What is a Kritik?

Kritiks are philosophically-based arguments which question fundamental assumptions underlying the arguments, positions, or presentation of one side in the debate. Since the kritik asks for the judge to evaluate the round based on the evaluation of the kritik, we can consider these arguments to be varieties of (formal) decision-rules. Generally, the kritik is a tool for the Negative team against the Affirmative, but there are instances where Affirmatives can apply the kritik, too. Authorities suggest that successful kritiks have five characteristics:

The kritik questions the fundamental assumptions of the round. It looks at issues lurking within the presentation of one side of the debate, rather than taking the presentation at its face value. The result of this is that the debate shifts away from policy discussion, often toward discussing questions of fact or value.
The kritik is generally presented as an absolute argument. It demands a yes-or-no response from the judge, rather than an impact which is weighed against other arguments.
The kritik may be non-unique. The side presenting a kritik may indulge in the same "hidden assumptions" for which it is kritiking the opposing team. They will argue, however, that a decision on the kritik can mean a lost debate only for the opposing team.
Kritiks are non-comparative. The kritiks only questions and objects. It does not seek to present an alternative. At most, a kritik can suggest a vague realm of alternatives but not specify which one should be selected. A "kritik of capitalism," for instance, may urge that capitalism be rejected, and the Affirmative plan's capitalistic underpinnings would be rejected as well. But the Negative presenting the argument would not have to urge for a specific replacement for capitalism, such as fascism or socialism.
Kritiks are a priori (Latin: "from the beginning") voting issues. Since they represent fundamental considerations on which presentations are built, they demand to be evaluated before substantive issues such as inherency, topicality, or disadvantages are considered. If the bedrock of those arguments is faulty, as the kritik suggests, then we can discard the arguments without looking at them in detail.

Basic Introduction to Kritiks

A Sample List of the Common Kritiks Used in a Debate Round

ANTHROPOCENTRISM

Aristotle was wrong: man is not "the measure of all things." Focusing too much on human needs and problems prevents our appreciating the essential oneness of life and thwarts a transformation to biocentrism or ecocentrism. Inasmuch as the concept of privacy is usually construed only to mean relationships between humans, a concentration on this issue destroys our ability to put human concerns on an equal footing with those of nonhuman animals, or plants, or other aspects of the natural world. And yet those larger concerns are obviously more important. Human rights and values are "socially constructed", they are phantoms with no real meaning outside each society. The relationship of people within the ecosystem is not a social fiction, though, but an immediate concern that is being ignored, endangering us all.

CAPITALISM

The thesis of this kritik is that capitalism is evil. It dehumanizes people, because it does not think of them as complex, individual persons but rather as "consumers" to be manipulated into making purchases or working for minimal rewards. The capitalist ethic reduces people to things, which flies in the face of centuries of moral philosophy. Promoting capitalism frustrates our efforts to look beyond the capitalist mentality, and thus must be rejected. Plans which operate within the capitalist system are corrupt and evil, and must be rejected so we can transcend the impulse to treat all things and all people as commodities.

ETHICAL IMPERATIVES

This kritik springs from the term "should" in the resolution. The realm of "ought" is divorced from the realm of "is." Just because we can do something does not establish that we should do it. Two thousand years of philosophical speculation have not allowed us to discover any single moral truth or ethical rule. To claim otherwise is to commit "the naturalistic fallacy": the false deduction of rules from mere facts. Since there is no legitimate ground for arguing values, worth, or needs, or the policies derived from them the Affirmative side of the debate rests on the false premise that proving effective action could be taken is sufficient to prove it should be taken.

FEMINISM

This is another kritik which would likely be presented by the Affirmative under certain resolutions, in response to a Negative disadvantage based on feminist principles. However, it is also marginally likely that Affirmatives may adopt a case based on a feminist view of the topic area, and that would provide the Negatives a link to this kritik.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

A branch of legal thinking called Critical International Relations Theory has posed a number of challenges to conventional interpretations of how countries interact with one another. Many of the ideas from CIRT could be developed into plausible debate kritiks. Here, we'll examine four:

Nations do not exist.

