Nietszche 2AC

8/11/2019 Nietszche 2AC

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2ACNietzsche

Perm do bothyou can't break away from history and traditionthe process of

changing education should be gradual and situated within current structures becausesudden and radical breaks are impossibleGolomb, 6[Jacob, professor of philosophy at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Can One Really Become a "Free Spirit Par Excellence"or an bermensch?,Journal of Nietzsche Studies 32, p. 22-40]

We also have to bear in mind that even Nietzsche was not a pure Nietzschean. His ideal type, the ahistorical free spirit parexcellence, was solely a regulative ideal, which, among other things, was a means to provide an antidote to the tendency of the Germans in histime to fill up the existential void incurred by the "death of God" by embracing extreme ideological and political substitutes (like Communism orNationalism). By this ideal he strove to fight the dangerous overemphasis prevalent in contemporary German culture on historicism and on theHegel-inspired "mighty historical movement" (HL 59). In "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life," though Nietzsche was opposed to

German trends of making history a scientific and objective enterprise, he does not object to the use of the past for theservice of life in the present. He argues only against a past that overpowers the present and annihilates any ofits novel and vital elements, so that, inter alia, it also destroys the future. More vitality and less historicity are his prescription in this essay for

the "we free spirits," who were individualswho did not act in an ahistorical vacuum and were not some kind ofexistential tabula rasa without memories, identity, and sensibilities rooted in their culture, heritage, andpeople. Nietzsche did not believe that one may succeed in severing all of one's linkages with one'sprevious history.18 Heonly attacked the popular illusion that it was possible to sever oneself completely from tradition, to become a"free spirit" by indiscriminately rejecting one's entire past. For psychological reasons Nietzsche did not believe that such a"liberation" is even feasible, let alone desirable. He was not at all reluctant to oppose either the metaphysical traditions of thepast or the accepted Christian ethic. But he did not profess to be a nihilist or to seek a complete break with thepast and its values. Neither was he a radical revolutionary, freed of the restraints of tradition anddescending into the historical arena from an atemporal, ahistorical pinnacle.Nietzsche's commitment

was to a path of self-transformation that is arduous and painstaking; the rigorsof self-education and the anguishof self-conquest constitute a process of slow and difficult evolution. He believed in a steady educationaladvance, devoid of grand illusions, which only gradually leads one to new patterns of life and thought(see HL chap. 3). It goes without saying that in any social-historical context no one can free oneself absolutely fromone's own ethos, history, heritage, and linguistic culture and float in thin air, as it were. Hence nobodycan become a free spirit par excellence but can only become a part of the nexus of "we free spirits."

Perm do the plan without the repsplan focus is goodsolves neg ground and there

are too many representations to predictkills in depth debate

Case outweighs

Alt doesnt solve the Aff - ______________________________

Extinction doesnt make you stronger their arguments dont apply when discussing

extinction level impactsWrisley, No Date*George, Ph.D., Adjunct Instructor at George Washington University; Nietzsche and Sufferinga Choice of Attitudes andIdeals, draft of paper presented in Nov 2004, http://www.georgewrisley.com/Nietzsche%20and%20Suffering.doc]

That harsh conditions somehow better both the individual and the species issurely only true to a degree.For example, when Nietzsche writes, Out of lifes school ofwar: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger, this is clearly notuniversally true. There are two constraints: first, there is a point of diminishing returns. If I am shot in
http://muse.jhu.edu.libproxy.mit.edu/journals/journal_of_nietzsche_studies/v032/32.1golomb.html#FOOT18http://muse.jhu.edu.libproxy.mit.edu/journals/journal_of_nietzsche_studies/v032/32.1golomb.html#FOOT18


