strives not only to be the most powerful
actor in the system, but also to ensure that no other state achieves that lofty position. International relations is not a constant state of war, but it is a
state of relentless security competition, with the possibility of war always in the background. The intensity of that competition varies from case
to case. Although it might seem counterintuitive, states do frequently cooperate in this competitive world. Nevertheless, cooperation among
states has its limits, mainly because it is constrained by the dominating logic of security competition, which no amount of cooperation
can eliminate. Genuine peace, or a world where states do not compete for power, is not likely, according to realism . This pessimistic view of how the
world works can be derived from realism's five assumptions about the international system. The first is that the international system is
anarchic. This does not mean that it is chaotic or driven by disorder. It is easy to draw that conclusion, since realism depicts a world characterized by security
competition and war. However, "anarchy" as employed by realists has nothing to do with conflict; rather it is an ordering principle, which says that the system
compromises independent political units (states) that have no central authority above them. Sovereignty, in other words, inheres in states,
because there is no higher ruling body in the international system. There is no "government over governments." The second assumption is that
states inherently possess some offensive military capability, which gives them the wherewithal to hurt and possibly to destroy each
other. States are potentially dangerous to each other. A state's military power is usually identified with the particular weaponry at its disposal, although even if there
were no weapons, the individuals of a state could still use their feet and hands to attack the population of another state. The third assumption is that states can
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never be certain about the intentions of other states. Specifically, no state can be certain another state will not use its offensive military
capability against the first. This is not to say that states necessarily have malign intentions. Another state may be reliably benign, but it is
impossible to be certain of that judgment because intentions are impossible to divine with 100 percent certainty. There are many possible causes
of aggression, and no state can be sure that another state is not motivated by one of them. Furthermore, intentions can change quickly, so a state's intentions can be benign one day and malign
the next. Uncertainty is unavoidable when assessing intentions, which simply means that states can never be sure that states do not have offensive intentions to go along with their offensive
The fourth assumption is that the most basic motive driving states is survival. States want to maintain their sovereignty. The
fifth assumption is that states think strategically about how to survive in the international system. States are instrumentally rational.
military capability.
Nevertheless, they may miscalculate from time to time because they operate in a world of imperfect information, where potential adversaries have incentives to
misrepresent their own strength or weakness and to conceal their true aims. None of these assumptions alone mandates that states will behave
competitively. In face, the fundamental assumption dealing with motives says that states merely aim to survive, which is a defensive
goal. When taken together, however, these five assumptions can create incentives for states to think and sometimes to behave
aggressively. Specifically, three main patterns of behavior result. First, states in the international system fear each other. They regard
each other with suspicion, and they worry that war might be in the offing. They anticipate danger. There is little room for trust among states . Although the level of
fear varies across time and space, it can never be reduced to a trivial level. The basis of this fear is that in a world where states have
the capability to offend against each other, and might have the motive to do so, any state bent on survival must be at least suspicious
of other states and reluctant to trust them. Add to this the assumption that there is no central authority that a threatened state can turn to for help, and states
have even greater incentive to fear each other. Moreover, there is no mechanism - other than the possible self-interest of third parties - for punishing an aggressor.
Because it is often difficult to deter potential aggressors, states have ample reason to take steps to be prepared for war.
The possible
consequences of falling victim to aggression further illustrate why fear is a potent force in world politics. States do not compete with each other as if international politics were simply an
economic marketplace. Political competition among states is a much more dangerous business than economic intercourse; it can lead to war, and war often means mass killing on the battlefield
and even mass murder of civilians. In extreme cases, war can even lead to the total destruction of a state. The horrible consequences of war sometimes cause states to view each other not just as
Second, each state in the international system aims to guarantee its own survival. Because other
states are potential threats, and because there is no higher authority to rescue them when danger arises, states cannot depend on others
for their security. Each state tends to see itself as vulnerable and alone, and therefore it aims to provide for its own survival. As
Kenneth Waltz puts it, states operate in a "self-help" system. This emphasis on self-help does not preclude states from forming
alliances. But alliances are only temporary marriages of convenience, where today's alliance partner might be tomorrow's enemy, and
today's enemy might be tomorrow's alliance partner. States operating in a self-help world should always act according to their own self-interest, because it
competitors, but as potentially deadly enemies.
pays to be selfish in a self-help world. This is true in the short term as well as the long term, because if a state loses in the short run, it may not be around for the long
haul. Third, states in the international system aim to maximize their relative power positions over other states. The reason is simple:
the greater the military advantage one state has over other states, the more secure it is. Every state would like to be the most
formidable military power in the system because this is the best way to guarantee survival in a world that can be very dangerous. This
logic creates strong incentives for states to take advantage of one another, including going to war if the circumstances are right and victory seems likely. The aim is to
acquire more military power at the expense of potential rivals. The ideal outcome would be to end up as the hegemon in the system. Survival
would then be almost guaranteed. All states are influenced by this logic, which means not only that they look for opportunities to take
advantage of one another, but also that they work to insure that other states do not take advantage of them. States are, in other words,
both offensively-oriented and defensively-oriented. They think about conquest themselves, and they balance against aggressors; this
inexorably leads to a world of constant security competition, with the possibility of war always in the background.