This is sometimes called the Kritik of Geopolitics; it also shares a lot of argumentation with the Kritik of Security we will discuss a bit later in this document. The thesis: Nation-states are merely human conventions. There is nothing an observer can point to in the real world to show where the borders of one country must end, or to distinguish a person as being from one nation rather than another. Indeed, all of human history has shown that national borders are fluid, and nations arise or disintegrate freely. The distinctive quality of nation-states is that they allow citizens to reject non-citizens as "alien" or "foreign," and thus somehow subhuman. Anything which perpetuates the myth of the nation-state thus perpetuates this "us vs. them" mentality which is the ultimate source of all war. Since the Affirmative team has bought into the nation-state myth, rejecting the myth requires rejecting the Affirmative position.

"Foreign policy" is oppressive.

To assume that other nations can be bullied, intimidated, or cajoled is to assume that other nations cannot legitimately have a difference of opinion with the United States. In other words, the ways of living chosen by other nations are implicitly rejected; anything that is not American is necessarily inferior. This is the vilest form of nationalism, because it rejects at the very outset all opinions of all other nations and peoples.

Anticommunism equals oppression of belief. People have the innate right to be wrong. American policy that is aimed at opposing communism denies the remaining communist nations their natural right to choose, even if that choice would be misguided. Worse, if communism is truly suppressed, then we will lose the opportunity for the errors of communism to be exposed in the free marketplace of ideas. Thus, anticommunist actions will only serve to cloak communism in shadows, rather than truly neutralize it. Finally, it is but a tiny step from being opposed to communism to being opposed to communists that is, a move from opposing a viewpoint toward opposing, and oppressing, people because of their beliefs. Note: Although we used anticommunism as an example in this paragraph, any U.S. foreign policy program which is pursuit of a specific philosophical goal would generate a parallel argument. In many cases, this could be combined with a kritik of rhetoric for example, if your opponents argue that fundamentalist Islamic movements pose a special danger for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Foreign aid is immoral.

At best, American foreign aid works much as a lollipop is used to pacify a crying infant. A better analogy might be that foreign aid is a form of bribery, through which the American government convinces another nation to do something which may not be in its best interests at least, to do something the receiving nation would not have done without the bribe. Even worse, foreign aid now is predominantly in the form of loans and loan guarantees, and the receiving nation is often formally required to spend the loans on purchases of American goods. This means that "foreign aid" is really a marketing tool to ensnare other nations in a web of debt, making them captive clients for American big business. The term for this is economic imperialism. Any plan or counterplan providing foreign aid must be rejected.

Nietzsche

Nietzsche's philosophies are broken down into 2 staple kritiks of many debate circles.

Security

The thesis here: The idea of "security" only serves the interest of the state (the government, the nation). Preservation of the state becomes a value, in the minds of political leaders, which outweighs the interests of the people who live in the state. We have seen how this path leads to oppression of people who dare to criticize the state or its leadership, and the establishment of a hierarchy where those who claim to defend the security of the state are given greater importance over others. In moral terms, since a nation is arbitrarily defined anyway, the concept of national security elevates a fiction over the real needs of real people an argument similar to the one developed on Statism, below. The impact of the kritik is that the debaters who base their arguments on "security" are establishing an oppressive power-structure and should lose the round in order to restore the proper emphasis of people over fictional institutions.

Suffering

The thesis here: Suffering is not bad, but beneficial. Nietzsche argues that all humans have a right to suffering and that by trying to prevent it, we are denying them that right. This philosophy is put into straight words with the song "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger". This kritik claims that only by going through hardships, will we be able to become stronger in life, and that by preventing suffering, one is preventing others from growing stronger by removing obstacles in life.

STATISM

Liberty is the natural and preferred condition of human beings, and it should not be taken away lightly. Government is evil, because it is intrinsically coercive. Cooperating with government makes you an accomplice to evil. Any debate argument which involves governmental action for instance, any Affirmative plan is tainted, because it consolidates the evil that is government and blinds the debaters to the alternative, which is doing away with government altogether. Since fiat is unrealistic, the Affirmatives should lose because they are promoting coercive, statist power structures.