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the head,survive, but lose my memory, many motor skills, and the ability to fully grasp what is happeningaround me, I am not destroyed but I am surely not stronger because of it(though this will possibly depend on thesecond constraint). Conversely, if my cat scratches my hand by accident, the suffering I thereby experience is not going to the kind from

which I can become stronger. So, there are low and high degrees of suffering that seem to be ruled out. Second, even ifwhat I suffer is only the loss of a pet, my job, or a hand, I am not automatically made stronger by living through it. There are times where all wecan do is hold on as best we can, hoping that the pain will stop; in such cases we do not overcome the suffering, but just do our best to ride it

out. Whether I come out stronger depends on what my attitudes towards suffering are and whether I can use those attitudes to see the

suffering as an opportunity for growth and strengthening, and then whether I have the strength to carry out the growth. Concerning thestrengthening of the species through harsh conditions, we can also imagine limiting cases. Conditions ofgreat plagueor natural disaster in which our strength of will and body are of no use are not going to beconditions under which the species is strengthened. Further, it is not entirely clear why we should thinkmurderand theft strengthen the species, as Nietzsche seems to claim.

Disregard their inevitability claims

He is writing in the context of individual sufferingnuclear war is not inevitable and

must be prevented

Suffering is not monolithicintentional violence can and should be prevented

Jessica Weinhold 2004Help your congregation do something about violence, Fall

http://www.pcusa.org/ideas/2004fall/violence.htm ]

It is important to note that different forms of suffering permeate our personaland corporate contexts. Thus, not allforms can be equated or responded to uniformly.In the case of domestic and sexual violence, thissuffering is notinevitable(like natural disasters, for example); it is intentionaland above all else unnatural. Therefore, thisform of violence must be addressed on its own terms. It must be distinguished as a particular form of suffering that occasions a unique form of grief and demands auniquely definitive responsefrom clergy and congregation.

Value to Life Debate

Its subjective and we shouldnt decide it for others turns the altSchwartz et al, 2[Lisa, Lecturer in Philosophy of Medicine, Department of General Practice, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK; Paul Preece, ThemeCoordinator of Medical Ethics, Dundee Medical School, Ninewells, Dundee, UK; and Rob Hendry, Medical Advisor, Medical & Dental Defense Un ion of Scotland,

Mackintosh House, Glasgow, UK, Medical Ethics: A Case-Based Approach, p. 112, November]

The second assertion made by supporters o f the quality of life as a criterion for decisionmaking is closely related to the first, but with an added

dimension. This assertion suggests that the determination of the value of the quality of a given life is a subjectivedetermination to be made by the person experiencing that life. The important addition here is that the decision is apersonal one that, ideally, ought not to be made externally by another person but internally by the individual involved.Katherine Lewis madethis decision for herself based on a comparison between two stages of her life. So did James Brady.Without this element, decisions

based on quality of life criteria lack salient information and the patients concerned cannot give informed consent.Patients must be given the opportunity to decide for themselves whether they think their lives areworth living or not. To ignore or overlook patients' judgement in this matter is to violate their autonomy andtheir freedom to decide for themselves on the basis of relevant information about their future, andcomparative consideration of theirpast. As the deontological position puts it so well, to do so is to violate theimperative that we must treat persons as rational and as ends in themselves.


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Their evaluation of when lives are worth living results in eugenicsand makes it

impossible to affirm lifeEisenberg, 2005(Daniel, Medical Doctor, Department of Radiology at the Albert Einstein Medical Center, The Death of Terry Schiavo: AnEpilogue, 4/10, http://www.aish.com/societyWork/society/The_Death_of_Terri_Schiavo_An_Epilogue.asp)

We have unfortunately seen such hubris result in terrible loss of life over the past century. The belief that medicine can de termine which lives are worth preserving

was an intrinsic part of the pre-Nazi German medical establishment (see "Why Medical Ethics"). In the late 1920's and early 1930's: anumber of prominent German academics and medical professionals were espousing the theory of "unworthy life,"a theory which advanced the notion that some lives were simply not worthy of living. . . If Mengelehimself (an infamous physician who performed murderous experiments on live concentration camp inmates) became a cold-bloodedmonster at the height of his Nazi career, he certainly learned at the feet ofsome of Germany's most diabolical minds. As astudent Mengele attended the lectures of Dr. Ernst Rudin, who positednot only that there were some lives not worthliving, but that doctors had a responsibility to destroy such life and remove it from the general population. His prominent views gained theattention of Hitler himself, and Rudin was drafted to assist in composing the Law for the Protection of Heredity Health, which passed in 1933, thesame year that the Nazis took complete contro l of the German government. This unapologetic Social Darwinist contributed to the Nazi decree that called for the

sterilization of those demonstrating the following flaws, lest they reproduce and f urther contaminate the German gene pool: feeblemindedness; schizophrenia;manic depression; epilepsy; hereditary blindness; deafness; physical deformities; Huntington's disease; and alcoholism