5. Their 1AC evidence concedes ethics don’t solve all instances of violence
Bernasconi, prof phil Memphis, 05
Robert Bernasconi, Prof. of Philosophy at the University of Memphis. 2005
Addressing Levinas Ed. Eric Sean Nelson, Antje Kapust, and Kent Still. Northwestern University Press. Pgs. 170-185
In fact, Levinas had already given his answer twenty pages earlier: "It is not without importance to know that war does not
become the instauration of a war in good conscience" (AE203, OB 160). But Levinas cannot avoid the problems
posed by the violent struggle against violence, the choice between violences, the choice of sides. These
are political problems.
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6. In attempt to alleviate the sufferings of the Other, the affirmative fails to address the needs of the other
Other. This justifies violence in their framework of ethics
Gillick, Lawyer and PhD, 06 (Michael H, JD PhD Lawyer, “We hold these truths: the rebirth of the American ideal after Levinas,”
Centennial Conference on Levinas and Law, 9/17, http://ccll.mcgill.ca/presentations/gillick.html, TGA CDI ’08)
The point here is that the actions of a government, if truly grounded in the inalienable rights of all Others, will necessarily
be a calculus, much like the utilitarian calculus, and will necessarily involve a failure to honor some of those inalienable
rights. To use terminology that I very much dislike because of the religious connotations with which it has been burdened,
no one is innocent. If the failure to satisfy all demands can be called guilt, then we are all constantly and unavoidably
guilty. In a world where there is a scarcity of goods, the government must adopt policies regarding the distribution of those
goods, and every such policy will necessarily involve a failure to satisfy everyone’s need for such goods. If it is the
function of government to provide protection against harm from nature or from aggressors, the providing of that protection
will necessarily involve the denial of basic human rights to some. Restraint, detention, even injury, even killing, may be
necessary in the calculus of human rights for all.
7. The affirmative’s act of ethics is grounded in self interest; this kills any genuine relation with the Other
Gillick, Lawyer and PhD, 06 (Michael H, JD PhD Lawyer, “We hold these truths: the rebirth of the American ideal after Levinas,”
Centennial Conference on Levinas and Law, 9/17, http://ccll.mcgill.ca/presentations/gillick.html, TGA CDI ’08)
Ego-based ethical systems contain within them a core problem. They are all primarily in the nature of social contracts,
whether the raw version by Hobbes or the more sophisticated thought experiment of John Rawls. The problem is that, since
the system is grounded in self-interest, it is also revocable on the basis of self-interest. The premise of such a system is that
humans are, by nature, at war with each other, and that they band together, and even surrender some individual rights,
because they see themselves as faring better that way than on their own. Morality itself is a contract, whether express or
constructive. So, what if someone comes along who concludes that he has sufficient power that he does not need the
cooperation of others, that he has no need of a social contract to promote or protect his own interests, or even that he would
actually be in a better position to achieve his chosen goals by opposing other and subjecting them to his own will? What,
within the framework of the social contract, can you say in objection to that person? You have defined morality in terms of
self-interest. You have acknowledged the rights of others only in order to serve your own interests. Here is a man who has
used your own principle, self-interest, and has come to the opposite conclusion. The capitalist corners the market in some
commodity, oil for example, and uses his power to gouge the consumer to the great detriment of the vast majority of
people. If the only principle you can appeal to is self-interest, he will meet all your objections to his gouging by saying that
gouging serves his interests. The political leader decides that war is a viable option, that he has the power to win the war or
that the existence of war will serve his political goals. You cannot object that war is wrong, because he has come to his
conclusions based on your guiding principle, self-interest. You cannot object that war is unjust, because, in a system
grounded in self-interest, justice is never more than a political device, a tool whose utility can only be measured in terms of
efficacy. On your own principles, you can only object to the monopolist or the tyrant that his plan will ultimately work to
his detriment, for instance, that the people need to think that he is just so that they will not rise up against him. As in the
Republic, justice becomes a matter of mere appearance. Fairness is at best generosity, and generosity, if it is not another
form of enjoyment, is at best a hedge on a bet. Analytically, all of this says no more than that, if there is to be an argument
for what we think of as justice, by which I roughly mean a right or obligation which is intrinsic to the one claiming the
right, then there must be a source of value or meaning that transcends the subject. There must be a meaning, a referent,
which is absolute, that is to say, a meaning which is absolved on any dependence on the constituting subject. It must be
prior to that subject’s constituting powers, prior in a concrete sense, prior in a real, temporal sense, coming from a past
whose “pastness” is not recoverable in the horizons constituted in the subject, not subsumable in the constant presence
which is intentional consciousness. We can say this another way. Terms like “right” and “obligation” and “justice” and
“morality” are all terms of relation, of reference. If everything is reduced to a monolithic totality, whether it be the subject
or the State or a God/Being, the possibility of real relation is destroyed. Totalities destroy the very idea of relation because,
in a totality, there can be nothing like the fundamental plurality required for a real relation. In the end, the participants in a
dialectical moment are no more real, have no more intrinsic value, than the emanations of the Plotinian or Parmenidean
One. In the end, if God is literally all, then I am literally defect, negation, nothing.
