I have read that essay several times. It is not an argument built upon assertions but a 'by means of negation':

The strategy I employed was to follow a sort of via negativa, examining the dialogues for the philosophical positions that are therein totally and consistently rejected. The ‘consistently rejected’ part is important because many would maintain that the difficulty in determining Plato’s philosophy is in part that his views changed over the course of the dialogues. So, we hear about the early, middle, and late Plato, terms of periodization that, we should never forget, are entirely fictitious.
The apotheosis of such fictional construction is the hermeneutic version of an astronomical
epicycle, the ‘transition’ dialogue, supposedly including those works which do not fit neatly into the early, middle, or late categories

My problems with his argument have nothing to do with this sort of speculation.

Gerson is a devoted student of Plotinus. Plotinus had his own view of the limits of Aristotle in relation to what he thought Plato was saying. To some extent, I think Gerson is reverse engineering what Plotinus assumed to be the case.

I don't charge Gerson with some nefarious purpose. Some of his commentaries on Aristotle are very interesting. But I am not on board with the Ur Platonism argument.

Sure, you might be right. But in context, Gerson's point was this: 'when you think you see—
mentally see—a form which could not in principle be identical with a particular, including a
particular neurological element, a circuit or a state of a circuit or a synapse, and so on. This is so
because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally. For example,
when you think ‘equals taken from equals are equal’ this is a perfectly universal truth which you
see when you think it. But this truth, since it is universal could not be identical with any
particular, any material particular located in space and time.' Which makes perfect sense to me. — Wayfarer

If I am correct, then Gerson has misunderstood Aristotle. I recognize that you want to use Gerson to leverage an argument against reduction in the context of the scientific method. I don't have a clear understanding of those matters and am loath to put forward an exact definition in the style of the SEP.

But I have read enough text to question Gerson's assertions and look forward to challenging anyone who would champion his position as a scholar.

That convict element seems very important to the mix to me. I think of those videos where Progozhin is shown telling them (more or less): "Make no mistake, if you back out of this deal, I will kill you myself."

Agreed. My comment is pure speculation.

….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too. — Lloyd Gerson

The arguments in Aristotle do not follow this line of reasoning. The "identity" with the object is not a simple correspondence of "forms". Aristotle goes to great pains in his Metaphysics to distinguish between the relatively easy task of grouping beings by kinds from understanding causes. The often repeated maxim is that "we move from what is known by us to what is known by nature." Toward that end, we can establish some principles by analogy and others through experience. Gerson consistently overlooks the importance of this distinction when discussing substance (ousia) in Aristotle's writings. The idea of intellect as a pure process is presented as something we will never be able to directly experience for ourselves:

And in fact there is one sort of understanding that is such by becoming all things, while there is another that is such by producing all things in the way that a sort of state, like light, does, |430a15| since in a way light too makes potential colors into active colors.363 And this [productive] understanding is separable, unaffectable, and unmixed, being in substance an activity (for the producer is always more estimable than the thing affected, and the starting-point than the matter), not sometimes understanding and at other times not. But, when separated, this alone is just what it is.365 And it alone is immortal and eternal (but we do not remember because this is unaffectable, whereas the passive understanding is capable of passing away), and without this it understands nothing. — Aristotle

This idea of a self-sufficient process is closely bound with a very messy material set of conditions:

A problem might be raised as to how, when the affection is present but the thing producing it is absent, what is not present is ever remembered. For it is clear that one must understand the affection, which is produced by means of perception in the soul, and in that part of the body in which it is, as being like a sort of picture, the having of which we say is memory. For the movement that occurs stamps a sort of imprint, as it were, of the perceptible object, as people do who seal things with a signet ring. That is also why memory does not occur in those who are subject to a lot of change, because of some affection or because of their age, just as if the change and the seal were falling on running water. In others, because of wearing down, as in the old parts of buildings, and because of the hardness of what receives the affection, the imprint is not produced — Aristotle, On Memory, 1 450a25–b5

Apparently this was meant as a kind of wake up call to the Kremlin. Strange way to do so... — Manuel

That aspect makes me wonder if Prigozhin had been communicating with parts of Putin's regime and other oligarchs who may have extended tentative support if he achieved a certain level of success. The sudden abandonment of the project could have come from being notified that the support was being withdrawn. Palace intrigue combined with Mafia gang dynamics.

Having to shoot down Russian aircraft cannot be what Prigozhin was hoping for.