1. The scary part of the Terri Schiavo debate

has been the blurring of the line between life and death, and between medical data and morality. Why does the medical knowledge of the physician seem to

translate into skill in evaluating thevalueof life? We are a society easily open to suggestion. Our opinions are strongly influenced by themedia. And asDr. Milgram proved with his obedience experiments, our moral judgments are most easily swayed by authority figures. So when doctorsespouse a belief that some patients are "as good as dead," who are laypeople to disagree ? We see themurderous outcome when our natural tendency to trust a uthority figures is exploited in the area of evaluating value of li fe. If the doctors tell us that some lives are

not worth preserving, we may feel that we lack the knowledge to disagree. This drives home the crucial need to carefully asse ss who our authority figures are andwhether they are functioning within the area of their expertise. In an excellent article examining the role of nurses in the eugenics programs of Naz i Germany, Susan

Benedict, a professor at the College of Nursing of the M edical University of South Carolina in Charleston, writes:2During the Nazi era, so-called

"euthanasia programs" were established for handicapped and mentally illchildren and adults. Organized killingsof an estimated 70,000 German citizens took place at killing centers and in psychiatric institutions...TheGerman people were exposed to the idea of euthanasia through posters, movies, and books supportingthe destruction of "lives not worth living".A 1936 book entitled Sendung und Gewissen (Mission and Conscience) was published in Germanyby an ophthalmologist and was widely read. This novel told the story of a young wife with multiple sclerosis who was euthanized by her physician -husband. Thisnovel was important in preparing the ground for the euthanasia programs

3It was made into a movie "Ich Klage an!" ("I Accuse") and was widely sh own during these

years. Two other popular movies of the time also dealt with euthanasia, Life Unworth Life (1934-1935) and Presence without Life (1940-1941)4. "Opfer der

Vergangenheit (Victims of the Past, 1937) was produced under Hitler's direct order and shown by law in all 5,300 German theaters."5These films argued that

keeping seriously ill people alive was against the basic principles of nature. The results of the active participation of the medical community in the determination ofwhich lives were worth preserving were devastating. "By the time the Third Re ich lay in ruins, German doctors had sterilized at least 460,000 men and women

diagnosed as unfit or disturbed dispatched 250,000 to 300,000 chronically ill patients by means of starvation, gas inhalation, prolonged sedation and toxic

injections; gassed and cremated more than 10,000 infants and children with disorders ranging from congenital heart disease to epilepsy."6And so, with help of the

medical establishment, the most civilized and scientifically advanced country in the world, destroyed its ownpeople, because their lives were simply "not worth living."Did these doctors and nurses appreciate how far they had strayed fromtheir duty to care for the sick? Evidence from the Nuremberg trials seems to point to the inescapable conclusion that many of the perpetrators never appreciated

the ethical disconnect between their actions and their medical mission. Their medical personas were subsumed into their polit ical and philosophical views. It is only

because they were doctors and nurses that they had the op portunity to cause such great harm. They became leaders in Nazi Germany7and used their medical

knowledge to further their personal utilitarian agendas. I make no apology regarding my stance on the Terri Schiavo case. In the guise of misplaced compassion,

using our legal system's "due process" as legal sanction, the American courts l egalized the killing of those people whose lives are not worth living. Many Americans

have accepted the information that they have seen in the media with little question. While the courts probably acted appropriately within the scope of theirjurisdiction, the people of this compassionate nation should do some deep soul searching and ask themselves whether they have been sold a "bill of goods" and

misled by those it trusts most -- its doctors and courts. Are we so sure that life without consciousness is not life? The real significance of the Terri Schiavo case is not

that one woman was killed. The outcome of the case has called into question the lives of all disabled people. Can the s upporters of removing Terri Schiavo's feeding

