A2: Util

1. The mentality of Utilitarianism is the recreation of the heard mentality. It is an attempt to reduce all human desires and humanity to sameness. This denial of difference destroys the value to life and leads to micro-facist attempts at control Thats our Der Derian and Deleuze evidence 2. The quest for utility based on supposed scientific truth about the world is utterly nihilistic we need to wrestle with why we are on such a quest before blindly committing to that path. Saurette 96 ('I Mistrust all Systematizers and Avoid Them': Nietzsche, Arendt and the Crisis of the Will to Order in International Relations Theory,
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 25 i. 1, March 1996) The very logic of the Will to Order, 'Christian morality itself, the concept of truthfulness taken more and more strictly' ,56 leads to the dawn of its self overcoming. Science is one of the latest phases of its [Will to Truth] evolution, one of its terminal forms and inner consequences-it is the awe-inspiring catastrophe of two thousand years of training in truthfulness that finally forbids itself the lie involved in belief in God! 57

By challenging the truthfulness of God, the scientific Will to Truth undermines the very dichotomy between the Real World and the Apparent World. Science, however, is not an overcoming of the Will to Truth, but merely the most complete, empty, and nihilistic ascetic ideal. It refutes 'faith' but retains an unquestioned belief in itself. Although science claims to follow no authority, its Order/Truth, because in spite of its disavowal of the Christian dichotomised world, it retains a belief in Truth without attaching any value or meaning to existence.59 With the rise of science, then, the sole virtue of the Christian Will to Truth/Order, the' faith in the dignity and
uniqueness of man, in his irreplaceability in the great chain of being, [becomes] a thing of the past. Man has become an animal, literally and without reservation or qualification'.6O The radical scepticism of science is the 'suicidal nihilism' of the late-modern age, 'affirming as little as it denies'." It is the process by which all such 'transcendent' grounds are dissolved in a corrosive scepticism: the true world becomes a fable. The central value of our culture-truth-drives us towards ceaseless unmasking. The irony, as Tracy Strong observes, is that this discovery does not liberate us from the sense that we must have

'unconditional will to truth is faith in the ascetic ideal itself, even if as an unconscious imperative... it is the faith in a metaphysical value, the absolute value of truth' .58 The scientific Will to Truth is both the most advanced and the most dangerous manifestation of the Will to

truth in order to have meaning, that meaning is somehow inextricably tied to truth or the universal. We continue to search for what we know does not exist, confirming our growing sense of meaninglessness; worse, we come to be at home in this exhaustion of meaning.62 Ironically, then, Nietzsche suggests that it is precisely the nihilism of scientific faith which pushes man 'onto an inclined plane-now he is slipping faster and faster away from the centre into-what? into nothingness? into a penetrating sense of nothingness' .63 The danger of the late-modern nihilistic Will to Truth is that this reactive 'will to negation', while yearning for a truthful foundation, can only destroy and negate. Even anthropocentric recreations of authoritative Truth, such as faith in progress, utilitarian happinessfor-everyone, socialist utopias, or Kant's secularised teleologies, cannot survive the scrutiny of this nihilistic Will to Truth. As Michael Haar notes, [a]fter having killed God-i.e. after having recognized the nothingness of the 'true world'-and after having placed himself where God once was, Man continues to be haunted by his iconoclastic act: he cannot venerate himself, and soon ends up by turning his impiety against himself and smashing this new idol.64 The radical and untempered scepticism of scientific Will to Truth undermines the foundational meanings of the modern world and thus threatens modern life with the prospect of unconditional nihilism. 3. Utilitarianism is ultimately an attempt at making decision in order to eliminate suffering and any elimination of suffering is fleeting. The truth is that suffering is inexorably tied to existence, it can never be solved merely concealed. Kain 2007 (Philip J. [Professor of Philosophy @ Santa Clara University] Nietzsche, Eternal Recurrence, and the Horror of Existence; The
Nietzsche Journal) projectMUSE) Knowledge of the horror of existence kills actionwhich requires distance and illusion. The horror and meaninglessness of existence must be veiled if we are to live and act. What we must do, Nietzsche thinks, is construct a meaning for suffering. Suffering we can handle. Meaningless suffering, suffering for no reason at all, we cannot handle. So we give suffering a meaning. We invent a meaning. We create an illusion. The Greeks constructed gods for whom wars and other forms of suffering were festival plays and thus an occasion to be celebrated by the poets. Christians imagine a God for whom suffering is punishment for sin (GM II:7; cf. D 78). One might find all this unacceptable. After all, isnt it just obvious that we can change things, reduce suffering, improve existence, and make progress? Isnt it just obvious that modern science and technology have done so? Isnt it just absurd for Nietzsche to reject the possibility of significant change? Hasnt such change already occurred? Well, perhaps not. Even modern environmentalists might resist all this obviousness. They might respond in a rather Nietzschean vein that technology may have caused as many problems as it has solved. The advocate of

