Parli: This House values life over liberty.

I ought to learn much from her. I will now defeat each of my opponent's points in the order given. 1. A) "Existence (life) is the ultimate value of all living beings. " --Pro gives no proof of this, nor can she prove that this is empirically true, because individuals possess the liberty to choose what their ultimate value is. B) "you need to be alive in order to have liberty. You can be living but not free, though you cannot be free and not living; for there would be no 'you' to have freedom" --Believers in religion would argue differently. Particularly those who believe in heaven would counter that their soul would still exist, which is 'them', after they have died. This soul has all of the liberty it wishes to possess, for no forms of control that exist in life are imposed upon it. Which brings me to my next point, C). And, even if you don't buy the religion argument, even the most devout atheist would probably agree that if the form of control were bad enough, i. e. a brutal totalitarian government, situations such as the holocaust, etc, death would be freedom from that control. Therefore, death is liberty and is the ultimate end to life, giving a reason for it to be valued over life. 2. and 3. Pro's "2. " is a statement of rebuttal and therefore belongs nowhere in the first round as per the rules stated in my first post, and must be disregarded as an argument in Pro's case. Characterized by Pro's stating that what she is arguing here was something that I previously said, "Con states," this is a rebuttal and not a constructive argument. This is also true for Pro's "3. " in that she states, "In her third point, Con says. " Both of these arguments MUST be disregarded as arguments in the first round, leaving Pro with only 2 main points for me to refute. 4. As per the resolution, this is Parli debate, and all arguments used must pass a "test" of sorts, called 'The New York Times Test. ' This stipulation simply states that arguments must be something that a well-educated person of age, in our case high school and college, would know out of the top of their head, or something that a patron of the New York Times would know from reading it, hence the name. Having searched The New York Times' online archive and finding no articles about Jean-Paul Sartre printed in the New York Times newspaper since 1955 [1], which is very far before either of our births, finding it not likely in the least that one would read so far back into N. Y. Times history, and having the knowledge that my opponent and her resources are fluent in philosophy to a greater degree than most college students would be, find that this argument does not pass the 'New York Times Test'. But, because my opponent may not have fully understood the rules of Parli debate before accepting, I will argue this point with her. My answer is simple. I must disagree with Jean-Paul Sartre on this one. One can "choose to not make choices" physically by making an ultimate and final choice, the choice to take one's own life. Physically after one is dead, what is done with the body is no longer the choice of the individual who has achieved ultimate liberty by making the choice to be free from all worldly control. Thus, liberty is valued over life. Philosophically we cease to have liberty when our ideas can no longer pervade society, which through technology is becoming increasingly hard to do. For your question, "does freedom (liberty) even really exist? " here is the answer: In life, total liberty does not exist until we are self-aware. From the very beginning we are taught to think and act in a certain manner, with no respect to our own liberty of decision-making. This continues as we grow, though as we become more and more self-aware, we make the decision to take our liberties or not to. Only when we are fully self-aware are we truly living, because only then do we have total liberty. In this manner, liberty comes in gradual steps before we are, by my philosophical definition, truly living, and thus liberty obviously supersedes life. Again, thank you to my opponent. =) [1] . http://topics.nytimes.com...