tube honestly answer whywe should not euthanize a profoundly retarded child who will never have any real self awareness? Should depressed people with

refractory deep depression be given lethal doses of painkillers for their own good? Who will be the arbiter of such decisions? I worry that our societyis descending once again into the abyss of a particularly pernicious form of ethical relativism whichattributes value only to certain lives based on whatever set of standards are currently in vogue . As the valueplaced on life declines, but the cost of medical care increases, even greater pressure will be placed on the disabled (who "c ost" too much to maintain) to do us all a

favor and die. I sincerely hope that there is a remaining bastion of common sense and morality among themillions of Americans who have a basic faith in the value of life. They do not need medical degrees to understand that life isintrinsically valuable. They understand that life does not derive its value from the ability to derive enjoyment from the wor ld. (see: Should Terri Schiavo Live or Die?)The neurologist ended his letter in the following way: Western neurologic practice, o pinion and ethics recognize these conditio ns (PVS and Alzheimer's disease) as

terminal in contradistinction to "Halachic law". It would seem that medical ethics at least in the U.S., has become more informed or evolved beyond an archaic

Halachic law. Dr. Eisenberg states in his essay , "The key to analyzing any situation is to realize that good ethics start with goo d facts." On this, I wholeheartedly
http://www.aish.com/ci/s/%20http:/www.aish.com/societyWork/sciencenature/Why_Medical_Ethics$.asphttp://www.aish.com/societyWork/sciencenature/Why_Medical_Ethics$.asphttp://www.aish.com/ci/s/%20http:/www.aish.com/societyWork/sciencenature/Should_Terri_Schiavo_Live_or_Die$.asphttp://www.aish.com/ci/s/%20http:/www.aish.com/societyWork/sciencenature/Should_Terri_Schiavo_Live_or_Die$.asphttp://www.aish.com/societyWork/sciencenature/Why_Medical_Ethics$.asphttp://www.aish.com/ci/s/%20http:/www.aish.com/societyWork/sciencenature/Why_Medical_Ethics$.asp


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concur and as a bedside clinician who deals with these cases, would offer this as a prescription to Dr. Eisenberg. Given a ch oice between the enlightened ethics of

my correspondent and the "archaic" ethics of Jewish law, I really s ee no choice. He is not the first educated person to announce to the world that traditional ethics

are passe. But throughout history, the cheapening of life has inevitably led to the deaths of innocent people.Whether it is a communist nation that devalues the intellectuals or ethnic groups that cheapen the livesof their rivals, in every instance the beginning of the end is the concerted attempt to convince thepopulation that some lives just don't matter.

Value to Life is Inevitabledoing things that you enjoy make life worth living

rollercoasters, winning debates and basketballthat means extinction is a net

decrease in value

Only preventing extinction allows the alternative to occurwithout the fight for

preservation, there is nothing to overcomeConnolly, 91[William, Professor of Political Science at John Hopkins University, Identity/Difference: DemocraticNegotiations of Political Paradox, p. 186]

Zarathustra says: "The most concerned ask today, 'How is man to be preserved?' But Zarathustra is the first and only one to ask: 'How is man to

be overcome?'" 16 The idea is to stop worrying about the preservation of man, to strive to create a fewovermen. Leave to their own devices those who insist upon being consumed by resentment, so that a few can cultivate another type ofhumanity. The new type to be cultivated consists of a few free spirits who fend off the resentment against the human condition that wells up ineveryone, a few who rise above the insistence that there be symmetry between evil and responsibility, who live above the demand that someguilty agent worthy of punishment be located every time they themselves suffer, who recognize thatexistentialsuffering is a precondition of

wisdom. But this typological differentiationbetween man and overman no longer makes much sense, if it ever did. Forthe overmanconstituted as an independent, detached typerefers simultaneously to a spiritual disposition and to the residence of free

spirits in a social space relatively insulated from reactive politics. The problem is thatthe disappearance of the relevant socialpreconditions confounds any division of humanity into two spiritual types. If there is anything in the type to beadmired, the ideal must be dismantled as a distinct caste of solitary individuals and folded into the political fabric of late-modern society. The

