Always the bald-headed stepchild of eternally expanding systems.

I agree with T Clark on the importance of recognizing the danger of the new means of production. I also stand with those who point to the dynamics of exploitation which is readily evident to any that care to look. With that confluence of concerns, the arguments between communitarians and global unity should be seen as necessarily linked to your question.

Ivan Illich spoke of how technology can disempower individuals, not only as a participant in a system of exchange but as a shrinking scope of freedom for the homo faber. Perhaps he was naive in how society could be different, but it is interesting how he thought Marx was naive.

One factor pointing toward the status of taking Kyiv being a central goal at the beginning of the invasion is how the failure to do so has greatly diminished the utility of Belarus in the conflict.

One imagines that the situation in that country would be very different if it was now the favored access path to a Kiev ruled by a puppet government.

Much of your description of a 'continual process of change' reminds me of Gene W Marshall's Primer on Radical Christianity. One can safely say it is a very different response than the Evangelical churches of today but probably is an example of the 'modern' that Dermot Griffin objects to.

This is what is truly remarkable; St. Stephen asks God to forgive his persecutors in the Book of Acts. This brings me to the sobering fact that New Testament Christianity is dead and needs a revival. Kierkegaard, for example, wrote to an entire country that he felt had never been authentically Christian. — Dermot Griffin

It is true that Kierkegaard greatly annoyed his fellow Christians by saying that their satisfaction with holding good opinions is not the same as doing the works of love as commanded by Jesus. He did not, on that basis, declare a separate congregation as others have. He was a voice, like Luther and Pascal, trying to separate a vision of authentic life from one made false through corruption and illusion.

What you don't like about modern evangelists sounds a lot like the complacency others have objected to in the past.

Thank you for the careful response. I will ponder upon it in coming days.

I remember the discussion well. What part of that history suggests to you that Christianity was a solution to an 'objective' problem? Or is that how you meant to put the matter?

Job does not claim to be blameless but doesn't accept that he must be wrong by default either.

Your question about what I mean by distinguishing faith and understanding is a good one and I admit that I need to think about it more.

In the context of the OP, I am wondering how the reception of matters 'Christian' relate to a choice between a vision of revolutionary change versus something more 'normative' as suggested by Dermot Griffin. And by bringing up Job, I was thinking that expecting good results from living a good life is sort of an argument for the normative.

I won't argue those bullet points as theses, but several observations occur to me.

In 2014, Russia succeeded in getting a large number of the 'the self-identified Russian' population to support the changes. There are no similar groups in play during this Special Operation. The attempts to set up a similar scheme in Kherson has collapsed. The conscription methods in Donetsk and Luhansk have the population hiding their males to protect them from the war. So whatever strategic/tactical similarities may exist between the present operation and the first invasion, the previous element of local support is not there in newly attacked territories.

The WW2 comparison most apt for the present situation in the Kherson oblast is the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans were kicking butt until their supply lines were cut and they could not retreat across a big river.

Some of the fear of death may be connected to a fear of an after-life.

There is the prospect of torments as spelled out in The Inferno. The scariest part of that to me is a living person getting to have a tour. So it is the imagination itself that causes despair.

Like those nightmares where each strategy to escape a scene leads to another scene. One comes to wonder: is this a tourist visit or am I dead?

The people who participate in those threads are interested in them to whatever degree they make efforts to present their point of view. Are you asking for those people to go away?

That would remove what you find objectionable.

We know, however, that he is blameless. — Fooloso4

We are told that is the case. His 'friends' doubt it. How does Job know they are wrong? Is that a keeping of faith or a better understanding of what righteousness is like?

I understand your view. My comments are a challenge to it. Perhaps a topic for a separate conversation.

I agree that there is a lot of emphasis on the righteous getting help when needed. The greater part of the book of Job is devoted to whether Job can know his status in that regard by himself. His 'friends' keep telling him he must have sinned. The wager is on whether that kind of self-knowledge is alive or only an illusion of good fortune.

How does the struggle of Job fit in with this objective?

I am curious what you see as more 'objective' in the Gospel texts that countervails against the excessive 'subjectivity' you see expressed by Paul.

Kierkegaard, after all, emphasized that the experience of the Single Individual was where the struggle for one kind of life against another was happening.

Yes, your effort in these matters is evident.

The recognition of the reference connecting modern theories of influence to ancient texts is illuminating.

Jews have always had an idea that fixed societies are inherently evil, as if you're closer to God if you're detached from cities and able to dwell in the desert, free from the corruption that inevitably creeps 8nto city life. — Tate

This idea was put forward in The Protocols of Zion.

It is a society of righteous people where outside behavior is apparently pretty rigidly constrained. It's kind of strange vision. — Moses

I hear that. When I read the Sermon on the Mount, the call for not reacting to violence with violence strikes me as particular answer to a specific situation, not an adequate response to all situations. In many articulations of Christian belief, this issue keeps coming up with the whole range of being comfortable with being a soldier of God or renouncing War as such.

It was part of the humanist focus, with or without religion, but as the emphasis on social existence is the key domain, as opposed to in relationship with God, awareness of effects of action has become more important as a form of social ethics. — Jack Cummins

If it is true that the two domains are not given to us before thinking about them, all theological expression is also a 'social' ethics, a 'conjunction' with particular consequences. Maybe it would be good to decouple the tendency to see the creator as like us or vice versa from the agency of a god as a source. The Timaeus told a story of the creator as a sort of Cabinet Maker with a well-equipped shop. Aristotle presented us with the idea of an Unmoved Mover who we must reflect in our nature by definition but is not like us in most respects.