TERROR TALK

This is yet another variation on the Kritik of Rhetoric. One mans "terrorist" is another mans "freedom fighter." We have been conditioned to have an emotional response to the idea of terrorism a response that short-circuits rational assessment. We can have no conception of people laboring under such great oppression that they resort to violence as their only means of calling attention to the situation. Instead, we label such people "terrorists" and use the fear that term evokes as justification for considering those people as less than fully human. Using the words "terrorist" and "terrorism" is an attempt at psychological manipulation of the audience and an attempt to cover up the fact of true injustices afflicting these people. Obviously, then, debaters who start using these buzzwords should be chastised for their attempt to manipulate the debate process, and their arguments must be rejected in order to free us to develop a positive and inclusive future for all people.

RIGHTS

Much of this analysis derives from the Critical Legal Studies movement, which challenges conventional legal theory by "critiquing" (in the same sense debaters "kritik") standard interpretations of fundamental legal doctrine. Under many resolutions, its likely that Affirmatives may start talking about rights such as the right of security, or the right to life. That opens the Affirmative to a kritik about the nature of so-called "rights." Of course, Negatives are not immune to this, either; they may well propose disadvantages grounded in various rights. Many attempts at using valuative decision rules can also become links to this kritik.

Rights are legal fictions. Nobody naturally has a "right" to anything; even life itself is something we sustain only at the sufferance of other human beings. Government arbitrarily creates rights. This leads to several problems. First, the more we talk about rights, the more they begin to seem real things, not just abstract concepts; this process is called "reification" (REE-if-a-KAYshun). As rights begin to seem more real, people seem less so, in violation of the moral rule called the categorical imperative, which says that people are to be valued above all things or ideas.

Second, the proliferation of rights just leads to more conflicts with other rights that already exist, and there is no way to decide which rights should have precedence. Third, when rights do inevitably collide, society gives priority to the people who are already in control so "rights talk" tends to further disenfranchise and disengage minority opinions, women, and other less-dominant voices in the social structure. The idea that reality is socially constructed can also apply here. In the debate round, the side advocating rights should lose, in order to rid our culture of its futile and harmful obsession with "rights" and to create the possibility of breaking out of current power-structures.

NORMATIVITY

Normative statements those dealing with values, obligations, or "shoulds" assume that human beings are free-willed, politically effective individual beings. But in reality, political power is held by impersonal bureaucratic forces not subject to democratic control. Trying to decide what should be done is both useless and deceptive (it masks the political impotence of individuals). The only way to free ourselves from the illusion that political action is worthwhile or even feasible is the rejection of proposals which call for political action, such as the Affirmative plan.

Kritik structure and Capitalism K

How to refute a Kritik

Show that the kritik is not compelling within the policy framework

Once the Affirmative shifts the debate back into a comparative policy-based mode, the next step is to show that the kritik fails to be persuasive if viewed as policy issues. The last tactic we looked at in the previous section, permuting the kritik, was already a step in this direction. Other arguments that the Affirmative team can make are:

The kritik is fundamentally incoherent. It does not make an argument, and therefore requires no response. Our opponents claim we're doing something objectionable, but they can't seem to express their objections in a meaningful way. They should not be allowed to reinterpret the kritik in later speeches: their initial presentation is so vague that they have forfeited the right to build on it. (This claim is especially appropriate against mumbled 1NC arguments that don't seem to add up to any solid claim).
The Negative advancing the kritik is fundamentally inconsistent. At the minimum, we must insist that the Negatives advance no policy arguments which would themselves be subject to the kritik. It makes no sense to argue that causality does not exist and also that the plan would cause disadvantages, for instance; any Negative team trying to make both arguments in the same round should lose all credibility for either.
The kritik is illegitimate as an argument form. Within the policy framework of debate, kritiks fail to offer an alternative, and therefore they may be ignored. Policy debate is the weighing of contrasting policies: this gives no contrast, and so is irrelevant to the round.
This kritik does not apply to this Affirmative case. The Negative bases their kritik on exploring hidden assumptions of the Affirmative. We do not make the assumption that the kritik is trying to refute. There is no link to the kritik.
The kritik leaves holes to allow an Affirmative victory. The kritik asks us to rethink our beliefs and hidden assumptions. Fine, but that still permits us to reconsider our positions while the round is going on and decide that our initial position was right all along. "Rethinking" doesn't always mean rejecting everything which has gone before: it really just means a pause for reflection. Fine, we've reflected, now let's get on with life. (Some kritiks naturally have such additional gaps which can be exploited as grounds for the Affirmative to bypass the kritik. For instance, the kritik of rationality allows the Affirmative to win on purely emotional grounds, even if rationalism is considered an unreliable guideline for the ballot).
The non-absolute nature of the kritik allows for an Affirmative victory. Even if the kritik is almost certainly true, there's enough residual uncertainty for Affirmatives to win in the absence of a competing policy argument. For instance, even if we're 99% sure that materialism is a false doctrine, that 1% chance that matter may exist still means the Affirmative plan is desirable. That's because the kritik gives no real challenge against an Affirmative policy, just a challenge to the motives underlying the policy.