"overman" now falls apart as a set of distinctive dispositions concentrated in a particular caste or type, and its spiritual qualities migrate to a setof dispositions that may compete for presence in any self. The type now becomes (as it already was to a significant degree) a voice in the selfcontending with other voices, including those of ressentiment. This model is implicitly suggested by Foucault when he eschews the term

"overman" (as well as "will to power") and shifts the center of gravity of Nietzschean discourse from heroes and classical tragic figures to

everyday misfits such as Alex/Alexina and Pierre Rivire. The textual moves are, I think, part of a strategy to fold Nietzschean agonism into the

fabric of ordinary life by attending to the extraordinary character of the latter. I seek to pursue this same trail.The Nietzscheanconception of a few who overcome resentment above politics while the rest remain stuck in the muck ofresentment in politics is not today viableon its own terms. Today circumstances require that many give thesign of the overman a presence in themselves and in the ethicopolitical orientations they project ontothe life of the whole. But this break with the spirit of Nietzsche requires further elucidation. The shift results partly from thelate-modern possibility of self-extinction. In this new world the failure to "preserve man" could alsoextinguish the human basis for thestruggle Nietzsche named "overman." Preservation and overcoming are nowdrawn closer together so that each becomes a term in the other: the latter cannot succeed unless ittouches the former. But the entanglement of each with the other in sociopolitical relations means, when the logic o f this entanglementis worked out, that the "overman" as a type cannot eliminate from its life some of the modalities definitive of

the "human." If the overman was ever projected as a distinct typeand this is not certainit now becomesrefigured into a struggle within the self between the inclination to existential resentment and anaffirmation of life that rises above this tendency.


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Double BindEither A. There are things about life that are worth living means

preventing extinction is a prerequisite or B. there are no values and you should

probably just vote AffWymore, 92 *John, Nietzsche, Von Hildebrand, and Human Fulfillment ALETHEIA+

In order to develop my criticism of Nietzsche, thata Nietzschean view of value would empty the world of the meaningnecessary by which a full and affective life is possible, I want to draw upon Dietrich von Hildebrand's insight into "categoriesof importance" developed especially in his Ethics. Von Hildebrand there elucidates three "categories of importance"*: the category of the"important in itself," that is, the intrinsically valuable or precious; that of the "subjectively satisfying"; and that of the importance of the

"objective good for the person." (1) The important in itself is that which ought to exist because of its intrinsic worth, such as the preferring oftruth over error. (2) That which derives its importance because it pleases us makes up the category of the subjectively satisfying. (3) Air,shelter, food, and medicine are all important as objective goods for the person. They act beneficently for and upon man. All these "moments"

of importance draw things out of neutrality. They are the motivation by which things take on interest for us. Love may emerge from neutrality,significant, because it is pleasurable to me; hence it is subjectively satisfying. Or it may emerge from neutrality because love produces trulybeneficial elements in persons; hence, it is an objective good for the person. Or, finally, one can have insight into the essence of love itself and

see it to be entirely precious in virtue of its immanent nature.Love emerges from neutrality and is significant, above allelse, because of its own essence not because it does something beneficial or because it brings aboutmy pleasure, but because of what it is in itself. It is good that love qua love exist rather than not exist. Itis precious in and of itself, and its existence adds a priceless treasure to living. Nietzsche completely

denies the category of importance that we term the important in itself, or the intrinsically valuable. Heclaims that objective reality is value neutral. In Nietzsche's mind there is nothing intrinsically preciouswhich can, of its own nature or act, be the reason for its being lifted out of neutrality. Value is neverdiscovered; it is only created. Hence, we enter at birth into a world which has no pre given meaning, and it is up to the individual to

create significance by a fiat of the will. It is on the basis of this denial of the important in itself that a completelyNietzschean view would render a fully human life impossibleinsofar as life is experienced strictly along the linesNietzsche declares. This is because human life in order to be full and vital depends upon the experience of thingswhich have the power, that is, the sufficient weight and grandeur of being, capable of eliciting responsessuch as we havementioned. Gratitude, deep joy, reverence, humility, awe, admiration, and love come about from ourcontacts with values for which we can be grateful, about which we can feel joy, before which we canexperience reverence, humility, awe, or admiration, or to which we may give ourselves in love. All these