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8. In fulfilling an ethical relationship with the Other, our non-ethical counter relationship with other
Others reveals itself in the unleashing of genocidal fantasies
Meister, Professor of Politics University of California, 05 (Robert, Professor of Politics at the University of California – Santa Cruz,
“’Never
Again’:
The
ethics
of
the
neighbor
and
the
logic
of
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/v015/15.2meister.html, TGA CDI ’08)
genocide,”
Postmodern
Culture,
The presumed unthinkability of genocide--the repression, not the absence, of the wish--is thus both the founding premise of
the fin-de-siècle Human Rights Discourse and the stated goal of most human rights advocacy.18 The recollection of
genocidal experiences from the victims' standpoint, however, is the overt subject matter of many histories and of much
science fiction.19 On its surface, this literature claims to warn us of the dangers of genocide so that we will fear and avoid
them at all costs.20 At a deeper level, however, the fear of genocidal victimhood and our enhanced imagination of it are
also troubling. What does it really mean, after all, to imagine genocide, to fear it, and to avoid it at all costs? Is it not
ultimately this political mindset that has made "thinkable" in the twentieth century the genocides of which some otherwise
civilized nations have become capable? For them, the thinkability of ethnic cleansings and extermination has been a
defense (by projection) against their heightened ability to imagine themselves as the objects of genocidal intent.21 As the
world embarks on the twenty-first century, genocide has never been more thinkable--especially the genocide of which we
may be victims. It has now become almost conventional to argue for the existence of genocide, for example in Darfur, by
publishing photographs of dead bodies and daring the viewer to refuse empathy.22 The thinkability of genocide as a
defense against the fear of genocide is a disturbing point to acknowledge. To say that genocide is morally intelligible is not
to say that it is now, or ever could have been, morally right; instead, it is to note that most genocides are not mere acts of
inadvertence or insensitivity, but rather moments of intense moral concentration invoking high concepts like human rights
and democracy. If we cannot imagine the logic of genocide (and how that logic employs our moral concepts), we will never
understand how a human rights discourse (which may, for a period of time, seem well-established in places like Sarajevo)
can dissolve into what commentators glibly describe as "primordial group hatreds," and how that same discourse can later
re-emerge as a self-conscious return to civilized values.
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Ext- other other
The existence of endangered 3rd parties makes responsibility impossible to determine
David Campbell, professor of international politics at the University of Newcastle, Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World
Politics, ed. by Campbell and Shapiro, 1999, p. 35-36
This unique lack of choice comes about because in Levinas's thought ethics has been transformed from something independent of
subjectivity—that is, from a set of rules and regulations adopted by pregiven, autonomous agents—to something insinuated within and
integral to that subjectivity. Accordingly, ethics can be understood as something not ancillary to the existence of a subject; instead,
ethics can be appreciated for its indispensability to the very being of the subject. This argument leads us to the recognition that "we"
are always already ethically situated, so making judgments about conduct depends less on what sort of rules are invoked as regulations
and more on how the interdependences of our relations with others are appreciated. To repeat one of Levinas's key points: "Ethics
redefines subjectivity as this heteronomous responsibility, in contrast to autonomous freedom.
Suggestive though it is for the domain of international relations where the bulk of the work on ethics can be located within a
conventional perspective on responsibility39 Levinas's formulation of responsibility, subjectivity* and ethics
nonetheless possesses some problems when it comes to the implications of this thought for politics . What
requires particular attention is the means by which the elemental and omni¬ present status of responsibility,
which is founded in the one-to-one or face-to-face relationship, can function in circumstances marked by a
multiplicity of others. Although the reading of Levinas here agrees that "the ethical exigency to be responsible to the other
undermines the ontological primacy of the meaning of being/* and embraces the idea that this demand "unsettles the natural and
political positions we have taken up in the world and predisposes us to a meaning that is other than being, that is otherwise than
being,"40 how those disturbances are negotiated so as to foster the maximum responsibility in a world populated
by others in struggle remains to be argued. To examine what is a problem of considerable import given the context of this
essay, I want to consider Levinas*s discussion of "the third person" the distinction he makes between the ethical and the
moral, and of particular importance in a consideration of the politics of international action the role of the state in Levinas's thought.
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