One element I found interesting in PDK back when I first read him as a teenager up to now as a pretty senior person is the theme of how one distinguishes fake narratives from real ones.

Moral logic and quests for the common good can lead one to do immoral things. As intimated I believe morality reveals itself in the act alone, whether it is impelled by thought or instinct or self-concern. — NOS4A2

That was Luther's argument against Erasmus. There are not a gang of referees to call each play so a different approach is needed.

I am not (only) appalled by Wallace's ranking of different societies. Darwin did not fill in the cultural development dimension that Wallace does. Maybe that silence counts for something.

I have many conflicting views of what is "spiritual" But I am not down with this:

As contrasted with this hopeless and soul-deadening belief, we, who accept the existence of a spiritual world, can look upon the universe as a grand consistent whole adapted in all its parts to the development of spiritual beings capable of indefinite life and perfectibility. To us, the whole purpose, the only raison d'être of the world--with all its complexities of physical structure, with its grand geological progress, the slow evolution of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and the ultimate appearance of man--was the development of the human spirit in association with the human body. From the fact that the spirit of man--the man himself--is so developed, we may well believe that this is the only, or at least the best, way for its development; and we may even see in what is usually termed "evil" on the earth, one of the most efficient means of its growth. For we know that the noblest faculties of man are strengthened and perfected by struggle and effort; it is by unceasing warfare against physical evils and in the midst of difficulty and danger that energy, courage, self-reliance, and industry have become the common qualities of the northern races; it is by the battle with moral evil in all its hydra-headed forms, that the still nobler qualities of justice and mercy and humanity and self-sacrifice have been steadily increasing in the world. Beings thus trained and strengthened by their surroundings, and possessing latent faculties capable of such noble development, are surely destined for a higher and more permanent [[p. 478]] existence; and we may confidently believe with our greatest living poet--



That life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter'd with the shocks of doom
To shape and use. — A.R. Wallace

Nothing will be the same. — Jabberwock

Agreed. We don't know what is going on but so much brinkmanship doesn't fit with the monolithic information control Putin has relied upon up to now.

My family did not impose such a polarizing set of options of what makes a "real man" as yours did but the society around us was dominated by that ethos. My particular situation probably had something to do with short male life spans and abusive behavior encouraging finding new mates over several generations of mothers. I am twenty-seven years older than what my father got. I don't know what my lease agreement says. The process has not given me a strong patriarchal vibe.

Both my male and female siblings received a training based upon being able to fend for oneself rather than expecting shelter by means of another. Kind of a mixed message as far as family bonding goes. My son grew up in a much more supportive environment. That is not to say I did not make a lot of stupid situations. Parenting is a fantastic method to learn about one's limitations.

Despite those generational differences, I think there was a continuity in a belief in a balance of personality of the sort Jung talked about between animus and anima. Male and Female were mythological components that had to be explored but was not a law or something. My parents did not read Jung (as far as I know) but there was a sense that we had to find out what we were rather than being told what those roles were.

This experience causes me to reflect on how humiliation gets mixed up with all sorts of sexual distinctions. Humiliation comes in many forms. There is the Lord of the Flies, The Last Picture Show, the fetishes of Sade. I think the Metamorphosis of Kafka may be the most terrible vision of the conditions. The son turns into another species while the favored daughter is put upon display the next day to lure prospective husbands.

I don't have a sense of what is going on beyond what emerges from time to time. Just observing parts that don't fit with other parts.

The response by Surovikin makes sense as a way to cut out support from Wagner troops. I wonder how the heavy recruitment from prisons will play into this. They aren't your "go along to get along" mobis from Vladivostok.

Plato addressed this problem from two directions. The need for dialectic as demonstrated in the middle books of The Republic shows that it is the incongruity of different ideas that can help us search beyond sets of assumptions that exclude each other by default.

The Cratylus shows how the use of language is a pattern of contingency where meaning is not given through looking for a word's definition.

Taking such a broad view that would encompass ancient, medieval, and modern points of view is a project beyond the scope of my tiny mind and would call for its own discussion if it was not. But I can offer an example of how different first principles give different 'psychologies' or 'soul accounts', to translate the word from the Greek.