affective states presuppose conscious objects of knowedge, prior to any act of the will, to which werespond or by which we are moved.For instance, we respond with admiration to great honesty or courage, or with thanksgivingfor a precious gift, or with appreciation and gratitude to the loyalty of a friend. We respond to these things in the way that we do because ofthe knowledge of their significance, the experience of their ontological and qualitative weight, especially to their intrinsic beauty. According to

von Hildebrand: "there exist certain affective responses which are essentially value responses, that is, aremotivated only by values. Such, for instance, are esteem, veneration, and admiration" (Ethics, p. 211). Nietzsche seems to missentirely the fact that a joyful life depends upon the existence of intrinsically precious objects and qualities which are capable of engenderingour response of joy. Von Hildebrand wrote: "those things endowed with value possess a capacity of bestowing delight" (p. 36). What Nietzsche

fails to note is thatjoy and thanksgiving, as well as many other feelings consciously related to their objects,do not arise from knowing objects or acts which are, in themselves, value neutral. The world, insofar asit is perceived as value neutral, could only engender negligence, boredom, and indifference . It is preciselybecause of this that aman [person] blinded to objective value, holding a thoroughly Nietzschean outlook

cannot by that very fact experience the preciousness and goodness of life. All external reality, in itself, is neutral forhim. The Nietzschean man necessarily lives in a world, that in terms of significance, is dull and flat because all objectivities are equally neutral

in his eyes. Prior to the Nietzschean fiat by which anything meaningful exists, nothing has meaning; and inthis context the only due responses are ones such as we have said, negligence, boredom, andindifference. Nor does the human will have the power to generate affective responses of the sort we have mentioned from objects whichare given as neutral prior to a subject's act of willing or constituting.Despite Nietzsche's declaration of human potential,the power of one's will is limited. Specifically, the Nietzschean fiat is a myth in reference to affective states.While the will is free and in our immediate control, affective responses are not . Quoting von Hildebrand: "wenever can engender any affective response by a fiat, nor can we command it by our will as we can any activity. Love, for instance, is alwaysgranted to us as a gift" (p. 203). Were we to decide a neutral thing shall have importance, and then try to will it so, e.g., a rock, it would be


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absurd to speak of our newly created state of love, or esteem, or awe, or reverence for the rock.The Nietzscheanman [person] findshimself [herself] in the predicament of being faced with the perception of a value neutral world and thenhaving to do the impossible and will affective responses of joy, esteem, and gratitude. It cannot be done .

Turn - Genocide

Ideas have consequences Nietzsche knew he would be used for Genocide and so

does the NegLang, 2002 [Berel, Prof of Humanities @ Trinity College Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? P 60-2]

But there is a gap between logic and rhetoric, and it is in this space that the charge of Nietssches responsibility for his fascism gains its

purchase. It is not only that at the center of Nietzschessocial critique wasa theory of how political powerevolved (hisgenealogy)but that he recognized that groups who thought in terms of collective rather than individual power, inthe mystification of group will and spirit, wouldin fact, they already had in his lifetimesee in the conception of power which he advanced a

justification for their own collective, not individual, use of thatpredicate. He was as much aware of this as he was moregenerally of the easysubtle, subterranean, glibtransition effected when individuals, failing to find sufficient capacity in themselves, jointogether to assert it: this is the basis of his critique of bourgeois society in which he lived, a comfortably outfitted version of the slave-morality

from which it emerged. (If you wish to know which of them has won for the present, Rome or Judea, he asks, there can be no doubt:consider to whom one bows down in Rome itself today (GM, I:16). We find Nietzsche, then, in opposition to essentialfeatures ofthe fascismthat purported to follow him historically, aware of elements in his own thought that might be appropriated by itsadvocates for their own purposesand yet willing to accept the risk of such misrepresentation. Not, as I emphasized,unknowingly, and not without remonstrating with those who did this (or might yet) without speaking out: Nietzsches antinationaliststatements, as I have indicated, are numerous and unequivocal, as are his many anti-anti-Semetic statements, which are themselves oftenrelated to his antinationalistic declarations. To defend the post-Enlightenment Jewish culture in Europe and specifically in Germany as

