Tournament: TFA State | Round: 2 | Opponent: Westwood SN | Judge: Cameron McConaway

I DEFINE Ought as a moral obligation as per Merriam Webster.  Prefer this definition

A) Key to philosophical debate over normative ethical theories and thus clash

B) Teaches students what it means to act morally, a key portable skill in the real world to make us good human beings

Observation

The nexus question of this debate is to answer the question of whether the USFG has a moral obligation to guarantee a right to housing.  We seek to resolve this question through determining whether an action is normatively good or bad in order to fulfill our burden.

The standard is affirming the infinite obligation to the other.

First, I experience the world as radically beyond my comprehension and having meaning from a multitude of perspectives. These other perspectives are defined by being not-mine, so I have an obligation to respect them – I cannot justify anything else since the nature of the other is always beyond my experience.

Blum 2k - Blum, Peter C. "Overcoming Relativism? Levinas's Return to Platonism." Journal of Religious Ethics 28.1 (2000): 91-117.
The experience of transcendence is, at bottom, the experience of having my interiority 

AND

I is the fact that no one can answer for me"(97). 

2 Implications:

A. This card means that if it is true that morality exists within independent agents it is impossible to make any sort of moral claim beyond a respect for the Other because there is no warrant that whatever ethical subjectivity you may subscribe to is translatable to the Other. This is the most fundamental ethical position and any more developed one is impossible to justify.

B. Comes before other frameworks because this directly indicts their base assumption that there exists some sort of objective principle or position of reasoning from which we can derive normative ethics. This is impossible because there is no way for me to be able to comprehend the Other outside of myself.

Second, my conceptualization is the only way to resolve the question of moral agency. A subject can only exist after it’s named by the Other, so my opponent is already obligated to the framework. This is a prior question.

Nealon 95 - Nealon, Jeffrey Thomas. "'Junk'and the Other: Burroughs and Levinas on Drugs." Postmodern Culture 6.1 (1995).
For Levinas, on the other hand, if one is to be an ethical 

AND

appeal of expropriation, not an originary loss of the ability to appropriate. 

There are 3 implications:

It is others who make me what I am, and without them I simply don’t exist.  Subjectivity is impossible without the other.

Moral agency is meaningless without the Other. Ethics and morality are incomprehensible in a world in which your body and mind is the entirety of the universe. In such a situation any sort of ethical framing you undergo will become the only objective framework of ethics that exists. This sort of reasoning is only useful as an amusing thought experiment.

Even if they win that their framework is good, my framework functions as a prerequisite to theirs: the obligation to the other is infinite and comes before reason.

~Third, Levinas’ theory of the encounter with the Other as the site of ethics is empirically backed by neuroscience.

Marche 15 - Stephen Marche, columnist for Esquire magazine and the author of five books doctorate in early modern English drama from the University of Toronto, NYTimes, "The Epidemic of Facelessness", 14 Feb 2015
For the great French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, the encounter with another’s face 

AND

merely of ethics, but of the biological and cultural foundations of ethics.

This evidence is an independent framework justification that is sufficient for you to prefer aff framing of the round even if you disregard the metaethical arguments I’ve made.~

Fourth, the greatest impact under the framework is totalization of the Other.  This is impact calculus:  if I win my framework, the largest impact is totalization.  Beavers:

("Introducing Levinas to Undergraduate Philosophers" Anthony F. Beavers. http://faculty.evansville.edu/tb2/PDFs/UndergradPhil.pdf .)
If we can accept this notion that ideas are inventions of the mind, that 

AND

"filled" with sensations, the satisfaction of feeding on the environment.

The Beavers impact framing applies under any framework and outweighs because their justifications must always presume nontotalization before engaging in normative reasoning about morality.  Nontotalization is a prerequisite to productive educational discourse.

Fifth, if I win a reason my framework comes before theirs, you must evaluate all offense in the round under my framework.  This is the nature of framework debate.

Contention 1

The word guarantee in the resolution totalizes the other because it is an extreme – this leaves no room for responsibility to the Other. CLARIFY MANSELL:

Mansell, Samuel. "Proximity and Rationalisation: Reflections on the Limits of a Levinasian Ethics in the context of Corporate Governance." LEFC No Date.
The more flexible a set of rules can be, such as the voluntary codes 

AND

principles can be adhered to that do reflect a genuine openness of responsibility.

Contention 2

Legislation that just lumps the Native Americans in with everyone else and makes governmental decisions for them totalizes the other-

Larson 05

, member of the Gros Ventre tribe and director of American Indian Studies at Idaho State University, 2005 (Sidner J., "Making Sense of Federal Indian Law", Wicazo Sa Review, Spring, 20.1: 9-21. EKC)
At the same time, there is a folding of federal Indian law into general 

AND

tribal values with regard to such things as environmental issues seem very positive.

And this lumping excludes their voices because we pretend like they’re just any other interest group that does not deserve a voice in the discussion.

Endres ‘09

• • Bracketed for offensive language
    Endres, Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Utah, 2009 (Danielle, "The Rhetoric of Nuclear Colonialism: Rhetorical Exclusion of American Indian Arguments in the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Siting Decision," Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies. March, Vol. 6, No. 1, Page 50, MAG)
    Instead of explicitly naming American Indians as "savages" (a common strategy indentified 

AND

be asked to sacrifice their lands for the greater good of the nation.