the perfectible cosmos, on the other hand, would no doubt counter such Nietzschean pessimism by arguing that even if technology does cause some problems, the solution to those problems can only come from better technology. Honesty requires us to admit, however, that this is merely a hope, not something for which we already have evidence, not something that it is absurd to doubtnot at all something obvious. Further technology may or may not improve things. The widespread use of antibiotics seems to have done a miraculous job of improving our health and reducing suffering, but we are also discovering that such antibiotics give rise to even more powerful bacteria that are immune to those antibiotics. We have largely eliminated diseases like cholera, smallpox, malaria, and tuberculosis, but we have produced cancer and heart

disease. We can cure syphilis and gonorrhea, but we now have AIDS. Even if we could show that it will be possible to continuously reduce suffering, it is very unlikely that we will ever eliminate it. If that is so, then it remains a real question whether it is not better to face suffering, use it as a discipline, perhaps even increase it, so as to toughen ourselves, rather than let it weaken us, allow it to dominate us, by continually hoping to overcome it. But whatever we think about the possibility of reducing
suffering, the question may well become moot. Nietzsche tells a story: Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of world history, but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die (TL 1, 79). Whatever progress we might think we are making in reducing

suffering, whatever change we think we are bringing about, it may all amount to nothing more than a brief and accidental moment in biological time, whose imminent disappearance will finally confirm the horror and meaninglessness of existence. The disagreement here is not so much about the quantity of suffering that we can expect to find in the world but, rather, its nature. For proponents of the
designed cosmos, suffering is basically accidental. It is not fundamental or central to life. It is not a necessary part of the nature of things. It does not make up the essence of existence. We must develop virtue, and then we can basically expect to fit and be at home in the cosmos. For the proponents of a perfectible cosmos, suffering is neither essential nor unessential. The cosmos is neutral. We must work on it to reduce suffering. We must bring about our own fit. For Nietzsche, even if we can change this or that, even if we can reduce suffering here and there, what cannot be

changed for human beings is that suffering is fundamental and central to life. The very nature of things, the very essence of existence, means suffering. Moreover, it means meaningless sufferingsuffering for no reason at all. That cannot be changedit can only be concealed 4. Utilitarianism is simply a re-working of Judeo-Christian morality it prioritizes the herd over the individual. Warren, 88 (Mark, Professor at the University of British Colombia, Nietzsche and Political Thought, MIT Press) If Nietzsche is not interested in ethical rules so much as in the conceptions of agency they presuppose, one would think that he would have been well-disposed toward the utilitarian attempt to evaluate practices in terms of their benefits for the self. After all, utilitarianism breaks down the Christian polarity between the demands of the self and what is good, between morality and life. But one finds little praise of utilitarianism in Nietzsche's writings. Part of the reason is that utilitarianism embeds a metaphysics of moral agency in its concept of the "ego," and it is this metaphysics that is expanded into notions of general welfare. Nietzsche's argument is that the utilitarian self is not given as a fact, but must itself be explained as the result of a specific historical organization of power. Utilitarianism in effect takes over and simply reevaluates the Christian "false dogmatism regarding the 'ego': it is taken in the atomistic sense, in a false antithesis to the 'nonego'; at the same time, pried out of becoming, as something that has being." 38 This is why "the 'welfare of the individual' is just as imaginary as the 'welfare of the species': the former is not sacrificed to the latter; [the] species viewed from a distance is just as transient as the
individual." 39 Nietzsche's point, as we saw in chapter 2, is that the powers, capabilities, and needs of agents become something "individual" through an incorporation of historical experiences, culture, and language. Insofar as moral judgments attribute selfhood to individuals, they as much constitute individuals as they flow from them. What utilitarianism really does, then, is read interests of general welfare ("the happiness of Rngland," as Nietzsche puts it) onto