Nietzsche did, in the face of then current anti-Semitism, was already to recognize and contest the protofascism best known to Nietzschethrough his acquaintance with the Bayreuth circle around Wagner. What more than this, one might ask, could or should Nietzsche have done? I

have not yet even mentioned the defense on his behalf of the readerly equivalent of caveat emptor (I suppose it would be c aveat lector),

which absolves the seller (in the case of interpretation, the author) of any product liability.Is not reading, after all, even more than in the

case of more ordinary acquisitions, a purely voluntary act? And cannot the reader see more fully whathe or she isgetting than with most other purchases? to assign responsibility to the author in this transaction, even if only up to a point, would

argue for the founding of an agency to test books for their effects much as the Food and Drug Administration does in the United States when itassesses ingested products. Only assume that words or booksideasdo indeed have consequences(intellectual, moral,psychological, historical), andthat those effects may be cloaked in the texts that provide a medium for them andthe question of the role and extend of the authors responsibility then becomes unavoidable. What, however, does this mean in practice?

Should Nietzsche be held responsible fornot anticipatingthe rise of Mussolini and Hitler and their fasciststatesor more modestly, for the use they or their supporters made of him? But already in his own l ifetime, we saw, he was aware of theconflicting appropriations of his work, including the use made of him by partisans whom he thought he had been attacking. Nietzsche himselflabels On the Genealogy of Morals a Streitschrift a polemicthus a representation in his own hand of what he took to be a declaration of

war against the world of known values, in choosing the means, we know (and he certainly knew) that we also choose the end.He wasaware, then, of the risk, and yet he preferred the risk because ofwhat it entailed: that is, the responsibility ofeachself, each reader, to create himself, to make himself the individual of whom Nietzsche spoke. And then heaccepted this risk even if it also nourished the possibility of abuse that later in fact ensued. His was not only avariation of a manufacturer whose product unexpectedly turns out to be dangerous (although even for that, the charge of negligence may at

times be warranted), but knowing something of the potential danger and weighting it against the possible benefits of writing what he did, heheld steady in his course. What more would be required than this to invite (and for Nietzsche to accept) a judgment of responsibility? Not (atleast not directly) for what the fascists did, and not for their contribution to the misinterpretation, by which they took the step from privilegingthe individual to privileging the group and then the statebut for his sake of the misinterpretation which if it is not decisive is not negligible

either. What this amounts to is failing to build a fence around what he did mean so as to separate it (and itsconsequences) from what he did not meanand evidently failing (more precisely, refusing) to do this, because that would inhis view have diminished the force of what he did for those who interpreted him correctly. In sum: Nietzsche accepted the risk ofmisinterpretation, in sufficient if not (as it could not have been, then or ever) full knowledgewilling to chance misinterpretation (and sotoo, its consequences). He was willing, in other words, to have views ascribed to him that ran counter to those he


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heldwilling to accept the risk because of the challenge he posed in doing so. It was for his audience to decide

in the face of Nietzsches attack on them how they would respondwith Nietzsche unwilling to hedge that attackby additional qualificationseven if because that refusal a certain unwanted outcome (i.e., misinterpretation) became more probable.

Because the changes requiredto enter those would also have conduced to the weakeningor diminution of what hewished, even more strongly, to affirm.

This means voting Neg is a vote for the HutusGolomb and Wistrich, 2002 [Jacob, teaches philosophy at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Robert, Neuberger Chair of ModernEuropean History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? P 3]