John Duns Scotus regarded the will to be prior to the intellect. He would have objected to the way Descartes presents them side by side in the quote above. There is a tension between the natural world and the realm of divine grace which the scholastic philosophers dealt with by explaining that the intellect is an activity of creatures as described by Aristotle. The possibility of free choice is 'unnatural' against the background of necessary processes. So, Scotus develops an idea of contingency quite at variance from Aristotle's treatment:

By contingent, I do not mean something that is not necessary, or which was not always or which was not always in existence, but something whose opposite could have occurred at the time that this actually did. That is why I do not say that something is contingent, but that something is caused contingently. — Quoted from Arendt, will provide source when reunited with my Scotus book.

It has been more than a decade since I last wrestled with the text. This discussion encourages me to give it another go. In the meantime, I will appeal to a secondary source who I think gets at the consequences of free choice being accepted as prior to intellect:

When Scotus rejects the idea that will is merely intellectual appetite, he is saying that there is something fundamentally wrong with eudaimonistic ethics. Morality is not tied to human flourishing at all. For it is Scotus’s fundamental conviction that morality is impossible without libertarian freedom, and since he sees no way for there to be libertarian freedom on Aquinas’s eudaimonistic understanding of ethics, Aquinas’s understanding must be rejected. And just as Aquinas’s conception of the will was tailor-made to suit his eudaimonistic conception of morality, Scotus’s conception of the will is tailor-made to suit his anti-eudaimonistic conception of morality. It’s not merely that he thinks there can be no genuine freedom in mere intellectual appetite. It’s also that he rejects the idea that moral norms are intimately bound up with human nature and human happiness. The fact that God creates human beings with a certain kind of nature does not require God to command or forbid the actions that he in fact commanded or forbade. The actions he commands are not necessary for our happiness, and the actions he forbids are not incompatible with our happiness. Now if the will were merely intellectual appetite—that is, if it were aimed solely at happiness—we would not be able to choose in accordance with the moral law, since the moral law itself is not determined by any considerations about human happiness. So Scotus relegates concerns about happiness to the affectio commodi and assigns whatever is properly moral to the other affection, the affectio iustitiae. — Thomas Williams, SEP article

All I'm saying is that I perceive that in a single mental act, or object of knowledge, there is more at play than the will. — Manuel

I mean to say that Descartes would largely agree. The greater degrees of freedom come from knowing more and resisting acting stupidly as a consequence. I don't understand how you see the will as being over-determined in the Meditations.

I suppose I unconsciously had Schopenhauer in mind, as when he says "Man can do what he wills, but cannot will what he wills." But he was a determinist. — Manuel

I don't know how Descartes would respond to that. He might agree to some extent. Spinoza denied free will but for different reasons than Schopenhauer did. Spinoza said it was cheeky to say our acts of deliberation were like what God did. We deliberate about what will best serve our ends. Spinoza accepted that it was natural that we pursued those ends. He objected to the idea that we were breaking a chain of causality by doing so. Having a God who would interrupt the program at any time was declared capricious and weird from the perspective of a natural world.

Schopenhauer introduced a more thorough going skepticism regarding the idea of an ordered universe which would have been nonsense from Spinoza's point of view. It seems determinism is as tricky as freedom.

If you want to add something, please do, you certainly know Descartes very well. — Manuel

Well, I have had to accept that I had gotten it wrong several times during this OP. There are plenty of opportunities to fail again.

Now, if my definition is not too problematic, then we can do, or not do something. With the intellect we judge, discern, reason, suppose, contemplate, compare, distinguish, evaluate, consider, combine, etc., etc. — Manuel

That either/or always happens in the context of intellect:

This is owing to the fact that willing is merely a matter of being able to do or not do the same thing, that is, of being able to affirm or deny, to pursue or to shun; or better still, the will consists solely in the fact that when something is proposed to us by our intellect either to affirm or deny, to pursue or to shun, we are moved in such a way that we sense that we are determined to it by no external force. — ibid. Fourth Meditation page 38

For Descartes, 'modes of thought' include all the processes we experience from sensation, to emotion, to conceptual reasoning, and so on. The either/or of choosing happens in the case of the least important matters up to the most important decisions. That is where the element of 'indifference' is seen in relation to orders of freedom:

However, the indifference that I experience when there is no reason moving me more in one direction than in another is the lowest grade of freedom; it is indicative not of any perfection in freedom, but rather of a defect, that is, a certain negation in knowledge — ibid. Fourth Meditation page 38

Maybe it would help if you gave a definition of the will as expressed by a philosophy that rings true for you. The concept has been approached many different ways and those ways have prompted very different 'psychological' perspectives.