the individual. In this way, it usurps the good of the individual into the good of society -precisely the opposite of what its proponents intend. 5. The alternative is a prerequisite to utilitarianism. Utilitarian calculus is impossible when there is no pleasure only pain, as in the nihilistic world of the affirmative. 6. History proves alarmism false, and also shows that identifying and creating alarmism replicates harm By Amy Kaleita, Ph.D with Gregory R. Forbes 2007 Hysterias History: Environmental Alarmism in Context Pg. 18-19) Apocalyptic stories about the irreparable, catastrophic damage that humans are doing to the natural environment have been around for a long time. These hysterics often have some basis in reality, but are blown up to illogical and ridiculous proportions. Part of the reason theyre so appealing is that they have the ring of plausibility along with the intrigue of a horror flick. In many cases, the alarmists identify a legitimate issue, take the possible consequences to an extreme, and advocate action on the basis of these extreme projections. In 1972, the editor of the journal Nature pointed out the problem with the typical alarmist approach: [Alarmists] most common error is to suppose that the worst will always happen.82 But of course, if the worst always happened, the human race would have died out long ago. When alarmism has a basis in reality, the challenge becomes to take appropriate action based on that reality, not on the hysteria. The aftermath of Silent Spring offers examples of both sorts of policy reactions: a reasoned response to a legitimate problem and a knee-jerk response to the hysteria. On the positive side, Silent Spring brought an end to the general belief that all synthetic chemicals in
use for purposes ranging from insect control to household cleaning were uniformly wonderful, and it ushered in an age of increased caution on their appropriate use. In the second chapter

of her famous book, Carson

wrote, It is not my contention that chemical insecticides must never be used. I do contend that... we have allowed these chemicals to be used with little or no advance investigation of their effect on soil, water, wildlife, and man himself. Indeed, Carson seemed to advocate reasoned response to rigorous scientific investigation, and
in fact this did become the modern approach to environmental chemical licensure and monitoring. An hour-long CBS documentary on pesticides was aired during the height of the furor over Silent Spring. In the documentary, Dr. Page Nicholson, a water-pollution expert with the Public Health Service, wasnt able to answer how long pesticides persist in water once they enter it, or the extent to which pesticides contaminate groundwater supplies. Today, this sort of information is gathered through routine testing of chemicals for use in the environment. Ironically, rigorous investigation was not used in the decision to ban DDT, primarily due to the hysteria Silent Spring generated. In this example, the hysteria took on a life of its own, even trumping the authors original intent. There was, as we have seen, a more sinister and tragic response to the hysteria generated by Silent Spring. Certain developing countries, under significant pressure from the United States, abandoned the use of DDT. This decision resulted in millions of deaths from malaria and other insect-borne diseases. In the absence of pressure to abandon the use of DDT, these lives would have been spared. It would certainly have been possible to design policies requiring caution and safe practices in the use of supplemental chemicals in the environment, without pronouncing a death sentence on millions of people. A major challenge in developing appropriate responses to legitimate problems is that

alarmism catches peoples attention and draws them in. Alarmism is given more weight than it deserves, as policy
makers attempt to appease their constituency and the media. It polarizes the debaters into groups of believers and skeptics, so that reasoned, factbased compromise is difficult to achieve. Neither of these aspects of alarmism is healthy for the development of appropriate policy. Further, alarmist responses to valid problems risk foreclosing potentially useful responses based on ingenuity and progress. There are many examples from the energy sector where, in the presence of economic, efficiency, or societal demands, the marketplace has responded by developing better alternatives. That is not to say that we should blissfully squander our energy resources; on the contrary, we should be careful to utilize them wisely. But energy-resource hysteria should not lead us to circumvent scientific advancement by cherry-picking and favoring one particular replacement technology at the expense of other promising technologies. Environmental alarmism should be taken for what it is a natural tendency of some portion of the public to latch onto the worst, and most unlikely, potential outcome. Alarmism should not be used as the basis for policy. Where a real problem exists, solutions should be based on

reality, not hysteria.