Nietzsche wasclearly an elitist who believed in the right to rule ofa good and healthy aristocracy, one thatwould, if necessary, be ready to sacrifice untold numbers of human beings. Hesometimes wrote as if nationsprimarily existed forthe sake of producinga few great men, who could not be expected to showconsideration for normal humanity.Not surprisingly, in the light of the cruel century that has just ended,one is bound to regard such statements with grave misgivings. From Mussolini and Hitler to Stalin, Mao,Pol Pot, and Saddam Hussein, the last eighty years have been riddled with so-called political geniusesimagining that they were beyond good and evil and free of any moral constraints. One has to ask if

there isnot something in Nietzsches philosophy with its uninhibited cultivation of a heroic individualismand the will to power, whichmay have tended to favor the fascist ethos. Mussolini, for example, raised the Nietzscheanformulation live dangerously (vivi pericolosamente) to the status of a fascist slogan. His reading of Nietzsche was one factor in converting himfrom Marxism to a philosophy of sacrifice and warlike deeds in defense of the fatherland. In this mutation, Mussolini was preceded by GabrieledAnnunzio, whose passage from aestheticism to the political activism of a new, more virile and warlike age, was (as Mario Sznajder points outin his essay) greatly influenced by Nietzsche. Equally, there were other representatives of the First World War generation, like the radicalGerman nationalist writer, Ernst Junger, who would find in Nietzsches writings a legitimization of the warrior ethos (as David Ohana makesclear).

The alt results in a normless world incapable of sublimating desire to the good

causes extinctionFasching, 1993(Darrell, Professor of Religious Studies at University of South Florida, The Ethical Challenge of Auschwitz and Hiroshima,p. 28-29)

Our modern technological civilization offers us seemingly infinite utopian opportunities to recreate

ourselves(e.g., genetic engineering, behavioral engineering) and our societies(social engineering) and our world (chemical

engineering, atomic engineering).But having transcended all limits and all norms, we seem bereft of a

normative vision to govern the use of our utopian techniques. This normlessness threatens us with

demonic self-destruction. It is this dark side of technical civilization that was revealed to us not only at

Auschwitz and but also at Hiroshima. Auschwitz represents a severe challenge to the religious

traditions of the West: to Christians, because of the complicity of Christianity in the anti-Judaic path that led to Auschwitz renders its

theological categories ethically suspect; to Jews, because their victim status presses faith in the God of history and

in humanity to the breaking point. But the path toAuschwitz, and from Auschwitz to Hiroshima, represents a

challenge, equally severe, for the scientific and technical, secular culture of the Enlightenment. We do not seemto have fared any better under a secular ethic than we did under a religious one. Indeed we have fared worse. Genocide it seems is a uniqueproduct of the modern secular world and its technically competent barbarians. Auschwitz stands for a demonic period in modern Westerncivilization in which the religious, political and technological developments converged to create a society whose primary purpose was the mostefficient organization of that entire society for the purpose of exterminating all persons who were regarded as aliens and strangers especially

the Jews. The Nazi vision of the pure Aryan society represents a utopian vision of demonic proportions a

vision that inspired an apocalyptic revolutionary program of genocide. It reveals at once both a time

of "The Death of God" in the Nietzschean sense and yet the resurgence of religion, that is, a demonic

religiosity that creates a new public order in which all pluralism is eliminated from the public square

and in which virtually nothing is sacred not even human life. The period of the Holocaust stands as


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prophetic warning to a technological civilization that has no other norm than the will to power. If

Auschwitz embodies the demonic use of technology against targeted populations to commit genocide,

Hiroshimaand Nagasaki represent the last such use of technology. For with the coming of Nuclear warfare, technology has

outstripped human intentionality so that if the bomb is ever used again, genocide will be transformed into collective

suicide or omnicide the destruction of all life.Having enemies is a luxury no community on the face of the earth can any

longer afford. If there is a next time, it will not matter who is right and who is wrong, we shall all perish in

the flames. Auschwitzand Hiroshima suggest that the millennium which brought us the utopian age of

progress threatens to bring itself to an abrupt apocalyptic conclusion. The age of the bomb seems to have shatteredand restructured the millennial myth. No longer can we imagine that apocalypse will be followed by utopia. The myth of unfolding stages seems

to have broken apart into an absolute Either-Or: either Apocalypse or Utopia. Not wishing to face the terror of the first option we

enthusiastically (although uneasily) embrace the second. Through a somewhat forced utopian euphoria we try to

repress the prophetic warnings of Auschwitz and Hiroshima which remind us that a normless world

will inevitably end in apocalyptic self-destruction.

Nietszche 2AC

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Transcript of Nietszche 2AC