I am reading Descartes as saying will is freedom of choice rather than him speaking of " having freedom of the will. The latter suggests there could be an unfree will. In this context, I read that as a contradiction in terms.

My question is, do all aspects of natural knowledge play a role in the will? — Manuel

I think that D is saying it will always help in making better choices but the inclusion of 'divine grace' in the statement is important too. We did not give ourselves freedom of choice nor what is our Good. The freedom of choice is a condition discovered through the limits of our intellect:

Were I always to see clearly what is true and good, I would never deliberate about what is to be judged or chosen. — ibid. Fourth Meditation page 38

A bathrobe and the dynamic of cultural evolution will help bring that technology into a better light.

Descartes is saying he is not in a position to compare "wills" of beings as a capacity in the way differences in knowledge and ability can be. As a freedom of choice, the experience between selecting to do or not do, to affirm or not affirm any option is one that does not feel forced upon him by an exterior cause. In the theological registers Descartes was working within, that freedom of choice was related to the sin of choosing to turn away from God. From Augustine to Anselm, the freedom is a critical moment where we can err. Descartes is making a striking move by combining the choosing between true and false ideas and good and bad actions as instances of one "will." While Anselm may not approve this expression as a matter of faith, I think he would not object to:

Nor indeed does divine grace or natural knowledge ever diminish one’s freedom; rather, they increase and strengthen it. However, the indifference that I experience when there is no reason moving me more in one direction than in another is the lowest grade of freedom; it is indicative not of any perfection in freedom, but rather of a defect, that is, a certain negation in knowledge. — ibid. Fourth Meditation page 38

This approach does call for asking what freedom of choice is and what counts as an external cause. Spinoza's Ethics got to work with calling the first an illusion and the second a category mistake.

These sound to me to be strongly inclined to moral considerations, I master my will in order to change my desires so as to make them adequate for the task at hand. This is what I ought to do. — Manuel

I don't think Descartes is saying the will can be mastered. The reason he cannot experience the difference between his will and that of God's is because he can only directly know his own freedom. That freedom does include selecting between options that range from the indifferent to the most important:

For although the faculty of willing is incomparably greater in God than it is in me, both by virtue of the knowledge and power that are joined to it and that render it more resolute and efficacious and by virtue of its object inasmuch as the divine will stretches over a greater number of things, nevertheless, when viewed in itself formally and precisely, God’s faculty of willing does not appear to be any greater. This is owing to the fact that willing is merely a matter of being able to do or not do the same thing, that is, of being able to affirm or deny, to pursue or to shun; or better still, the will consists solely in the fact that when something is proposed to us by our intellect either to affirm or deny, to pursue or to shun, we are moved in such a way that we sense that we are determined to it by no external force. In order to be free I need not be capable of being moved in each direction; on the contrary, the more I am inclined toward one direction—either because I clearly understand that there is in it an aspect of the good and the true, or because God has thus disposed the inner recesses of my thought—the more freely do I choose that direction. Nor indeed does divine grace or natural knowledge ever diminish one’s freedom; rather, they increase and strengthen it. However, the indifference that I experience when there is no reason moving me more in one direction than in another is the lowest grade of freedom; it is indicative not of any perfection in freedom, but rather of a defect, that is, a certain negation in knowledge. Were I always to see clearly what is true and good, I would never deliberate about what is to be judged or chosen. — ibid. Fourth Meditation page 38

which is what he has control over after all, we cannot will to change the world, we can will to change ourselves, in order to try and have an effect on the world, however small this change may be. — Manuel

The "increase in natural knowledge" increases our power and effect upon the world.

Lacan does not express himself in the way you ascribe to him.

In the same way, when I write, the intention should not be the desire to be understood, — Levon Nurijanyan

Noted.

There has been, is presently underway, and will be in the future, many ways to explore the experiences of infants through different models of childhood development.

I am a bit taken aback at your approach of it as a general question of interest when the question is at the center of so many philosophical and scientific discussions.

In regard to our freedom to move forward that you show pervading many sides of Descartes' work, I have been thinking a lot about the historical movement from his 'rationalist' perspective to the empirical methods based upon theory and experiment. The absolute divide between intellect and body strikes me now as a subtraction of previous "First Principles" rather than a revolution or addition to previous 'metaphysics'.