Refute the kritik on its own terms

By now, you know how to debate. It's time to put those skills to use. The arguments you will make:

The kritik is untrue. Many kritiks are postulated on controversial philosophical grounds. Use evidence and reasoning to clash with the issue.
The fundamental assumption the kritik addresses is justified. Evidence and analysis, again.

Kritik the kritik

Turn the tables back on your Negative opponents. Their action in proposing a kritik implicitly endorses the legitimacy of kritiks. You can use that implicit argument right back at your opponents. The arguments you might chose to make:

The kritik itself has "hidden assumptions." Those assumptions are subject to kritiking. Many kritiks rely on post-structuralist, post-modern philosophical arguments which are very controversial. This would, of course, require evidence specific to the particular kritik at hand.
Kritiks lead to infinite regression. If all underlying assumptions need to be challenged, we can never reach a meeting of minds between teams, there's always some other assumption in the way. The conventional debate round ends up in a decision one way or the other because there is always some common ground both teams can agree on, but the Negative has establishes the principle that every action of the Affirmative, the choice to speak in English, the choice to obey the rules of debate, is potentially abusive.
Kritiks are innately self-contradictory. The idea that "all assumptions must be questioned" is itself an assumption which must be answered before the kritik is allowed to go forward. In other words, the fundamental hurdle which must be passed is one Negatives set up in introducing the kritik in the first place: they must show that their kritik is not vulnerable to the perils of hidden assumptions.
Kritiks are nihilistic. If everything is subject to being questioned, then there are no grounds for believing anything. We are left staring into the void of paralyzing skepticism. That's not a tolerable situation. We can reject the nihilism of kritiks on two grounds: (1) emotional grounds, it's just too bleak to stare into the void; and (2) pragmatic grounds, paralysis stops us from getting on with life. Reject the idea of the kritik and step away from the void.

Reassert a comparative policy framework for the round

Kritiks often get a lot of their persuasive strength because the Negative is asserting that they do not have to meet the same standards that they set for the Affirmative, and that there is no near for the kritik to engage in comparative policy analysis. "The kritik doesn't have to give an alternative to the plan," the Negatives say. "It's enough that we show the plan isn't as thoroughly conceptualized as the ideal Affirmative team would want it."

That's just absurd. Yes, the Negative might have a point if we were discussing philosophy in a college classroom, but in a debate we're locked into a competitive, comparative framework. So a key tactic will involve rebuilding the focus of the debate where it belongs: on the comparison of policy systems, rather than one-sided philosophical considerations.

Potential Affirmative responses are as follows:

Social contract. We were invited to participate in policy debate at this tournament, so we need to restrict argumentation to comparative policies which are traditional in this venue. By accepting the invitation to debate here, we have mutually committed to deal with comparative policy issues.
Policy debate is an inappropriate forum for kritiks. Kritiks are not germane to the subject matter of policy debate. A debate is not an open forum; there is no rule which says we have to discuss everything which strikes any debater as an interesting idea. Consider: during congressional debate on welfare reform, hoots of derision would meet a senator's philosophical objection that we must first understand the ultimate nature of material reality before we can undertake any policy action. Similarly, for an interscholastic debating format at the high school level, kritiks represent too abstract an argument for our consideration.
"Permutate" the kritik into an appropriate policy position. As we have observed already, most kritik resemble defective versions of conventional policy arguments. For example, the kritik of statism is very similar to an anarchy counterplan (but not abandoning the existing governments of the status quo); a democracy kritik can be considered as a disadvantage linked to democratization (just not a unique disad, because the status quo engages in democracy promotion all the time). Respond to the kritiks as arguments in the conventional form, and point out their deficiencies.