Regarding Kant, perhaps all 'histories of philosophy' approaches are their own 'conjunction.' But I don't want to argue for that as a necessary conclusion. That would presume an understanding that I do not have.

Yes, that level of interconnection can be heard in both Spinoza's and Nietzsche's versions of 'determinism' and their rejection of an anthropomorphic creator.

Wanting to know how to live makes wanting to know more than curiosity. I agree with I like sushi saying:

‘Ethical aspects of philosophy’ IS ethics. — I like sushi

Consider how the first part of Spinoza's Ethics is a cosmological explanation of our conditions.

There is a distinction between what is pursued as a description of life and the meaning and values we find there, but their "conjunction" is not that of two self-sufficient domains. How those domains are distinguished is one of the primary features of a 'philosophy.'

In Nietzsche, for example, the will-to-power is seen as a fundamental property of organic beings that informs us of a source for 'moral' behavior. The idea of that source is not a collapse of all distinctions between the two domains. They do become necessarily linked to each other through the description.

I read Nietzsche as more of a Monist in that regard. We are stuck with our world and that attempts to make it otherwise kick the ball down the road.

What I meant to say in my comment was to push back on the idea of philosophies being discrete points of view when there are many substantial disagreements about what is being said through their exposition. Different 'philosophies' do not pose problems worthy of solving to the same degree. To the degree they can be encapsulated into a simple thesis, they do not ask anything of us.

Did he ever demand his teachings be treated as authoritative or was he just writing letters with his ideas that were later established as authoritative by the compilers of canon? — Moses

In both letters to the Corinthians, he presents the Spirit he has introduced to the congregations as higher than the law required for participation in Jewish communities.
Your question goes to the larger result of Paul only knowing Jesus through visions but claiming to be a witness at the same time.

As facts are not always straightforward at all it seems to make sense that some are drawn to different philosophies — Jack Cummins

It is not straight forward. But it can be said that events happen and attempts to understand how and to what extent a reality is shared while it is happening is the work of different philosophies.

In the example of Nietzsche, for instance, he is read by some to argue that events are ultimately arbitrary formations and by others as a rejection of that idea because Nietzsche rejects Kant's separation of subject and object that would be able to say what an accident is.

Which prompts me to wonder if "different philosophies" are like available locations from which to take common objects into view.

I appreciate your pragmatic spirit.
It seems to me that what counts as a 'benefit' is one of the issues that is most fiercely debated.
I don't want to say there is no world of shared values that could stand as the premise for a shared world. But I am not able to provide the basis for it either.
Where do the facts begin?

If one were able to separate the effects of a philosophy from the 'truth' for the sake of evaluation, wouldn't all efforts toward that end have to be verified by separating actual causes from illusory ones?

I think Aristotle would say this proposal is an infinite regress.

Some keep it in a library, others lend it to friends, etc. but the point is you don't need the book anymore — Agent Smith

I have some books I have read many times over the years. I still have not "grokked" them. In some cases, I am losing ground.

This is pretty good:

Very interesting.
Needing a reason for a reason not indicting all attempts toward those ends.
(Your comment went well beyond that observation).

It is interesting that Zelensky was not asking the 'bloggers' to shut up but chill with the absolute immediacy element.

The information war includes these bloggers.

I am curious if the aim was always to attack in force up north after trapping so much of Russia's best prepared units down south by blowing the bridges, or if it was just opportunity and the ability to move resources north quickly. Guess we won't know until things settle down. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The Russians did move resources south after all the fanfare. As you say, it is hard to know who is fooling who until the deal goes down.

Do you see a light at the end of this tunnel? — Agent Smith

Well, I do not share the ready optimism of Leibniz, but he did show that all alternatives do not need to be cancelled for something to be viable. The limits of negation apply to all. Which is sort of one of your points.

Does it not matter who is putting forth a dogma and what it is?
It sounds like you want an unconditional boundary.

Zelensky acknowledged some success in recent operations but added this:

Zelensky also appealed to "some bloggers," as he put it, "not to complicate the task for our army with your haste. Please do not report the specific details of the defense operation earlier than the official representatives of our state."

As an avid consumer of information, I heard that as calling for less demand for the last five minutes. Guilty, as charged.

Before anybody tries to prove anything with it, wasn't Leibniz saying that everything that exists must have some reason for being here because the thing that exists could easily not exist with another set of conditions?

What does PSR refer to?

Euclid did pretty well with the second method. That another set of premises is possible doesn't make fidelity to the one's adopted unsatisfactory.

Each of those thoughts merit exploration.

I don't want to hijack this thread to discuss them, especially since it would call for reading much more than Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

I will try to put together an OP on the matter. I am more than a little uncertain, however, if such a dive into primary texts will interest the Forum.

I was thinking of Nietzsche's idea of our present science as something that was available but problematic as a vehicle of certain knowledge. So, the natural was not presented as outside of the approach of established disciplines but not included either as a final word.

So, it is not clear whether the doubt about science is to be understood as a rejection of all that it produces or something else. In view of the fact that Nietzsche introduces a competing "science" not based upon a refutation of the other kind, but on the question of completeness, it is difficult to say what that is or could be.