The trust restored in the unity of mind and body during the Sixth Meditation establishes that we can trust our senses up to where they need work from the intellect to explore the nature of creation. To wit:

Accordingly, it is this nature that teaches me to avoid things that produce a sensation of pain and to pursue things that produce a sensation of pleasure, and the like. But it does not appear that nature teaches us to conclude anything, besides these things, from these sense perceptions unless the intellect has first conducted its own inquiry regarding things external to us. — ibidl page 82

As a matter of 'theology' this is to say God will not be filling in this part of the picture. What made God necessary to accept that I was not merely living in a dream of my own making gives me a mind that has to start from scratch. It turns out that accepting God is an innate idea is not a leg up on using the 'natural light' to explore the darkness.

That makes me think that I had things backwards when puzzling over the 'equivalency' of continual recreation versus a world of 'preserved beings'. From the Cartesian Zero, there is no way to tell. The provisional trust in the senses lets us move forward despite creating unknowns. It is an X, if you will, ready to be acted like it is known.

From that point of view, the later 'empirical' methods owe their life to this very restricted unity of mind and body. With the various meanings of skepticism to consider, I like this question from John Dewey:

Thus there is here supplied, I think, a first-rate test of the value of any philosophy which is offered us: Does it end in conclusions which, when they are referred back to ordinary life-experiences and their predicaments, render them more significant, more luminous to us, and make our dealings with them more fruitful? Or does it terminate in rendering the things of ordinary experience more opaque than they were before, and in depriving them of having in "reality" even the significance they had previously seemed to have? Does it yield the enrichment and increase of power of ordinary things which the results of physical science afford when applied in every-day affairs? Or does it become a mystery that these ordinary things should be what they are; and are philosophic concepts left to dwell in separation in some technical realm of their own? — John Dewey. Experience And Nature

I think Descartes approves of that message if he has been lingering in a celestial bathtub long enough to translate it from Latin.

When a contingent believes that all of the evidence has been fabricated or planted, then the trial is only theater for them. No risk of suffering cognitive dissonance. This crowd must be fed regularly by those who feed upon them.

The proof will be in the pudding. The indictment is strong, but the actual presentation of the case will have to go much further.

Au Contraire. At that point, we chuck the pack of Gitanes and hike toward the tree line with a sharp tool and a foolish grin.

Well, I think Dewey is acknowledging the discontinuity of the 'narrator' as you describe it but sees the activity to be grounded in a process where we belong rather than a condition of exile.

Your post reminds me of a passage I read recently in Dewey:

Every case of consciousness is dramatic; drama is an enhancement of the conditions of consciousness.

It is impossible to tell what immediate consciousness is not because there is some mystery in or behind it, but for the same reason that we cannot tell just what sweet or red immediately is: it is something had, not communicated and known. But words, as means of directing action, may evoke a situation in which the thing in question is had in some particularly illuminating way* It seems to me that anyone who installs himself in the midst of the unfolding of drama has the experience of consciousness in just this sort of way; in a way which enables him to give significance to descriptive and analytic terms otherwise meaningless. There must be a story, some whole, an integrated series of episodes. This connected whole is mind, as it extends beyond a particular process of consciousness and conditions it. — John Dewey, Experience and Nature, page 306

I don't see what's conservative about the way the Russians advanced into Kherson. They penetrated quite deeply, and seemed to have encountered very little resistance until they were counter-attacked. — Tzeentch

That is how they roll. And they made the Ukrainian recapture of that ground very expensive.

Even if everything went the Russians' way, Kiev was way too heavily defended to be taken given the amount of troops the Russians deployed. Unless you have different information than me, I don't see any way the numbers could be interpreted to fit this idea. — Tzeentch

If they had advanced with solid logistical support instead of rolling the dice, retreat would not have meant a panicked withdrawal from the field. If the airborne operation had been successful, there would have been a Russian presence north of Kiev much longer than the ass grab of their retreat. To this degree, you are pinning a theory upon the goal of the operation to whether it failed or not, leaving no room for its possible success.

I am pretty sure that Russia would now give its left nut to have not gambled so recklessly. As in our argument about this last year, the lack of importance you assign to the airborne infantry is what keeps getting left out of your analysis of numbers of boots on the ground.

If it was a feint, it was definitely planned. The same is true if it was not.

I don't see the logic of

Forming a defensive line in the north would have also given away the fact that the Russians had no intention of taking Kiev, which would have severely decreased the strategic impact it might have had. — Tzeentch

If Russia had started moving towards Kiev in the conservative fashion it advanced upon Kherson, for example, that would have pinned the forces needed for defending the city. I take the point that perhaps there were not enough resources for that to be sustained but Ukraine was not in a position to assume it was a bluff. Instead, the Russians attempted an incredibly risky airborne infantry move.

Leaving the reading of strategic intentions aside, stupid or not, the issue not touched upon in your analysis is that the airborne operation could have worked. A lot of marginal situations broke the Ukrainians way. Your thesis does not make sense of what success might have led to.

Possibly the international reaction might have been different as well - slicing off the pieces of Ukraine might be viewed differently than an 'all-out' war. — Jabberwock

That, after all, worked to some degree in the original taking of Crimea and the 'independent' Republics.

Putin became convinced that they will be able to take Kiev and depose the authorities, so they tried, with catastrophic results. If they stuck to the plan, the campaign might go much better for Russians, even with the Ukrainian forces relieved from the north. — Jabberwock

Things would have been very different if the Russians had been able to establish an air bridge to Hostumel/Antonov airport. The Russian paratroopers who survived were sent to trenches in eastern Ukraine. Proof of intention will have to wait until after the war is over and Russians talk about it. But the lack of airborne infantry attempts and their use as ditch diggers since that battle suggests a deep opportunity cost.

As has been demonstrated ad infinitum during these thousands of comments comprising the OP, the idea of a military feint is always linked to a particular theory that Russia was provoked into attacking Ukraine. This runs counter to the idea Russia planned to take the whole of the country under their control through proxies. If one removes that debate from the question, the movement toward Kyiv still was a terrible mistake. If they had advanced into Ukraine from Belarus to establish defensive lines as they did in the east, that would have pinned the forces to the northern front more effectively than joy-riding tanks with no infantry support.

So, the debate is stuck in which way the Russians were stupid in their planning. That is not a very compelling ground upon which to support theories. Hopefully, the war will end soon, and we can get the words from the horse's mouth. Presuming, of course, that the horse has not been shot.

Alain de Botton's remark reminds me of Thorstein Veblen's theory of Conspicuous Consumption.

That is to say, in concrete terms, in any community where conspicuous consumption is an element of the scheme of life, an increase in an individual's ability to pay is likely to take the form of an expenditure for some accredited line of conspicuous consumption.

With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper. In an industrial community this propensity expresses itself in pecuniary emulation; and this, so far as regards the Western civilized communities of the present, is virtually equivalent to saying that it expresses itself in some form of conspicuous waste. — Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class

This speaks to:

Focusing so much on invulnerability, which was a major philosophical theme at the time so it makes sense, is also another point of departure for me. This dovetails with the above. It's not to be impervious to fortune, but to be able to feel and go with the flows of fortune with tranquility. — Moliere

The entanglement of the personal within 'the scheme of life' cannot be dissolved but there are degrees of freedom regarding the 'habits of emulation.' I think that Foucault's The Care of the Self is a close examination of this "Epicurean" virtue.

I do not see law as a cause or as capable of causing persons to act or not act; although everyone else does. Everyone thinks we humans are simply things which can be in motion moved by the language of law — quintillus

This 'everyone does' is not a very convincing argument about why people make laws.

I don't understand how you see law as a cause.

I don't get the ' precipitated' act part of your thesis. Laws are made on the basis of preventing a behavior, things people do. Bad laws certainly exist. But there are good laws too.

The system sucks in many ways but what does the replacement look like?

Damnit. — Moliere

I feel your pain.

I am glad that you found Badiou useful for you.

I am not sure if the following relates to your OP but here it goes:

The 'rationalists' tradition developed the idea of seeing reason as different from theology in various ways. Hegel is interesting as someone who viewed the 'concepts' of religion as something integrated into a larger understanding of reason. Rational premises are the ground for dispensing with theological registers. Badiou's approach is he doesn't take the Hegelian view that such a trajectory of thinking can be resolved or is the large tendency of the world seen through a teleology. For Badiou, the vitality of reason is tied to an asymmetry it cannot go beyond. And it is kind of an accident.

But how can you verify that you feel nothing under anesthesia? — sime

That is an interesting question. Having had to return from it several times, I cannot verify a 'nothing' but the experience is unique. Something like, 'I left and am here again'.

Sleeping and dreaming is often an oppressive tour in the opposite direction. A cruel dossier of what one particularly sucks at.